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about amplifiers. This includes Jeremy’s perspective on amplifiers, and cost analysis, and how his boss’s view of amplifiers contrasts with his own. This is the topic that requires most of the uh-huhs, and only by staring straight at him and forcing her eyes open a tiny bit wider, can Mirabelle appear somewhat interested. Unlike his penis, his stream of chatter does not rise and fall. It maintains a steady flow, and Mirabelle begins to question whether William Jennings Bryan still deserves to be known as America’s most grandiose public speaker. Jeremy booms and bellows opinions and observations for a full thirty minutes, none of which ever leave the sphere of Jeremy. Eventually, he sputters out, returns to bed, and puts an arm around her, in a position yet uncategorized by Mirabelle that gives her some more of what she wants. Even with the ignoble flailing that took place earlier, she feels as though she has been wanted, and she knows he has thought her beautiful, and that she has made him happy and energized him, and that the expenditure of his energy on her has sent him into a deep, deep sleep.

The Weekend
    IT IS 9 A.M., AND for the second time that morning Mirabelle is awake. The first time was two hours earlier when Jeremy slipped out, giving her a kiss good-bye that was so formal it might as well have been wearing a tuxedo. She didn’t take it badly because, well, she couldn’t afford to. She also is glad he’s gone, not looking forward to the awkward task of getting to know a man she’s already slept with. A little eye of sunlight forms on her bed and inches its way across her bedspread. She gets up, mixes her Serzone into a glass of orange juice, and drinks it down as though it were a quick vodka tonic, fortifying herself for the weekend.
    Weekends can be dangerous for someone of Mirabelle’s fragility. One little slipup in scheduling and she can end up staring at eighteen hours of television. That’s why she joined a volunteer organization that goes out and builds and repairs houses for the disadvantaged, a kind of community cleanup operation, called Habitat for Humanity. This takes care of the day. Saturday night usually offers a spontaneous get-together with the other Habitat workers in a nearby bar. If that doesn’t happen, which this night it doesn’t, Mirabelle is not afraid to go to a local bar alone, which this night she does, where she might run into someone she knows or nurse a drink and listen to the local band. As she sits in a booth and checks the amplifiers for Jeremy’s signature stencil, it never occurs to Mirabelle to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a shy girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred. She never feels sorry for herself, except when the overpowering chemistry of depression inundates her and leaves her helpless. She moved from Vermont hoping to begin her life, and now she is stranded in the vast openness of L.A. She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscient voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her.
    But that night, the voice does not come, and she quietly folds herself up and leaves the bar.
    The voice is to come on Tuesday.

Monday
    MIRABELLE AWAKES TO A CRISP L.A. day with an ice blue chill in the air. The view from her apartment is of both mountains and sea, but she can see it only by peering around her front door. She feeds the cats, drinks her potion, and puts on her best underwear––although it is unlikely anyone will see it today, unless someone bursts in on