Two Brown Guitars

Volume One

Two Playing Blues Guitar

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Elizabeth wanted to join them. But she was hesitating on the threshhold. Standing in the doorway. Under the lintel, if that’s what it’s called. The place they say is the safest place to be if things get seriously shaken up, as in earthquakes. Not nuclear bombs, though. Elizabeth tried not to look directly at the in and out of what they were doing. But she didnt have much luck in not looking. Clothes were in the way. Pants, mostly pants, his and hers. Pulled down, halfway pulled down, not completely. Belt, he had a belt that was jingling. His never made it down around his knees. Neither did hers. What really bothered Elizabeth more than the at times quite visible in out was his hands, him having his hands under her shirt like that. She didnt care about his head laying back, eyes half shut. The eyes half shut didnt bother her much. And the in out didnt bother her too much either, though it was the in out which her eyes kept going back to. But it was his hands, that’s what really got her. Under her shirt. The slow, methodical, the soft, the so gentle. It occurred to Elizabeth that she couldnt recall him being so gentle and methodical and slow with her. That bothered her a lot, as she stood under the lintel, if that’s what the stupid thing is called. And his head laying back didnt bother her either. And it didnt really bother her that they went back to what they were doing, once they’d recognized her, given her the nod. Matter of fact, Suzy had smiled at her, and it was an inviting smile, it was friendly and it was warm, and it was inviting, it was asking Elizabeth if she didnt want to somehow get in on this. But that didnt seem possible, physically speaking. Unless they got off the chair, and took it somewhere else.

Not that she’d go for it then. Elizabeth would never go for it, not under any circumstances. Not even if she was blasted out of her mind. Which had never happened anyway. She’d never been blasted out of her mind. She was always in control. Besides, she was getting that baby, the one that was presently being gently rocked within Suzy’s interior. Elizabeth didnt need any of this funky stuff. She didnt have any secret demons driving her to bizarre excess. Like some of us do. Like everybody does. It’s just that not everybody knows it. Or if they know it, then they dont want to know it. Like Elizabeth. Now here’s something that Elizabeth doesnt know. That she can have babies. She can have babies, though she doesnt know it. How can that be? How can it be that somebody who’s been to all the doctors, and had all the tests, and tried all the remedies from quirk to quack… how could they not know it? What kind of nonsense is this? I think we need some Miss Elizabeth background. She didnt grow up on 21st Street, which is where I grew up and where Suzy grew up, although strictly speaking Suzy grew up around the corner, on the little street behind our big street. Now 21st Street is on the west side of Broad Street, and 21st and Porter is pretty far south. The City basically ends right around there, at least in that section. But if you stay on Broad Street, and dont swing west to where we were, but just stay on Broad and keep going south, then you can go a lot farther south, you can go down to the old abandoned Navy Base. And behind the old abandoned Navy Base, the highway swings round, good old highway 95, which runs south and then swings around under the City, following the Delaware River, and follows the River as it heads down to the bay.

Man, I love describing the City, and I really love trying to tell people about how it’s not at all what they think it is. I love trying to tell them how it has Four Portals, and it has the Monster in the center, and there’s a great battle going on to defeat the Monster, and Suzy’s leading the battle, and she has helpers, like Johnny is her helper. And like Miss Elizabeth is her helper. Yes, that’s right, Miss Elizabeth. Like I was saying, she didnt grow up in our neighborhood. She comes from 10th and Jackson. Now that’s the old neighborhood. I was born there, and that’s where my grandparents, on my father’s side, were from. And they’d been there a long time. My grandfather had a grocery store on the corner, and he raised four kids, and sent them all to college. Not bad for somebody who came over in a boat as a child, his mother and father holding his hands, none of them knew a word of this language, and they didnt arrive first class either. It wasnt much, riding in the bottom of that boat, in those days. And they came right in past the grand lady holding her torch high in the sky, and the bosses ran them through the long lines on the island, before they let them in. Congratulations, son. You’re in America. Nineteen hundred and eight, the year. Now like I said, Miss Elizabeth was living down there in the old neighborhood. And she had what scientists call a dual personality. It was very unusual, and you may comb your way through all the demented textbooks and not come up with a case similar to hers. Because she was both young and old, though not simultaneously. All depended upon her mood, you might say. A young girl, eleven or twelve. Or a grown woman, twenty eight.

You should’ve seen her, Sister, when she rode that fast train out of town, on that dark night, though it wasnt raining then. It was up near Frankford Avenue, that’s where a daredevil who wants to try sneaking out through the North Portal will wait for the train to come around that bend, they’ll wait on the roof of the little one story garage, they’ll wait for when the train comes around on it’s little elevated railroad bridge, and then they’ll latch on to it, and hang on for dear life. The black train came around the corner fast, but she wasnt scared, or not too scared. That black hair of hers was flying along behind her, heck, she herself was darn near horizontal. And then the train punched through the North Portal and it was through the Portal and gone and then it was following the river north, with Elizabeth hanging on, and at a certain place it crossed the river into Jersey and then made its way for those low mountains. And there’s a little river up there, and they call it the Second River. A man lived and worked up there, and he was some kind of Eco Ethno Biologist, with a specialization in things gone wrong. His job was to monitor what nobody on Earth wants him to monitor. He was universally despised, and properly so. Even the squirrels couldnt stand his guts. His name was Aaron Bennet Junior. Elizabeth was heading up into his territory. His job was to watch the end of the world, real time. Elizabeth had children who lived up there, and a husband who lived up there, a big giant of a man they called Sarge. Elizabeth had no reason to be stuck in this stupid expensive phony house where Georgie, who properly speaking wasnt even her husband, was screwing that pretty little girl with the big big belly, and they were even inviting her to join in. And she couldnt keep her eyes off the in out and the in out. The rod, and what contains it. The rod entering into the very center of the world.

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