and carry Elliott back into the livingroom on my shoulders like Perry does, only Elliott wants to get down off my shoulders at once, in fact he wont even sit on my lap, in fact he hates my guts—I call Billie desperately at her agency and she says she’ll be over to pick us all up and adds “How’s Perry today?”—“He’s kidnapping little girls he says are beautiful, he wants to marry 10 year old girls with pony tails”—“That’s the way he is, be sure to dig him”—In her musical sad voice over the phone.
I turn my poor tortured attention to the general who says he was an anti-Fascist fighter with the Maquis during World War II and also a guerilla in the South Pacific and knows one of the finest restaurants in San Francisco where we can all go feast, a Fillipino restaurant near Chinatown, I say okay, great—He gives me more booze—Seeing the amusing Irish face of Shea the photographer I yell “You can take my picture anytime you want” and he says sinister: “Not for propaganda reasons, anything but propaganda reasons—What the hell do you mean propaganda reasons, I aint got nothin to do with propaganda” (and here comes Perry back through the door with Poopoo holding his hand, they’ve gone to dig the street and have a coke) and I realize everybody is just living their lives quietly but it’s only me that’s insane.
In fact I yearn to have old Cody around to explain all this to me tho it soon becomes apparent to me not even Cody could explain, I’m beginning to go seriously crazy, just like Subterranean Irene went crazy tho I dont realize it yet—I’m beginning to read plots into every simple line—Besides the “general” scares me even further by turning out to be a strange affluent welldressed civilian who doesnt even help me to pay the tab for the Fillipino dinner which we have, meeting Billie at the restaurant, and the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunchy mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food
