Fiction and Fact

So you want a first line that's both a hook and a catalyst, and you have the status details firmly lodged in your head – a sandy promontory, gray rocks, knobcomb pines – all of it aswirl in milk mist (my code name for the fog that rises from saturated ground.)

Time of year: October. The sea lions are barking from the commercial wharfs. There's an armada in the harbor. You catch jagged glimpses of the boats through the fog.

You're hung-over -- not the kind of hangover where your head pounds; more the kind of hangover where your skin would like to be on someone else, someone who's sleeping in a really comfortable bed.

There's dialogue. The annoying friend insists on giving everything nicknames and making ponderous literary jokes – "Make sure that umbrage doesn't have any opprobrium in it."

The annoying friend is very tall, has one of those pubic hair beards and if you were living in the present tense instead of seventy-five years ago, you might be tempted to use the term "Asperger" to describe him.

The other friend is silent and sure-footed as he moves over the rocks, stopping to kneel down and look for things in pools of trapped water that you can never see though you keep tagging along after him anyway, hoping some day you will.

He's frowning. He's pulling something loose from the rocks that was never alive.

And at the same time, approaching you rapidly through the dense mist, you see the figure of a woman. A naked woman.

You've never seen a naked woman before except in paintings or classic statuary. You're not like John Ruskin, the famous British art historian, who was so horrified on his wedding night to discover his wife had pubic hair covering her Venus mons that he promptly had a nervous breakdown.

(That's two pubic hair references in one chapter – one of them will have to come out.)

You've felt a naked woman before but from the inside out as it were, French and German prostitutes, fully dressed but without undergarments, your fingers perhaps nervously grazing a bird's nest as you guide your own flesh in.

You rather like the look of the pubic thatch, you decide, though it's a different color than the improbable distracting platinum blonde of the woman's head…

###

In other news, B's return has not been particularly awkward. It's like having my own personal magic leprechaun! He managed to get the entire house sparkling in just two days, he cooks, he engineers Homer head transplants, he sleeps on the couch, and I have turned over to him all Robin custodial care. Let him fight with Robin about walking the dogs, let him stand over Robin while Robin whines about homework.

(Parenthetically, Mr. Spedding – Robin's homeroom teacher last year – told Dr. H. that he considered Robin the brightest kid at the school and it was a Great Mystery why Robin doesn't get better grades.)

We've had civilized conversations about politics – the Dems can't possibly take back the majority in the upcoming November congressional elections, we both agree – and television shows: Ben thinks Lorelei should go back with Luke; I think she should stay with Christopher.

Weekday business at the Little Store has been depressingly slow and I am considering sinking $600 into Danger, Men Cooking paraphernalia.

The Little Circus has been dying in Colorado and I am wondering whether they'll even be able to finish out the season.