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e x a n d t h e f u t u r e a n d I s t i l l don't know what. I began to pee this world as one where citizens stare, say, at the armless Venus de Milo and fantasize about amputee sex or self-righteously apply a fig leaf to the statue of David, but not before breaking off his dick as a souvenir.
    A l l events became omens; I lost the ability to take anything literally.
    "So the point of all of this was that I needed a clean slate with no on e to read it. I needed to drop out even further. My life had become a series of scary incidents that simply weren't stringing together to make an interesting book, and God, you get old so quickly! Time was (and is) running out. So I split to where the weather is hot and dry and where the cigarettes are cheap. Like you and Claire. And now I'm here."

    So now you know a bit more about Dag (skewed as his narrative pre
    sentation of his life may be). But meanwhile, back at our picnic on this throbbing desert day, Claire is just finishing her mesquite chicken, wiping off her sunglasses, and replacing them with authority on the b r i d g e o f h e r n o s e i n d i c a t i n g t h a t s h e ' s g e t t i n g r e a d y t o t e l l u s a story. HA bit about Claire here: she has scrawl handwriting like a taxi driver. She knows how to fold Japanese paper cranes and she actually l i k e s t h e t a s t e o f s o y a
    burgers. She arrived
    in Palm Springs on the
    hot, windy Mother's Day
    weekend that Nostrada-mus (according t o some
    interpretations) had pre-dieted would be the end
    of the world. HI was

    t e n d i a far more lofty
    n g t h e p o o l s i d e b a r
    a resort complete
    at La Spa de Luxembourg
    then,
    place than lowly Larry's
    and
    w i t h n i n e b u b b l i n g h e a l t h p o o l s a n d p a t t e rned imitation silver knives and forks for outdoor use. Weighty stuff, and it always impressed the guests. Anyhow, I remember watching Claire's incalculably numerous
    and noisy siblings, half-siblings, step-siblings chatter incessantly out in the sun by the pools, like parakeets in an aviary while a sullen, hungry tomcat prowls outside the cage's mesh. For lunch they would only eat fish, and only tiny fish at that. As one of them said, "The big fish have been in the water a bit too long, and God only knows what they've had

    a chance to eat." And talk about pretense! They kept the same unread SAFETY NET-ISM: The
    copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lying on the table for three belief that there will always be a
    d a y s r u n n i n g . I t e l l y o u .
    At a nearby table, Mr. Baxter, Claire's father, sat with his glistening I TRY TO IMAGINE
    MYSELF IN THIS
    and be-gemmed business cronies ignoring his progeny, while Mrs. Scott- I SAME JOB ONE
    YEAR FROM NOW...
    Baxter, his fourth (and trophy) wife, blond and young and bored, glow-

J U S T N O T
    ered at the Baxter spawn like a mother mink in a mink farm, just waiting SEEING ANY
    PICTURES
    for a jet to strafe the facility, affording her an excuse to feign terror and eat her young.
    The whole Baxter clan had en masse been imported from L. A. that we e k e n d b y t h e h i g h l y s u p e r s t i t i o u s M r . B a x t e r , a N e w A g e c o n v e r t (thanks to wife number three), to avoid a most certain doom in the city.
    Shakey Angelinos like him were luridly envisioning the strangely large I houses of the valley and canyons being inhale d into chinks in the earth financial and emotional safety net
    to buffer life's hurts. Usually
    with rich glottal slurps and no mercy, all the while being pelleted by parents.
    rains of toads. A true Californian, he joked: "Hey, at least it's visual."
    Claire, however, sat looking profoundly unamused by her family's
    DIVORCE ASSUMPTION:
    spirited, italicized conversations. She was idly tethering her paper plate A form of Safety Net-ism, the
    belief that if a marriage doesn't
    loaded with a low-calorie/high fiber lunch of pineapple bean sprouts and work out, then there is no
    skinless chicken to the