Okay. OBVIOUSLY *some* people are having a hard time surviving without more Burlington Story. This one goes out to thebot and to Anonymous Home.com Visitor Who is Reading All of Me and Not Signing The Goddamn Guestbook. Also to MG but if I link to her one more time I'm going to have to just go sign myself up as her agent for promoting her relentlessly. And to Turtleguy who gets to play whichever male part he chooses in my After-School Special.

Once again, as we start back into the Saga, at the Fourth Installment, if you haven't, I suggest you go back and read Part I, Part II, and Part III for the reasonably important background. Not to mention my incredibly fabulous descriptive prose. (yes, I admit it, I just copied this part from the last one. Sorry. Standard Saga Style.)

There would appear to be a few folks out there who are wanting something by way of actual Events. Pah, I say. Bah, humbug, Phooey, and thpft. But all right. I succumb.

Actually, most of the events are essentially the same. But I will begin at the beginning, and if you get bored, I am more than certain you will let me know.

S. and D1 and I, as mentioned earlier, consumed more cough syrup than would cure the whole goddamn nation-state of Bangladesh and a good parcel of Pakistan of pneumonia. My standard joke of the moment was that I was going to launch a suit against the makers of Robitussin (who, coincidentally, later on were clients of mine) because I still had a cough after what must have been gallons of cough syrup.

It is simply impossible for me to explain the effects of dextromethorphan hydrobromide upon one. Suffice it to say that every sense is affected, and that doors open that had been closed for at least years. I should also note that this practice was called "dexing", after, of course, the active ingredient I just mentioned.

So, we would dex. We would dex and we would walk the bike path I have spent so much time describing. D1 and I located, through the hexagonal one-eyed haze of dex, a connection each of us thought was lost. S. and I discovered that we had always had that connection, just never known how to articulate it. Not that we could verbalize it, but we could articulate it.

Forgive me, once again, if I get flowery or stylistic. This is the sort of thing that pushes me easily back over the edge of actual writer-dom, and I have never claimed to be compelling as a writer. Beat me with midgets if I get too bad, please.

S. and I would sit on the ground and laugh, thinking the same things. Barely a word needed to be spoken between the two of us. S. had a silent laugh, punctuated by glottal stops, and if you have never learned an arabic language and do not know what a glottal stop is, think of something like an interrupted cricket. D1 would watch us, she as his girl, me as something like a sister.

There was one time when they were in the bedroom and D1 was going down on her. I know this not because of some bizarre psyche-to-libido connection, but because as he was entering the bedroom he mentioned that he was going in there to, cough, "turn her brain to drool", and I knew what that was code for, because I had been told. Sinead O'Connor was playing in there, and it was coming up on the song that I knew turned her to hysterics. It meant the same thing to me as it did to her, but the boy that it meant to both of us had not meant as much to me as it had to her. I forget the name of the song. No, wait, I don't. Phoenix from the Flames, I believe. It starts, "Dublin in a rainstorm..." and we both thought of the one boy we had shared, and we screamed that song to each other driving in her car, with the volume cranked up loud enought that neither of us ever had to hear the other scream. Never once have I listened to the beginning of that song without lighting a cigarette, and the smokers in my small readership will understand what I mean.

After the song had begun, D1 came storming out of the room and I looked at him from the couch, where I was waiting for them to finish. Not that that was usual, but that night D1 and I were going out on our own, without S., and what he was doing was partly to help her go to bed before we left her alone. He glared at me from the doorway and asked WHY didn't you tell me? although I had never said anything about understanding the song or that she would of course spurn him as soon as it came on, and I said, how could I? I could not interrupt you and he said with your MIND, dammit

And I don't think I ever really truly learned how to do that although there have been times I have come very close.

I was the designated thief of the family, because D1 was on house arrest and S. was too frightened and I was also very good at it. Did I mention how broke we were? We stole food from Price Chopper, the goddamndest cheap place EVER.

I had a brilliant routine, if you were a blindfolded retarded alien with a heart of gold.

On my trips I was always, always still rather fucked up from the night before. I wore my trenchcoat and fedora in the 80-degree weather, deciding that it made me Incognito. Never mind the purple hair sticking out from under the hat. Burlington Vermont did not see a lot of purple hair. On several occasions people called me "sir" because female and short hair and fedora did not compute. Under the trenchcoat, which was laden with pockets, were pocket-appendages, hip and waist-sacks.

Three stores carried what I was looking for: a drugstore (forget which), the K-Mart, and the Price Chopper, all in the same strip mall. I started at the drugstore. I would rip the bottles out of the packaging and toss the boxes deep into the shelves as double-protection, first, so I would not set off an alarm, and second, because if I did get caught it would be terribly hard to prove that I had stolen the stuff.

I never got caught.

I would walk out of my last stop, Price Chopper, many ounces heavier and clinking audibly. Saunter, rather. Because I was invincible and Incognito. Nobody would EVER recognize the scrawny chick with pupils the size of saucers wandering around in a trenchcoat and fedora with purple fucking hair. Nope. No way.

And now I do believe that I have fulfilled my obligations for the evening. There have been Events. There have been dedications, and there has even been a little bit of Magic. So I will be having no more complaints.

onehanded