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in this geometry of a murder. As to the figure of Nader - one must remember that Talbot is here distinguishing between the manifest content of reality and its latent content. Nader’s true role is clearly very different from his apparent one, to be deciphered in terms of the postures we assume, our anxieties mimetized in the junction between wall and ceiling. In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one’s legs will have more significance than all the pages in War and Peace . In twentieth-century terms the crucifixion, for example, would be re-enacted as a conceptual auto-disaster.’
    Idiosyncrasies and Sin-crazed Idioms . As she leaned against the concrete parapet of the camera tower, Catherine Austin could feel Koester’s hands moving around her shoulder straps. His rigid face was held six inches from her own, his mouth like the pecking orifice of some unpleasant machine. The planes of his cheekbones and temples intersected with the slabs of rain-washed cement, together forming a strange sexual modulus. A car moved along the perimeter of the test area. During the night the students had built an elaborate tableau on the impact site fifty feet below, a multi-vehicle auto-crash. A dozen wrecked cars lay on their sides, broken fenders on the grass verges. Plastic mannequins had been embedded in the interlocked windshields and radiator grilles, wound areas marked on their broken bodies. Koester had named them: Jackie, Ralph, Abraham. Perhaps he saw the tableau as a rape? His hand hesitated on her left breast. He was watching the Novotny girl walking along the concrete aisle. She laughed, disengaging herself from Koester. Where were her own wound areas?
    Speed Trials . Talbot opened the door of the Lincoln and took up his position in agent Greer’s seat. Behind him the helicopter pilot and the young woman sat in the rear of the limousine. For the first time the young woman had begun to smile at Talbot, a soundless rictus of the mouth, deliberately exposing her wound as if showing him that her shyness had gone. Ignoring her now, Talbot looked out through the dawn light at the converging concrete aisles. Soon the climax of the scenario would come, JFK would die again, his young wife raped by this conjunction of time and space. The enigmatic figure of Nader presided over the collision, its myths born from the cross-overs of auto-crashes and genitalia. He looked up from the wheel as the flares illuminated the impact zone. When the car surged forward he realized that the two passengers had gone.
    The Acceleration Couch . Half zipping his trousers, Koester lay back against the torn upholstery, one hand still resting on the plump thigh of the sleeping young woman. The debris-filled compartment had not been the most comfortable site. This zombie-like creature had strayed across the concrete runways like a fugitive from her own dreams, forever talking about Talbot as if unconsciously inviting Koester to betray him. Why was she wearing the Jackie Kennedy wig? He sat up, trying to open the rusty door. The students had christened the wreck ‘Dodge 38’, furnishing the rear seat with empty beer bottles and contraceptive wallets. Abruptly the car jolted forward, throwing him across the young woman. As she woke, pulling at her skirt, the sky whirled past the frosted windows. The clanking cable between the rails propelled them on a collision course with a speeding limousine below the camera tower.
    Celebration . For Talbot the explosive collision of the two cars was a celebration of the unity of their soft geometries, the unique creation of the pudenda of Ralph Nader. The dismembered bodies of Karen Novotny and himself moved across the morning landscape, recreated in a hundred crashing cars, in the perspectives of a thousand concrete embankments, in the sexual postures of a million lovers.
    Interlocked Bodies . Holding the bruise under his left nipple, Dr Nathan ran after Webster towards the burning wrecks. The cars lay