★
Well, there’s no one here yet and the floor is completely engulfed!
We’re on the floor and we can’t breathe!
OK.
And it’s very, very, very hot!
It’s very—is—are the lights still on?
The lights are on but it’s very hot!
Ma’am, ma’am, stay calm—
It’s very hot! We’re all the way on the other side of Liberty!
And it’s very, very hot!
Any lights—you could turn the lights off?
No! No, the lights are off!
OK, good. Now. Everybody stay calm, you’re doing a good job—
Please!
Ma’am, listen. Ma’am lis—everybody’s coming, everybody knows. Everybody knows, what happened. OK?
{ }
(abff.avi)
M: Get the guy who says SLOW.
W: I didn’t get the guy, I’m sorry. I’m just pointing forward.
M: Pilot car…
M: It’s a fire—Oh shit!
W: Oh my gosh!
M: Cool! Oh man. Can you get that?
W: I don’t know, it’s so, like—I’m trying, but the camera—I don’t know if it’s picking it up! [narrating] THIS IS A FOREST FIRE!
W: It’s ALL BLACK on the screen.
★
It was just past five in the evening and the people in suits were leaving their places of work. They spilled out of ground-floor double doors,
revolving and automatic sliding glass doors, and flowed up the sidewalk, their tides regulated by the traffic lights, toward their cars and trains and buses; they hurried on.
And I stood on the corner, looking through them, to the place where the woman in the sweatpants had just disappeared, as she’d walked straight into, against the flow of, that crowd… (Take it, Sal…)
★
(sal.aiff)
There was uh these huge caves, we had no idea what they were, and, uh, when Aida—the wife—said, What are those openings in the side of the cliffs there? And, uh, I’m trying to think of the name of the uh Spanish farmer that was—he said, uh, they’re zumas, and I said, Zumas? What’s a zuma? and he would come out and say, Living quarters. He was the only one that was able to speak just enough English to get into trouble. It was so funny because uh uh he had been in the—he had been in the war, the civil war—
M: ’Cause this was in the ’50s that you were there…
Yeah 1954, ’55, ’56, ’57… was there until ’67. I was one of the—the few, but there was a few of us—handful—that were in a necessary job that couldn’t be replaced right away.
★
I’d seen her everywhere. In alleys. In doorways. On old cement stoops and staircases, in front of crumbling columns, looking out at the heaving streets. Asleep, doubled over, or leaning against a wall, somewhere. Eyelids dark, bruised. I saw her leaning against a garbage can for balance. Then she had pulled down her sweatpants, crouched, and as the crowd had coursed between her and me I saw her take a shit into her hand.
Just outside the Market Street doors of the San Francisco Shopping Centre. Nine stories of elegant shopping, four of which belong to Nordstrom’s department store, the website says. Go to the top floor for a great view of the gently curving escalators, all stacked up on top of each other…
★
M: What were you doing there exactly? I heard you were in—you were in intelligence…
Yeah, we were part of an intelligence corps—thank you.
W: You’re welcome… And the pills…
M: Here let me… there’s a bunch in there; you might wanna take them separate…
★
She pulled up her sweatpants; then walked into the crowd, which parted around her, never touching, and swallowed her up.
★
Yeah, we were—we finally got down there from the road—it wasn’t much of a road believe me—it was more off the main—the main uh road, down to a secondary road—
M: And this was outside of Madrid…
Outside of Madrid… the west side of uh—I’ll get you the name—uh it’ll come to me…………… Anyway…… So they said uh would you like to visit the—the castle. I just never thought of what I was going to fall into and and and see… because I had uh I had been given—back at the embassy when I was digging information—they said, uh, That’s just uh overnight stop for the king—to rest and make a gallant entry into Madrid.
M: Freshen up.
Yeah, you know. I said, OK, you know. I figured it was a stable with uh—to change the horses and get some fresh water and that was it. Well, this turned out to be a huge metropolitan castle—that he had built. And uh he said uh, Let’s go inside. The farmer… said, Let’s go inside. I said, Can we do it? He says, Oh yeah. Then he says, These are all my friends here… the guards… they’re all friends… So we—we went down into into into the gardens… we started looking around… they were still beautiful—beautiful gardens… Had strawberries planted all over the place… you know. It was just something that the land was good for… so they decided uh to plant plenty of strawberries… and uh… We sat down—while we were looking around they had put out sheets… rows of sheets as tables…on the ground… So they brought out the wine they brought out the bread, the cheese.
M: This was in the castle?
Yeah! Right in the castle grounds. And uh… so I said uh… to Zamor…I said, This is very interesting. I said, You got a national treasure here that you could use…for your tourism. You know, you gotta remember that this was uh uh during Eisenhower’s uh presidency… and he fought tooth and nails for… uh… ooh, what was that program……………… It was Hand to Hand……. what was that program… I’d have to look it up. But anyway, he believed…the great soldier that he was and the statesman… uh… he believed in uh… in meeting the people face-to-face… so he opened up Europe like no other man had opened up Europe to us… with his uh funds to Greece, funds to Italy… and…………… So we sat down, and we were all at two lines… of tables… and uh… they brought out—we broke bread… drank wine, ate cheese…you know you’re so worried about uh the chemical situation and all that… but you still ate the cheese you know… and I kind of leaned back and laughed… and and Aida would say,
“What are you laughing about? Why you laughin?”
and I would say,
You know you talk about not drinking their milk, and uh… their water… and you have to be careful about all that… I say, Here you are eating the cheese! You know? And it’s uh… So… after about an hour… of just, being friendly and talkin and eatin… uh… he said to me he says… Come on, I wanna show you somethin. He took me into the innards of the castle… and uh… into the kitchen with—they didn’t use it anymore but it was still kept… uh…… took you up the back staircase, right into the different private rooms of the… king and queen and all…
★
(ONBED.avi)
W: —take us.
M: Take us doing what?
W: Take a photo of us. Just lying here.
M: From up there?
W: Yeah.
M: Like up here?
W: Yeah.
M: OK. Ready?
W: Uh-huh.
★
M: So the castle was still in use…
The cas—the majority of the castle was still in use, and uh, the outside grounds were great—they were—you know they still had the… royal guards and and so on and so forth—they tried to make an uh uh an appearance uh of a workin castle like uh you might have in England or in Denmark or someplace like that—but uh it it it was uh it was humorous—they finally hit it! You know, they tried and tried and they finally hit it—and they weren’t embarrassed! See? So a lot of this was built by Ferdinand himself, the king…… And uh went into his chambers… th
e queen’s chambers… uh… beautiful beds, that were made specially for them, and their comfort, and all that…
★
M: How can I tell if we’re both in the frame?
★
Uh…… you just… uh… can’t forget those uh those times. No, my uh—
M: First—take those last pills first.
Yeah………………………………………………………………………
M: You’re thirsty, eh?
I—the—what?
M: I said, You’re thirsty.
Ah! Yes, I was!……………… Yeah I was uh… I was part of a a team…
W: This one’s Sal’s. This one’s yours. This one has more fruit. We do this regimen in the morning of this soy… did he tell you?
Yeah? No.
M: I didn’t warn him, no.
W: We’re addicted to it. But I put more strawberries in yours to make it a little sweeter because I don’t think you’ll be able to take it.
O-K!
W: But we—we just have a taste for it, you know?
Good! Great!……… So… the uh, we were part of—well, each embassy at that time had its own… designated team, and whenever anything… major was erupting, this was the first uh first inkling that would be reported back to Washington—that there was problems, that there was unhappiness… or, something major was going on—about to happen… and this was how the CIA…
was able to set up…
its uh its successful…
career over the—over the years.
Then it all somewhere—somewhere along the line instead of… lettin it work—or ah waiting for it to work—ah…
somebody stirred the pot and uh—
we got into a big mess.
M: Cowboys?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they wanted to do it their way, you know, the American way… and you don’t go into Europe uh and try to do anything the American way. It just doesn’t work! It doesn’t work! Right? So………………. This is good!…………
★
M: Aren’t you glad we came this way?
W: Yes. [narrating] WE’RE DRIVING INTO A FOREST FIRE! It’s hard to tell…
M: Wow.
W: It doesn’t seem too bad…
M: No it doesn’t does it. It’s really, really pretty. Look to the left.
W: It’s just ALL BLACK. Sor—
★
So…… we uh we’d always be on the uh on the lookout for information, we’d always be uh open to it, just report what you see, don’t embellish… uh
don’t take away,
don’t try to analyze it…
just report it.
★
And then there she was again—Our Lady of the Sweatpants—now occupying the body of another woman, this one scatterbrained—makeup caked and stumbling down the street, shouting:
“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU MOTHERFUCKER! GET OFF ME I DON’T GIVE A SHIT GET THE FUCK OFF!”
She was walking alone. As she made her way down the street. My wife and I, on the opposite sidewalk, walked past. But her complaints were expressed such that even a block away her words were echoing off the walls, the faces of abandoned storefronts and apartment houses: GET OFF ME I DON’T FUCKING GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU MOTHERFUCKER! GET THE FUCK OFF DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE MESSING?
And it must have been someone up in one of those buildings who yelled at her (because the sound appeared to come from out of the overcast sky):
Shut up bitch!
We thought nothing of it. And then up ahead of us, across the street, we heard—and then we saw—her hero.
He was fat, short, black-skinned, crossing the street, making a beeline right for us, shouting:
“YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH WHAT THE LADY’S SAYING?
YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH WHAT THE LADY’S SAYING?”
His hand was under his shirt, and down by his waistband, like he was pulling out a gun—
“YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH WHAT THE LADY’S SAYING?”
no man relax relax relax relax
★
W: Hey, honey, fix the bed. Why don’t you get a movie of how you broke the bed.
★
We’d just come from Montana, where we’d spent the winter. Spring came late, but when it came the man who owned the house we were renting came back from his place in Mexico to charge wealthy vacationers ten times what we were paying. The winter in the Flathead Valley is long and cold and gray, but in the spring it’s easy to see that all of life did originate there, around the peaceful shores of that great sleeping lake. I had a dream about it the other night.
And in the dream,
I was back in that cabin on the lake,
but the skies weren’t gray,
and there was no snow,
and it wasn’t cold,
and no wind blew—
no, it was warm in the dream and we’d been able to stay deep into spring—I walked out through the woods, down to the shore, and the animals came to welcome me;
there were rabbits,
and deer,
birds of every kind and color, all singing songs of spring,
and there were beavers,
and antelope,
and bear,
and they were all living in splendid natural harmony.
The dog loved the cat, the cat loved the mouse, the mouse loved the cheese, the sky was bright, the water glowed, and fish leapt toward the sun. The surface was turquoise, and down below it was emerald in color, but clear to the bottom depths, as I remember it had been when I was seventeen and I had come on vacation with my family—it was two weeks after I hit my head on the bottom of a swimming pool.
And all through that vacation, I was in a very thick fog. I’d rub my eyes and clean my contact lenses thoroughly each morning, but the thick white and gray clouds which blotted out light and blurred the edges of everything always remained firmly in place.
“xxxxstrangexxxx”
I had never had a headache that I could remember, but my mom had suffered from migraines all of her married life—every few months she would get in bed with the shades down and the lights off and stay there and you could not bother her, you could not stand by the door or step inside her room, and most importantly, even if you were playing on the other side of the house, you could not make a sound. For three or four days we would tiptoe around and my dad would cook spaghetti for dinner or banana-and-pickle sandwiches and that was the price we all had to pay. Until eventually she would come out of the room in her bathrobe, her permed hair flat, dark under eyes, her face looking old and gray. I was trying to fan the clouds away when I realized I had a headache.
★
(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.avi)
W: This is our very comfortable bed…with crea-king, way-too-thin supports which break very often… This is my…husband M who…I did not know I was marrying when I married Matthew but I got a two for one and I am really pleased I must say.
M: It’s good to be here.
M: It’s good to be here.
W: I really love and appreciate M I must say and I…uh…value him and appreciate all his opinions and feelings…
★
When the season turned my wife and I could not afford to stay on the lake, so we packed up the Bronco and rode southwest to San Francisco, to sublet the apartment of a guy we’d met at a wedding the month before. The apartment was the bottom floor of an old Victorian in a row of old Victorians, next to the projects, in an alley called Birch, and across the alley, facing the houses, a white wall, twenty feet high, ran the entire length, and on the other side of the wall, a factory of some kind, or an auto shop, I have no idea. Behind the apartment was a small slab of concrete, and a fence we shared with the house behi
nd, which had a small slab of its own.
★
(tour.avi)
M: OK, let’s begin. Uh, what we’re looking at here is the back yard of the—the—place we used to live, back when we were poor.
I think uh over there is a box. And I think we’re coming to the part where we look at—
we see some cigarette butts. And I think there’s a closeup of some cigarette butts.
Yeah, that’s right here. It’s not known who smoked that cigarette. As you can see back then we weren’t doing so well,
we didn’t have as much money as we do today. Uh, we did have a cat next door. Right there, yeah, I remember that part.
And uh right here looks like there’s a closeup of the neighbor’s cat.
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