There was a drawer full of old detective novels. They'd had thick paper book jackets with nice type designed in the 40's or 50's. Dramatic titles and war ravaged, truth seeking heroes--always misunderstood and usually in the military or at least the CIA. Me and Mary had stayed over at Marianna's. It was now very late Saturday morning and we were getting up. There was a fire escape in the center of the building--where the chimney used to be and girls from other apartments were just starting to get up with towels and sit on fire escapes. Marianna met me at the door with one dollar bills. An artist was doing an installation and signing his name with mashed potatoes. He also needed a big pile of mashed potatoes to write his name in the mashed potatoes the way you'd write your name in the sand. But not mashed potatoes spread flat and thin like sand--a mound of mashed potatoes, lumpy as a landscape, and there was one baked potato on the table. I was going to Key Food to get some mashed potato mix with the right texture (Marianna's words). On the way I stopped at a NBA basketball game. I was sitting on the floor beneath (behind) the backboard with my kitty and while I was watching the game she ate the baked potato. The basketball went out of bounds to kitty and she clawed the basketball open and started eating it too. I went back empty handed but Key Food was open 24 hours. This artist was also gonna carve his name into pears. Marianna asked me to go to the library and get some pears. The library was late opening and the staff was hung over. Sure enough, a chef was at a table cutting up pears and putting them in plastic bags. I told him I needed some whole pears--but they all had cut marks in them. Some were beautiful green pears with warm spots of red. A guy on the train was trying to get to Williams St. and another guy gave him wrong directions. I pointed to a stop in Wall Street we called "Williams St." I told him to take the F train. Blue or orange. There were empty plastic bags on the very top floor. The elevators went up and down. There was a girl I was talking to at a diner counter. She asked for steamed lettuce and chicken sandwich. I was wearing a black slip. She said she was a painter. I asked her about her art. She said Velcro in playgrounds. I thought of the little girl drawing but her art was Velcro escalators. A couple had a one week old baby in a white dress. The guy was wearing the baby's bonnet on his head. He handed the baby to his friend with one hand. The baby's head was wobbling. He didn't seem to care. His girlfriend had just had the baby I guessed. He left her, walked away down an escalator. I rubbed her stomach gently--it was sore. Her nipples were sewed--tied with black surgical thread and I wondered why--if it had something to do with childbirth. When I got home there was a secret message, with the new address rubbed out and the name rubbed out--the only legible parts were clown school reunion and the town which was foreign in Europe. I called right away--with the door wide open, sitting on the floor when I realized Zeb had been sitting--perched on the back of the couch with his chin in his hand--his elbows propped on his knees--all along.