Chapter 2 - Polaroid Picture: Nadia participates in her first press conference as a member of the Pittsburg Football League’s governing body. One person showed up without a news outlet to write for, Joseph Kelling. At the end of a press conference he hands her a photo of… her hairbrush? Click the image above to listen to or download this latest chapter. [21 minutes].

Get ready, get set… I’m rolling out a new podiobook [Click the image above to listen to Chapter 1]. This one runs to 17 chapters, which means we should have it all rolled out for you by sometime in August. This book falls somewhere in between a novella and a novel. It had been a full on novel a few years ago, until I rewrote it in a mad spree in early 2005, ripping about 150 pages out of it and a whole lot of mythological & just-got-outta-college mumbo-jumbo. Not to mention all the sexual frustration the first version represented. Whew! Best forgotten.

This is the first chapter, the one that sets the central relationship of the book up. It’s about Nadia Mills and Grey Clowbros, best friends since 7th Grade. With the Operation: Desert Shield in the background, after high school graduation, they don’t apply to college for one year and each of them captures the public imagination. Nadia, as the face of the city’s wildly popular touch football federation, and Grey, as the masked vigilante dynamiting the porches of meth labs and crack dens of Southeast Kansas. When Nadia gets kidnapped by a secret society, will her amateur avenger buddy know what to do? Or will he leave her to save herself?

All you have to do is click the image above and you can start listening now, to Chapter 1: Early Decision. 21 Minutes.

C’mon kids, this is why Aunt Betty bought you that Ipod in the first place! Do it, to it!

Chapter VI: Customer Service

Moon/Mona/Monday’s place was a good three miles from the building where I had fallen into the dumpster. Pretty far, but not so far if maybe Blue Hoodie lived somewhere in between. Or maybe he just used a subway stop as his base of operations? Maybe he lived out in the ‘burbs? Or a different part of town? Or in the hood? Maybe, baby, maybe he lived in a rough part of town?

Moon had a computer with dial-up Internet access, so I got onto Yahoo! Yellow Pages and looked at the businesses between Moon’s place and my favorite dumpster. I made a list of Rite Aid’s and CVS’s and Walgreen’s and any place else I could think of that might offer round-the-clock One Hour photo services. Are you with me? Are you with me?

People like me who believe that Blue Hoodie is out there don’t think that he takes pictures of the girls, right? But he might have. I have never heard anything about him having a camera with him when he actually appears in a girl’s room. That would be risky. I mean, you think about it, for all the stories you hear about girls waking up and seeing him, he probably stands in the room of a dozen more girls who never wake up. If he’s that cool and calm about it, this has to be a maneuver he knows really well. He’s probably in somebody’s bedroom every night, right? He has probably watched hundreds of girls (dozens, anyway) that have not woken up.

Maybe he takes pictures of women he knows he can count on not to wake up? See where I’m headed. Sure, there are the ones that wake up. Those are probably first appearances. There are probably others that never wake up, you know? Can’t imagine what this freak thinks about those girls.

He probably even has some friend who knows all about his creepy obsession. Maybe the guy thinks it’s cool. Maybe he even looks up to this motherfucker? I don’t know. Blue Hoodie probably knows some girl that could sleep through a monsoon. She’s probably the one he visits when he’s feeling unadventurous. He calls her ‘Old Reliable.’ He and his buddy drink their Pabst Blue Ribbon and he talks about the ineffable qualities of different positions he has seen Old Reliable sleeping in. His friend tries to talk him into actually jerking off in the room while Old Reliable sleeps, but Blue Hoodie swears he won’t. It’s against his moral code to actually beat his meat in the room while watching. The whole point is to store it up.

“Besides,” Blue Hoodie would say to his drinking buddy, “that’s the time that she’ll wake up, right? When I have my dick in my hand.” Can you hear the conversation in your head? I can hear it. Makes me hate men. Any man would laugh, you know? Don’t you fucking laugh.

Somewhere outside he had wandered along until he saw this window, got somewhere he could look in and he saw her. He watched her sleep from outside first, and then he got inside. He watched from the outside until he couldn’t resist coming in here.

So, I looked out at the buildings you could see from Moon/Mona/Monday’s window. Only about three had roofs that someone could see in here from. Then there were a few apartments across the street that probably would have given visual access as well. Which one? Which one?

Did it matter?

I had an idea.

Previously, the priests hung out in Beau’s classroom talking about which sycophants to turn into acolytes. _________________________________

“Eventually, everyone will be in, Lissa,” Sonja said.

“It’s better if other people ask them to join, anyway,” Jerri said. “So how many?”

“We’ve got two. Two more, I think.” I said.

“Tai and Robby, then. Tai is super energetic which balances Charlie. Robby is just talkative and friendly enough. He has the best social skills of the group - after Cliff, I gotta say.” Jerri said.

“Objections?” I asked.

“I don’t think any of them has any nuts,” Tom-Paul said.

“Ginger has nuts,” Jerri said.

“OK, the girl has nuts.” Tom-Paul said.

“People with nuts don’t join cults, do they?” Lissa asked.

Everyone thought about that and then Tom-Paul said, “From the mouths of babes…”

Here’s what we decided to do: each priest pulled one of the four aside in a subtle way and gave them a little invitation we’d run off Jerri’s fancy journalist printer. It told them to come to the big pack porch at the Warehouse at 1 AM next Tuesday.

When the four showed, they found us all standing there, waiting for them, wearing a sort of loose pajamas, each in a different shade of grey. Except mine. Mine was white. Tom-Paul and I wore a version with two pieces. The girls wore a more fitted, one piece design.

The sleeves and pant legs were heavily belled so that they would flap and wave while we did cartwheels. Every extremity and edge on the cloth had been accented with large, silver buttons.

When our new crew arrived they found the buttons had an accent of their own: the light of a full moon. We lined our inductees up against the wall.

“We’ll show you what to do first,” Jerri began.

Sonja finished, “We’ll explain why later.”

I stood, watched and glistened.

Previously, Tuesday shows up at the house of Tuesday, a hippie pothead who is absolutely sure that Blue Hoodie visited her. __________________________

“You-oo-oo are searching,” Moon said.

“That’s right.”

“Sear-er-er-ching-ingggg.”

I nodded.

“Makes a lot of sense, condense, recompense, cadence, ence, ence…” she said. She was really high.

“Tell me again what he was wearing,” I asked her.

“Rub my belly,” she said. I did. “He was not very tall. Very average height. I know because he was standing under my fern which hangs pretty low but Brandon could always stand under it no problem and he was 5’ 8”, or maybe 5’9”.Your creepazoid had on blue jeans. Old, light blue jeans. Blue jeans. Blue jeans. I don’t remember his shoes-oo-oo-oes but they must have been sneakers, right? Must have been/ must have been/ -een. Why would you go out stalking in anything but sneakers?”

I nodded. That gave Moon a sloppy smile. Her lips were huge. These were Jolie/Jagger huge lips. The sort that could suck golf balls through garden hoses. Huge lips stuck between two chubby cheeks. She did a lot of sucking with those lips, no question, but more on a pot pipe than boys. She’s the type to go for either, whenever.

“I remember his hoodie. He had on a blue hoodie-boodie.”

“Was it up?”

“The hood-ood-ood?”

I nodded and stroked her cheek.

“It was up!” she put her arms in the air like she had just got 50 on Skee-ball. “He looked dark and mysterious. Sort of sexy in a way, I guess. Sort of, dove, love. Sexy, mexy, texy.” I think Moon was getting nervous thinking about it. I don’t think her pot-addled emotions could deal with fear. Her sing-songiness always got nuttiest when we made it to this part. “You always ask the same things.” Her eyes bugged out a little when she said that. Was she surprised with herself that she had been a little direct?

I kissed her on the mouth because I knew she liked it. “I know, love.”

She smiled. “Rubby robby robot.” Translation: you’ve stopped rubbing my belly – keep going.

“How could you tell it was blue?”

“Moon’s moon shown through-bee-doo!”

Moonlight. I asked her if she would mind if I looked at her room, and she said she didn’t. Moon’s bedroom was off the kitchen, so I walked through there. Her kitchen stayed surprisingly clean for someone who constantly had the munchies and preferred her couch to anywhere on Earth. She was singing “Kum-By-Yah” and “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat” back and forth as I went up the stairs. I could still hear her when I got into her room.

I had been in Moon’s room once before, but I hadn’t really thought about it then. She had a pretty big bedroom. Her bed was just a big futon mattress on the floor. I saw the fern she was talking about. It hung in a corner by a big book shelf that had all sorts of  CDs stacked all over them. One copy of Siddhartha, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Alchemist. Her bed had like nine different possible blankets or sheets, all in a jumble in various parts of the bed. I think she had a dozen pillows. Everything was different colors. What should I do? I stretched out on her bed. I took a bright yellow throw pillow with beads sewn all over it and propped my head up so that I could see where the guy must have stood. I imagined him there in his blue hoodie, watching. Brr.

Moon had her bed sort of in the middle of her room. It really wasn’t against the wall. It wasn’t near anything. It’s like she left it where it fell when she moved in.

She had some sort of insight about the place all the sudden, but she couldn’t quite say it to herself. What was it?

Moon’s room had a giant window in it. It had two panels that you could open up with a little turny-thing to let in air. It was probably eight feet by eight feet. It didn’t look out on much but city, street and sky, but I bet that window is the reason why Moon took this apartment. I bet she got all stoned and stared out this window and it felt as good to her as actually being outside.

What was it she had said? “Moon’s moon…” Right, right, right! She could see the moon out this window, I thought. No wonder she didn’t even have any curtains up on it. She would want to be able to look out at her namesake. I looked outside and it was dim enough that I could see the moon. It was waxing near a quarter at that point and it looked nice up in the sky, a clear night.

And so it sank in. Are you one step ahead of me? Don’t expect me to have any big revelations here for you. I will be the first to admit that I am not the smartest gal who’s ever had a Ph.D. in Saks 5th Avenue. I have been to Moon’s apartment time and time again and I had never given that window much thought. But of course, but of course. You’ve already got it.

He could see her from outside.

This is it! The fast-paced resolution of Casa Del Queso. Everyone returns to the house and Anissa finally sees The Dago and all the water pouring from his face. Darrah does what she can to make it better, but she finally makes the wrong move. Of course, as Brown knew, it was all fated to happen from the beginning, even his role in it.

Approximately 22 minutes.

Darrah hangs out and tries to stay awake by juggling as Misty screams at Mike, Mike tries to get away, Anissa glowers and the Library Thing tries to get her clothes on. Misty figures out how to get the cake to quit coming out of the Oldsmobile’s tailpipe. When they finish yelling, they each decide where they want to go next.

Approximately 17 minutes.

Chapter 6 — A lot can happen when you listen outside a mobile home. Besides Darrah’s big discovery about what Anissa didn’t do, they also realize that Eric has been at the house all along. He just collapsed in the front yard. Brown didn’t see that coming, but he does see something. But what?

Appoximately 38 minutes.

If you’ve had any trouble listening to any parts of the podiobook, or just thought chapter 2 seemed too long, I just reloaded new versions of all those files. They should sound more consistent and they should play reliably on more different kinds of MP3 players. Still working this technical stuff out, so I apologize if you had any trouble.