AtDTDA: 19 Rocco & Pino, pt. 1 [530/531]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Tore Andersen [where is he? Please come back!] sent me a note 
remarking how we'd make a pretty good Pino & Rocco, he the 
restraining and careful one, me the crazy guy who likes to blow 
shit up. So we have a pairing similar to Mason & Dixon. a mirror 
image where one half is upside-down, like some 
refracting/magnifying optics.

Fatou [the slinky one in a skirt and undies borrowed from Britney Spears]
sidles up to Pino, wanting to know how many ships he's blown up, a repeat of 
the flirting Kit recieved on the previous page. Rocco, paranoid wet blanket that 
he is, warns that Fatou might be a lady spy:

          "You are safe with me, Lieutenant," Fatou assured him. "Any 
          Government that hired me to spy would have to be hopeless           
          idiots. . . ."
          
          "My point exactly!" Rocco staring in righteous density.

The girls discuss the marriage potential of these two walking shipwrecks.

Rocco & Pino are working on a souped-up torpedo, modifications made by 
'Red' mechanicians from Ghent. 

          "Why didn't you sell the plans to the English?" one of the 
          Ghent machinists had thought to ask. "Why give them away 
          to some stateless collection of Anarchists?"

          Rocco was puzzled. "Steal from one government to sell to 
          another?" He and Pino looked at each other.

          "Let's kill him," Pino suggested brightly. "I killed the last one, 
          Rocco, so it's your turn."

          "Why is he running away?" said Rocco.

          "Come back, come back!" cried Pino. "Oh Well, they're all so 
          stolid up here."

Useful definitions courtesy of against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com.      :

http://tinyurl.com/2ys2xx

Not so Po-Mo sounds wafting in the background:
Rafael Orozco: Chopin Preludes
Seraphim Lp [thrift shop special}