and this is my confessional.

And You, you are my

witness, perhaps my judge,

and maybe even my executioner.

But those petty details don't bother

me anymore. And I don't know if

I can really call this a confession,

because perhaps my crime can't

really be forgiven, because I can't

truly be repentant. I can't change

what I am...I can't or I won't...

isn't hard to make a distinction

between those two? Either way,

I ought to warn you, because you see,

I'm a professional larcenist.

But it works out in a very tricky

manner. You see, I steal lives.

I take you, strip you down to the

smooth cream of your flesh, expose

you naked to the elements and then

I dissect what I can-only to leave

the rest to rot in the darker places

of the educated mind. And I do this,

with only a pen and paper.

I'm the very worst kind of thief.

Because I can only make my victims

out of those whom I love.

So if you can, forgive me,

and if you can't...or won't,

I ask only that you listen to my penance,

and remember.

unstable and manifests an unsoundness of the mind.

FICTION. Thank You for your time.

Diary of an Urban Space Goddess

Well I'll see you in the Stratosphere,

Graphically yours-

(prologue)

Now, just a shade of reality about myself. For I am really not the reason you have chosen to read this story, but indulge me for a moment. I have no particularly striking features, save my eyes. They are heavily embroidered with long dark lashes that are accented nicely by the darkness of my irises. I have been blessed with the most perfectly shaped eyes I have ever encountered, and seeing that this is my only fine attribute, I am not ashamed to say so. I was never very tall and now only stand five feet four inches. But due to the wonder of modern technology, to the camera I appear much taller. Through the years I have managed to carry my weight well, never too thin, never slipping on to the path of eating what ever, when ever and then finding my head in a toilet sometime the next day. My stomach is very flat, but my thighs leave something to be desired. My hair is long and has always possessed a natural wave that is often brushed out. It's color is copper brown just a few shades lighter than my eyes. As for my face ,I shall make this brief.

I have unusual lips, full and fine shapeliness grace the upper lip and a teeming heavy look has settled on the lower lip. It often causes me to look as if I am constantly pouting. I have an irish complexion, given to me by my mother along with her gracious gift of being able to almost stop the clock and age with a grace unbeknown to man. From my father I received an italian nose, a slender bridge with an end just big enough to drive you mad! (I suspect that somewhere on my father's side there was also some Jewish blood, for I don't believe that this nose is totally italian). With definite cheek bones and shapely eyebrows, I look nothing out of the ordinary to the common eye.

Enough about me. I merely wanted to give you some type of visual picture that would imprint itself into your mind so when I say: I leaned over and hit him, you can picture the scene in it's entirety. Who I should describe is the Urban Space Goddess herself.

Despite popular belief, she was not five nine with incredibly blinding red hair. Actually she much shorter than I, and now I shall estimate that the Goddess, in all reality stood only about five feet two inches. It's dawning on you now, yes ladies and gentlemen,that is why you'd always see her Worship in high heeled boots. She use to say those damn boots were like her diaphragm, she'd be in big damn trouble if she left home without it. Her eyes were very dark, and they could catch the light in the room just right,it would cause them to literally sparkle the way you would see in cartoons or cheesey television commercials.They were the color of a topaz stone in moments such as those. In the average situation however they lost some of that glow that characterized her always head turning entrances. Those eyes were small but set proportionally to compliment that bronzed face. She had a very full face, especially in the cheek area. The spanish blood that pulsed through her veins left a permanent mark upon the pigmentation of her skin. It was a rich bronze color that had a tendency to shine easily.

Her awash nose was well defined with deep curving indentations around the nostrils. The lips remained always upturned in any situation. A thin line for an upper lip and a full almost cradle shaped bottom lip, these were never without a bight color painted abstractly on them. Her forehead was high, a sure mark of the intelligents she possessed, or was capable of possessing, depending on the circumstances. The face in a whole was stunningly unusual and elegantly rounded, that face tenured an unconventional beauty that proved irresistible.

Yet, it was the hair that was her trade mark. That Brobdingnagian mass of curls that seemed to symbolize everything that was untamed, cocksure, and holy about her music. The-Devil-may-care hair is what I had taken to calling it after the group moved to Switerland. And to pick another bubble of fantasy, the Goddesses hair was never red. She was not born with the locks of bright red despite popular belief. Actually she was born with a dirty blond colored head and as the years progressed the blond just kept getting dirtier and eventually you would swear she was a brunette. There, now you have it. Your introduction to the beginning of the end.

(present)

I

Once upon a time-there was such a thing as music. As in M-U-S-I-C. As in Rock & Roll. As in you can hear it from a radio with a speaker the size of your thumb nail and it would end up sounding like listening to music over a half disconnected telephone-and it didn't matter. Once upon a time ladies and gentlemen-it-just-didn't-matter! I believe the philosophy was: the smaller the speaker the bigger the music. Big. And just what made it big, by a sheer force of it's own, could reach out from that fuzzy, crackle of the speaker and grab you by the throat and change your life-change the World-change the Universe!!

Or at least your life.

But you don't remember how The Music changed your life? Of course you don't.(Why am I even asking?) You can't remember, even though you were there. I saw you there. I know-I do.

" sex is so concealing of everything your feeling "

That's not how you remember the song? Of course not. But that's how it was sung. Not by the group of motley sluts who managed (somehow) to chart it as one more near-miss before passing away into the shadows of musical nostalgia.(I suspect that some day there will be a high-school musical about them). But by a woman who supposedly committed suicide the day after it hit number one. And thus cemented with GOLD her place in the ivory pantheon of Rock Music Deities for all time, and with her death sending a large part of the civilized world into a mourning that eclipsed the deaths of Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Barbra Streisand, and Elvis all rolled into one.

Oh-

You don't know her.

II

"Out out..."

(i)

Some young bohemian with a dented 1989 guitar was strumming out of key as the clouds folded like hands in prayer,blotting out the rays of the setting sun. He was a beautiful boy to look at. His face all angles and contours with clean apricot skin and heavy lidded blue eyes. Long softly curled blond hair fell to his back and formed almost a halo about his sculped head. He wore all white, which was horribly bad manners at a funeral-but Laura had always stood for non-conformity at every angle. Her legions, I supposed,would follow the dream til' the end.

He parted his lips a drew a sharp breath, it was November 15th, and I could see the outline of the air he inhaled. And then it began. The music-it was a single boy-with a single sound -but it was really a choir, because as if on cue by the golden boy,the bitter wind found it's voice and blew through the skeletal fingers of the cherry oaks. And he sang as the earth moaned in harmony-and they sang:

" This is strange to me/ I lost a piece of myself vicariously/ to Her/ She doesn't know that/ I told her/ So many ways/ That piece was big/ Like that Paper cup?"

The boy paused and I noticed my body was swaying from side to side with an unnoticed rhyme because all themourners swayed well. Like under a magic spell-just the mention of the Goddess's name stirred something deep inside the human soul that even the body couldn't deny. The boy was strumming my song to Laura. And when the wind reached a cresendo-he continued, never looking up to the spellbound crowd. He sang:

" Oh about Laura/ I called yesterday/ Picking up the phone/Not knowing what to say/ Hearing the other click/ She's never there anyway/ And I know-I know-I know-I know-Even the wind cries Her name/ Even the wind cries Her name/ And even the wind cries Laura.And I'm sorry/ And I'm sorry/ But there's no excuse for Royalty/ I'm the bubbles in the champagne/ Like the man in the window/ With the Mage/ Always keep me amazed/ So why am I the one with blood on my face/ From your long forgotten race/ Of helpless ambition..."

So it was a medley he had planned, and I felt slighted -even a little jealous. That was my tribute to Her,that this honey voiced boy sang. But I pushed that from my mind-or maybe

it was the music that did that for me? But the boy continued as the wind waved to a whisper. And he sang:

The boy began 'Bella Madonna' and a cloister of women far off in the foggy distance let out a soul renching scream. A large group to my close right roared in applause and the scene around me exploded with tears and cries of a type of agony I had never experienced in my life. And of all the agonies I knew-this was the hand I dared not touch.The boy and his cheap guitar never deviated from their volume, he continued as if in a trance and the wind ceased suddenly. My eyes were fixed on his pretty face and those funny shaped lips. And he sang:

The boy's tears blinded him now, and I looked away,feeling the acid swell in my own eyes. He abandoned the cheap guitar and with twenty-two thousand people compounded on top of the rocky cliff side over looking the sea he finished his borrowed tribute accapella. He moaned:

And if he was finished or not I don't know. But he rose upward with a quick graceful motion and seemlingly floated down into the crowd, where I lost him in the blanket of white covered bodies. I think I was the only one wearing black that day.

And the next thing I remember someone, a man in a three piece suit was taking her from my hands. I didn't know him but I supposed I should have. And I would have done it-I really would,but it was against my religion. This whole damn affair was sacrilege. And everything was contradictory and nothing made sense. Or maybe it never made sense in the firts place, but with Laura it didn't need to. So there I stood, a lone black figure against a sea of white bodies moaning in harmony, fluttering to and fro like nervous doves.

The sun was setting when the man in the three piece suit approached the edge of the cliff, holding her in his white gloved palms like the Eucharist on Easter morning,with all the solemnness of a wizard. It didn't seem right,but nothing could be done. He raised her high above his head, in an offering manner, like a warrior who had returned victorious from battle. The deep cadmium light bounced off the golden urn and illuminated the ground around the man's feet like a fire ball, or a falling star. It was unbelievable. Maybe even an epiphany of kinds.

And it was when she was set loose to the air,that hallowed shell of twenty four karot gold fell to the misty earth on the cliffs edge, then did the blond haired woman shimmer up to my side and press her finger tips deep into my shoulder. I looked only at her. As she scattered into the ocean, merging with the silvery twilight sea, and the rest rising higher and higher into the murky clouds and beyond,ever-upwards I was sure, into space-where the goddess belonged, just out of reach.

"Are you alright?" Kate asked, in her sweet american apple pie voice.

She pulled back her hair, that sunny blond mass that hung loosely about her shoulders. She was in white.

"Are you?" I returned eyes still transfixed on the sea's innings and outings.

"No, no, I guess I'm not-but I will be, it's you I'm worried about." She said this with great hesitancy as if the idea that she should be hurting had just dawned on her.

"Don't be." I muttered looking down, forcing myself not to cry.

"David is bringing the car around, you should come home with me, I worry about you Aj-I worry alot." She turned from me then and made her way back to the statue of Laura erected by the grassy cliff side.

The car came and left without me. And so did her legions in white. I stood for six hours watching the leaves on the cherry oaks and sugar maples change color and fall like animated snowflakes with color picture. Each one swinging downward slowing, cradled by the wind. It was dark by that time and the mist rolled in waves like it's counter part up my legs and around my feet-which were aching now butcouldn't see the point in moving. And when I did look around,finally ready to move-off to my cottage, or her condo,or Kate's home, David's flat,a hotel,ally,taxi,church-where ever, everything looked so cheap I stayed where I was and closed my eyes. It made my stomach roll. And I fell with a whispered 'plop' to the misty carpet beneath me and didn't move again until morning. Everything was so cheap.

(ii)

It wasn't dawn yet when David arrived. Dressed in a suit, minus the tie, of blue. Little boy blue. His face looking graceful and his green eyes soft with liquor. He was still everything he was before, and that scared me. What kind of person remains forever unchanged? He had a tall forehead-he was a Yale boy. With expressive but small eyes trimmed ever-so-slightly with thin pale ash lashes. With fabulous eyebrows of charcoal brown that complimented his eyes perfectly, following their rising, then leveling, then sloping sharply downward shape.He had a very Scottish face, with his father's Jewish nose.That straight bridge and large rounded symmetrical end. A thin long upper lip that sat on a full bottom lip, that caused his smile to be more charming than words could describe. He was a tall man, six foot one, and he had a tiny mole on his right cheek. I don't believe he liked that mole. A strong neck and wide shoulders-he looked more like a swimmer than the general "athleticly built man".With large soft hands. I loved his hands.

He towered over me as I sat staring into the nothingness. Then picked me up with a quick jerk and set me on my feet.

"Let's go" he ordered quietly in that eminently disarming monotone.

So I went.

Netherward the cliff I walked with a silent pride and a quiet shame for having behaved so dramatically. And ending up here, with him walking me to the car which I was sure was sitting squarely at the roads edge. The trees that laced the cliff faded slowly into the larger picture of the brightly colored forest scene that rose like flames to the grey canvas sky, up and up and up. It was along time before either of us spoke. He was too cool and I was too proud.And we were both idiots. We merely walked arms at our sides, unconsciously staying in step with each other as the mist lifted in little puffs as we stepped.

We were down the cliffs rise and heading towards the knoll to the car when he spoke. He sounded drone, and almost detached, a perfect disguise.

"You know," he said glancing towards my black veiled face, never actually turning his head, " you have no idea what your problem is?"

We looked forward, walking arm to arm, our feet cutting through the mist that had settled on the soggy grass. Head stones were sprinkled like pebbled in the background, set against

chilled emerald pines.

"No," I began feeling the dampness creep into my high heeled shoes, "but I suppose your going to tell me."

"I suppose I should."

"Then do it."

"You've got to quit seeing people as objects d'art," he tried his hand at a french accent and came out badly, "people are people Aj, flesh and blood and feeling- and your philosophy is too damn draining."

"If you say so." I think he wanted a reaction-he didn't get one.

"There isn't going to be another Laura."

His voice went suddenly somber, as if he were a child again whispering during the sanctity of a mass.

"I was thinking about joining a convent."

My shoe stuck in the damp earth and made a sucking sound.

"You won't."

"Don't think so?"

"No."

"There's nothing left, not now, so what else is there to do when the dream dies? I'm going back to God."

"I didn't know you left?" He looked at me full face now, pausing. I froze.

And with the precision of that statement I remained silent, and he remained silent. And the only sound that was made was the mumbling of the fog.

(iii)

When I woke up, I mean really woke up I was standing on the steps of Agnus Dei one of the oldest convents in American history. I was standing on the giant patchwork stone steps on a cold november morning-praying. Praying so hard I cried, and I was praying that he'd be in there-waiting for me. Or that She'd be in there with a bottle of the best chardinay New York had to offer in one hand and Her copy of Phone Calls from a Sociopath in the other screaming:

"Babe don't you get it??!!?This is what it's about!Fuck this place, and go fuck the world, the saddest thing I've ever seen is a girl like you who dies before their born! Jesus Christ-oophs-that's sorta appropriate here-eh?!I mean I let you outta my ear shot for ten minutes-AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENS!!Good Lord, get in the damn car-I oughtta charge you gas money for this one babe!Jeeeez-us!"

And I would laugh so hard I'd have to bury me head in my stomach. But I peeled back the twin oak doors with the warped faced knocker and the burst of stale air rushed past me, into the freedom of the november atmosphere. The foyer was large, like a banquet hall I had seen in Chicago.I had to wonder why such a large foyer?Did they expect a fountain of people would crawl into this dusty tomb on a regular basis-searching for salvation? I almost smiled.

The other three novices turned to look at me. My long dark hair loose and wind whipped, with my stacked heel boots and the black suit I use to wear to the studio when there were paper for me to sign. And he was there, in the far off corner, seated loosely on a tacky green vinyl sofa of sorts. Looking as miserable as I'd ever seen him. I tilted my head. Miserable not so much that I was right and he was wrong-I'm in the convent-waving my blue narcotic days good-bye while those days are probably looking over their shoulders going-"Who the hell is SHE?", but it seemed this place, that seat, the corner was making him so.

I crossed past the three novices sitting side by side each with identical rosaries, heads bowed and lips moving in unison. I sold my rosary eight years ago to pay my rent. I remembered that now. My feet kicked up dust as I shuffled to David's side and slouched so gratefully against his left arm.

"You are INsane!" he snapped in that famously charming monotone.

"I know-thanks."

"I could honestly have you committed, I could waltz up to whattever you call the head nun here-"

"Mother Superior Immaculatta Maria"

"WHATEVER, and tell her that you CAN'T join her stupid chain gang because your not even in a sound enough mind to bake brownies let alone join a convent!"

"I'm so glad you came." I was serious, but I don't think he took it that way.

"Aj-she'd kill me if she knew I was letting you do this." His eyes went very flat and he looked away. The Goddess, living or dead, seemed to haunt a space in his mind. He put his head to his hand, he'd write a poem about this moment on a bar napkin in six hours. I was soully sure of that.

"Letting me do what-go back to God? Die in peace?Attain salvation for the damnation I've caused?"

"Who the hell do you think your bullshitting?That's not what your doing here.She'd kill me for letting you run off to play virgin martyr, because that's exactly what your doing."

"That's not what I'm doing." I crossed my arms and my voice became so dry the words came out as a whisper.

"Right-Sister Aj."

"Sister Joan"

"The Virgin Martyr-thank you very much!"

"Oh fuck you."

"Please.Do me a favor, but that would sort of put a monkey wrench in that 'virgin' thing wouldn't it?"

I went very rigid on the sudden and seized him by the collar of this tieless shirt. "I don't need your fucked up sense of humor!What I need is...," I was hissing but I couldn't find the right word to finish the sentence. I pushed him back against the green vinyl and made some gestureof apology."What the hell brought you here anyway-your not even a goddamned catholic?"

"You asked." He was no longer looking at me, but far down the corridor at a long procession of young postulants that seemed to parade in a wide circle with each of their colorless lips frozen in a perfect o. Looking like a scene for a black and white silent film."You asked," he whispered again, but never finished the sentence.

"And since when have YOU ever done anything I'VE asked?" Better to get everything in the clear now, than end up locked in a crypt hating him.

"I'm not getting into this here."

"Since when have you ev..."

"I'M NOT GETTING THIS HERE, you come with me, you get in that fucking blue car and you go somewhere else and we can get into it there-not here-not here!" He was yelling now and I could almost see without turning the three novices jerking their heads upward in unison-with their holier-than-the-other expression on each their faces.

"What do you care-your not a catholic, you not any-"

"Just shut-up or get in the car!"

He moved to leave passing by the triplets in their white cotton dresses that were already turning yellow with time. Opening with a gentleman's hand the double doors with the locks both on the inside and the out.And then to only disappear down the steps of Agnus Dei, as if a sea of cold stone and ice had enveloped him. I just sat their while the triplets looked at me. My eyes began to water from the dust and as I stared back they seemed to become one creature-joined at the hip. I blinked away the water and it fell in fat slaty drops down my cheek-smearing by non-smearable mascara I was sure, I was extremely allergic to dust and always have been.

The next sound that registered, between the sniff ball bearing steps of the circling postulants and the flapping of the triplets was the sound of an engine. I could taste the exhaust in my throat. I told myself that it didn't have to be Daivd leaving, it could be anything-but it was something leaving, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was something leaving me. At that precise instant with the starting of that Godforsaken engine something was gone. I left my bags on the tacky vinyl green couchand shot out the double doors as David in the steel chariot pulled out of the convents gravel looping driveway.

As my legs pumped beneath me and I ran like a purified hoodlum I think I caught a glimmer of a smile in the review mirror as he looked to watch my figure rising as it came further and further from the stone catacomb of Agnus Dei. And when I did reach the car, with it's slimy blue color and out of date registration, I remembered thinking that I was going to have to find another way to reach salvation now.

(iv)

Deck the halls-I'm young again-I'm you again!Just a girl from a little town with big dreams. It was almost Christmas and outside my doorway our local do-gooders were marching up and down the drive way to the estate shouting to the frost that the end was near. I was sitting in the window and laughing-they'd missed it-the end had already come and gone like the Music.

The room smelled smoky, almost pleasant.It smelled like December or maybe rotting leaves or just rotting, it smelled like winter. I turned my head from the parade of do-gooders, figuring one half would leave in a few hours to go meet their mistresses in the Notell about ten miles up the road and round the corner, and the others would follow with their video cameras. Purity is a joke and only the jesters have it. I was dressed in a motley sweater of bright martigras colors-it was so un-a la mode I knew, but it was always my favorite sweater.

I was feeling better, now, now that things were resolved somewhat.Or rather what could be resolved was. And had taken a long deep bath. And the type writer was waiting for me in the corner. I never learned how to really use a computer-just enough to get me through college and vist a few web sites to fill up those empty hours I had once in awhile. I still cradled the almost antique typewriter that was a birthday gift when I was ten-ahhh the good old days.

I was resolved, and maybe even a little in love again. Was was going to write this book, and perhaps face down the monster of my own inadequacy. I knew that if I did love her-I needed her to be KNOWN. Really known-not what the public saw-the Goddess facade that she played-she was such an actress, but never a fool. They needed to know the person-not the God. And maybe-maybe-maybe-maybe she would be an example, teach someone something pure-maybe, because no matter what you leave or what's left you-there's always hope-isn't there? So I slowly crept towards the magical machine of ink and print, sneaking up on it's machincal being on tip toe in order to seize it's powers the way the words had seized me. I was at a new ending, and it felt so warm.

The date was december 18th and I was again,after all that time locked away in he tomb of eclat. I stood casting a thin shadow over the desk that my metal messenger sat upon thinking with a grim smile that I wanted my tombstone to read : Aj born: December 18 died: October 28 born: December 18 died: fill in the bloody blank! 'To her virtues be very kind, To her faults a little blind'. Or maybe-'hey, it wasn't my fault!' would fit a little nicer, and I smirked mentally as my eyes filled out with light. I sat down and began.

I can't find the right words to describe what happened to me next. You may find me on a street, on a snowy afternoon outside a book shop some twenty years from now,older and wiser, and if you were to stop and ask me to describe what overtook me at that moment-I don't even think I could find the right words then. So I'll have to tell you in all the wrong ones. Because I have to tell you.

I sat in the straight back wooden chair, like a child just now ready to finish her term paper. My back curled above the glimmering keys with their boldface markings blaring through the shine. My head, eyes fixed on the paper peeking childishly out from a top the antique. And my fingers became dancers, twitching and anxious to be back on stage.I was poised in that space like a mad woman,who was finally reaching her salvation. And all along it was here, in the dustiest of corner-the last place you'd ever look.

Like a priest I laid my palms flat against the cool steel medium, so lightly as if it would burn my naked hands. I felt naked. And I closed my eyes-and started to say a prayer:

"Oh, my God I am heartly sorry-for having offended You, and I detest all my..."

And suddenly my hands jumped to a life of their own flying across the type writer as if possessed. The clicks and gangles and hushed hums of the keys poured out like symponey filling my head with dizzying music. I tried to force myself back, to push away from the vertiginous explosion what had erupted from within me. I couldn't, my body seemed in a state of rigamortus. I could only turn my head and squeeze my eyes shut tight, hoping maybe that would protect me from the demon within.

And after a minute, my fingers stopped their frenzied waltz and curled themselves up and deep into my trembling hands. They were burning. And when I took a breath, to clean the heat away, they relaxed. I tore at the paper as I heard a door come open somewhere behind me. And I rooted my wide eyes to the flimsy victim of this brutal attack. It read, in seemingly out of proportion capitals:

DIARY OF AN URBAN SPACE GODDESS

The door slammed shut with a loud thump. And David's sly dead pan voice broke through the consecrated air that had fallen over my body like Vironica's veil.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" His eyes were squinted and his brow was furrowedagain.

I didn't move, I searched for words, but came up horribly short.

"I...I...I...uh..."

"Jesus Christ Aj, you look like you've seen a ghost. What they hell is going on? Have you been drinking? What's that in your goddamned hand?" He crossed the cherry oak floor and red clad oriental rug to snatch the limp paper from me.He looked at me sideways before reading the words, opening his mouth as if to lash my numb body with another round of questions, but fell gravely silent as his eyes passed over the epistle. I saw those lips form a single word to themselves, a word that failed to reach a sound, a word of recognition. 'Laura'. He laid the sheet smoothly on the desk,pressing in gently into the thin layer of dust that powdered the surface.

The fit passed me. I began to shiver so violently that the straight backed chair teetered on it's legs.It was like frozen streams of light were pouring out of my body through every possible opening they could find. I think he had his arms around me, saying something about calling 911,it's very hazy to me now. And when I could feel my limbs again I found my voice, somewhere in the far far back of my head. Craning my neck I looked up at him.

"D-did I w-w-wake you?"

He stared in an expression that could have been interpreted as disbelief. He pulled his hands off my shouldersand just looked at me. Then sat down in the nearest chair he found while stumbling backwards.

"No."

"Sorry-it's probably late. The Doomsday Crew has already packed up I see-so it must be late."

I pushed myself up from the straight backed wooden chair and felt as if I would float.

Float up through the ceiling, over the estate, and into the pink dusted clouds that signaled the coming snow squall.

"Too late to be writing, I suppose, when you have company."

His face changed then. His eyes became very flat and blue in the light. "It's never too late."

"That's not true-they're may never be a tomorrow. Geez,haven't you heard anything the Doomsday Crew has been shouting about? Christ if they didn't wake you-I don't know how the typing would."

"A.j, there are no tomorrows. How can something that doesn't exist cease to be?" His voice had that serious tone that had the tendency to frighten me.

"Jesus David, don't get philosophical on me at this time of night."

He didn't say anything. He was looking out the bay window, staring into the muddy blackness that configurated just out of reach. I'm sure it had some meaning, but there are only a number of levels in depth that humans can reach,and once you reach deeper than that, you cease to be human. That's how angels are made.

"You wanted to talk?" I said. It was less of a question, it was a flat hearted statement put in the form of a flat hearted question so neither of us had to admit we knew the other so well that we knew just what one wanted when they entered the room. Maybe love is a sickness that is without a vaccine, that lies dormant in each body, and once given the right circumstances the germ festers and propagates until it over takes you. And your sick, sick,sick, sick but you can't admit it, because there's no cure, and if your sick forever-well, that can change everything. And change, real change, is always so very sublime.

I felt sick just looking at him now. Something rolled deep in my stomach and I could almost taste the acid in my throat.

"I'm sorry I woke you. But I'm through now." I gestured towards the type writer that suddenly looked it's age.

"Yes" he murmured.

"Good night then David, I'll call you before I leave in the morning-if you want." I was going to call him anyway, but I kept talking because the little silences that settled between his words and mine had become uncomfortable. Like they did when we use to talk about relationships, and fidelity, and sex, and God. But we never talked about those much.

"You'll be leaving."

"For awhile, a week maybe two. There are things I have to work out with her lawyers, the trust, the money, the second house, just material things."

"I'm getting married" he said dryly.

My eyes heavy with the sand of passing time jumped open at his words and my knees turned to water. But a kept my tongue, not by choice, but it was as if the opening of his mouth with those words had somehow acted as a sort of vaccum-that sucked away my voice. Because I knew he wasn't talking about me, the ice queen.

I have a knack for words. Simple words, not the complex ones that the average man can't understand. But what is a simply way to say you want to die? I'm cold, I'll give you that, but I was never beyond feelings and affections. And those words suddenly forced me to peek through my icy walls, to see, that it mattered to me. He mattered to me, there was a revelation that I did not want to face. That the ice queen was capable of need. My heart grew very cold. And it's always the bitterness you notice first about the cold, how it can twist a personality, freeze up the ounces of liquid goodness they had in them-and make them very cold.

"Married?" Suddenly I felt as if I could only speak in single words. Simple single words, and anything more than that would cause my frozen jaw to snap off it's hinges and shatter on the cherry oak wood floor. I said it again to register it's meaning through the ice. "Married??"

"Surprised?" and somehow he found what ever it was he needed to look me in the face.

The bastard! What he needed was my humiliation, how ever inner and secret it was. He knew. He's always known, and maybe that's what freezes me to the bone. He knows, and like a boy, a goddamned baby, he uses it as a trump card in our little game of freeze tag. I hated him so much in that moment, that I knew I was sick, and it was sublime. So, tag-my move. And I told myself he'd be swallowing ice in Mexico for the rest of his goddamned life after this one.

My eyes became frost covered and I swiped at them with the back of my hand.

"Surprised?ME?," I had to pause as I noticed, pulling my hand away, that the hue of my sick had turned a gruesome bluish tone, I sat down next to him to finish, "I...no." I picked my head up, "No, not at all. It was only a matter of time-ya know. She was right and I was wrong. It's never much of a surprise."

"What?" his brow furrowed again. "What the hell are you talking about? She was right?"

"She WAS RIGHT. She told me," I threw myself back against the couch,"she said-'Aj, babe, you love'em or you lose'em-you know what I mean'. And I knew exactly what she meant-god-fucking-dammit!I knew exactly what she meant!"

He stared at me blankly. Just looking, without a hint of realization on his face. He fumbled for a response.

"Jealous?"

And with that word, I was gone, the blizzard hit and my jaw snapped off and hit the cherry oak wood floor. I almost laughed.

"Ooooh fuck you David! Jealous! Jealous?" I leapt from my place at his side and proceeded to perform a mad twrist before his lanky frame, my hand found their stance in the air and thus waved in furious circled before him-like two blue snowflakes darting in wind whipped circled."Of course I'm fucking jealous!But not because your getting married-because that's the biggest joke I've heard in a long time. As far as I know you can only love someone long enough to fuck them and the rest is just details! If that's what your bringing into a marriage then blessed be! No one is going t put up with your bullshit!Nobody!!Jesus Christ I'm just like my goddamned mother-only I'm not married to it! I loved you-you son of a bitch!And you fucking bastard-you made me fall in love with you afterwards! Do you have any idea what that's like? Do you?? Obviously not,so yes-I'm jealous-just drink it up David-you win. I feel,o.k.-you've shot my Medusa facade to hell-happy? But in case you haven't noticed, I don't crumble into dust over it. If I can lose her, if I can go on after her-no matter how ideosyncratic it appears-do you think your going to reduce me to dust! I've outlasted the best of them, and I'm finished! Through-no more pretending, no more characters, no more lessons about how to put on a good show, I was done with that ages ago!Get it through your head David, I'M NOT LAURA!THERE IS NOTHING FALSE ABOUT ME!!I'm IT, the real thing, so just look at me when I'm talking to you-and THEN walk away if you can't take it!"

He just sort of smiled at me then rolled his eyes in that Lennon-esque way of his. As if that was the exactly the response he had been looking for-only with a twist. I turned up the music in my head to maximum volume. If I was truly holding on-as I claimed to be-it was by a very thin and worn frozen thread. When I peered over again at him, that strangely beautiful face appearing in my head-like a vision of a laughing Christ reflecting itself through my half closed eyes, he had his hands folded in an almost mock-prayer fashion under his chin. I has always imaged that Jesus and Mary Magdaline had something going, I had thought this through most of my catholic life, I use to get into a lot of trouble in Sr.Rebecca's religion classes when I was younger with that one. You see,symbolism is only as deep as you take it. I mean maybe Jesus had a sexual encounter with Mary Mag, does that make the son of God any less in catholic eyes? Is he suddenly dirty now because of this-unclean-unworthy?And what does that say about women? And as I was thinking this neo-feminist babble,looking at David looking at me laughing, I realized that maybe I was a little bit Laura-esque, and maybe Laura had been a little bit me. But I turned from him, and lingered by the door like a ghost, or an apparition of glittering motley colored dust.

"See you in the morning." I whispered.

"In the morning then" he waved me on and then his attention was again on the darkness just outside the picture glass.

Under any normal circumstances, I would have said more,I would have felt that the problem thrown to me was not sufficently broken down to terms I knew how to play a game of rummy with. Because all problem could be solved with a game of rummy-if you can go deep enough with that in mind.It's all in your faith, and has nothing to do with relationships, or fidelity, sex or God -it's just faith.Like music is. It's nothing you can explain, but deep deep down in the part of ourselves that we don't talk about-or don't acknowledge the existence of, but yet the presence is there-we know it's nothing we could even conceptualize. We know there's something bigger-in all of us, and that realization, and that acceptance wether in the ego or the id-that's faith.

(past)

III

"Prelude to the Poster Girl"

(The Story of David and Moses)

'the girl with the purple hair/she's walkin'/she's talkin'/while the crucifixed poster girl/sells cupboards from a coffin/ to fill up with pleasures-and secrets-and sins/sell some to the sisters-keep the bodies in/hey hey hey hey-what can i say?'

-from 'Prelude to the Poster Girl'

I AM WHAT EVERY WOMAN LONGS TO BE. STRONG, STUBBORN, IMMORAL, HOLY, VIRGIN, WHORE, ELUSIVE, DESIRABLE,CREATOR, AND DESTROYER.

I AM WHAT EVERY MAN LONGS FOR. SEXUAL, POWERFUL,PLAYFUL, PRIMITIVE, PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE, IMMORAL, HOLY,SEDUCTIVE, SEDUCTOR, AND WOMAN.

I AM NOT GOD-BUT I KEEP TRYING

I AM A GODDESS-I AM LAURA -I AM SPIRIT AND SOUL AND THEREFORE I AM FOREVER.

I AM NOT GOD-BUT I AM GETTING THERE.

I AM BECOMING...

I AM BECOMING DANGEROUS.

and this is slipping out of my control.

She placed the pen on the sheet of light that illuminated her tanned and rounded face in the large opaque mirror propped almost ceremonially before her.What she saw in the mirror caused her thin eye brows to knit together. A reflection of a superstar with a darkly atrabilious expression settling on her face. She turned away, and the reflection being slighted by the rejection turned it's back to her as well. She pressed her hand over the thinly bound book in her hand and stared down at its metallic silver covering. It too reflected the image of the super woman in red. She stared at it for a long quiet time. Studying her sad expression and the cigarette dangling loosely from her brightly painted lips. Some ashes fell on the metallic image and the paper covering withered away in a blaze of glowing embers, causing the silver filmed woman staring up at Laura to curl away in eight different and burning directions. She threw the book to the floor with a yell.

"Jesus Christ!" she swore as she stamped the covering with her high heeled boots. It reminded me of a tribal dance,the way she circled the book, it cover smoldering into ashes, throwing one foot down upon it, then raise it up,cursing then turning to repeat the action."Jesus Christ A.j. -why the hell didn't you say something!"

"Me?" I pulled my palms flat to my chest in an expression of beguiled innocence, "me?I just got here!"

"Hmph!" she grinned towards me, now having extinguished the false fire and retrieve the pratically undamaged book from the black and white tiled floor, "excuses, excuses." Her grin seemed to glittering in the light that shone full force from beneath the glass dressing table. It was almost blinding, that light or the glimmer, it depends on what you where looking at. She looked down briefly at her book, the shining silver covering was burned away, and the reflection rising up with the final puffs of light grey smoke, reaching up towards the sky like the incense they would burn at the masses when I was still in school.

It's hard to forget the murky, musky smell of the incense,it would clog every opening your body had and hang over you like a rain cloud. All fragrant the way rain clouds are and oppressive, and heavy looking.

I sat in the third pew, fifth in, shoulders always very squared, like this was some type of military ceremony. I remember the wool of the uniform skirts, how it would itch against my bare legs that were swinging in rhythm with the imaginary clock in my head. Tick-a-tock-a-tick-a-tock. The walls in every church were always tall. Soaring walls that looked down on you as you sat in what was your equivalent to reverent prayer.Third pew, fifth in, shoulders squared every damn time. Later on, years later, I returned to that church, slipped like a thief past the stone angels that held the holy water in half sea shells, avoiding their eyes.Eyes that could burn you. And returned to my seat, my pew,only to see they had put in a new window, change for the unchangeable is inevitable. It was a stain glass of the Virgin. A viridian Virgin, gazing lovingly downward at the rows of dusty pews and molding hymnals, like only a mother could. And her hand, the hand of the Virgin trailing with it her blue cloak (for those windy days in heaven), fell in a sun beam of light over my bent head. I didn't realize this until I looked up, after my Act of Contrition, I could feel a weight on my head, a warm weight. But when I turned towards the source, the image of the virdian hands flew over my face, now encrusted with golden light. As if the Virgin were slapping me with a bright wand of heat. I left the church, as the Virgin's virdian eyes followed me, and the angels with the shells stood their vigil.

Her voice snapped me back into the present. Laura had shoved me aside to greet the male figure silhouetting the empty space in the open door. I could smell him before I knew anyone was there. Males smell different than women do. But anyone can tell that. And I was suddenly seized by an instinct, I backed slowly away from the door as the smell grew more pungent. And right before she pushed me aside, I realized it was David coming up the hall.

"Heey beautiful!" Laura cried in her floating voiceas she pulled his face to hers. They kissed, a kiss that was a little more that friendly and just falling short of intimate. I tilted my head like a child watching this,breathing very deeply the air that surrounded the two, for an artist the breath is everything.

Actually, it was a classic scene. She being as short as she was and he at six feet, it would have been comical-if it wasn't all so personal. They stood on the threshold of the poorly lit hall, the shadows let in by the open door crept up Laura's stocking legs like tiny snakes slithering up an apple tree.And on the other side of that threshold was the illuminate and silky white light that poured over the room like a flood, in this light I could make out the feature's of David's face, he was smiling now-looking at the Goddess with a kind of cynical utopia expression that he rarely put on in public. Her arms wrapped around his neck, his hands spread flat against the small of her back. I saw this and I twiched the ring that suddenly weighted down by index finger like a cannon ball inset in sterling sliver. Their lips brushed together, the light from the dressing mirror threw a glow off their pressing lips. It reminded me of the way a new paint brush strokes across a canvas. They nuzzled at each others lips for a moment, and Laura smiled, breaking the osculation. David saw me-breathing-out of the corner of his sharp squinty eyes. It must have been a sight. My body pressed against a wall of light, a recovering box top angel in a three hundred dollar suit cut to a perfect fit. His eyes blinked, perhaps to clear away the light, or perhaps to clean away the sight of me-to no avail. He backed away from Laura and smiled gingerly towards me as he extended his hand. He looked to me as if he had just free fallen from the sky. He looked to me to be sorely out of character, happy, alive, excited, enraged, afraid. He said my name and raised his hand without even knowing he did so. I loved his hands.

When I was eleven I spend the summer doing nothing but losing myself in palmstry books. I think I found a tiny piece of me when I inhaled the musty rancor of those old,old, pages. I studied, memorized and scripted in the blank spaces of my head every meaning of every line that could possibly have manifested itself on a human hand. There is something sacred about a human's hands. A person's hands are the gate way for their aura, the only portal to release the energies that exist for each individual. Hands construct what the mind dares to create. Hands express what words can't. Hand's touch, feed, sooth, savage, silence,caress, calm and kill. You can know a person's entire life by looking at their hands. You can experience an entire person by the touching of their hands.

I was starring, when I felt the smooth pressure of his fingers intertwining with mine. My eyes were with the last particle of smoke that was disappearing into the light. It was the fingers that brought me back. The electric static that shot up my nerves and to the base of my brain as his thumb created a rhythm of friction against the back of my hand.

And I think now, looking back at this moment,I think I owe alot to David. He did something that the Laura, my parents, all my schooling,religion, and maybe even God couldn't do. He taught me how to love. In a subtle way that I don't even think he ever realized,if the idea of me was even realized at all. And not the general kind of love that most humnas expierencxe at least at one point in their lives, even if it's for a favorite doll. I mean the mad, passionate, all consuming form of love that set me on fire within and the light from those flames could be seen shimmering and radiating a pulsing illumination from without. It was the form of love that made you love the world,not just the man,but the man was the world,it's sublime and it's difficult to explain in words,I lost something when this transformation settled upon me,I felt like I lost nothing and gained the key to that part of myself that remained exiled in the attic of my ego. I know David did that for me,and I think now that this makes up for the slits of love that he inflicted,the blood that he drew. I think ...and then again,this is not my story.

"Well kids," Laura chimmed as she gave the two of us a satisfied little look of approval," it's show time!" And it's hard to tell exactly what she meant in that sentence. There were a number of 'showtimes' as far as the Goddess was concerned. The actual performance,I noted menatlly,wasn't scheduled to begin for another half and hour. But 'showtime' also meant that it was time to put the wheels in action-so to speak. Another one of her master plans was about to take center stage. It was at this point that Moses appeared in the shdowy doorway.

Moses.

There was something unnerving about Moses. Perhaps it was his blind devotion to his Goddess. Don't get me wrong,devotion is a noble thing,but blind devotion,blind devotion is dangerous. There was always something about Moses that frightened me.He was a tall man, taller than David,and for a woman as short as I,that was unnerving enough. He always gave me the impression that he was rasied in some kind of royalty,although he looked just as common as I,a slave to the world,there was something about him,his posture,that serious but amiable expression he wore. Or perhaps it was just the air about him,a royal aura. I seem to remember now that Moses had some sort of trouble with the law a time back,Laura had mentioned passingly once about some mix-up with his paternity. He had a speech impedament for the longest time,but Laura hired him a speech thrapist,a boy by the name of Arron.

"Everythings set Laura,their waiting on you" he said slowly and finished the sentence by almost bowing towards L.

"Fablous!" she exclamied and gave Moses a pleased look,"Ida know,should we start the show a little early, finish alittle ealier,and celebrate a.s.a.p.?" she raised a mischevious eye brow towards me and grinned wickedly.

"L.." I began,attempting to reason with her,but she was already gone. Escorted by Moses down a long seemlingly endless corridor of darkness,and from there down and down and down the thirity three flight spirialing stair case,until finally reaching the center of her funnel theather,with it's Goddess on center stage at the direct base. Take from Laura what you will,a show performed by the Goddess would blow you mind!

The music was a poet's heaven and the stage could have come straight from an M.C. Escher sketch, with the masses of fan(atics) circling around the funnel's brim screeching like

banchee's down towards their Goddess. I remember one girl actually threw herself over the edge,as if to martyer herself for the Goddesses love, but she didn't die,I remember...she was dressed in white and she had this shiney golden hair that just shimmered like sun rays as she plummeted,only it was beautiful,her arms spread wide as if her Goddess would catch her ,her virgin white skirt rippling upward in the draft and she was smiling,she was doing more than that,she was glowing-radiating joy. I watched her falling,her blue eyes wide,and in that moment she ceased to be a girl,she transformed herself into a golden haired swan,and the metamorphsis didn't alarm me. Falling,falling,falling,glowing,glowing,glowing,never once did I detect fear in her face...and so I wasn't afraid either. I merely stood there,frozen to my place just off the base of the stage,like my feet had turned to roots,and I marveled at this angelic creature spilling from the air, like a child marvels at it's first sight of a falling star. And the music went on...

" there's a parade in the counting houssse,you'll nevver believe what you seee!"

As if Laura didn't realize that this swan woman was decending.

Rooted,I felt a flurry of energertic,heated,rushing movement circle around me and out towards the stage's center to Laura. They were rushing her like a sworm of black suited bees.

Loud shouts erupted and she was still falling falling, and my head began to spin as the black suits pushed past me with urgent grunts escaping them as the rushed towards the sworm.Then everything was spinning on a needle that centered on my head and I could see the girls face,she was laughing...laughing! And I laughed with her,the scene was blurring,two men shoved Laura off the stage and three others huddled her and pushed her off into the darkness before she could turn to see...

But she turned around. Her expression was perturbed,her eye brows lowered over her little eyes her mouth twisted and she saw the girl stike the stage with a ceremonial thud...onlt the sound echoed through the building,carried by the accoustics,it magnified and spread like a caner out and out and washed over everyone there. The only thing that drown out that sound,were the screams from the Goddesses minions.

The swan's blood oozed from her skull,and the sight of it,the slow and gentle flow and pored from her head,calmed me,and turned the volume off in my head. I heard nothing,just sweet and sanguine silence. My vision shifted and began to focus only on the girl...she looked about tweleve now that I looked at her closely. There was a blurred rush of movement around her broken frame. But all I could see was her crumpled body,frozen in a singular moment of time...everything was so blissfully quiet now and the only thing that really moved was the pool of blood that spread out and out and out,as if crawling across the stage. And I almost smiled,allowing the peace to ripple through me, wondering if that was what the end was really like. But suddenly everthing went dark and an arm was twisting my body to the right.

I was being pressed against a solid body, warm, arms wraped like boa constricters around the barrel of my chest. The alarms in my body went off simutaniously, causing me to shake,I began to push at the chest to escape,and his hand touched my head,and I knew it was David.

"let me go" I insisted though his shirt,my voice muffled by the fabic.

If he heard me,he showed no sign of recognition, and I gasped for breath.

"David....I can't breath!" I forced.

He loosen his grip just enough to allow my head to over an inch or two away from his white shirt. I still couldn't move,I looked up towards his face,but his eyes were on the scene being played before him. I wanted to know what they were doing to the swan girl,but I was pinned to his chest like a metal or a moth,so I watched the reflections in his eyes...those clear and perfect eyes.

And for a minute,I felt like I was with my mother,that same smothering heat that wraps around you and wants to protect you,but only succeeds in choking you to death,despite the intention behind it. That's a mother's love ya. But that wasn't David.

When he was young,and it's hard for me to imagine him ever being a child,I seem to have this mental picture of him forzen in my mind. Even now,I can only see him as I first saw him, thirity-two looking twenty-six, smiling half heartedly,as if the burnette at his side had just told him a joke and he had failed to find it's humor,but he would humor her just the same and give the illusion of humor. Probably for sex,I thought,but maybe not,and I sipped childishly at my white wine and orange juice before our meal came. She would probably jump him even if he turned around and slapped her. He was so very tall, yet he seemed to me in that moment,forever passive...I don't know why, but in my memory I can best descibe David as a photographic,sitting or lounging,completely passive looking at you,at anyone,at everyone,or perhaps at me,with those eyes that could melt tar.

"Bedroom eyes..eh?" Laura whispered across the table to me,after having followed my gaze like a treasure map.

I shook my head slightly,suddenly feeling very tiny,and very ugly and wanting to leave her mother's resterant as quickly as possible.

"Pardon?" I asked,putting up a front,that failed miserably.

"I said,he's got bedroom eyes" L repeated,now turning in her chair to capture his image,making every moment and every move come to the near publics attention. She had no shame.

But I had shame enough for the both of us.

"Geez Laura,make a scene wouldya?" I snipped in my usual aplomb.

"His name is David, I met him once, before he was acting babe, he was..." and she paused as her eyes slipped over him again,like water running off his limbs as he stood,"a writer."

My face spasamed in surprise.

"I think he still tinkers around with it now and then,I think you should meet him" she said slyly and about four notches above her normal volume,she turned back towards me and smiled cruelly.

And I thought "I must be cruel babe,only to be kind".

"Laura-no" I called after her,my voice turning to gravel with the ferosity of the command,but she had already ascended towards David and the burnette,whom I now recognized as a novice singer. She looked about five years old to me,with giant glasses that were the fashion in the retro-music scene at ths poitn it time and limp pigtails and a teddy-bear backpack. She looked like an absolute infant.

As a defense mechanism,I turned off the volume in my head.The scene was from a silent movie,in screamingly glorious color. Laura eight feet away,smiling that sparkling smile and motioning towards me still as death at the table, David glowing down on Laura due to his height, in his white cotton t-shirt and black pants looking as lethal as I'd ever seen any man look in my life...but I had seen very few men. And the poor burnette, forced to look at the Goddesses back as she ushered her escort to our little table at the resterants outdoor center. I only wish I had the capablitity to convey to you the brightness,the glow of the scene which to me played in slow motion,leaving me all the time in the universe to escape if I wanted to,so I quess,deep deep deep, I didn't want escape from his 'bedroom eyes'.

"Annnyway," Laura purred towards David,with her hand resting snugly on his back as if to push him at me,"this is Aj!" she said with enthusiasiam.

"Aj, hi, really pleased to meet you," he began in the broken sentences that stars use to greet strangers,and out of reflex to the greeting I exteneded my hand,"Laura has got you pegged as a regular F.Scott.Fitzgerald" he finished as he clasped my hand.

And to put it bluntly,I started to melt. I smiled at him,careful not to smile to wide,or show my teeth as I pumped his hand up and down. But I lost it,as I was searching for a responce, I looked into his face and just lost it,I started to grin and then laughed lightly,closing my eyes and tipping my head back slightly.

"My mother was a Fitzgerald!" I responded jovelly,without even realizing I had spoken.

"It's funny you mentioned that David, they're related!" Laura said,now standing back admiring her handy work.

"You and your mother?" he questioned mockingly towards me, releasing my hand.

"No," Laura snickered,"Aj and Fitzgerald."

"oooh" he whispered turning towards the glow of the Goddess.

It wasn't until long after we had left the resterant that she began her interrigtaion.

"Your so obviously attracted to him babe," she was yelling down the hall from her room in the hotel as I peeled off my coat and laid it on a chair's back,"I mean,you can hide it from him,hell,you can hide it from the fucking world,but honey," she now manifested her form in the halls mouth,"you can-not hide it from me!" she finished with classic New York atttitude.

"And?" I questioned,smiling.

"And? And? And so what are we going to do about it?" She said,pretending to be enraged and my ignorance,"Aj,you need a man dammit! Look at you,your thirity and you haven't even been kissed yet! Doesn't that bother you?"

"No."

"Well...it bothers me, when I think about it babe,it bothers the hell outta me,so I'll be bothered for the both of us!" she ranted,"Jeees-us babe! somedays,somedays,you know I luv ya in all,but somedays you really worry me."

"I'm fine" I assured the figure with her hands on her hips looking intently towards me.

"Yeah,well,your gonna be even better when Mr.Bedroom Eyes invites you back to his place!" she insisted,seemingly to herself,because I was off to the kitchen for a drink. Besides, I seriously doubted that "Mr.Bedroom Eyes" wanted anything to do with me in the first place.

"L,you know I'm not that kind of girl" I called to her as I poured a half glass of orange juice.

Laura was fast on my heels. She entered the kitchen directly behind me with her usual hip swaying walk. And she was on a mission now,I could see it in her eyes as I turned to grin at her,the way I do when ever we'd talk about men or boys,relationships,sex,or God. But we didn't talk about those very much,sore subjects for the both of us,depending on who you were talking to. She shimmered over to me and took the orange juice glass from my hand as I was rasing it to my lips,still smiling faintly, as she reached for some object on the near by cupboard.

"Yes,but what kind of woman are you Aj? That's what I wanna know."

She smiled cruelly and with the reaching hand she produced a bottle of half empty vodka and proceeded to pour it into the orange juice until it reached it's glassey brim. Now grasping the glass firmly in her own left hand,she smiled at me again,rasing an eyebrow as if she were about to propse an embrassing question,and then sipped the screwdriver danitly.

"That's what I wanna know."

But what I do remember of David, the most, and above all else is his stoic silence.

The David that I knew, and please note that I'm not assuming that I knew the Real David

by any means, was,was a pool of Zen. If that makes any sense. There was one time,however,

and I am soully sure I did get a tiny glimpse into his psyche. It was the one time I saw the Goddess looking at David looking at her. The way Laura looked at David always made me think suddenly, as if the thought had just burst from a pod,frightening because it was unexpected, that he was too good for me. Because that night,I saw David as he sinerely was.

A contemplative man,who while being completely comfortable here in the physical realm,

maintained an devotional link to the cosmos. I'm not sure if even he realized that then. David was annoited by the Goddess that day at her mother's resterant. And with that annoiting she proclaimed,without words,that she chose him out of all his brothers.He was her chosen one,

he was the star player in her game now.

That evening, after we had spent the afternoon discussing some of my lyric and after a few heated debates about weither or not she was sing a song right, I headed for bed. Laura,on the other hand,headed for the phone. And I know she didn't think I could hear a word she breathed,not that she would care if I had, I remember lying on the billowy bed and listen with annoyance as she dialed the phone, the faint ringing from the other end,the pause,the greeting from the far away male voice...and it was at this point that I became fully alert and interested. It was my job,after all,to keep track of all Laura's public moves-so to speak.

"Heey Samual," Laura crooned into the recieve in her I-need-a-favor-voice.

Some indiscrpit greeting from the male voice followed.

"Yeah,yeah," Laura chimmed enthusiastically,"listen,Sammy,I need you do me a favor...yeah.

O.k. there's this guy that I wanna er..get to know better," there was a pause in her speech,"Oh for Christ's sake Sammy,not like that,you know Aj right? Yeah,yeah, the writer,yeah she's great,ooh Sammy if you can come through for me babe,she'll be doing even better. Anyway,ya know how Aj's sorta shy when it comes to men,yeah,yeah,that was sorta funny wasn't it,the way she looked at you that time," Laura laughed sinerely at the memory, "Anny

way,there's this guy..she saw him today at mom's resterant,yeah,yes Sammy mom's doing great, anyway Sam-she melted,I mean like thawed and liquified in the same second!No Sam not my mom-AJ! Jeez-us babe-keep with me here. Yeah, I know-it was a miracle,anyway,I want to get these two together...like soon babe. But I need this guys whole story,ya know,just to be sure he's worthy and all,yeah,yeah Sammy,his name's David..."

My hearing shut off because the rage was boiling to my ears. I threw off the covers with a quick whip of my hand and stood,slapping my feet loudly on the red oriental rug that protected the hard wood floor. She had some nerve,she...was my brest friend for almost fifteen years,and I got back into bed. No matter what,I could never stay mad at Laura for very long.