She was attaching false greenery to each post on the back deck--which of course she called a porch. The only roof was the tree she had to trim just a bit to let the flames not touch its branches; the side of the porch that was most frequently comfortable to her after this operation was the one least lit by the flames.
"We wished that the situation involved you, only it doesn't." He stood--as if standing in the past. "What is that crawling behind you? Only a long-haired zombie, let's hope. Oh. You brought a guest. In that case let her treat you with silence, and tell the tale. Make it hopeful and emphatic--the outlook of price adjustments on a Sunday morn. Can you tell me the price?"
He accepted. "It's a Marxist text." He paused. The moon had moved when he began: "Flies stuck in soup during intermission, the effect they had on the review. 'Heads are shaved at dolorous show' ran the title. 'You'd like to make sense of their line--it's caught up perhaps at the sight of the hairdressing studio--we didn't know when to begin the Weird.' The structure, they were saying, was there, but not its translator. The wave of activity would continue alone, misguided, 'the devil may take it back to storage, the last sentence, I'm going into the fog. Leave the light on. Obey a dozen masters, find it in yourself not to use a broken pen.' But Dolores works it fine, a stubby green pen made of wood at the base and shiny silver against the page."
"Alarming," she said from the window, a balcony I'd forgotten looks to this day from the far corner of her room onto our leafy control lab. Where no group is given the test, though they each constitute the entire study--"Rampant individualism?" she stood her head up to say. It looked about to fall into the imaginary pit. Since Ray had mentioned just a moment ago (or was about to mention) the likely locality of the void, adding that he'd not slept since he heard the voice saying it was possibly here--since that information was fresh in my mind, Ray was now being told by playwright herself. "We have editors, decision makers. to excise is...not all that they do. Just nearly. You won't get that by trying on new hats in front of old friends."
This shocking exercise in hidden logic told of a courage in Dolores' distant urges, portraying matriculating housewives because she'd realized that at one point she'd wanted to become one. "It comes slowly and is reinforced, towards the forgiveness of the present century; are we taken out of it, then? Never! Ray, return, go away."
Nothing stood in his way, but he was caught. One could tell he didn't like gardens but was standing in one he couldn't let himself escape though he just was ordered out. Talking was the answer, no matter what he'd say we would recognize the effort, and be responsible to ourselves respond. He went on with it. "Call the site, the active burning opening, the source of all poetry. See what it's got, possibly all manner of thoughtful (considerate) behavior, a man with talent's caricature's running half the business of self-imagining."
Did this man, we might ask, make or sit for these pictures of exaggeration? When is the next logical leap for this poor unreflective boot in the door so that the terror in his eyes will be cleared up (in our understanding of it)? He approached an answer to all this. "Oakland coastal base, one number off so, further down the road you'll see a wreckage on wheels, upright, enjoying loyalty across the lake, smiling."
"I know, Ray," says Dolor. "You've got all kinds of stories left and right about how this shit of me got stuck. It's Flavor-Aid, remember. And laced? Not at all. Just cold. Exceedingly cold on the hottest of days. Thus the wreckage! This is the story you want to explain my character--as a news event, yes that is fine. Alterity has less to show for its theories of being than your paper could ever pretend to acknowledge!"
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