massive income

From: Bernadette Fox To: Manjula Kapoor It was the first time I had been downtown in a year. I immediately remembered why: the paytopark meters. You obviously dont get seasick, I said. Because a couple of hours of that is a day at the beach by comparison. Tardive dyskinesia can last forever, he said. Forever I said weakly. The likelihood of tardive dyskinesia is about four percent, he said. It increases to ten percent for older women. I blew out really hard. Oh, man. I spoke to your doctor. He wrote you a prescription for a scopolamine patch for motion sickness, and Xanax for anxiety. Xanax, I had Bees battalion of doctors had always sent me home with Xanax or some sleeping pill. (Have I mentioned I dont sleep.) I never took them, because the one time I did, they left me nauseous and not feeling like myself. (I know, that should have been a selling point. What can I say Ive grown accustomed.) But the problem with the Xanax and the hundreds of other pills I had squirreled away was this: they were currently jumbled together in a Ziploc bag. Why Well, once, I was thinking about ODing, so I dumped the contents of every prescription bottle into my two handsthey didnt even fit, thats how many I hadjust to eyeball to see if I could swallow them all. But then I cooled off on the whole idea and dumped the pills in a baggie, where they languish to this day. Why did I want to OD youre probably wondering. Well, so am I I dont even remember. Do you have some kind of laminated chart of what the pills look like I asked the pharmacist. My thinking was, maybe I could figure out which ones were Xanax and return them to their proper container. The poor guy looked baffled. Who can blame him Fine, I said. Give me the Xanax and that patch thing. I removed myself to the brocade couch. It was murderously uncomfortable. I put my leg up and leaned back. That was more like it. It was a fainting couch, I now realized, and wanted to be lain upon. Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. Theyre everywhere, and even if they dont get in your way, you cant help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them. This one was all glass, of course, white and ruffly and full of dripping tentacles. It glowed from within, a cold blue, but with no discernible light source. The rain outside was pounding. Its rhythmic splatter only made this hovering glass beast more haunting, as if it had arrived with the storm, a rainmaker itself. It sang to me, Chihulyâ€¦ Chihuly. In the seventies, Dale Chihuly was already a distinguished glassblower when he got into a car accident and lost an eye. But that didnt stop him. A few years later, he had a surfing mishap and messed up his shoulder so badly that he was never able to hold a glass pipe again. That didnt stop him, either. Dont believe me Take a boat out on Lake Union and look in the window of Dale Chihulys studio. Hes probably there now, with his eye patch and dead arm, doing the best, trippiest work of his life. I had to close my eyes.

And this is when it began to unravel: I could swear one of the people waiting for him outside was a gnat from Galer Street. Not the one whos hassling us about the blackberries, but one of her flying monkeys. I blinked to make sure. But Elgie and his group had been absorbed into the lunch rush. My heart was really thumping. I should have stayed and popped one of those Xanax. But I couldnt stand to be in that compound pharmacy anymore, trapped with the icy portent. I blame you, Dale Chihuly I fled. I had no idea which way I was pointed, where I was even headed. But I must have gone up Fourth Avenue, because the next thing I knew, I was standing outside the Rem Koolhaas public library. I had stopped, apparently. Because a guy approached me. A graduate student, he looked like. Completely nice, nothing mean or threatening about him. But he recognized me. Manjula, I have no idea how. The only photograph of me floating around was one taken twenty years ago, right before the Huge Hideous Thing. I am beautiful, my face radiating with confidence, my smile bursting with the future of my choosing. Bernadette Fox, I blurted. I am fifty, slowly going mad. This cant make sense to you, Manjula. It doesnt have to. But you see what happens when I come into contact with people. It doesnt bode well for the whole Antarctica thing. * Later that day, Mom picked me up. Maybe she was a little quiet, but sometimes that happens, because on the way to school she listens to The World on PRI, which is usually a downer, and that day was no exception. I got into the car. A terrible report was on about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how rape was being used as a weapon. All the females were getting raped, from baby s, six months old, all the way to eightyyearold grandmothers, and every age in between. More than one thousand women and s were getting raped each month. It had been going on for twelve years and nobody was doing anything about it. Hillary Clinton had gone there and promised to help, which gave everyone hope, but then all she did was give to the corrupt government.