I Smell Esther Williams

THE RIVER

Look in my closet. There is a blue double-breasted blazer with gold buttons. It is the afternoon and someone is watching us from their sofa and eating cheez doodles. O.K.? Do you hear the anvil falling from the sky and striking you on the head? Now you’re an accordion. I’m putting on my blazer and I’m skipping along the river bank, playing a polka on you. The crippled mice are tossing away their crutches and dancing behind me! The cute mouse women are screaming and fainting. But someone with a big vacuum cleaner is chasing us, and sucking the mice up. There goes the last one! Thup! Now I’m sitting alone on the edge of the river in my blue blazer, and you’re an accordion. Assume your old shape and let’s go for a drive in my motorboat, or else we will die.