The little cluster of artists did not

  want to talk about politics.  "Useless squabbling," one said.  "Waste of time," another agreed.  "Make yourselves a sandwich.  There's no catering here." The loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly was laid out on a picnic table. 

  "Do you guys live here?" 

  "I'm local.  They are not.  I'm a potter." 

  "You make pottery?" 

  "I'll give you a studio tour later." 

  "I'm not sure that it is 'existential' or even a crisis.  It's just something I'm stuck on.  For a lot of the people who were trained they come up with something to mass produce and that's the success.  Making a hundred of something." 

  "Do you not have ideas?" 

  "I do, it's not that.  More like, I don't need a hundred clay feet or a thousand smiley faces with missing teeth.  I mean why portraiture our misery." 

  "Are you in misery?" 

  "I try not to be." 

A string of lanterns on caribiners hung

  inside a box truck.  Two convoys were converging. 

  "Listen to me.  Just me." A man told a woman.  Eyes looked all around, settled on the man's face.  "This whole thing's changed again." 

  "What thing?" The woman slammed down a cigarette purse.  The plethor strap which was already torn, broke.  She sat on a crate.  Put her throbbing migraine in her hands.  Hands covered in tie-dye colors.  The man took her hands in his.  "What did you girls do last night?" She blew out a long breath.  "Babysitting for some Officer couples." The man took this in with a gentle but strong nod, (i)Oh(i).  "Did the kids survive?" A little laugh.  "Not my forté." 

  "Well, what in here is going to get this stuff off of you?" 

  "Why?" 

  "You are needed." 

  The woman's sharp sarcasm had cooled and she let her eyes look at the truck floor.  She looked at the man's dirty pants.  "Who's going to do your laundry?" 

  "I'll have to do it myself.  There's some real towns on my itinerary." 

  "Should I ask you, needed how?" 

  "I don't have all the specifics myself, but," the woman started to squirm on the crate, "I know, you're not committing, here, now." 

  The man put his callused hand under her chin and lifted her face.  "I think you can do it.  They explained it as a sort of linchpin position." 

  "What the heaheck is that?" 

  "I'm going to let them explain it." He knocked on the wall to the cab.  It opened. 

  "The tornado guys?" She asked. 

  "That's not the only thing we chase," one said without looking away from a monitor scrolling hundreds of "mugshots". 

  "All bad guys?" The woman was drawn in.  "Not at all.  People filtered out of jobs by algorithms." 

  "What's algorithm?" 

  The guy in the driver's seat looked at a huge watch velcro'd to the dashboard.  "Got time for dinner?" 

  "Oh shit!" The woman dug a shoelace with a wedding ring and cross necklace stuck to it out of the cigarette purse.  "How 'bout not dinner but beers?" 

  "I could get onboard with that plan." 

  The guy in the passenger seat absently shook his head (i)no(i), "Doesn't work for me." 

  "I'll go get a pizza," the man said. 

"Super shined," the boy in a tall man's janitor jumpsuit said dramatically.

  "They're coming!" Another boy in a more broadchested man's shirt reported as he squeak-sneakered into the lobby.  A deep breath and adjustment of coffee trays on both arms. 

  The clicking of heels on the sidewalk growing louder.  

  Louder.  

  Suddenly a safety whistle blown.  Heels almost skidding to a stop.  The voice of a woman.  "How dare YOU!  How dare you, and you, show your faces here. How dare you bring such dark days on our city!  On our party!  On this sacred place!  AOC, GET UPSTAIRS.  NOW." 

  "Yes m'am." 

  Only one woman passed through the new security entryway and paused.  Dropped head, hands over eyes.  Smoothing eyebrows and brushing off the devastation of reprimand.  Starting for the lobby. 

  "Go slow," said the janitor boy, "I just polished it." 

  "Thank you." 

His voice boomed,

  "OH, SO BY POLITICAL OPERATIVE YOU MEANT SOCIAL DRAMA QUEEN!"  One man pulled up his trousers. 

  "How'n the hell are you?  Been all over the world I bet." 

  "What's she doing here?" 

  More correspondents plowed through the partiers following the pastor's son-in-law. 

  "You all went off to do world class journalism and left me here to my own devices," the tall man with a camera strapped to his head looked at a shorter man with a camera strapped to his head.  One clicked the other's by a little hanging button.  "Same time next week?" 

  "Who are all these people?" 

  "Pretty random group.  Most are out of their minds high or something.  A lot of other party people." 

  An older correspondent covered the eyes of a young one. 

  "Put this over your head," the tall man was given a paper grocery bag.  "Why?" He whined.  "We can't leave here without photographing." 

  Not all magazines have the same standards. 

  A literary agent clicked the camera without film a few times.  The entire scene was filmed by several people as practice, group technique. 

  A man stepped forward from a doorway and scrawled in marker on the grocery bag on the tall man's head, (i)Pat's expecting you to be there.(i) 

  The hallway filled up with the scene busters.  "Well, now you know lass.  Boys have dingdongs." People blushing.  "He's always got a theory.  That guy in there, not invited.  This quarter's talk will include touching upon apocalypse and them," the man's pointing finger clipped a woman's nose, "Packing the Courts!" 

  "I think it's (i)stacking(i) not packing.  But I don't know everything." 

  "Who are those kids?" 

  "They wanna do it too, but not drugs and sex and booze." 

  "Really?!  What's the draw then?" 

  An insta-camera was passed forward.  "All out?  Morals in tact?" A photo was snapped, the door was closed.  The memo center-stage.  Photo slid under the door.  "Let's go!" 

"Most of mine had a conscience," one young woman

  snapped at another young woman. 

  "What's the conversation du jour in the living laboratory this morning?" An older correspondent asked a young man.  The young man's face froze.  Somebody had talked to him and not just anybody but (i)this guy(i).  Had been in the Cold War (i)and(i) working in the Gulf.  "Started out about teachers and trainers.  Could be a cat fight at any moment with those two." 

  "You're saying mine doesn't." 

  "I'm not saying that.  I didn't say that, make some comparison statement between the two men." 

  Arms crossed.  Practice at holding back stinging tears so makeup doesn't run. 

  "But since you took it there I'll tell you I've worked with both.  It's complicated." 

  "Simplify." 

A woman pelted a reporter

  in the back with a shoe.  San Francisco street sidewalk.  The reporter later reported being scared shitless, exhaling the stress in a deep meditative breath, turning and picking up the shoe.  Of course, it was not obvious who threw it.  The reporter looked at the feet of everyone at a bus stop.  No solo barefoot. 

  Two cigarettes on a bench.  A bicyclist messenger.  A note.  The gist: we need to talk, some of us being stalked by serial killers, health department gave out home addresses.  Group lunch at such and such a place. 

  "Wigger don't get mad, don't be mean," a surfer dude with three PhDs and a match to the thrown shoe stood outside the beansprout/lattè joint.  "Don't you ever work?" A hand came from behind the guy and beckoned with highly polished fingernails with tiny scenes painted on the polish for the other shoe.  "I saw you.  You better get better at hitting and running before anyone gives you a gun." 

  "Me no need gun, me have man." 

  "Yeah, yeah.  At least she did last night." 

  "That's disgusting.  Unsafe and degrading to all women." 

  "Obviously you weren't watching or you'd know we were safe." 

  "Somebody was," a shirt and tie guy smacked an envelope against surfer dude's chest.  "Bring those inside and tell me how you're political." 

  "I am absolutely not." 

  "In." Nobody made a move.  "What's the hesitation?" 

  "Could be you assuming."  This drew a chortle from a red headed woman who'd stepped out to smoke and stood there watching like a video camera.  "I think she's the political one," a chin thrust towards the reporter. 

  "Oh, look at the time, and I'm not even at the right restaurant.  Nice seeing you." 

It's actually most of the time

  that "the Press" does not know the strategy of politicians, and politicians do not know the military's.  It can make for harrowing scenes of confusion amongst the masses. 

  "I don't want to go there!" A correspondent was arguing with an editor's plan to meet objective and "scoop" another paper.  Wall to wall people in an airport. 

  "And I certainly don't want to go there like that," she said.  She flashed a photograph to the newsroom.  People in a cage on a boom being carted to a different area. 

  "Let me think." She hung up. 

  "Excuse me.  Excuse me," she said to a short man.  "You look official." The man said nothing.  "Why are those people in that cage?" 

  "They paid for safe passage.  You want?" 

  An even shorter woman came up.  "DVD sir?" 

  "Look, those are paid to defend those.  So, the less offensive you all are, the fewer of you will get gunshot wounds." Everyone heard her in plain English.  A man bought ten DVDs for a dollar a piece, but gave the money to a woman to give to the woman.  Others bought souvenir tee-shirts and sarongs to bandage themselves.

"I don't care," he said for the fiftieth time.

  "But it's the kid's way of dipolomatic solution." 

  He said it again. 

  After several days of prayer by himself he came out of the little room.  "There's no such thing as interfaith.  There can't be." 

  "None of us are converting." Said a mother whose children and husband were Muslim. 

  This angered a pastor.  Snarky comments to get at debate flew.

"We didn't know." The one tween spoke for both.

  "How'd ya find out?" 

  "So and so's big sister's back from the Middle East!  Now we know there's all different kinds of Muslims." 

  "Stop.  Just stop moving the units around metro." 

  "You can't tell me what to do.  You're under me." 

  "But what if it would save lives?" 

  An older-looking man came up out of the subway and crossed the road.  "You two still together?" 

  Neither the man nor the woman answered.

"Had we not worn these wigs," the bar music was blaring,

  "We'd be looking like them!" A shorter woman up from Orleans indicated the walking wounded.  Slumping and sitting but not cowerint.  One pushed self up a wall by muscled thighs and held up hands in front of the injured. 

  "How'd you know?" Our travel leader asked of the woman with dark, dark circles under her eyes.  "Know what?" She got up from crouching.  "That we needed the wigs?" 

  The woman re-crouched.  "Look, I been seeing these people fight for weeks.  Even before the BM's turned against each other." 

  "BM's?" A correspondent made a swift move in the conversation. 

  "Black Muslims." 

  The leader handed out another round of hard tack.  And bottled waters.  The woman said to the correspondent.  "There's people that have been effectively 'scalped' they pull hair so hard." She winced.