Baker Bloch couldn’t help himself. “Hold on,” he said, delaying the meeting even further. “Lemme get another beer out of the fridge.
“Everybody good?” he calls to the assembled cast and crew while fishing out a Krings from its depths, including new gal Jinx Doll. Who invited *her*? he thought when she arrived at 15 til 8, 20 minutes before anyone else. “I’ll take one,” said Wheeler directly across from him, who wandered in at 8:35, the last to show up. Immediately before her at 8:25 came Opp, her true love. And then, before that (8:15), Grassy Noll, the most famous of all Mmmmmm’s, a species formerly inhabiting the Great Lake area of Herman Park. No longer. Now friend Wheeler originally questioned him about selling out his kind, but he denies it, despite being the only true Mmmmmm left after successfully transferring over to virtual reality using his massive wealth and status as bargaining chips to the Great God of the Great Lake in ’64, just after the JFK debacle he was also responsible for, a warm-up act some called it. Like Wheeler, although she was only echoing what she’d heard at the time. “He took a *shot* for you,” she grilled beyond cooking and into simply burning to a crisp. Crisp Lake crisp. Grassy was use to the heat, though, and took Wheeler’s best (return) shot in stride, deflecting it a little bit up and to the right like he was good at — he was *fractally* good at, in fact, able to whirl it down into a vortex hole if needed, out of sight and also out of mind to those swirling all around, still trying and failing to become a singularity like that. Bay City was renamed John Fitzgerald Kennedy City because of it but that was only Alaska. Things happen differently it’s so cold up there, far away from the heat of the grilling and burning. It was a displacement, you see. And because of it “America the Beautiful” became the national anthem instead of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But no one remembered, no one knew, Marilyn (Lichen Roosevelt) least of all because she was so close to the subject, a tree for forest deal-i-o.
Baker slid a Krings over to Wheeler past the face of Al, the second to arrive after Jinx Doll at 8:05 and the last member of the Table to be brought up in this here post. He has 3 faces, actually. That’s the story we must go into next.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 