"Can you get me to eat?"

"Of course. Got gold?"

"Nope."

"Then I'll go to work and they'll pay me and it will take time but we will eat," Merilee promised, nodding.

Sam blew her a kiss from the doorway. "And when 'La Primavera' is done, we will get married," he said, and split for his work.

Back. "Hey sugar, did you just drop?"

"Yup."

"Why?"

"Felt like it."

"You sad about something?"

"No."

"How can you go to work stoned?"

"I string better stoned."

Just sit there in the back room at the Bee Game away from the inquiring eyes of tourists and make wonder from shiny glass. Gifts from Merilee to the world.

16. Magic garments to enhance our nakedness

Spring and Fall, all the changes in a single beaded gown worn by its creator to the unveiling of her husband's sculpture in Century Plaza. Priceless.

Merilee had never experienced the Fall, the unhappiness and even desperation Sam said comes when you see the leaves leaving the trees and you are left behind. But she was an artist as much as Sam was, darn it, and the artist goes traveling in his head where he has never been on his two feet. Goes unafraid and plucks from his experience things other people would leave for dead and buried. The greatest artist stands sans fear of anything he is capable of imagining. A world traveler with all the credit cards. Heaven in his mind, and hell.

The magic gown grows apace, bead by careful bead. On its kinetic, pixilating and luminous surface, swallows fly away, the Great Migration of the Tribe is played in loving sad detail, the anxious braves move south on their short ponies not knowing that they, peaceful folk, are about to found a bellicose nation and the first New World zoo. The resolute squaws come behind with the babies and the baggage. Their bare feet. One squaw remains at home, tearful but happy. Diamond beads for under her glistening eyes. Happy happy-so full of happiness she comes near to bloating-and there are no others to share it with. On the magic gown also see that men leave their wives, boys forsake girls, fathers daughters, daughters husbands, families leave German Shepherds for dead on garbage heaps, the background turns Tulsa and Ada black and stormy with rushing gusts of leaves and swarms of swallows and locusts perch on your nose. Through magic arts we absorb the unfair burdens of our lovers' dreams.