"War."
The advisor looked around at the people sitting and standing in the parking garage. "Who are these people?"
"Mostly artists and intellectuals is the safest answer for everyone Sir."
"In my opinion, that's 85% of the problem with
"I didn't ask
"The literary folks all up and down the Eastern Seaboard these days. I mean really
"For your opinion." The man stood three feet taller than the woman. She opened her eyes and looked up into his chin. "Sir?"
He put a finger up to his lips, sssshhhhh.
and a tsunami, at the same time."
More Officers had arrived from Germany. None showed feelings about a deaf, dumb, and blind "key witness group".
"And with the Ameree-cahns holding pwace in da Europa, Asia Minor
"would have been
"Ree-een-filtered!"
we'd gone to the little trailer house guarding the transformer, we thought we'd arrived with just our wounded Servicepeople." Someone swallowed hard. Drymouth. "But when we rattled through the 'extra keys' and got the wounded into the shelter, and then found the generator for some light," the Court transcriber kept typing and typing.
The witnesses would see each other in the hallways. Offer to get something from the vending machine if they'd finished up. An out-of-work-work dot.commer adapted one machine to boil water and make chicken noodle soup.
"The Chinese Sir." A Senior American official relayed to the Judge not truly presiding, but hearing. "Okay, your Honor, let me ask a question," said a Public Defendent. "It was the Chinese setting up a studio inside?"
Hopped a fence and caught a train to "Brick Town". Someone put the glass of champagne back on the server's tray.
"Hopped a train?" One gentleman asked.
"Caught a train?" Another gentleman asked.
It's making too much noise, a lady was clearly trying to wiggle out of the fancywear by crossing the room. An academic woman was close on heel. "It has to do with postulates!" She said loudly of the prospective research. "Great; I'll let the nerds know."
"It's Bean Town, not brick town."
"Is there a vending machine somewhere?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Thirsty?"
One blocked the other's raise and snap of a finger. "Why are you here little one?"
"Okay, we're ready," the server with the champagne told his watch. "Oh Lord," a male Academic in a graduation robe said out loud to no one in particular. "Try and keep up," one young person said to everyone tossed a stick with digital camera on it.
People crammed the stairwells. "I'd rahtha be home watching my wife do jijitsu." Said a Professor, honestly.
Outside long lean legs in dress slacks crossed in front of the chained closed doors to the halls of Academia. "It's a bottleneck Chief," a student said to two professors getting to the front of the line at the same time. "I am not a chief, except to my wife, who is not here," one looked around over the tops of many heads. "I am," said the other. "Here from Oklahoma." He stuck out his hand for a handshake.
Statistics, a young man blurted about who from which Department. Someone waved him forward. "What is the likelihood of us getting out this way?" The taller professor asked. The young man pulled a precision measuring tool from his shirt pocket. "I'll measure the chain."
A black lady's hand reached through the knot of body and snatched the tool. "Can't have those now," she dropped it in her briefcase/purse. The young man took off to more descending staircase.
"Was that a statement of truth?" The professor from Oklahoma asked. "No." Replied the woman. "I just wanted it." She shrugged. Then pulled Lock Down Drill manuals from her bag. "It doesn't say what to do if they don't know what's real from," she fell silent and held up her hands.
People dramatically breathed outside air once truly outside on a different sidewalk. Some were hot and sweaty and seemed a bit panick'd.
"We're on the move Helen," a professor told his watch. On both sides of the street people were single-filing close to the buildings. Shop doors were open and closed. One sign said NO STOPPING in a neon SAFETY color.
Plucked from the streaming foot traffic. Shown a monitor. The stream of people moving somewhere. A woman in a skirt suit oooooooo body slam, that's not good. Typing on a computer keyboard. The question, "Justification?" Within seconds a mostly dark gray screen got neon green words saying, "Someone shouting make way for the drones make way for the drones."
"Well, these must be specialty nails." Smooth as my finger traced a row of bumpy round hardware holding leather to wood.
"Hand Carved," a very tall austere-type man's voice boomed eloquently.
"Did you actually see them?"
"Oh yes. Look at this wood. Must be like our Pine."
"What are tawking about our pine, their pine, the two coasts are not different nations."
"Almost. That's what my Dad thinks."
"Except when you think of it that way. Yeah, yeah, might as well be is what my mother would say." The furniture store man inched closer. Stopping at a glass cabinet to fake read a newspaper.
"Don't look but he might be looking at us."
I looked as I said, "Okay, I won't look."
"Yellow pine," the man said. He put down the paper and straightened a rocking chair in a cluster of chairs, each one representing its family of chairs that could make sets of four or six or eight or ten or even twelve. Only the heads of the seats around a very rectangular and long table had "arms". "Some people call it Ponderosa Pine."
"Oh do they now? Come on," she tugged my sleeve. "Let me know when you're ready girls." The man went back up front. We went towards a side and the back. "Step into my dark corner booth," she said. And there was a breakfast nook table with bench seats attached. "It's kind of like a picnic table."
"So you want me to write a song?"
"Not just me. It's like our whole generation needs you."
"I'd find that hard to believe even if you weren't asking me for something. But, flattery
"And we have no money
"Flattery often tweaks my psyche just right, but," she got up as I sat down. She fished twelve dollars out of her pocket and put it in the middle of the little table. "What's that?" She asked. "Looks like money."
"Wanna do lunch?"
"Is the money for me?"
"Maybe."
"That would get me two more video tapes."
She sat back down and tried to push the table out from the bench a bit. "You're not fat."
"This close makes me feel like I'm suffocating."
"Oh God, and I have cigarette breath." I fished chewing gum out of a pocket and offered her a piece. "Sugar free?"
"Of course."
"Think we'll ever have homes for furniture like this?"
"I doubt it." I let her look through my wallet while we sat there. She could see my "credentials" for doing some of the public service work I was doing. And I could not exactly say much about photos of loved ones.
"What did that woman mean? About stinks?"
"TOP SECRET. For real." Eyes widened as they passed over my face and above my head and landed on a street level little window. "But I will say, the people who were trying to save as many people as they could over there listed those wounded as anything but people."
She buried her forehead in her palm for a minute. Then said, "Life gives me headaches."
The chance to get out of the smog.
"One of the oldest Spanish families in California."
"But why? We're so close to ending war!"
The three foot waves were steady rhythm. Curling and pounding, curling and pounding. "We're both pensive. Whatever that means."
"That's why you're sitting here alone together?"
"LOOK, I don't know the whys of everything. Or even anything really." One of the girls looked hurt for a split second, then smiled. "I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't feel abandoned." I stood up. "You're leaving me?!" She looked at the horizon of the ocean. "Yup, sailing the high seas!"
"She means we got gigs. Nothing romantic about it." Another girl rubbed the muscles on her arm. "We lug our shit around from town to town and
"Take it from me," said the less depressed du jour of the pair, "She's about to launch a career." She gave the "I'm proud of you" look to the girl. "Thanks for the amplifier!" The girl said to everyone. "And. It's been nice. Talking to other people."
"That's it?!"
"What else?"
"How 'bout a group hug?" One of us asked.
"How's about not?!"
"A prayer?"
"How about a group hug as a prayer?!"
"It's not very mature to hate anybody, let alone your children."
"Like you should talk. Having a bunch of diplomats act like five and six year olds and eat bitty bites of food."
"Tea sandwiches. And they weren't acting. There's a part of them, a part of all of us
"We're ALL God's children."
The oldest one wielded, a litte unsteady on her inch and a half heels, vintage 1950's. "Not you," she hissed at the wounded veteran.
"Why. Because you said so?" One of the redheads hissed. The handler tried to blink away the morning.
A blonde put the pistol in a red head's hand and some pieces of paper in the other. Told, "You wrote it." The actress sighed deeply and waved the gun around before keeping it pointed at everyone while reading. "And just what did I write?"
A cameraman did not stir from staring at the woman so a director said loudly in his ear keep filming, keep filming. A younger man in chinos and a mechanics shirt said in his other ear, "You're mum's a whore."
"Why are you staring at me Oriana?" She was rubbing cold hands on a big hot rock that she was sitting on. "Is this perched enough?" She hollered at some actresses. One drained an espresso and spat. "Writers are never far enough away in my opinion."
there were wild compulsions to tell my newfound friends everything.
What a shock then to return to a place gone into full-on warmode.
Once school rooms, then bereft of desks. A woman my age stepped from behind a coat hook area quarter wall. "You have returned."
"Not sure for how long."
Expressions unsure of freedom or no. Pieces and bits of chalk fell from her hand into a box labeled chalkboard chalk. "What if someone wanted to use the chalk for something else?"
Shaking away heavy thoughts to consider me, asking a question. "I see you've labeled this chalkboard chalk," I scooped some up. "In America, I have seen children draw on sidewalks with these chalks."
"What do they draw?"
"Mostly trees in the cities and vehicles in the countryside. I see you are a smoker. Do you have an extra cigarette?"
"My dear young American friend, there is nothing extra in this place." The feeling of being in a sand-timer or hourglass butting against the vigor of youth, inside me. "What else do you see?"
"I see," eyes dropping on woodplank flooring not unfamilar, like a basketball court, "grief. Where once, smiles."
"The smiles are just put away for a time. Like the chalk." Footsteps in a quad outdoors. "There have been many changes." She headed for a window. "Like what?"
"Like these," she took fistfuls of long curtains in hand and shook. Dust. And dark stains on the backside. We looked down at people our age in uniform. "Maybe John still smokes. Let's go ask him."
"My husband. You know my husband?"
"Did you marry John?"
She nodded through a wincing. "Are you hurt?" She shook her head noooo. Her hand reached for my forearm and she started to pull me gently. "Let's ask them for cigarettes." She donned a light sweater and put her pocketbook with the strap across her chest. I reached the doorway first and started to go back the way I'd come in. She reached for me again. "Go slow," she said.
In the once neat and polished hallway was graffitti and machine gun spray indentations. Making way slowly because of physical pain, a woman made a notation on a form. "I get terrible headaches too." The woman looked at the scarred walls, "I am sorry. But I am not a doctor." I patted her hand on my arm.
Down the stairs, one leg unable to bend, and into the brilliant sunlight. "There is news."
"We don't get news here."
"Right. And, John and I agreed best not to talk about religious upbringing, but," the little knot of people our age started towards us. None of us hugged in the middle of the courtyard.
The gauze closest to the man's eye was quite bloody. The outer wrapping, not so much, until we got about an hour and a half back towards the city.
Because they're going to tell us how the pandemic started, the Detective's shirt sleeves were splattered with blood. A suspected "media person" took an ice pick to the eye. "I don't really care how it started. I just don't want it." The Detective tried to open a file cabinet labeled in loopy lettering, cleaning supplies. "Who keeps their cleaning supplies in a file cabinet. I mean I'm not the shapest knife in the drawer, but even I know you keep paperwork files in a file cabinet." He rattled the handle. "It's locked."
An Asian person in a white coat came into the clinic's area. He went to a metal locker, unlocked it, and loaded a needle with medicine. He didn't seem to notice us. He went into a locked door where the other Asian people from the global health org had gone with a local nurse.
Sunlight splashed the concrete pad of a floor in the clinic as people in suits came into the area. "We're finally here!" One woman said.
"My husband will be so glad to know if I do or don't have AIDS," another woman read an index card. Part of a script segmented to stay on schedule building a bunch of PSA's. "I hope she doesn't. She's hot." A young man read his index card. The last suit in was a black woman related to Lateesha, the local nurse debating whether or not to take a long-term job at the clinic.
"That's not legal in our army."
"He's mad."
"Oh, I bet."
"She's mad."
The required resources list was ripped in half and had floated to the floor.
More people entered the room.
"No." The tall man in a starched but silky suit, perfectly tailored, looked down at the short woman.
"But, but," she stumbled for the words that would be the lever. "No. I will not allow this." She let her arm drop from reaching out to his. Heels, stiff clicks on the old wood floor. She knelt and picked up half of the sheet of paper. "Is this ripped?"
The man moved away from the woman who'd stepped towards him when others had come into the room. He moved slowly towards the piece of paper. Translators and silent recorders memorizing everything just stood. Like a leading man on a stage, all the hype and bigness of the TV'd man had dissipated. This was a small man of flesh approaching a piece of paper supposed to change the tide of complete destruction. As if in a fish bowl, eyes intensely focusing, psyche poised to do this.
A knock on the door. A person dressed in casual, soft black clothes realized no one else was saying anything or making a move. Opened the door. More leaders and entourage entered the high ceiling'd room. A man whispered to a translator. Translator asked in English, "Are they still filming?"
"They need to shoot everyone alone in there too."
One woman pulled back a thin polyester cardigan and put her hand on the gun holstered there. A man saw her and wagged his finger. "Not actually shoot." She tilted her head to contemplate that. The man held up arms and hands like a cameraman filming. "They say same?" The woman asked in English. "Sì señora."
"We're in the basement Sir."
An Army professional took the phone from him. We could see that because of a medical scope relay throughout the building.
The Civilian Strategy team had finished presentation. The moderator allowed each person to place the typed notes in an open leather portfolio.
"I'm not gonna bumrush him," Madeline assured. "But, he can't keep my folder."
"We'll find him," fell on ears deaf to anything but shock and horror. "We have every Intelligence Agency in the world here now."
"And these," another man motioned for a cart to be wheeled closer. Binders and folders and files and reams of paper. "What is all this?"
"Apparently there are Private Eyes and Programs also interested in helping. These are presentations." The remnant of "government" took this also into account.
Outside the sun shone equally on all parts of the city, but for the black dot. The shadow. A blot. Modern technology's "octopus ink".
"At home we call it Shamu. Like a whale in popular fiction." A leadership youth group was being sequestered near a history of the old city tour. "It's all poppycock," an older woman was straightening the shoulders of a young man's shirt. "What is ma?"
"Whatever They tell you."
"Don't fight the resistance, figure it out," the weathered-rough-again hand was put over the youth's with the handsaw. The board being cut was caught on the lip of a bucket of mud, so pinching the cut together. The hand over, guiding, was to prevent another fit of frustration slowing down the work. The youth looked at the man. Feels funny, a man touching another man, I know. Eyes looked to the problem-trail. "The board is caught!" The youth realized out loud. But the mentor was already flipping through sheets of schedule.
"He doesn't care."
"He cares."
Another youth, tall and solid, lowered his eyes, made a barely perceptible whimper. "This is hard mameer."
"It is boppy. It's hard on everyone."
Large panels for movies and "TV" were carried in with sheets of drywall. "There's no plywood chief. The other team needs it today."
Children who had never seen television roused low-energy selves from nap blankets and yoga mats. A woman spoke in Arabic. She was lifted by her elbows and held back against a wall until several people could vouch for what was said.
"She said it's here."
"She meant the Idiot Box."
"It will take us some time," a Contractor who'd helped deliver the supplies to discuss bidjob told the room of family.
Back home and in parts of Europe the race was on. "To what??!??" A blinded person asked for a typist being censo/ured.
The facts were proving, for a lot of reasons.
"To help people get settled. Follow suit. Eliminate dangers."
"Christ! My parents are duct-taping the neighbors grandbabies into a closet! I gotta go. Ciao bellas," a middle aged woman blew kisses and quickly donned "grown up" clothes for getting across Town.
in a glass bottle on a nightstand screwed to the floor. The flower was a Gardenia and smelled like just one of the ingredients in a famous princess perfume.
Our consensus is to
disengage.
Manifesto?
Maybe a declaration.
Who left it behind?
Eyes fell on the worn turf carpet. "The definitive Republicans on the inter-team geopolitical strategy exercise behind the military exercises."
"Their boat left," a woman stood on the edge of the pier, arms crossed, long wool coat, and said in thick Brooklynese. She chomped on her Wrigley's some. Smelled her magazine-perfumed wrist.
What do we have to do now? To the suggestion of an order.
"All we have to do is let go..."
And let God?
Okay, but
I can't
"Easy!" A white-uniformed sailor let go of a silk rope. Bottles of champagne were thrown out of the cabin at the yacht beside.
Bon voyage
Good LUCK
Adios amigos
Godspeed
People looked at the kid that said that.
"Who are you sweetie?" A woman dressed to the nines sat on a lower bunk beside the child and asked. "And more importantly, " another fancy-haired, well-dressed woman sat on his or her other side, "Why would he say that particular saying?"
They'd done it hundreds of times. Been promised their families left behind would be given money. They picked up scraps of papers with Pakistani, Lebanese, etc. scrawled on it. Hopped and were pulled aboard recycled jets with cargo doors cut into the sides. Lazily flown over structures like oil rigging sprawled all over Syria.
Had been trained to memorize.
Memorize?
The landscape. From above.
Some of the girls were pulling a wounded out of a dolphin carcass. The jetskier lingered and loped in another practice run of letting go of controlling the thing by self. "Looking good girl!!" A wave tipped the thing over. Raft pulled up beside. "You drowning?"
"Not chet. Cold tho."
"They call it iced-in."
"They do?"
"Cha?"
"Already tangled."
Lifeguards blew whistles.
In the pool. In the pool. In the pool. An Olympiad was pulled out of general population.
"WHY IN THE POOL?!" A little kid talked out of temper tantrum again demanded to know. His mother, "My husband can't even swim."
"It's a way to avoid impact injury."
"Like what?"
"GET IN THE POOL!!!!!!"
"Like shattered bones."
Take your broke ass home." The queen was losing her flambouancy by the eighteenth bar night.
"Whoooo are yoooo?" A girly-mahn mechanic-type got off a barstool to ask. Dwarfed by the man in heels. A man who'd stayed sitting on another barstool tipped his cowboy hat. The bartender poured him two two-fingers.
"Uh, ah, er," throat clearing
"We're called the Transforce," a bubbly muscle-y girl in a bomber jacket stepped between them. She held the clipboard close to her chest and got a glove off and the pen tucked into the clipboard and reached a hand out. A dainty handshake. "Who are you?" The queen reached over her shoulders and tried to take the clipboard. But the girl clutched it and said, "What I mean is, er, ah,
An olive drab coat came in. "Don't worry," he held up both hands, unarmed, "It's a peacekeeping mission. I'm just here as Recorder."
The cowboy lowered the brim of his hat and left the money on the bar.
"Hi." Another hand extended to shake. Not accepted. "We go around to see if anybody just hanging out, uh" a look at the flow chart, "Has any health care needs."
but, I'm all turned around." The woman's cheeks turned rosey. She turned her upper body slightly and vomited into a lunch sack. She neatly wiped her mouth with a tightly folded napkin. "I get car sick," she re-blushed.
"You came on a horse." Another woman said.
"Oh. Did I?" She looked out the window. "Where is it?"
A cellphone rang. Hands searched self's pockets. Opened it and closed it. Rang again. Hands answered and hung it up. Hands handed it off. It rang again. Guy said, "I'm shy." Woman handed it to a younger guy. Guy answered it without saying anything and just listened. Hung it up. "Who is it?"
"Just breathing."
"With kind of a wheeze."
"Someone's going to have to explain this."
"Which this?"
"I'm a writer. I might be able to help."
"I was but I got ghosted."
"Not that I know what the means."
"Me either."
"I do but I can't tell you."
"You'd have to kill us?" A woman pulled a gun from a pocket, started pointing it at people. Take a seat.
"Okay," A known-director-type put his hands up and thrust his pelvis at the woman with the gun. "Wallet's in my pocket."
"I'm not sitting down just because she said to," another guy said.
"Yeah, she's kinda short. I think we can take her out."
"Yeah, but I've got the gun."
"Can I use it?"
"On herself of course."
The man with the hands up and pelvis thrusted wiggled his leg to shuffle his foot forward. "Don't come any closer," the woman said. "Did it move?" People looked at each other. "Did my foot move?"
After a full ten seconds of silence someone stood up and moved closer to the man but didn't touch him. Ran a fabric-coated wrist up and down the legs of the man. "It's beeping near the pocket," he told a little tape recorder.
"Explains the hospital gowns."
Here's a link to an exceptional expository multi-media article about space, NASA, and US gov't.
I love that "the writing" is so clear that even if you couldn't "see" graphics you'd learn stuff.
to say in the Old School. Check out this innovation...
Brought to us all the way from Europe through Interesting Engineering
The creation features 3D-printed eyes, a glowing LED mouth, and a local AI brain that answers philosophical questions in real time.
A media person's mouth dropped open. A riding crop was used to lift his lower jaw. "I can't make it smile," the stern little woman said.
Since yesterday or maybe another day, low voices weren't arguing.
"We'll access the records." Suited men and women who traveled everywhere in a pack in case we have to break out into formation assured.
The long and short is that in some places in the world "bloodsport" still occurs. It was not the first time a dismembered body had been left at an embassy.
Everyone in the area had to stay in the area while the crime was investigated. There were young couples on their way to places, there was some media people, there were locals and officials coming and going. Going if they were a part of what unfolds as a human chain of problem solving.
The horse riders were Saudis. An ongoing love story. People, like all of us, dealing with modernization and warring, always warring everyone, always warring. "Do you think the dead person was involved in the warring?" The man asked was taking it hard. That there was a dismembered person like in the old days.
"It's male," a young Israeli guy came bounding over the cobblestones to find his date from the night before among the group staying put. Both blushed. "Glad it wasn't you," he said. "Might have been but Gammie called so I didn't go back out."
At different times our Country's departments share Academics and writing style. One benefit is that teams can address common issues. Here's a link to a good example article.https://interestingengineering.com/military/russia-ups-uav-warfare-game
She snatched the "love letter". "How dare you. Do you even know how many things are on their minds at that age?!" It was big sister battles to the max. She crumpled the letter in one hand trying to strangle distraction. She shoved it in a kitchen drawer. Wiped her hands on a Mother's Apron and called around the doorless entryway into the TV room. "You guys gonna get ready to go soon?"
Groans and throat clearing and a snort to clear a mold'd nose. "What's the game plan Big Sis?" The smallest boyman came into the kitchen first. "Okay, well, nobody showered so you all can."
"We're not showering." Came a voice from the other room.
"Not showering?"
"Yah, let 'em get a whiff of dah crud."
"Crud?"
Another appeared in the doorway scratching everything and stretching and yawning. "Do you know what we were working on this week?" Nobody answered. "Or has it been two weeks?"
"Like five. That would've been two and a half paychecks."
"What were you working on?"
"Has it been that long?" The rabbi asked. His head covered in a sweatshirt and socks, cleaned. "You loook like a big fuckin' rabbit." A big deep sigh.
"Am I allowed to say?"
"No, it's top secret moron."
"Is it?"
"Cha. Now I will have to kill you."
He tried to dodge the oncoming head noogie and rammed his head into the doorway.
"You should stop that."
"But they won't."
"And you shouldn't wear such tight jeans. You could damage your"
"Who's she?"
"Talking about our nuts Roscoe. Prolly an Upper." The rabbi threw a sock at each of them, the Muscle and the Giant.
"Look at that. There's a Most Interesting Man in the World contest on TV. Or do you enter via the TV? I wouldn't know I'm sooooo boring."
"HAaagh, When are your women coming for you?"
"That one prolly doesn't have a voomahn. He's a girly-mahn." He looked hard at the smallest.
"Just because someone's musically inclined and smart and creative doesn't mean they're gay."
"What'd he buy a skirt for?"
"It's a sarong. Very sexy in some parts of the world," he passed me the fork but she snatched it from me and put it in a different drawer. We both chomped on celery sticks all cut perfectly symetrical like the carrot sticks and potato sticks.
"Is there a store that sells such stuff? Sexy stuff?"
"No, we were at a fashion show." He took the rolled-up fabric out of his back pocket. "It could be anything you want it to be."
"Like a Superhero cape?"
"Or a headscarf."
"I wouldn't put that thing on my head after it was on your ass."
Someone threw it at the rabbi. He unrolled it. "It's soft." He contemplated it, then asked, "Do you wear underwear with it?"
"Some do, some don't," a middle-ager sleeping on the sofa said.
"He'll tell me."
"Helps to sleep with them."
"Eeeewwah. You're my shrink."
"Tell you what?"
"What have they been working on?"
He sat up but held his bright white socks off the floor until he reached for his neat little pile of man things. Shoes, belt, and "Where's my wallet? Oh dear Lord." The rabbi waved it at him. "Can't trust anyone these days," he said as he put his shoes on. "Ripping apart an asylum."
"Is that a thesis title?" A dark haired woman blending in with the floor under an afghan asked.
"Oh dear Lord. Am I not safe from you anywhere?" The shrink asked over the sofa.
"Literally?" The apron'd woman untied the apron. "That sounds cooler than pretending to be my mother."
More people came down from upstairs. A brilliant blonde who announced, "I'm ready." No one said anything. "To leave PT. And, I know what I want to do with my life."
A man and a woman holding hands tightly sat on a grand ottoman in front of the rabbi. They held onto each other's hands and she said, "We're ready for Couples' Therapy." He stayed looking at their hands clutching onto each other. "Is this true?" The rabbi asked.
"We can't go anywhere. But it's great that you're ready."
The man suddenly removed his hands from the clutching. "Why'd you do that?" The woman asked. "I don't know." He started wiping his hands off on his sweater. The sweater was sagged long like it had hung on the back of a chair for a long time.
"But you said," the blonde shook her head neat and curt, "Wait. Why not?"
"What do you mean can't?" The dark haired woman got off the floor and slung the afghan onto the back of the sofa. The back of the shrink's hair blew up in the air and fell back into place. "It does that because I can't remember when I last had a shower," he said to my watching everything.
"Do you know?" The blonde asked me. I knew her to be a senior in the Communications stuff so I couldn't lie. "Yes."
The roomfull of people looked at me. I blew out my shyness in a terse breath. And could smell the cigarette I'd smoked. "It has to do with how Towns keep functioning when people go off to war and to serve in the National Guard."
"Really?"
"I think so. That's my cursory understanding but," I looked at my husband, "We were on a bit of a honeymoon, and I'm behind in the articles."
"Let me make a phone call."
"Did you say husband?" She grabbed my ringless hand then threw it back at me.
"It's fine," the smallest man was looking down the front of his pants. The rabbi got up and looked down in there too. He dropped the wallet into the open travel belt/purse.
"It has to do with function. So like Finance people can fill in for each other and teachers can do Administrative and stuff."
The blonde came back. Closing a cellphone she said, "It's just a temporary stop." The darkhaired woman lit a cigarette. "Can you do that outside? I'm still experiencing some respatory symptoms." The dark haired woman felt along the wall for a door she'd come in.
"Say that again," the woman was clutching and twisting her own hands. The man was shaking his head noooooo.
The woman put the apron over her shoulder and reached into the smallest man's pants and snatched the rings. "Is this real?" She held the diamond engagement ring up to the yellowing lightbulb.
"God's brought us together," the rabbi said. And he looked around the room astonished. "Like he did in the forest."
