Class Inaction

If LISA offered to hire me on permanent, what would I do? I need to exit somehow. It's like Fabienne talking about her attempted lawsuit. The way she put it herself,

"I tried a class action suit. I thought it would work, you know, many people die, no one cares. I had been a small role in a movie. I am young enough men will feel sorry for me.

"But I spoke to a lawyer, no? He said my chance of leukemia was a few percentage points higher for the background radiation of the plant. There might be some chance, perhaps, a class action suit. Who wants to live in court with cameras?"

Sometimes I even wish LISA would catch me, just so the fear would end. That scares me. Maybe Carl's take makes more sense. Stealing from LISA is like the drunkard's walk. (You may know this. The drunkard walks north with a street at his right and a wall at his left? There's a 50% chance he stumbles left, 50% chance he stumbles right. Where does he end up?

Answer: He always ends at the wall, of course. In my case, that means I leave without being caught or when LISA catches me. The hour basketball game may be just the thing. It's more a gesture anyway, best because it's pointless, as though we had no idea whom we were flipping off. Which I suppose I don't.

Basketball for Lunch

The game was fun in its way -- the basketball -- ties pulling on and off, hustling back to the office, shirts too sweaty, oddly tight. I'm too bullnecked for the clip-on ties, so I'm half-standing in the back of Cliff's mustang, trying to get my neck in his rear-view and get the damned noose tied while he careens around the downtown alleys he seems to know. The guys laugh and swear at my stumbling. "Five minutes" Cliff keeps promising. I'm thrilled to worry about getting in to work late: piss-all, maybe they'll lay me off. I might be lucky that way. Rudy's on about a class-action suit, but all he means is that LISA doesn't have the right to take back our work.

"We're temps, Rood." Could there be a case?

"We still have rights. No one does this."

If LISA offered to hire me on permanently, what would I do? I do feel some responsibility to stay on, to get as much as I can. But then I even wish LISA would catch me, just so the fear would end. That scares me: you know that feeling when you watch someone at the side of the road and the car starts to track off?

I will exit somehow. It's like Fabienne talking about her own considerations when the doctors diagnosed her leukemia. As she put it,

"I tried a class action suit. I thought it would work, you know, many people die, no one cares. I had been a small role in a movie. I am young enough men will feel sorry for me.

"But I spoke to a lawyer, no? He said my chance of leukemia was a few percentage points higher for the background radiation of the plant. There might be some chance, perhaps, a class action suit. Who wants to live in court with cameras?"

Maybe Carl makes the most sense. Stealing from LISA is a drunkard's walk.

In my case, that means I leave without being caught or LISA catches me. I can never know it's too late until it is. I can never feel I've got enough on ECorp: no information will shut it down. The hour basketball game may be just the thing. It's more a gesture anyway, best because it's pointless, as though we had no idea whom we were flipping off. Which I suppose one never does.

Fab: An Early Obit

OK, Fabienne: footnote.

I suppose :

Her fingers laced through my chest hair, drawn tightly to her mouth in the tent, I suppose. I suppose that that says all I might. She must know that hurts. She must pretend that she's asleep. She must pull the reaction out of -- my skin? my chest?

Or.

Or son corp de danseuse naked head-towards-feet curved backward over my two arms, curved again to kiss the London floor between her ankles, shaking in seizure, dying dove like doves I shot.

Or.

Or the blowjob on Havasu in daylight. "Keep paddling out" she says. "They're going to see. Fab? Fab, the lifeguards have jumped off the platform."

(Ants eat thru the tent, I pull her hand, she won't go on the lake at night.)

Or.

Or asleep suddenly on the campgound table as storm crosses the steppe, approaching strident purple-blackening tumescence cloudbank darkening our starry Utah midnight, gleaming. Her hair grown out now, a bit, as long as my finger from tip almost to the first knuckle, grown fast and blonding fast, whipping frenzy at her ears, her eyes still asleep still as I place the stones, one hand holding a corner of the tarp firm to the table as I roll another stone close, pump it with my leg and arm up on to the table to the tarp, to it hold firmly in place over her blankets.

And another stone, as though the tarp won't billow. And eight. And nine. And twelve. And another stone, as though a grave. And another only stone.

Her lashes in the wind alive.

"Oh, Jack, this finest place to die" she'd said that day. Why can't she feel the wind? I watch her still -- why can't she feel the wind? --

So, Fabienne.

Never mind:I'm standing in a library in Alambres, the girl in Paris, presumably, newly married. Pardon the drama.

What did Fabienne say? Her words and would I remember? -- something "wind might dry our bones could leave us clean as stars, so quiet, something something something.

Maybe she lied about the plant in Bretagne or the radioactive tailings by the coal mine in Anjou where she played con los hijos de los campesinos españoles in convincing castellano. Or even her leukemia. She might have thought I'd leave politely, leave her to the man she must have known on our first night that she would marry, the man who had reviewed her work in Le canard enchainé, whom she found comfortable but did not love -- she claimed.

If I can't say this is true, why not a paean to a ghost? Besides, Fab wouldn't die on me so quickly; she's just extremely gone.

Therefore :

"Hello. I walk in here several days a week, once or twice a day, photocopy a few documents, stroll into the stacks for a few seconds only, then always leave without a book."

And how should I presume?