Jump

Alison was sure but that was not unusual. She was the most sure girl I had ever met at least in this era--although I have not lived all that long when you really compare it to others. But more than Lonnie. He is a real toilet bowl candidate if I can and so I will say so. It's really no problem, really. I could totally care less or more or not at all. Yet when you add it up, no one was going to come rose-like out of this situation.

If I had stayed in bed just a bit long that other day last week, none of this would have come to pass. And maybe, just maybe, that would have been just the item to make the earthquake that did occur a little less potent.

So maybe Aldo and I will go drive by the tall mountains north of the freeway and see if the real snow that is now on them looks the same as the other type of snow that seems to be there all other times of the year. I am tired of looking at airplanes not carrying me away from here between idle smokestacks and dangling power lines that try to join the notheast to the southwest. Maybe teasing and baiting Lonnie will ease that syndrome. Although Alison and Aldo think not.

Alison never wavers. Stiffer than a redwood pole in a severe Santa Ana according to Lonnie. And he has been here all his medium life.

The crater hole near the obelisk was nearly filled with newly-exposed bones from a war some time ago. The stench reminded Aldo of french vanilla, he said. I replied that it just recalled a lost feel of just-out-of-the-eye-frame sadness to me. And then again Alison as always pushed her lynx-like ways back into my dribbling countenance.

And the sky went yellowing-red. And the sounds commenced.

Alison and Lonnie just then appeared on the Cantuise- Gallentino overpass and jumped at us passing below.

They just missed the antique La Salle by the scrape of an elbow.

"Guess they both took their carpe diem to what they felt was the logical extreme," Aldo said.

I did not answer.

That would come on Tuesday.