VL-IV p40, 41

[Michael Bailey]

Page 40

Zoyd's astral traveling.
So his daughter is what, 14?  and he's never told her this before?  (Good)

"Say hi to 'em up on Phantom Creek, OK?"
Which is where he has arrived.
- oh yeah, the thought waves come in swells, there were a few building
up to the big one, and then a smaller reminiscence from this morning
flips him onto the beach.


"strumming over a cattle guard"
- never noticed that before, that's nice.
-- had a very vague image of cattle guard, here is a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_guard


Page 41

"he wrote her a postdated check he'd still have to scramble, this day
already so advanced, to cover."
RC and Moonpie take checks, therefore must have a bank account,
therefore are planning to pay taxes (possibly)

"They transferred the crawdads to tubs of water in the back of the camper"
which is a furnished camper, can't imagine that being anything but fun...
"lurching and sloshing back down the road"

Why did he go to the Steam Donkey (a bar that dated back into "the fog
of the last century" - so he's again riding into a fog...) instead of
the Lost Nugget, his usual haunt?  It being the anniversary of his
divorce (possibly) and he was still planning the public act of
craziness  (as he'd been doing "for weeks" p.3) and let's see, his
usual was jumping thru a window and this year he's gonna get a chain
saw instead?  I'd call that a contemplated escalation of the worst
kind.  Even though windows are expensive and bystanders could
conceivably get cut, something about a guy running amok with a
chainsaw is a little scarier.  Harder to stop?  Could go on longer?
Hmmm...

And the back booth of a bar where he's not such a regular is where
he's been putting together this plan to wreak havoc.  So his bud Van
Meter seeks him out and hears him out...talks about stuff maybe he
doesn't want his other friends to hear...

"Educated pussy," Zoyd sighed, "don't know why, f' some reason I
must've been a easy mark."

The time line will keep coming up.  My suggestion is 1967 beach house,
1968/9 somewhere in there College of the Surf, 1969/70 marriage and
production of Prairie, but I could be forgetting clues.

So, what were they doing, ie how did each of them spend their days
whilst married?  I'm thinking that Zoyd won the bread and was happy to
do that.  Probably not that much help around the house.
When and how did he (and apparently Van Meter) find out that "the
other federal guy was porkin' [Zoyd's] wife"?

"She was a filmmaker, went to Berkeley, I was working on people's
gutters, she rilly freaked when she found out she was pregnant."
So I'm thinking of the scene in Foul Play where Gloria Mundy (Goldie
Hawn) ducks into the bar to avoid her pursuer and Stanley Tibbitts
(Dudley Moore) picks her up and takes her to his lovenest..
Frenesi lets Zoyd get a lot further than poor Stanley, but eventually
cuts him off even more painfully.

"...Prairie, who for a while had been a topic of debate."
one's parents contemplating terminating the pregnancy that resulted in
one?  maybe just one's mother? Methinks it was Zoyd recommending the
LSD in the formula, and Frenesi's mom recommending the Trotsky, but
both trying to talk her out of it...
But imagining that too closely would be so un-Zoydian...






--
"Feliz Navidad"