Houses on the mind. Because the Arizona house is in danger? Because I don't have a house? So I dream my cousin moves into a luxury department store--a new rage in extravagant living space I hadn't heard of--after the new marriage and new baby, and it's a VIP cocktail party the size of an airport as soon as we arrive on the scene. Chandelier lighting, crystal and mirrors, velvet displays of imported cheese and cognac. Everyone's wearing a bikini and nibbling from serving platters and hanging around the enormous black marble fountain at store central where servers in white gloves and jackets look suggestive: anything I can get you. I'm pushing a shopping cart around the meat department, embarrassing my cousin as I tend to do. You don't shop here, for meats or fragrance or fly swatters. You never go shopping again.
***
The world wants to be deceived. If they won't pick you up at the airport, they won't visit you in the hospital either.
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"Mundus vult decipi; but there is a hierarchy of deceptions." At the bottom, oblivion. Forget everything. At the top, forget only what is unpleasant.
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Scruples.
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