The young lady in question has been requested to refrain from commenting on the following account. Can you blame her?

 

In the event that she is asked to gather our final things and lurk on one of the lower levels where a miniature finely woven brass basin holds a place of honor in the absence of former lurid affairs, I am warned once too often for my taste to take care that baked goods are supplied for the pleasure of our enemy. There is no position that I could take, either physical or psychological, that would allow me to ignore the directive, now that the very lives of community leaders hang in the balance; the time of playing with inflictable grains is at an impasse and all of us are bushed.

As I withdraw the remaining needle from its case and trace an intractable oval gently on her forehead to remind her of a time of fewer cares and stochastic obfuscations, there seems to be some trouble in the back where a bentument announces its disrepair with a yawning gap of function. She rides in the wagon that I've inserted into the pledator device and tries, without much success, to match her hair to the whispered lyrics of a song that we can hear from a neighbor's casual get-together. There is, however, an audible lump in my left clavicle. Each time she casually moves one of her hands in a display of rank defiance, I feel it right here where I've been sitting since I got home last year.

When I first met her in a State to the east of this one, she claimed to remember me as the person who once loaned her Uncle one of my spare winter jackets during a cold snap that had us breathing in a new direction. I told her then and I insist to her on this very day that I've never owned even one cold-weather out garment, let alone had a spare, since I've spent my entire life until the previous month in Tampa Bay, Arizona and have the documents to prove it. She is unmoved. I stare past her into a trapezoidal seating area now filling up with smartly attired guests who ignore our every request for aid initiating a bon fire in a cup-shaped bantry pit over which we, for some reason, seem to have sole jurisdiction.

As a paltry dose of fluid finds its target in the waves of the mind, some honorable bureaucrats are encumbered by a feeling of wistfulness for a time when dully colored plastic placemats we all anyone could count on to bring a small bit of levity into a vain and pointless affair. Nevertheless, if our muted expressions of concern fail to do the trick once again, the host who has betrayed us to the authorities will be awarded a vintage spring-loaded ice-folding packet and sent on his way. You will know him by the way he hums in the dark. During daylight hours, though, you might notice him whistling. Or maybe not, since he does it very quietly. All we can ask is that you try to see if that will get you anywhere. Then you'll know.

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