Two days of mortal hell and I got $400.00 cash at the end, handed to me by a girl who looked like a young Loni Anderson. I walked the subway pretending I was a guy named Sonny who had just made a deal in the bowels of Chicago. Yep, I have no life. Got up at 5:30 every morning, got home at 7:30 at night. Rush hour blues, had to go past the Loop towards the Hancock Building and then west. Missed a 70 degree day on Wednesday and met yesterday from the morning onward in rain and wind. Plastic chairs, no water or drinks, twenty minute lunches. A guy that talked like William Hurt if he had a broom up his ass all the way to his mouth was Mr. Pissy and his character was offset by Liz, who reminded me of the Cerevik girls of long ago, when I worked at The Gap in 1980. Without saying anything about how I spent those days, I can say that just before, ah, deliberations, a woman lawyer from NJ gave, um, closing arguments. I was in the front row, 36 of us in all, and whatever perfume she had on was enough to sway me into admitting a crime against my country. A bit of grey in her hair, she looked like Eartha Kitt circa 1966 playing the Bride of Frankenstein in a purple blazer. However you might think I described her, trust me. Wow. But anyhow, this explains my absence, fingers healing from gripping a clipboard and writing forty pages of cramped notes kept me off the keyboard here. I walked the subway as Sonny mostly to avoid the rush hour but to no avail. Yesterday, the rain was my nemesis. But I can still recall the lawyer, and I have fabricated a portion of her name, so Melissa Melendez will soon be a character in HOLLOWPOINT, my current project with John Kewley. I also missed out on the death of Charles Unruh, which I'll write about tomorrow.
