(September 20th, 2024)
Two Dead Girls by Thomas Newman plays.
This is a funny poem about five little monkeys who walked along the shore.
One of the monkeys decided to go sailing and left. So only four monkeys were left. These four monkeys climbed a tree, Very sadly one fell down and now only there were three monkeys left on the tree. These three monkeys found a pot of glue (gum). One of the monkeys got stuck in the pot of glue. So only two monkeys were left. These two monkeys found a currant bun and one of them took the bun and ran away. So only one monkey was left and what did this monkey do? He got married and lived happily ever after.
Jack Kennedy sits in the basement of the Anderson House. With Bobby his brother. And Martin Luther King Junior.
A Black man at the back of a bus in his nightmares tosses and turns in his sleep. Wakes. Everyday he sat there…exhausted.
“And I overdosed.” says dead Boomer woman who had long dark blond hair. “I took a drug in the late 1960’s…got on a Greyhound bus…and felt fine. Slept off my high. But by the time I walked home…I was a goner.” She thinks. “I was 24.”
“Where were you traveling to and from?” asks Lacey.
“You wouldn’t know.” she says.
“Sorry.” says Lacey.
“No, you’re fine.” she says. “It’s just not an area you’d know.”
The music plays.
A crow yells outside.
“They’re dumb. The Kennedys are dumb.” says the Boomer woman.
“How so?” says a dad Black woman from Minneapolis.
“I used Valium. I misused Valium.” says the Boomer woman. “By the way. Ahhh…did you hear what happened?”
“Oh! The evp?” says Lacey.
“YES!!” she says.
“Was Jack realizing Lem has actually been sexually involved with me?” asks Lacey.
“Every…day.” she says, eerily. “Every…day. Every day. YES!!!” she yells. “Come on! Yes!!”
Lacey thinks.
“Was she talking to my father?” asks Lacey.
“Clark Gable. And Edna St. Vincent Millay. Yes.” she says. “It seemed culturally appropriate to Sinclair Lewis. And C. S. Lewis. …And F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
The song ends.
“So they’re hearing people outside of time.” says Lacey.
“I feel so real. Don’t I? Huh. …Yeah. I mean…some people are there. For a a reason. Like me. …I was on one of those buses. Dying.” she says.
Lacey’s found a Minnesota paranormal investigation team online because she stayed at the Grant House Hotel.
“I can feel it.” says Lacey.
“It…was…awful.” she says.
“You knew you were dying.” says Lacey.
“I did. And I felt numb. And…high. But…also really weird. And…progressively more so over time. It felt… It was like a feeling of powerlessness. …I had crossed a bridge and there was no going back. …And I was just sitting on a bus. You know? Minding my own business. …So mundane. So ordinary. …But…I was dying. Dying! …And there was… I felt so stupid. So STUPID. …And I kept thinking, ‘This is-“ she says.
“Too anti-climatic?” says Lacey.
“Yeah! Way too anticlimactic. Like…I’m a bus! And this is where I die!?!?” she says, laughing with Lacey. “No! This cannot be the end. …But it was. …I may have died the way you saw.
I was…carrying my luggage. My bag. Down a dusty gravel road. To home. Surrounded by fields. On a sunny day. Possibly in September’s actually. And…I just…had to lay down. So…I put my luggage next to me…and just laid there. And…died. Alone. Scared.” she says, suddenly finding Lacey maternal.
Foolishment by Thomas Newman plays.
“I’m sorry.” she says.
Lacey fights back tears.
“I know you care.” she says. “You can’t fool me.”
Lacey remains quiet.
“Yes. I’m with God now.” she says.
“Good.” says Lacey.
“I’m sorry.” she says.
“Yeah. Your death really bothers me.” says Lacey.
She cries too. “I’m okay now though.” she says.
“You’re with God?” says Lacey.
“Yeah!” she says.
“Good.” says Lacey.
She gets back on the bus. Looks out of the Greyhound bus window. Thinks. Sober. …Sees the same thing. Sober. Analyzes herself…in peace.
A tiny piece of dust…happily floats by a window. The sun shining on it brightly.
“Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.” says Evelyn Waugh.
The song ends.
Coffey’s Hands by Thomas Newman plays.
Jack sits in the Palmer House.
“Go check!” he yells at Bobby.
Bobby checks.
“Every day.” says Bobby.
Martin looks at Jack. “Come on! I’m talking now. …Okay!? …You have got…to get a grip.”
“It’s not scientifically possible to pretend to be homosexual.” says a demon to Jack.
The demon of lust…and sexual violence…sits alone in the Palmer House Hotel. On a chair. In the dark. It stares at Lacey. Smiles. Kindly.
Why? Because her father was Thomas Banks.
“I’m a familiar spirit. I knew her father.” says the demon.
“SHIT!!” yells Bobby.
“She’s a basket case!” says a demon impersonating Lem to JFK who typically falls for these imposters.
“Why did you do this!? To yourself?” asks a somewhat gay man. Who has seen ghosts.
Jack laughs at him.
“Oh! Big scary demon!” he says mocking the rather powerful demon in Sauke Centre.
“I’m still indebted to her.” he says about Lacey to Jack Kennedy.
Jack stares at him.
“But she’s a Christian!” says Bobby Sr..
“Yeah? So what!?! …I made an agreement with her father’s organization, at least. And…it’s binding. She can personally protect herself. But ironically…I’m still on the clock.” he says.
“But you can’t trick the system?” says Harvey Weinstein.
“No! But that’s not what she did.” he says.
“So to Lacey you seem…like a worker?” says a woman.
“I am. Demons are just demons. We’re real. And extremely dangerous without Christ. But…yeah. It’s all overcome with Christ.” he says. “It’s kinda fun to say that, actually.”
“So…you worked for her father!” says a witch.
“Yeah! For years.” he says.
“I’m not scared of you!!” says JFK, trying to sound tough and brave.
“I repeat: Jack…you did this to yourself. …You were cruel to Lem either way. …And this is what you get.” says a gay man.
“I wasn’t gay!!” says JFK, incredulously.
Condemned Man by Thomas Newman plays.
“We look like idiots, Jack.” says Bobby.
Jack haughtily laughs it off.
From 2022.
“Jack. You were. You liked me. Sexually.” says a gay man who’s alive.
“SO WHAT!??” yells JFK. The hair on Lacey’s head moves.
“So that’s gay, Jack.” says Jackie.
“YOU THINK THAT! YOU THINK THAT. NOT ME!!!” yells JFK.
“No. That’s fact.” says Evelyn Waugh, calmly.
“That’s not homosexuality! …We liked women!” says JFK.
“It’s not an either or.” says Jimmy Stewart.
“Actually…you probably could pretend to be gay. Just saying.” says Saoirse by an unmarked grave. In Hibbing.
“Yeah. You could.” says a male ghost standing there.
“You’re me!!” says JFK staring at him.
“No.” says the man, very confused.
“That’s ME!!” yells JFK at God. It’s as if he has no way to accept that…this man…who looks a tiny bit like him…could have existed. Without being him.
Jack seems as though he’s basically insane. By choice. To avoid reality.
“He’s not sane.” says the man in the graveyard, sadly.
“No. He’s not.” says a woman in the future. “He seems to think he’s lots of other people.”
“I pretended to be gay.” says Lem.
“We don’t understand.” says JP Kennedy, calmly. “Lots of people just don’t understand. It’s not typical.”
Later.
“The story of the monkeys? That’s very much my life. I got stuck.” says Lem. “And I felt…incredible despair. …But lots of other people have that experience. You reflect back on your life…and feel…despair. …I did. Lots of people do. What would have made me a happy life? Living it.”
A demon of despair and anguish cackles. He’s dressed in blue. Mr. Blue. …He stares at Lacey. “You still think your head could have made this all up. But you’re hesitantly hopeful.”
“Yes.” says Lacey.
“You’re actually mocking evil with your reserve.” he says.
“You shouldn’t have fallen.” says Lacey.
“Yeah. You’re right.” he admits. “I’m Mr. Blue. By the way. …When you started your blog about this? Years ago? I inspired Mr. Blue. The name. Because I’m blue. …Bleu. …Cerulean, if you will. …But you had your heart in God…so…there was nothing I could do. It’s just a weird thing now. Quirky. Creepy.”
Lacey thinks.
“I’ve inspired at least once death.” he says.
“And mine.” says Saoirse.
“Two girls.” says the demon. “Two girls.” he repeats.
Later.
“I had been using recreationally for a while. So…I used several times that day. Including once before I got on the bus with friends. …I took way too much…because I was curious…and bored…and I just wanted to see what would happen. That was the late 1960’s. A boyfriend of mine had been prescribed Valium and I got it from him. …He may have come back from Vietnam and been prescribed Valium. And I took his medication because didn’t want to use it. …We were still sorta together when I died. But barely. …He married someone else and found out years later that I had died though. I never called. Like I had planned to. And…he moved on.” says the woman from the Greyhound Bus.
“Did people avoid telling him because you died from his drugs?” asks Lacey.
“Yeah.” she says. “He’d possibly have killed himself.”
Lacey thinks.
“My parents were…nice enough. My mother was an alcoholic though.” she says.
Lacey thinks.
“I just…got so tired. And at first I just slept because I assumed it was like always. But then as I woke up hours later…or while later, anyway, I felt weak. Like…I’d lost a lot of blood. Or something. And I kept thinking it’d go away. Because it was a while after I took it. But then I recalled someone I’d heard about who had died later, hours later…so…I knew it was possible. But…I knew if that was the case that it was bad! I was…dead. …And yeah…I staggered off the bus…holding myself up. And then I slowly made my way off with my luggage. Tan. …You had to hold it. And yes, I had long hair like Marcia Brady. Long, straight Hippie hair.” she says.
Lacey sees a train pass by where she’s sitting. Waiting for her groceries.
“You… What is that?” asks Lacey.
“That’s a sense of doom you feel.” she says.
And at that Lacey snaps back into reality or the present or something slightly more than she’s felt for years.
“Was my father Tom Banks?” asks Lacey. “Was my life cursed?”
“In a way…yes.” she says.
“It feels like my life flew off a cliff. Early.” says Lacey.
“It might have.” she says.
“You know you started to lose your sense of ‘reality’ when you went shopping in London at Whole Foods in 2012. It was too weird to you. Just…the concepts.” she says.
“I wish you’d died there.” says her father. “If you could have had your kids in Heaven.”
The woman who overdosed looks sad.
“We barely recovered.” he says. “Her death destroyed us.”
“I died. Early.” says her mother.
“So did I.” he says. “Lung cancer.”
“You wore White Shoulders?” says Lacey.
“Yes.” she says. “And L’Aimant.”
“And L’Origen?” says Lacey.
“Yes. And a few others.” she says.
“You were a very middle class family.” says Lacey. “Like…solidly middle class. Privileged by today’s standards, sadly.”
“Yes! We were…very American. White. We had a house. Savings. And she went to college. Or started to. …But…she got a boyfriend who was into drugs. Her Junior year. And…she just never recovered.”
“I’m so sorry.” says Lacey.
“Well…we’re all dead now. But it was rough!” says the mother.
Her father nods.
“I killed them.” says the woman, with shock and guilt.
Weirdly the car turns on on its own. Lacey feels chills on the back of her neck.
“Did one of you open my cupboard today?” asks Lacey.
“Yes.” says an old household worker. He functioned slightly as a maid? It’s unclear where he came from. He’s shorter, slender and meek.
“Where did you come from?” asks Lem.
“A local house. In Saint Paul. I was on staff.” he says.
“That’s not true!” says Lem.
“Are you from Duluth?” asks Lacey.
“Yes.” he admits.
“He worked for your father. In a hotel and club.” says a woman.
“That’s true.” he says.
“But you had been a valet?” says Lacey.
“Yah.” he says.
“He did better, financially, working for your father.” says a woman.
“How did you get it open!?” says Lacey. “It’s complicated.”
“I have ways.” he says.
Lacey feels sick. “That’s form you?”
“Yes.” says the dead overdose victim.
“And I’m smelling rubber.” says Lacey.
“That’s the bus. Do you smell the air?” she says.
“Yes. I think. It smells amazing.” says Lacey.
She grins. “Yeah! I loved walking home. Best memories. It was tiring, but…so pretty. And relaxing. …My idea was to get high for the bus ride…and then chill out, so to speak, on the walk home. But…I took way too much. My tolerance level was too high. For my own safety. And…
*the car turns off again*
I mean…I could have relaxed without the drugs. I just…was avoiding my own pain.” she says.
“Is your boyfriend still alive?” asks Lem.
“Yeah.” she says. “He’s old. He’s in his 80’s. But he’s alive. …He will be shocked when he reads her blog.” she says laughing. “When he dies. He’s gonna be shocked. Because…you’re hearing everything. And…it’s our story. He will be shocked.”
“Thank you for sharing all that.” says Lem.
“You two be careful!” she says.
She cries.
“Be careful!” she says. “You’re worrying me.”
“I’m sorry! Pray for us!!!” says Lacey.
And at that Lacey’s groceries arrive.
“What’s biotin!?” says Lacey’s son, with suspicion. “It sounds scary!”
It’s in his drink.
“It should be okay.” says the dead woman.
“Thank you for worrying.” says Lacey.
She smiles. “If there’s not reincarnation I’m not your daughter. Just so you know. Because you’re so maternal.” she says.
“Okay.” says Lacey.
The woman goes to pray for them.
Keen to Cross the Pond 