Bright orange lines trace contours through the windows, neon geometric contours. Yardley has black marbles instead of his eyes. Ants throng, zigzag all over the tabletop, ants with clear bodies, waterdrop ants.
          Okay I am nervous and Yardley says, “That’s just called freaking out. Play along, don’t fight, go with it. It’s fun.”
          “What is wrong with him?” Maxine says and brandishes a cigarette and it leaves steaks of smoke and sparks.
          Hours or minutes after I cannot talk anymore- the others are murmuring about this furiously, and irate, they loathe me -so I go out to the backyard where there are squadrons of nightbug airplanes swarming, dogfighting, RRRR-budda budda. Shooting at each other in machine gun flashes. Bad idea to look down at bundles of wet worms seething underfoot. Over there, gooey dog waste or a coil of intestine reflects flare and flicker of the patio torch. Gears grind and munch in my skull.
          Now nothing happens again for a long time, then frost lines my throat and esophagus so I cannot swallow. THAT is unpleasant. But otherwise, nothing, although I can hear my heart and it’s fast and nuts like a monkey drummer, but otherwise nothing except I feel stupid.

          I dreamt often, everywhere, about the drive-in girl and the sequence of the thing. Finding her house. Her father’s tree trunk body and boxer’s arms, varnished with sweat, him working in the yard-but really, showing his daughter’s date that old signal: Do not mess with mine, squidsucker. See this man hacking at shrubs with a machete? Get it? And we talk about the Grand Prix, which I think he envies until she comes out the door and he is stricken by love for her and hates me like boils but I’m thinking, go ahead and kill me, Father of Beauty, because it would be worth it for her- she in a summer dress, space helmet hair, browned from days at Arrowhead Lake, Jesus Christ in heaven.

4

  

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