Patsy's Girls

patsy's girls

By j.b. pravda

The tv was sending its electrons' in endless waves &; invisible
packets of light, now a visible/audible message to anyone who happened
to wander by the windowless communal room set aside for receiving the
hanidwork of those trillions of bits of an eternal universe: another
kennedy was dead, &; perhaps that universe was routinely
redistributing his borrowed being by way of those/his subatomic
self----his very atoms+ heralding invisibly 'his', its rebirth.

At least, that was the sort of insight she had grown accustomed to
sponsoring silently, as part of an inner mobius strip of consciousness,
as She wondered privately at all the hand-wringing; 'I wonder if he
would have told my story?..he should have, in that magazine of his?..we
both saw our fathers murdered on film, at least?' she began to purse
her lips as she always did when she thought about it. The death of
innocent fathers. But he never did, never even seemed to care, said it
himself, 'I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer?'

a case worker hovered over her, unnoticed for how long, she did'nt
know, or care; 'no one knows my name, my real name, maybe that's why
I'm still alive' was the latest line of her redundant internal
monologue-----she would call it a 'dialogue', between her 'oswald' self
and this geena suit she wore for insulation purposes. She spelled
'oswald' with a 'z', labelling it 'oz-world', whose most prominent
citizen was a very particular forlorn 'dorothy', the nominal identifier
given her by marina and lee when she, they, dwelt in the twisted union
of their bizarro multinational state describable in far stranger terms
than just 'kansas.'
"time for your session, dear" the perpetually-smiling worker whispered.
No response.
'geena' was detained?.in her least favorite place, the one pantomiming
soundlessly in her 'do not enter' child-brain: and each time she
nevertheless reentered, the beating hand, like a clownish shoe, was
grotesquely oversized, as was the damage to marina's contorted
face.
Fingers snapping. Not huge fingers, and perfumed, feminine???"Marina,
mother?..?"
"no, dear, just a friend" filtered into a drousy now-brain,
Geena/dorothy's.
aware, now. "have you heard from her?"
"your sister is not available just yet" came the evasive smoke, g/d
similarly evading its purpose.
"Look, I'm not crazy, just tell me the truth". She had been loud,
accustomed to silent speech, elsewhere, everywhere.
"we're doing our best to advise her??."
"where the hell is she?" now whispering, for strange emphasis.
"she's travelling, we're told. Just as soon as we hear from her, I'm
sure she'll come to visit". Unheard cued blandness.
Katrina oswald, now Mrs. Gerald pinehurst of portland, oregon. She had
been glad, at the age of 5, to pretend to be someone else, anyone else
just like mommy marina. Spared the electric shock treatments-----she
was too young even for spook standards------daddy lee had, for her
already faint memories, been consigned to the avuncular strangeness
section, 'father' having died in the service of the cold war, a kind of
unknowable soldier, namelessly entombed in a personal arlington, where
no honor guard ever appeared or was changed.
Seperated then, estranged now, in the holy amorphous name of security
for an aging corporation for the self-privileged whose founders openly
wore wigs and tights.
Marina, enjoying a state-sponsored series of identities, had not seen
either of the girls since her blissless exile from sanity, then
mortality. Heart attack; so young, yet so frail. Bookend to another
unmarked gravestone in a placeless yard just beyond the twilight.
The wizard, she called him, on leave from emerald city, now in the
service of the state. She shooed away her sweet escort, taking a place
in his uncomfortable office.
"ah, geena?..welcome. your sister?.."
"I know!" her face declared the rest of her, especially that part
behind the tired visage, a no bullshit zone.
"I also know what happened to that woman, pretend girl who played
dorothy, ok, &; she nor I was never even in kansas, bucko" was her
best example of the frankness she demanded from Dr. Frank Baumgardner,
'their' operative.
"Please be reasonable, geena; look, I've told you too many times we
have nothing to do with the federal authorities, and your treatment
here is utterly confidential." Smiling.
"she's signed papers, hasn't she" announced dorothy. "why aren't you
treating her----she's the one without a heart, or mind or guts enough
to face me."
"you're not ready for visitors??"
"ha, and miss congeniality said you simply couldn't find her just yet.
Got any deals on snake oil today, doc?"
the organized retreat had begun; geena was now done, a formality
foisted on her by her 'handlers', just holding her, awaiting orders.
The jfk,jr. thing was her opportunity, a voracious media, drunk on
ratings revenues, a proper little offspring of a creed called greed,
from zenger's courageous fourth estate to some thing 4th rate in a
third rate world at large, and unconcerned with 'the right thing', even
when its unofficial official censors defined 'it' self-servingly, was
her, dorothy's, ticket out. But first, to get out, with her records,
complete with references to 'the marina problem', 'the matter of the
oswald children'-----enough to jump start the soap opera machine on its
first step on the lane to doom?..for those who'd not even bothered to
damn the continent- sized blood stains decorating their un-brutus-like
cold mercenary hands.

Men with tiny earpieces stood stolid and poker-faced and unnoticed at
the outpouring of public grief orchestrated as the funeral mass for one
jfk,jr.
Into the cochnea of the senior of the two bookends of these seemingly
living beings swirled a stream of pulsing wavelike electrons: "were
there any copies?" these packets of light energy imparted their
emotionless data.
Their modular dataset twins related into macro twin ear pieces the
oldest kind of 'news': "that's a negatory, chief; complete original
files have been archived under 'black hole' status, along with final
galleys of article set for next issue of george."
The title of that expose was no consolation to the dead, newly or
long.
Geena/dorothy, there on the not published cover??.'I cannot tell a lie'
her last and only public utterance, also unheard, unseen by an amnesiac
america.
Mrs. Pinehurst stood alone at an obscure rectangular ditch hewn from a
yard somewhere beyond that perpetual twilight's last gleeming in a land
home to the guilt-free??. &; the slave.