"How did the dame get so bruised?"

  The ice-melting slipped some shrinking cubes out of a sandwich bag.  People dove to clean up the mess.  "That was my last good shirt," an everybody's Dad said of wiping and wiping at the ice water on the gymnasium floor.  "Why is this locker room floor like the court floor?" 

  "They're new.  The lockers." 

  A man with a towel hanging over his shoulders sat on a no-back bench like it was a horse.  "My dad's generation lost this place once."  He sighed like the weight in his body was shifting.  "Oh my God, they did?" A young boy and girl started and finished the question together.  The man raised his obviously tired eyes and looked in each face. 

  "When it's a war, we can lose everything," the mom-in-law-to-be put her arms around the boy and beckoned the girl to come get hugged too.  She sat where her Dad's lap would be but for the bench. 

  "We'll see you at the restaurant," a showered, shaved, and dress-casual clothed man came from the shower area and said to the family. 

  "That's what happened in Germany to the Jews," he got out to scrape the windshield.  "What do you mean?" Blended with the roaring defrosting sound.  "Put the cigarette out before I get back in." 

  "Technically, they lost." 

  "I'd say.  We went to the museum in Philadelphia." 

  "I've been studying." He blew the horn.  "Goats.  At home.  They stand around anything warm." 

  "They lost...their democracy." 

  "Yes.  And then the Republic was up for grabs!" 

  The fog was stranding off and up from freshly plowed slush mounds.  "First, they lost their property rights and then themselves as property." 

  "Did it have to do with taxes?" 

  "In a way.  Tax base."  The curb outside the restaurant was being shoveled.  "We could've walked." 

  "Couldn't leave my property on their property.  Can't afford another ticket." 

  "Thanks," to a door being opened and a hand to help over the garbage in snow ice mounds.

"Because you stole the foot."

  The gigantic swirl of undoing in the midst of having to do sounded, at first, like quiet ambulances and soft shoes giving little squeaks of changing direction. 

  At first the person in the jalaba wimpered.  Then began to laugh maniacally.  "Another gone over the edge," a nurse told two male orderlies.  "I'll put it back sister." The laughing echo'd down the real hospital hallway.  The center where the tents had been joined to form administration suddenly had a rush of people coming in. 

  "Who were you chasing?" A security personnel asked the writer who'd come to help however I can.  Then she'd been accused of breaking the lock on one of the body part freezers.  Had recognized eyes, a faint scar on a hand.  Had answered questions from all nations involved in the decisions to disband as both medical reds.  And withstood accusations of being the thief who should be stoned this minute. 

  The woman dropped her eyes to the floor in front of the real thief. 

  "Is this truth?" A friend-to-all asked.  Another young woman rushed forward and ripped the black garment off.  The foot was tucked into a waistband of pants like a gun. 

  The tallest nurse grabbed the garment, ordered hands up, and yelled for a photographer.  "It needs to be a military photographer," an administrative director advised. 

"Why you huddle widt my Viktor?"

  Everyone jumped up and stretched and scattered themselves around the room.  "I gotta cawl my Chief Correspondent." 

  Outside, someone choking on a hardboiled egg.  A president giving the heimlich.  "I toll you not to pop those like candy!"  Pissed at more setbacks.  So smacking on back harder than necessary once the slimey egg projectiled out. 

  "Because." 

  "Because why?" 

  "Long or short?" 

  "Both.  But quick the Russians are waking up." 

  "We had seventeen frozen urethras. 

  "What's that?" 

  "PENISes!" 

  "Ouch." 

  "That means you girls need to stick with those guys." 

  "Yeah, okay but 

  "No buts, no sorries 

  "But these homefield girls think they own their team captains." 

  "Okay, there she is, let me get her." 

  Thank you everyone.  "Is this you?" 

  "It's me." 

  "What is your temperature there?" 

  The little thermometer blew in the wind as a basic fact reading started the work day.