It was 10 minutes till. I was going to a dinner party. I wanted to stop and get a coffee. It was Eileen's class and dinner party. On the way I stopped at a square cinder block house. It was Christian's. I could hear him practicing the piano. I climbed on the roof (ceiling) and took an overhead photo of the piano. Now I had 2 pictures of pianos. The other was at an angle--like a shot of a car. I got to the dinner and assumed I was late, but others were coming in late too. We were splitting for cocktails. At my table were people I couldn't relate to. A boy and girl in love who only had eyes for each other. 2 women with grown children and all they did was talk about their children. A very, very tall horsey woman who didn't talk much sense was stuck with me for conversation. Her sentences were live wires--popping around (hopping around?) in crazy directions and going suddenly dead when the power went off. Snakes, black and vertical, in the air. ??? I had stopped talking. I was given 2 names to write on the black board. Lots of TOSOKO. The people next to me were trying to be polite. ??? We both wanted to hear and Dora picked some off my plate with her hands, because she had no plastic fork and because she liked to do it that way. "Leave some for me," I said. It was the end of the world. Highways were empty. I took the car as far as it would go up frontage road to connect to the highway. A guy drove up the wrong way on an exit ramp and asked me directions. I was standing outside the car--looking at the road.