WEBVTT

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This is "Wallet."

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And if Stephanie was
here, which she's probably

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at home with her
darling children,

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I would say it's for her
because it's set in Prague.

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So I just had a
hallucination of that, sorry.

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"Wallet."

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We were in a city that
saw little sunlight.

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All the buildings were
gray, but there were also

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furtive things about it, furtive
decorations, twisted angels,

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heroes, birds, and flight.

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And there were the
legendary finials and bulbs

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on top of the buildings.

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Downriver heroes
stood on the bridge

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in the dying purple
strewn night.

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The swans pilfered the silence
and the horizon line punctuated

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by the round and the straight,
the golden and the violet

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seemed mysterious
and still tangible

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as nothing else ever had.

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Underneath it all people waited
for buses and none of them

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were pretty.

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And all of them wore double
sweaters and carried fat,

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relentlessly used
up shopping bags.

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The young looked old
and even the language

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was peculiar, zigzags
and traffic jams.

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My friend is a dominatrix.

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I had never seen
her in character,

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but that night in the basement
restaurant eating something

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forgettable, drinking
bad red wine,

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I saw her as they saw her.

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The men at the other table were
eager to make our acquaintance,

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probably mainly hers although
I'd done my best to dress up.

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How to describe her beauty.

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She's tall and formidable.

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Imagine her as a Russian
Countess, black ermine muff

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or hooded fur coat
and dark secrets

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and white snow and
blood and wine,

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though usually she dresses
in a t-shirt and jeans.

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That night she wore high black
boots and a long leather coat.

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The men, middle aged and
gray haired, not impressive

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or unique, asked where we
were from, what we were doing,

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did we want to join
them at their table?

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My instinct was no.

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She said, yes.

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Like I said, I had never seen
her in her professional role

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before.

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And she wasn't doing anything
overt or physical that night,

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but her dominance was evident.

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She was aware of
their expectations,

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their assumptions, and
she was playing with them,

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teasing them like a bored lion.

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But if the rabbit
wants to play, wants

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to die, who's in charge then?

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I had been left in the dust.

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We went to a bar
for a drink and it

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seems to be now, though it's
just a feeling, one of us

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was sitting on
one of their laps.

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They were, naturally, paying.

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As we sat in our small huddle,
the dark loud bar with a round

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table, but only three
available chairs,

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whiskeys in front of
us, a sense on my part

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that I didn't know how
long this would go on,

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how far it would go,
a lack of ability

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to get my friend to the
bathroom for a tete a tete,

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any kind of woman to
woman reconnaissance.

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The men opened their
wallets and showed

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us pictures of their children.

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You know the shot,
a five-year-old,

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a two-year-old, crooked
smiles and tight ponytails.

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It was a confession, a rite, and
it came as no surprise to us.

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Would be paramours, sad
Americans confused in love.

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From a distance it's so clear,
the two traveling salesmen,

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the potential one night
stand, a little good fun,

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a need in any case to put on the
table the beauty in their lives

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as well as the money
for our drinks.

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