number. No answer. Not even a machine picked up. I called Lude back and an hour later we were losing ourselves in pints of cider at Red.

For some reason I had with me a little bit Zampan6 wrote about Natasha (See Appendix F). I found it some months ago and immediately assumed she was an old love of his, which of course may still be true. Since then, however, I've begun to believe that Zampan6's Natasha also lives in Tolstoy's guerrulous pages. (Yes, amazingly enough, I finally did get around to reading War and Peace.)

Anyway, that evening, as coincidence would have it, a certain Natasha was dining on vegetables and wine. Rumor was—or so Lude confided; I've always loved the way Lude could 'confide' a rumor—her mother was famous but had been killed in a boating accident, unless you believed another rumor—which Lude also confided—that her father was the one who had been killed in a boating accident though he was not famous.

What did it matter?

Either way, Natasha was gorgeous.

Tolstoy's prophecy brought to life.

Lude and I quarreled over who would approach her first. Truth be known I didn't have the courage. A few pints later though, I watched Lude weave over to her table. He had every advantage. He knew her. Could say 'hello' and not appear obscene. I watched, my glass permanently fixed to my mouth so I could drink continuously—though breathing proved a bit tricky.

Lude was laughing, Natasha smiling, her friends working on their vegetables, their wine. But Lude stayed too long. I could see it in the way she started looking at her friends, her plate, everywhere but at him. And then Lude said something. No doubt an attempt to save the sitch. Little did I know I was the one being sacrificed, that is until he started pointing over at the counter, at me. And then suddenly she was looking over at the counter, at me. And neither one of them was smiling. I lifted the base of my glass high enough to eclipse my face and paid no mind to the stream of cider spilling from either side, foaming in my lap. When I lowered my deception I saw Natasha hand Lude back a piece of paper he had just given her. Her smile was curt. She said very little. He continued the charade, smiled quickly and departed.

■Sorry Hoss,■ Lude said as he sat down, unaware that the scene had turned me to stone.

"You didn't just tell her that I wrote that for her, did you?" I finally stuttered.

"You bet. Hey, she liked it. Just not enough to dump her boyfriend. "

"I didn't write that. A blind man wrote it," I yelled at him, but it was too late. I finished my drink, and with my head down, got the hell out of there, leaving Lude behind to endure Natasha's pointed inattention.

Heading east, I passed by Muse and stopped in at El Coyote where I drank tequila shots until an Australian gal started telling me about kangaroos and the Great Barrier Reef and then ordered something else, potent and green. A while ago, over a year? two years? she had seen a gathering there of very, very famous people speaking censorially of things most perverse. She told me this with great glee, her breasts bouncing around like giant pacmen. Who cared. Fine by me. Did she want to hear about Natasha? Or at least what a blind man wrote?

When I finally walked outside, I had no idea where I was, orange lights burning like sunspots, initiating weird riots in my head, while in the ink beyond a chorus of coyotes howled, or was that the traffic? and no sense of time either. We stumbled together to a corner and that's when the car pulled over, a white car? VW Rabbit? maybe/maybe not? I strained to see what this was all about, my Australian gal giggling, both pacmen going crazy, she lived right around here somewhere but wasn't that funny, she couldn't remember exactly where, and me not caring, just squinting, staring at the white? car as the window rolled down and a lovely face appeared, tired perhaps, uncertain too, but bright nonetheless with a wry smile on those sweet lips—Natasha leaning out of her car, "I guess love fades pretty fast, huh?* ¹⁴² winking at me then, even as I shook my head, as if that kind of emphatic shaking could actually prove something, like just how possible it is to fall so suddenly so hard, though for it to ever mean anything you have to remember, and I would remember, I would definitely remember, which I kept telling myself as that white? car, her car?, sped off, bye-bye Natasha, whoever you are, wondering then if I would ever see her again, sensing I wouldn't, hoping senses were wrong but still not knowing; Love At First Sight having been written by a blind man, albeit sly, passionate too?, the blind man of all blind men, me,—don't know why I just wrote that—though I would still love her despite being unblind, even if I had all of a sudden started dreaming then of someone I'd never met before, or had known all along, no, not even Thumper—wow, am I wandering—maybe Natasha after all, so vague, so familiar, so strange, but who really and why? though at least this much I could safely assume to be true, comforting really, a wild ode mentioned at New West hotel over wine infusions, light, lit, lofted on very entertaining moods, yawning in return, open nights, inviting everyone's song, with me losing myself in such a dream, over and over again too, until that Australian gal shook my arm, shook it hard—

•Hey, where are you?*

'Lost* I muttered and started to laugh and then she laughed and I don't remember the rest. I don't remember her door, all those stairs to the second story, the clatter we made making our way down the hall, never turning on the lights, the hall lights or her room lights, falling onto the futon on her floor. I can't even remember how all our clothes came off, I couldn't get her bra off, she finally had to do that, her white bra, ahh the clasp was in front and I'd been struggling with the back, which was when she let the pacmen out and ate me alive.

Yeah I know, the dots here don't really connect. After all, how does one go from a piece of poetry to a heart wrenching beauty to the details of a drunken one night stand? I mean even if you could connect those dots, which I don't think you can, what kind of picture would you really draw?

There was something about her pussy. I do remember that. In fact it was amazing how hairy it was, thick coils of black hair, covering her, hiding her, though when fingered licked still parting so readily for the feel of her, the taste of her, as she continued to sit on top of me, just straddling my mouth, and all the time easing slightly back, pushing slightly forward, even when her legs began to tremble, still wanting me to keep exploring her like that, with my fingers and my lips and my tongue, the layers of her warmth, the sweet folds of her darkness, over and over and over again.

The rest I'm sure I don't remember though I know it went on like that for a while.

Up in the sky-high,

Off to the side-eye.

All of us now sigh,

Right down the drain-ae.

Just a ditty. I guess.

As with previous explorations, Exploration #4 can also be considered a personal journey. While some portions of the house, like the Great Hall for instance, seem to offer a communal experience, many inter-com- municating passageways encountered by individual members, even with only a glance, will never be re-encountered by anyone else again. Therefore, in spite of, as well as in light of, future investigations, Holloway's descent remains singular.

When his team finally does reach the bottom of the stairway, they have already spent three nights in that hideous darkness, their sleeping bags and tents successfully insulating their bodies from the cold, but nothing protecting their hearts from what Jed refers to as "the heaviness" which always seemed to him to be crouching, ready to spring, just a few feet away. While everyone enjoys some sense of elation upon reaching the last step, in truth they have only brought to a conclusion an already experienced aspect of the house. None of them are at all prepared for the consequences of the now unfamiliar.

On the morning of the fourth day, the three men agree to explore a new series of rooms. As Holloway says, "We've come a long way. Let's see if there's anything down here." Wax and Jed do not object, and soon enough, they are all wending their way through the maze.

As usual, Holloway orders numerous stops to procure wall samples. Jed has become quite handy with his chisel and hammer, cutting out small amounts of the black-ashen substance which he deposits into one of the many sample jars Reston equipped him with. As had been the case even on the stairway, Holloway personally takes responsibility for marking their path. He constantly tacks neon arrows to the wall, sprays neon paint on corners, and metes out plenty of fishing line wherever the path becomes

Later, I don't even know how much later, she said we'd been great and she felt great even though I didn't. I didn't even know where I was, who she was, or how we'd done what she said we'd done. I had to get out, but fuck the sun hurt my eyes, it split my head open, I dropped her number before I reached the corner, then spent a quarter of an hour looking for my car. Something was beginning to make me feel panicky and bad again. Maybe it was to have been that lost, to lose sense, even a little bit about some event, and was I losing more than I knew, larger events? greater sense? In fact all I had to hold onto at that moment as I cautiously pointed the old car to that place I had the gall to still call a home—never again—was her face, that wry smile, Natasha's, seen but unknown, found in a restaurant, lost on a street corner, gone in a wind of traffic—as in "to wind something up." I looked at my hands. I was holding onto the steering wheel so tightly, all my knuckles were shiny points of white, and my blinker was on, CLICK-click CLICK-click CLICK- click, so certain, so plain, so clear, and yet for all its mechanical conviction, blinking me in the wrong direction.

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