WEBVTT

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He placed a delicately flowered
pink dish of extra olives

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upon a metal tray beside
the extra beverage

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that wouldn't fit in the
short glasses in a pitcher,

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like the one that held
Mike's tomato juice side.

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He poured generously as always.

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As he set the drinks
down on their table,

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he ruefully smiled at them.

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Mike raised her eyebrows
as they tipped him $17--

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big tip for a $3 charge.

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At Bog it always was happy hour.

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The couple sat without
speaking-- the girl

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at the edge of despair,
the boy calm and collected.

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He was pretty-- shaggy hair,
doe eyes, thin but not frail.

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They took coordinated
sips of the martinis.

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They conducted a
long staring contest.

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"Good night," Mike
said as she bent down

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to get her umbrella and
lunch sack off the floor.

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Pete was cutting up lemons
slowly and methodically

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with a sharp knife that
had belonged to his mother.

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She'd once run for mayor.

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The knife had a
white bone handle

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into which the words Mike
for Mayor. were carved.

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His mother was
also named Michael.

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Pete raised the knife in Mike's
direction "I wave goodbye,"

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and then he went
back to the slicing.

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She took a deep breath
in the pine-scented rain.

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An empty bus went
past, whooshing up

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the hill toward the park.

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It looked like the magical
cat bus from a Japanese movie

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she'd seen as a kid
with her mother.

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That bus could fly.

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It even had fur.

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She stared down the
hill toward the city.

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It was quiet-- no motion.

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And up on Mount Fair,
the deep fog had settled.

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Mount Fair had a
beautiful silhouette

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by moon and by streetlight-- fir
trees against the night sky lit

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by the city.

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It was a covered volcano.

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Mike turned to her home,
though the volcano, as always,

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beckoned to her.

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In her second story apartment,
in gray flannel pajamas,

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she leaned out a window.

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She flicked ashes down
through the pines.

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She took just a few
puffs of an old cigarette

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before tapping the lighted end
out on the building's faded

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gray siding and slipping the
barely smoked cigarette back

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into a very warm carton
and under the mattress.

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It was a white
curtain with a picture

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of a black camera on it.

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Mike and her friends had bought
it in high school downtown.

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This was the day they
also acquired fake driving

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IDs under a tent in an alley.

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She'd been Mike's
dearest friend.

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Often, they went
up to Mount Fair

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and read favorite
verse to each other.

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"I've painted a picture
of a ghost upon my kite

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and hung it on a tree.

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Later, when I loose the
string and let it fly,

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the people cower and hide
their heads and so forth."

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Poems that went like that.

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Some years later,
the friend had jumped

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from the roof of the building
where her own mother had died.

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"Assholes don't kill
themselves, no one was there,"

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her suicide letter had read,
the night watchman had found it.

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Rain hit the windows.

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It was only drizzling now.

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The sound was muted, electric.

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It was morning when
Mike dozed off at last.

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The rain had stopped and the sun
shyly shone through the window.

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Sometimes when it rained
so much in a place,

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the sun becomes awkward, like
a person who doesn't often

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get out of the house.

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As usual, Mike would sleep
until noon, and when she awoke,

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our story started once more.

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"There was a little
dead family cold

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as a ghost younger than most,
one in a little trench coat,

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and they all lived in
a warm wooden building.

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The little dead father said
'good morning' one day,

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put on his hat, and went away
into his little dead world.

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The little dead mother
bathed her dead child,

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and off the girl went to play
on the volcano in the park

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near where they lived.

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It was a wild, wild park.

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Pine trees grew all
over the ground,

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and wild winds blew
through the air,

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wild cones fell from
the trees, and wild owls

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whispered in the dead child's
ears and made her wonder.

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'Hoo, hoo/'"

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