2.

L., aged nine, stretched her legs con gusto across the dining room table, her chair tilted back to an inappropriate degree. Thus she sat for close to forty minutes, reading The New Yorker and sipping English Breakfast. When H., aged forty-four, found her, he sat across from her and watched for several minutes as L.'s toes wiggled in time with the turns of her pages. Finally he decided to speak up.

"L.," he said apprehensively, "don't you have homework to do?"

L. responded, without looking up from the page she was reading. "Don't be a dick, father," she said, and sipped the last of her tea.

Deep Six

They wouldn't let me back in my room so I walked around the block and bought an iced tea. The bike shop was closed for the first time in forever. I was afraid of getting my dad's old loafers wet. He's had them since the days that he lived here, in the city, in the early 1970s. He could've been wearing them when he saw the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, third on the bill behind Ten Years After and Johnny Winter. Back then, they did two shows in a night, with Johnny Winter going first, then TYA. At around 2 AM, the Allman Brothers went on and played a historic four hour set that was later documented for the famous Live At The Fillmore East album. He likes to tell the story of how there was a bomb scare right before the Allmans went on and how the Fillmore East was evacuated and then, as soon as the scare was confirmed to be a hoax, everyone was let back in and the Allmans just played that much farther into the morning. Maybe he was wearing the loafers when he shuffled home, still stoned, at 8 AM to find his father sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the New York Times, which he'd already finished reading. His father always used to wake up at 5 AM or earlier. He still does. The funny thing is, my dad didn't even know he was at the concert that became the Live at the Fillmore East album until he bought the CD version, reread the liner notes, and read about that bomb scare.

Outside again, I wondered if the loafers were happy to see the city once more, thirty years later. I think they might've been depressed actually. It was a pretty dreary early morning out there; it had rained earlier in the evening while we were busy recording and I had missed the storm and it was post-rain dreary. I went back to the room and they let me in. Honestly, I was hoping that somebody would have followed me out of the room and into the streets. I always leave and hope they'll follow me.

1.

To the extent that faulty wrists allow, it seems appropriate to undertake a writing experiment with a person named Julian. As there are friends from foreign lands asleep on my floor, I will begin briefly, and more important, quietly:

Sit.:
There were three rag dolls on top of a radiator. The rag doll on the left was made from the remains of a child's mother's dresses, which the mother had recently decided were no longer of use. The rag doll in the middle was made from a cotton cloth the mother used to wash the basement windows. The rag doll on the right was made from a canvas bag which the mother had found beneath the kitchen sink. The mother sewed the three rag dolls within a month of one another and gave them to the child on three successive days. The first day, the child cried when he heard thunder. The second day, the child breathed in muffled tones. The third day, the child closed his eyes and counted the white spots.

Q. 1:
Which doll was given on which day?
And,

Q. 2:
Which doll did the child love most?