The Last Time Machine. Forum A small, semi-private room at ..

Seats six. Long leather couches surround a low table. A red velvet curtain seperates the room from the main bar. Mamu, the bouncer stands at the entrance. He's huge and silent.

'Mamu, darling.'

Wait, arch my back a little....ah, got it, got the nod.

Oh, yes, I can sleep here. It has been a while, admittedly, but my face is still known. Oh, leather sofas? These are new.

Mamu watches as I kick off my heels and stretch out on the leather. He snorts a little.

My buzz lulls me, my first sleep in four days.

(continued from the bar scene)

"...marmalade?"

Shocked that I let slip such an utterance, I quickly look around to see if anyone had noticed. There's the bartender over there...either didn't hear me or pretending to not have. It seems as if there is no one else and I begin to sit back when I see movement out of the corner of my eye followed by a quiet murmer. I turned to the side. At first, all I see is a dark bundle on the sofa next to mine. It takes a few moments to allow my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the lounge--and then I see her sleeping there. She's beautiful. Lying on her side, curled up with knees bent to her stomach, hands clasped under her head full of dark, curly hair surrounding an angelically peaceful face--she has the look of total relaxation. I am completely mesmerized by her loveliness. Before I can think, an "Oh my," escaped my lips and I quickly sit back, masking my embarrassment in case the bartender thinks I'm some sort of voyeur.

Realizing that I may look a bit out of place without a drink, I hailed the bartender.
In case the beauty woke up while I'm here, it would be good for her to see me having a civilized drink, something with class, I thought. The bartender asks what I would like. My mind races through the list of possible "good" beverages she would fancy a stranger having--good enough that she would regard him (me) in a decent light. Before I could decide whether she would prefer me having a bourbon or a mojito, the sailor in me got his voice in. "I'll have a rum." God, what a degenerate I am!

Through clouds, through fizzing limbs and fat-feeling fingers, something stirrs me. The adrenaline kicks in. I am wound to a spring from last night. I sit up fast, too fast. I leave some hair behind, wound around a button. I put my hand to my scalp and scowl at the stranger who woke me with his cries of 'Rum'.

Oh, she's looking at me. My eyes widen in startlement. And she looks rather perturbed...I must have woken her! Feeling like a bumbling idiot, I quickly swing my legs off the sofa and push myself into a more proper sitting position, trying to make myself as humble as possible. I know I must say something to her.

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you. I thought, you see...well, at first," I stammered on, "At first I thought I was the only one here and then....then I saw you laying there....not like I was "noticing" you or anything, it's just that, well..." Oh God, I'm making a mess of this! "I...I didn't mean to wake you, is all."

As much of a jackass I was making myself into, I can't stop looking into her eyes--they are so blue! Oh, what can she be thinking of all this?

I am exhausted, my arms are floating, but he is talking, talking.
Something about waking me.
I see his drink, I down it, remembering too late that it is Rum, still, it hits the spot.
He stops talking.
He looks a little frightened, maybe we have met before, perhaps he knows why I am here.
Jeeez, my head hurts. I put my forehead on the low table, realising too late that I will look like an idiot sprawled out on the table in front of this man who may or may not remember me.
I look sideways.
I see her.
I have to squint as my eyes are not good. She has walked away, leaving her notebook on the floor. Is it deliberate? Is it a trap? Surely she would not just leave it like that?

good, i think she saw me. She's slumped over a table in the damp back room for sleezes and addicts... but she's neither. Crippled there, like a dirty rag doll. I try to catch a glimspe of her arms. I'll know all i need to know if i just get to see the curves, the bends, and the skin healed and smooth like it aught to be... like it was last may, when she threw the notebook at me. A pastel blue hand embroidered book. We wrote poetry in it together; wrote wrote wrote until the thing nearly fell apart. The binding was worn in all the wrong places, pages fell out and were duct taped back in... But Who was that man inside? i didn't catch a good glimpse of him... i was too busy wandering the length of her body.. but i could swear i'd seen him around. He looked like the nerdy type that hid behind a laptop in a coffee house... what was he doing in the back room? Did he know where he was? He's probably just another skank draw to a sleeping beauty in a bad bar room scene.

God, how f****n' glad i am to have a pad of my own and not rely on the tatooed bouncer nodding his approval at me. No more nights sleeping off sex, drinks, and barmaids in a back room at this crummy little air port. and doesn't anyone realize it isn't legal to smoke inside anymore? Another law as useless as prohibition.

He sees the change in me as I sit up, inhaling long and deep, clutching the edge of the table. My intestines swirl-churn. I may vomit.
There she is, my...oh. She. Did she see me?
I hope so. God, I hope not.
I half get up, then sit down. She is still walking away. She still looks edible.
I stand right up. This Man must think I am insane. I am insane.
Damn, she must know why I'm here. Do I go for the book, our book? The Book. I see her no more. Where is she. I have a sudden realisation that the shock of seeing her again has allowed me to let my guard down.
I look at the man. He looks at me. He looks good. F**k it, I'll kiss him. I kneel on the table and grab him by the neck of his t-shirt, pulling him towards me. We meet in crash of lips and I kiss him deeply. Cinnamon?
Enough. I push him back onto the sofa. "You may not want to stay in here by yourself, Sailor" I tell him. I hitch up my stockings, slip back into my heels. Will I find her in the bar?

there are one of three things she could be here for... and one is that man. I've seen him before, and i've seen his gaze follow women better left alone. i forget my footfalls and ponder the empty bar stool at the end of the bar. If i take a seat, i can still see the doorway in my peripheral vision and elegently slip out of the room if need be. If i leave, all i have is the rain cascading down my cheeks to mask tears of utter disbelief and insanity. I clutch my book and....my book! Where is it? ican't go back to the room....

She kissed me! It takes me a few moments to catch my breath, to slow my heart, and yet my mind races. She was so strong, her kiss so...deep. And then she was gone, hastily rushing out. Was it real?

"Did you see that?" I ask the bartender, whose only reply is a slient stare. "She kissed me!" With that said, I stand up, and look toward the door into the main bar where my mystery kisser had just passed through. Mustering up what little strength is left after such a mood changing altercation, I walk toward the bar, toward her, and wonder what I will say to her if she's still there.

I'm so distracted I almost walk right into a woman who's standing by the door, frantically looking around as if she's misplaced something. I manage to halt a pace away and open my mouth to utter something other than apologies and marmalade when a flicker of movement in the bar draws my gaze outward to two people dancing in the middle of the room--one of them is her! A strange feeling comes over me as I watch them dance--curiosity mixed with...what? I look to the woman in front of me and over again to the dancers in the bar.

"Something's out of place." I think aloud. Is it the dancers? Is it the woman before me? I'm about to ask the woman if she notices anything odd when I realize what it is: no one else in the bar is moving! It's as if a snapshot had been taken and posted up in front of the doorway with a hole cut out in the middle to allow for the dancers. Everything else appears to be in null entropy.

Feeling a desperate need for human contact at that moment, I reach out to the woman before me. Just as my fingers are brushing against her arm, the strangeness of the bar vanishes and everything moves about as if the baffling scene never occurred.

I look to the woman whose arm I'm lightly touching and ask, "Why do I suddenly feel like Damocles?"

I've decided to seduce Hawkins. He is standing still beside the curtain, beside Mamu, as if he is waiting for something. I grab his shirt as I pass and pull him behind me.
"Sit here, sit still."
He sits.


I take my place at the next sofa and wait for the draw to bring him to me.

**** �My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie�"****

With all the strange goings on, I am not surprised in the least to find myself back in the sofa, looking at my mystery kisser. Any embarrassment I may have had before is long gone, my innocence torn from me by this carnival-style funhouse. Time to talk.

"From everything I have experienced so far, I would believe that someone put a large quantity of mescaline in my rum--if it weren't for the fact that you drank it all before I had the chance," I pause for a second when I see the smile spread slowly across her face. "But before I ask about all that...whatever it was that happened in the bar, I have to...do we know each other from somewhere else? You look so familar...and the kiss...it felt as if...so much deja vu. We've done this before, haven't we?"

She's still smiling. God, I can't tear away from her eyes! I give enough time for several shared breaths. Will she respond? I can't wait any longer.

"Look, before the ape-lizards arrive, the piano man dresses more like Elton John, and any other shocks-to-the-senses takes place, will you at least tell me your name?"

"Oh, so you're funny as well as handsome? Elton John, Ape-lizards? You have not changed. Your name is Hawkli...Hawkins, correct me if I'm wrong, and yes, we have met before. I'm waiting for someone, he should be here shortly and when he gets here you must leave. Look, they are leaving for the party at the mansion. Go. I will join you there soon, and when I do, I have a feeling that it will be the best joining you have ever had."

I step closer, reach down to hold his wrist and place his hand on the small of my back. I step closer still, whisper into his neck..

"I'm your wife. Delighted to meet you again."

"BBut, I am your wife too! We cannot both be the same? Two of the same?? For whom? Give me that bag, bifch! I saw you take it from jonesy, you little s**t! Oming in here making like you was here for the first time. I'm on to you, Trixie... you got one gal of mine and one man of mine when my back was down. Now I'm up, and I'm well up to you." She glared down at the shrunken head, wanting to scream at the little f****t pixie but she knew it wasn't no head, just the flixy booth lamp. "Corpella! Another Pisst Blue!!"

Comin' up, Mister Belle. Y'all want some more pea-nuts? They's here.

Breezes into the room with dull lips and bloodied knuckles. "A rum for the gentleman..."

Places it upon a table. Then reaches into a pocket. "And a Casablanca for his wife. I presume."

I then place down my pint of cider and pull out a few bags of pig lumps, walkers crisps and a double decker bar for myself.

rubs knuckles. looks at the rambling guy..."Who's peanuts here?"

"I have no idea. Thanks for the beer.

So...eat the snacks, what is that??? Pig skin? Uh!

How are you, where are you?"

"I'm here.... Well i think so. I kinda feel a bit.."

Looks vacant.

"odd."

Throws the pig lumps at the girl. "Have some pig lumps...you know, pork scratchings. The double-deckers all mine."

"Pork scratchings. Takes me back.

Get comfortable, I need you to concentrate. Can you see the house, are you still there?"

Always to business. i saw the mansion in the mirror. it spoke strange words to me. i saw me hulking in a tree throwing lemons at a fence. is it a premonition?

"Yay, more incoherent rambling!" I lean closer to the man and my newfound wife whom I had somehow forgotten all about. "I will be heading off to the car in the mansion. I prolly don't need to say this with this Phillip K. Dick atmosphere in here but be careful of that kid who's talking "peanuts"." I move in even closer and whisper conspiratorially, "Although I don't see a bicycle helmet anywhere on his person, I believe he may be retarded....no, not just retarded--seismically retarded--you know, the kind who may be a harm to himself and others. Just be careful."

I stand up and, feeling a bit more resolved by being able to discern at least one person with a definable malady, I kiss my bride long and hard, grab the rum, and down it in one smooth swallow.


"Thanks for the drink," I say to the man.

"I'll see you at the mansion." I say to them both.

"Don't forget that tin foil keeps the aliens from reading your thoughts." I say to the babbling kid.

I walk out of the lounge and head to the car.