-2-
"Gridley was the gunner, you
see, on the first ship about to attack the Phillipines, and my great
grandfather Oscar, see, he was also on the deck with Admiral Dewey when
Dewey said: Fire when ready--"
"We'll get to that."
"And I have all this stuff
about the plumber and the electrician who were a double plague upon
our house last summer. It was frightening and hilarious, even at the
time I saw it was fraught with absurdity and meaning, another classic
right in our own house , which I don't even have to leave--"
"What do you mean, you have
all this stuff?"
"So, getting back to the main
point, who are the witch women?"
"Ah yes. They spend all day
dealing with damaging information about people, heard;" from other other
people, and then redistributed, by the witch woman!-- after she's stirred
it around in her stewing pot which might be a--"
"I wanted to know who they
are; I can well imagine what they are."
"Oh. So you want to know who
they are."
"Stuff, and more stuff! Never
did get organized! Never did bring the paint cans from the basement
out to the curb. Never did--"
"But if you knew what they
are, you would know who they are--they stand right out once you have
the category."
"And if you don't have the
category, knowing who they are is
just spurious. It tells nothing."
"It is not, in itself, a bad
thing to be a witch woman. In fact they think of their work as a positive
force; they are busy all the time, and can't help themselves. It's up
to us to . . ."
"Is this one of those things
that only you understand?"
"How should I know?"
"I always remember that equation
in that Stoppard play. "
"What was it?"
"When one character asks another
if they met by chance or fate. And the other says if it was fate it
would have to be fate for both of them. "Cause you see you can't have
one guy moving in one realm and another moving in the other, you see."
"You do see this?"
"Chance is twice simpler,"
replies the original jester.
"And would you please resupply
the lemonade, it's lifelike sweltering hot out here, the patio stones
are burning my feet."
"So much we will never know,
pray tell,
Stranded here, at the Afterlife
Hotel."
"That almost rhymes."
"Everything almost rhymes."
"If they wanted to live, they
could have. Of whom do I speak?"
"They can't kill me as long
I have all these other voices in my head. They can't snuff out the whole
lot of us in one fell swoop, I wager."
