Sophia Loren Strips For A Flood Victim
THE FLOOD IS REAL AT LAST
Joy? Didn’t I promise it? Didn’t you believe I would deliver? And now I must leave you, but I find it so hard. Mary is restless now, she is jiggling restlessly, neither of us has any pleasure now, and some of her fluids are so ancient and unreplenished that there are pinchy paths of evaporation down my arm. Patients in O.T. are signing unfinished baskets so they can be identified in the nurse’s collection. The short spring afternoon has darkened and the tight lilac buds beyond the barred window are barely redolent. The afternoon linen has been sterilized and crisp folded beds require us.
– Bow wow wow! Bow wow! Grrrrrrr!
– What’s that commotion outside, Mary?
– Just the dogs.
– The dogs? I didn’t know there were going to be dogs.
– Well, there are. Now hurry! Pull it out!
– My hand?
– The package! The oilskin package!
– Must I?
– It’s from our friends!
With some fishlike movement she maneuvered her haunches, altering all the internal architecture of her cunt reception. Like a trout dragging the hook into the roof of its mouth, some blunt delicious shelf of miniature fountains applied the oilskin package to my hooked four fingers, and I withdrew it. Her wide white uniform shielded me from curiosity as I read the message. I am reading it now, as Mary Voolnd insists.
ANCIENT PATRIOT
FIRST FATHER PRESIDENT
THE REPUBLIC SALUTES YOUR SERVICE
WITH ITS HIGHEST HONOR
the escape is planned for tonight
is scribbled in invisible ink which her lubrications have activated! Tonight. – Grrrrrr! Arroooooof!
– I’m frightened, Mary.
– Don’t worry.
– Can’t we stay here a little longer?
– See the pretty lines, Mary?
– Too late for sex, F.
– But I think I could be happy here. I think I could acquire the desolation I coveted so fiercely in my disciple.
– That’s just it, F. Too easy.
– I want to stay, Mary.
– I’m afraid that’s impossible, F.
– But I’m right on the edge, Mary. I’m almost broken, I’ve almost lost everything, I almost have humility!
– Lose it! Lose everything!
– Help! Haaaaaaallllllpppp! Somebody!
– Your screaming can’t be heard, F. Come along.
– HAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLPPPPP !
– Click, clickclick. Bzzzzzzzzz. Sputter!
– What’s that funny noise, Mary?
– Static. It’s the radio, F.
– The radio! You didn’t say anything about the radio.
– Quiet. It wants to tell us something.
(DOLLY IN TO CLOSE-UP OF THE RADIO ASSUMING THE FORM OF PRINT)
– This is the radio speaking. Good evening. The radio easily interrupts this book to bring you a recorded historical news flash: TERRORIST LEADER AT LARGE. Only minutes ago, an unidentified Terrorist Leader escaped from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It is feared that his presence in the city will touch off new revolutionary extremes. He was aided in his get-away by a female accomplice who had infiltrated the Hospital Staff. Mutilated by routine police dogs in a diversionary tactic, she is now undergoing surgery, but is not expected to survive. It is believed that the escaped criminal will attempt to contact terrorist strongholds in the forests beyond Montréal.
– Is it happening, Mary?
– Yes, F.
– Grrrrr! Chomp! Arararara! Erf!
– Mary!
– Run, F.! Run. Run!
– Bow wow! Hoooowwwwllll! Grrrrrrr! R-i-i-i-i-p!
(SALIVATING POLICE DOG JAWS TEAR INTO THE FLESH OF MARY VOOLND)
– Your body!
– Run! Run, F. Run for all of us A——s!
(CLOSE-UP OF RADIO EXHIBITING A MOTION PICTURE OF ITSELF)
– This is the radio speaking. Eeeek! Tee hee! This is the ah ha ha, this is the hee hee, this is the radio speaking. Ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh ho ho ho, ha ha ha ha ha ha, it tickles, it tickles! (SOUND EFFECT: ECHO CHAMBER) This is the radio speaking. Drop your weapons! This is the Revenge of the Radio.
And this is your lover, F., finishing the joyous letter which I promised. God bless you! Oh darling, be what I want to be!
Yours truly,
Signé F.
Spring comes into Québec from the west. It is the warm Japan Current that brings the change of season to the west coast of Canada, and then the West Wind picks it up. It comes across the prairies in the breath of the Chinook, waking up the grain and caves of bears. It flows over Ontario like a dream of legislation, and it sneaks into Québec, into our villages, between our birch trees. In Montréal the cafés, like a bed of tulip bulbs, sprout from their cellars in a display of awnings and chairs. In Montréal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth. Girls rip off their sleeves and the flesh is sweet and white, like wood under green bark. From the streets a sexual manifesto rises like an inflating tire, “The winter has not killed us again!” Spring comes into Québec from Japan, and like a prewar Cracker jack prize it breaks the first day because we play too hard with it. Spring comes into Montréal like an American movie of Riviera Romance, and everyone has to sleep with a foreigner, and suddenly the house lights flare and it’s summer, but we don’t mind because spring is really a little flashy for our taste, a little effeminate, like the furs of Hollywood lavatories. Spring is an exotic import,
