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Marie, it s wonderful. People are always complaining,  Oh, I need to get away,
I need to relax, I don t want to think about it. If they turn on the tube and
it s some program about current events they rush to change the channel to get
some silly rerun of a sitcom. We spend ninety percent of our lives escaping.
If you really, truly, completely deal with the real world... it s
fascinating!
She asked him to go away. She said she wanted to sleep, to get away from it
all. So he left, but she didn t sleep. She started to turn on the television
set high on the wall across from her bed, but a flicker of movement out of the
corner of her eye claimed her attention.
Out there in the sky, turning in tight maneuvers, a Sopwith Camel was having a
dogfight with a large green and gray pterodactyl., She knew it was really
happening out there, because from the angle at which she lay she could see
other windows in the wing of the hospital to her right, and there were people
leaning out and pointing at the sky.
For a long time she watched the marvelous ballet of wood-and-fabric airplane
and
Cretaceous flying reptile.
She was waiting on the sidewalk outside the recording company for the married
executive to pick her up for their date. He had called it their  illegal
tryst and she had not liked the way his face pulled up on one side when he
smiled like that; but she had been empty of plans for that night, and it was
something to do not to be alone. The married executive had, promised her
dinner and a movie. They were going to see a very popular space war movie that
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everyone said was the return of entertainment. It was something to do.
As she stood there at the curb, a 1941 Packard pulled up and a woman rolled
down the window. It was a green Packard, highly polished, as though someone
who loved it had waxed it endlessly.  Anne Marie, the woman called from the
car.
She walked over. It was her mother.
Her father was driving. The scent of pipe tobacco came from inside the car.
 We thought we might have a picnic, like the old times, just the three of us,
her mother said.
 Would you like to come along?
She began to cry, even as she nodded and her mother reached back to unlock the
rear door. She got inside and sat very quietly beside the picnic basket. The
Packard thrummed to life, and pulled away.
Anne Marie Stebner s mother and father had been dead for eleven years. It was
a wonderful picnic.
Sailing the catamaran through the reefs of sapphire rocks, she made for the
island.
The wind smelled of freshly mowed grass and carried with it the faint tinkling
of wind chimes.
 If it gets too lonely out here, she said aloud,  perhaps I ll start a
fast-food franchise.
Something with Lebanese food, maybe.
As she spoke, a group of golden-tanned men and women emerged from behind a
dune on the island, and waved at her, waved her in through the precious reefs.
 Or I can always rent a television set somewhere, she said, smiling broadly.
Several of the golden people produced oddly shaped musical instruments and
began playing Hoagy
Carmichael s  Skylark. It had always been her favorite tune.
She tacked against the wind, and headed in to the island. Reality was fighting
back. If the real world was too horrible for the lives it served, then the
real world would alter itself.
Anne Marie Stebner beached the catamaran and ran up the sand toward the golden
island dwellers.
 Hi, she called to them.  I ve always wanted to live in a place like this, I
just didn t know where to go to find it. What s happening around here?
So they told her. And she could not, in her wildest dreams, have believed
anything could be that terrifically interesting. But it was. There in the real
world.
The Other Eye of Polyphemus
INTRODUCTION
I was dragged, kicking and screaming, on a tour through the lives of two
women, once upon a time.
It was one of the most awful experiences of all time.
Including the Spanish Inquisition, the murder of Garcia Lorca, the genocide of
the
Brazilian indians, the crucifixion of Spartacus army of slaves, the sinking [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]