A small town. A married woman in her thirties is thinking of having an affair. She meets a guy she thought was sexy in high school, though she never went out with him. But twenty years have passed, and he's balding and pot-bellied: already middle-aged. Ugly, in fact.

She's shaken. Twenty years is a long time. If he looks like this, and he was practically God then, what's SHE like? Can't trust the mirror, the eyes of habit. She's middle-aged too. She'll never attract her dream lover now... she's stuck with her dull husband, and town, and life. Too late to change.

The irony is, she looks fine. Beautiful in fact. Pale fluffy blonde hair, thin tall, classic bones, big wounded eyes, a bit sad and scared now but still alive, still feeling--not the deadness of one who denies her dream. She'll look good forever, and she doesn't know it. She could win her dream lover--if she'd only leave town and LOOK...

NOTES

• Sad small-town wives =
  1. I just read Forbidden Flowers by Nancy Friday--women's sexual fantasies. Sad letters from women trapped in small towns--and even smaller marriages.
  2. A voice inside me says "you're middle-aged now, you're ugly, you're dull, why would your dream lover want YOU?"
• ACTION: catch the lie. Get out there. Find someone you like.

The same small town. I'm a detective come to investigate the financial dealings of two sisters, one of whom just died. I talk with their lawyer and accountant upstairs in a big-city building, wishing there were windows. For some reason we first discuss the dog, a retriever. Patiently I steer them round to the sister's death...

Pollution from a factory next door probably killed her. It smelled nice, like fresh apples, and they insisted it was harmless. She was exposed 5 hours a day. She knew it made her sick, she protested, and after years they cleaned up their emissions and she won a settlement--though they only conceded it was a "nuisance". The money went to her estate--she was already dead of cancer. Environmentally induced?

I point out "If you, as her lawyer, were convinced she was being poisoned, you should've gotten her out of there! The settlement didn't do her any good when she was dead." But then (and that's why I've been called in) it does HIM some good, doesn't it? He's her executor; now the WHOLE settlement's in his hands!

He angrily shouts "We didn't KNOW what it was doing to her!" I'm not sure what I think yet. Could be naive, a man not wanting to believe how bad the situation was.

Or it could be slow, subtle murder.

• The Lawyer says "we thought it was a nuisance, not fatal" = despite severe allergies, I delayed vacuuming my room for weeks.
• Settlement, cleanup come too late = I finally cleaned up after I lost a whole week to gut-attacks and mysterious fatigue and depression...
• Apple effluent = cyanide. Read an article on cyanide pollution from gold mining.
• Pleasant-smelling poison, 5 hours a day = Baked bread from scratch--4½ hours. Wrote & drew on the computer--about 5 hours. Dust in my room? Exposed all day! Wore sweats and a leotard for about 5 hours, and my guts flared up. Constriction enough to sicken me? Should I stick to baggy clothes?
• ACTION: eliminate all the above and see what happens. Quit baking & eating wheat, wear loose clothes, dust my room thoroughly, and work on computer less than 5 hours a day.

I'm a visitor in a rich golf club. Ill at ease, and not here to play. I'm returning a file I had to study, and some bright-colored things... forget what. The file was on my mother's father, who was a member. He just died.

They treat me courteously on top but patronizing underneath. "Where do I put my grandpa's folder?" The cabinet holding the members' records has been removed, for an upcoming Open House. All the records put away. They want me to give them the folder. I don't trust it not to disappear. They shrug "It doesn't matter; he's not a member now anyway, he's an ex." Once he's dead, forget him.

They have a Maid, a cliche Southern Black Maid. She's young and smart, with a diamond-shaped face, fox-chin. But she plays the Old South role--look decorative and keep your mouth shut, in exchange for learning intimate details about every millionaire in the county! She's too smart for blackmail, but discreet investments based on overheard old-boy gossip... now that's lucrative! I rather admire her discreet initiative--but I think there's a bigger one going on here.

Rich people donate their entire fortunes to the club, undergoing religious conversion after sleeping in the clubhouse... why? Long list of celebrity endorsements, including Norman Vincent Peale or Norman Cousins, one of those super-positive Normans--to a hard-boiled private eye like me they're all the same.

They ask if I'll squeeze three lemons for the ritual Southern lemonade. Fine, I say. I know it's distraction. But my eyes are still open. I notice they store thousands of bicycle tires on the ceiling. Very efficient.

I stay over, in the room they offer me free. During the night, I think about the maid, and her 8-year-old son, so small he looked like 6 when I first met him. Small enough... yet old enough... to... God! To follow her directions, to crawl inside the walls and ceilings, to peer through the cracks and nail-holes I've noticed in every room, to spy on the millionaires and their lovers and their business deals, to take that news back to his mom... for blackmail and...

But I've still underestimated them all. A tiny flying saucer falls on my bed. Steaming with... some kind of knockout drug. Or poison. I feel weak and dizzy. Wrap it up. Had I not been expecting SOME attack, I'd have been deep under by now... suggestible. This can't be just one maid's scam--can it? More likely those rich guys!

I stagger out, compose myself--barely able to walk, but I must be ready to bluff. The Maid is leaning up agains a wall kissing her boyfriend. I wait till a two-car Muni trolley comes by and isolates us from the rest of the club, a moving loud wall of bright ads... and I throw the steaming saucer in a high arc down on her. And look at her, not saying a word, just grinning meanly. If she runs or wraps up the saucer she'll be acknowledging she knows the gas is toxic; if she doesn't, she'll be poisoned.

The Muni has her cornered; she'll have to fight me to run. She tenses... and sighs, thinking better of it. Wraps up the disk. My backup, a Federal agent I phoned, comes in. I relax in relief. Had she run, she'd have clobbered me. I was a wet rag--got a big dose of the drug. All bluff.

The FBI man says "She's beautiful." She looks startled, actually a bit flattered. "A beautiful case, man, I have to hand it to you. Wrapped her up for us." She looks hurt.

I almost feel sympathetic. She was only milking millionaires. And don't they deserve it?

NOTES

• Rich country club:
  1. I just read Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse. A ritzy club/cult milks millionaires--aerosol drugs, hypnosis, "spirits" demanding donations.
  2. Today I tried out two support groups for severe allergics like me. They were all rich yuppies. My dream compared them to the Dain scam!
• Hypnosis = I've been trying hypnotherapy for allergies. I thought it was doing some good. My dreams disagree!
• Dead grandpa's file = He had bad allergies, passed them to my mom, who passed them on to me.
• I inspect his file: Examine my own aristocratic attitude (Grampa was well off and rather patrician). I too demand lots of space and respect. Learned from him? And yet chronic illness makes you need rest & space. Maybe I'm just protecting myself--as he did. And then others judge us.
• Rich club just wants your dues, forgets you once you're dead = if I get rich will I be turn crass? Raised by radicals, I still think rich people are always wicked. Always?
• Flying saucer:
  1. Over-exercise? I stretched and lifted a free-weight just before going to bed. Just one loose black disk. Like a flying saucer.
  2. Loneliness? Theodore Sturgeon's classic sf story "A Saucer Of Loneliness" has a heroine much like dream 1, "If She Only Knew."
• Sneaky black maid: in The Dain Curse, a black maid enabled a white girl's drug habit just to keep her quiet, oblivious... safe. Better doped up than a witness needing to be killed.
• Diamond-shaped face = the teaching assistant in our piano class, who teased us about our names, to hide that she couldn't pronounce them.
• Precocious kid picks up info = my child-self, a starved & undersized artist, still being exploited...still...
• THE POISONING SCAM REPEATS! I poison myself--bad food, dust, other allergens. Oh, and while poisoning myself, add stressful therapy...
• Hate the rich = Such hatred has a cost. Do I hate myself, for being a saver not a spender? For living in a rich, progressive, unpolluted town? I chose it--despite its tight housing market--because its air was clean and medical services good (for America, I mean; crap for anywhere else.)
• Hating money may stimulate self-neglect! If I keep myself sick, I'll stay poor and noble and pure...
• ACTION: Quit indulging in class resentment, it actually encourages self-neglect! I get reluctant to clean up toxins. Crazy but true!

YEARS LATER

Turns out all that lovely-scented home-baked bread really was poisoning me! I was SEVERELY sensitive to gluten. Quit wheat, oats and barley, got sharply better, and stayed better. Unless I slip and eat that stuff again.

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