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6. YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME CREDIT: Holy Holey Underwear.

In the night I awake.

I hear the muted thunder, hold my breath to listen, hear it in the continuous mode.

I need to urinate. I don't want to stir. But I do. I retrieve my pants from where I draped them off the top of my guitar case, leaning in the corner. The silence in the room is deep. I'm aware of the sound of my feet going down the legs of the jeans. I slip step, tiptoe, out to the middle of the room away from their bed hollow, try not to move my arms to not activate the lighting any more than necessary. I quietly close the bathroom door, do my business, and come out.

I turn and go to the ramp, down to the living room, cross to the passage down to the back door. I don't need to open the door to see and hear the storm, but I do, get misted, close it, hear it latch. I ponder the science of the constancy of the lightning and thunder. I saw something sort of like that once or twice on Earth, I think, driving south one rainy night toward Memphis, Tennessee.

But not like this. Frequent lightning, spidering across the sky, followed on by another strike, sometimes huge bolts, there at Memphis. But here... Constant! Crackling! Continuous! Strobe-light frequency. Hours and hours. All day, all night long!

I come back up to the... living room. Eenunh is coming down the ramp, hair ruffled, sleepy-eyed. She says something, points into the room. She goes and picks up "To Kill A Mockingbird", passes it from her right hand to her left. She waves her right hand vigorously at the ceiling. The light comes up. She lays on a lily-pad chair, pulls her legs up, lays on her right side, tucks her dress around her calves. She reaches to the chair next to hers, pulls it over to hers, like before. She lays the book on the chair, busies herself with the comfort of her dress pulled up around her legs, settles.

She wants to read. I'm okay with that. I go, pick up the book, and sprawl in the chair next to her. I begin to read. Same routine, until... Eenunh gets up, crowds into the same chair with me! She points at intervals to a word, I pronounce it, she points to a sentence and passes her finger along it. I re-read it. She points at the first word in the sentence. I say it. She points at the second word. We go across the sentence. She sweeps her nail across the sentence. I read it. She settles down then, gets in the same position she was in her own chair, except, her legs across my left thigh, her face at my naked shoulder. I feel her breath.

I go on reading with occasional interruptions to read word by word through a sentence, her returning to her... listening position.

When she has stopped doing it, interrupting the read, I look, see she's asleep, hear... and feel... her steady breathing. I stir a bit, thinking to lay the book on the table as she does, open, pages down, and maybe go back to bed. She snuggles against me. I stop, let her rest there. I like her there. I like her trust in me. I like... I like a lot of things. I wonder if I should be liking things. But... I like things. Sleep takes me.

I awake, see her dark silhouette going toward the ramp, up and almost out of sight; she stops, motions for me to come, with her right hand, points up the ramp with her left. The thunder rumbles. I like her honey smell, lingering there by my side. There I go liking things again. She goes on.

There's light in the cracks around the window closures. It must be early morning. I know from the noise it's overcast. I'm not well-rested, but I feel like I want to explore... something, somewhere. I'm happy to assess that we won't be going wriggly hunting, dragon hunting today.

I'm... happy.

It's... an unfamiliar feeling.

Eenunh has come back. She reaches for me. I take her hand. She pulls me gently up, allowing me to do the actual work of rising. She lets go of my hand, pushes me toward the ramp. I go up. She pushes me toward my bed hollow, goes to her own. I hear her and Tinunh talk, just a few exchanges; then, silence. She's taking off her dress. I'm watching, taking off my pants. We lay down. I drift off to sleep.

I awake. Tinunh is there, head bent to the right side, her fluffy hair hanging down, hand coming to hold it off her face, golden irises flickering, grin. She must have touched me. She smiles, grins, perfect white teeth. She stands up, calls out. Eenunh replies from somewhere, the bathroom I think. Tinunh is dressed. She goes to the bathroom, slips around the door standing half open. I sit up on the edge of the hollow, reach for my pants. I think I want more sleep. I lay back down, pull the sleeping bag flap back over me. It's chilly.

Eenunh comes and speaks to me. I open my eyes. I want to see her face. She speaks again, gestures for me to get up. I sit up. I stretch. She's still there, watching me. I stand. She turns, slowly, goes to the ramp. She comes back, uses her left foot to push my sneakers close to my feet.

"No boots today?" I say aloud. She doesn't respond. "No big lizards trying to eat me?" I say.

She giggles, crosses the room, goes down the ramp. I retrieve a pair of socks from the shelf in the wall, put on the shoes. I wear the same shirt I wore yesterday, freshly laundered, after the baths.

Coming out of the ramp passage I hear them in the kitchen. I go there. I wonder what we're going to eat. I'm not ready to face a wriggly. They're seated. There's a bowl in front of each of them and one by an empty chair. I sit, look down. It's some kind of cereal in a white liquid. I let my head hang there, sleepy, comfortable.

'Could be milk,' I think. 'Probably not,' I say in my head.

The handle sticking up is bigger than the sporks. I lift it out of the bowl. It's a genuine spoon! White material like sporks and the table and the chairs, and the bowl, but, a spoon. I put it back in the bowl, fill it about halfway, just the tip of the spoon, and lift a bite toward my mouth. I look up. They're both watching, motionless, irises flickering. I grin at them. I begin to worry. I put it in my mouth.

It's milk! I move it about on my tongue. It's milk! The cereal is flakes and little globs. They taste like... like... kind of like nuts. Some kind of nuts. It's good! I take another spoonful, a spoon, full. It's good. It's crunchy. The milk is cold. It's milk! They converse, a bit, go on eating. I look at them. They're not looking at me.
Tinunh does the dishes. Eenunh talks to her, looks at me, golden irises. I like... her eyes. They laugh, talk, go silent, talk some more, giggle. Tinunh comes and takes my empty bowl, and spoon.

"Thank you!" I say.

"You're welcome!" she says, little human girl voice. When did she pick that up? I say 'Thank you' and, when I think they're thanking me for anything I do, say, 'You're welcome,' just natural courtesy. Tinunh must 'get it', what I mean by those utterances.

Dishes done, Eenunh motions for me to come with her. We go across the living room, up the ramp. She goes in the bathroom, brushes her teeth. She comes out. I go in. Tinunh comes in, smiling, as I finish brushing my teeth. I go out. I hear her brushing her teeth. Eenunh is standing by the door. Tinunh comes up behind me, pushes me, as Eenunh opens the door. We're going somewhere!

Out in the corridor people are walking both directions, entering apartments, leaving apartments, going up ramps, coming down ramps.

Tinunh leads to our left, straight down the corridor past the ramps up and down to the octo-room. We pass two other up/down ramps, go all the way to the end. The corridor ends with a wall and a ramp up to the right, into the mountain. No down ramp. The ramp turns back on itself, and up. People are going up on the right ahead of us. One man is coming down on our left. The ramp opens on another corridor like ours. We're at the end of it. There's no corridor to the left, just to the right. It's not continuous like running over ours. It goes on the same direction we came down ours. I didn't have to go out into the corridor. They had simply turned across a space between the top and bottom of the ramps. I stepped out to look up the corridor. Lots of people moving.

I'm huffing and puffing. They're trucking on. No wonder they have such beautiful legs! I try not to be obvious but I'm not keeping up.

The ramp turns on itself, and another corridor, this one being above the one we just came from. Two more upramps. Eenunh has stopped, looking back at me from the up-ramp. Tinunh has gone on. The ramp turns on itself, goes up another level. This corridor goes left and right. I see people passing by up there, behind her. I go up. There's another ramp up, but we don't take it. There's a rope across it, to stop anyone from going up. We... must be... on the fifth floor. That ramp goes to the roof... the top of the... mountain.

I come out on a two-way corridor, left and right. People, not a lot, not a crowd, but... several. Men. Women. Children. Families. I have to look the women over to see they're not... my... my girls. They look at me... some stopping in their tracks. They smile. I smile back. I'm learning to smile back, and then to go on and grin. It's.. just... a friendly gesture here I think. I distinguish mine, see them walking, having turned to the right. I feel like a puppy, trying to catch up. I wonder if they think of me as a pet. Eenunh and Tinunh glance back at me at intervals. I feel like a puppy.

There are slatted shutters along the left wall. Windows! Glass windows in an outer wall! Glass windows behind slatted shutters inside! The corridor is lit by the strobing ightning, through the slats, flashes of lightning, chronic thunder. The shutters keep it from being aggravating in its constancy, I think. It's gloomy, save for the white light-emitting stuff low on the wall, and overhead. It is white light; not yellow like down in... our house, the bedroom, the bathroom. Like the white in her living room ceiling, and kitchen. The corridor floor is white, like her living room floor. I look out a crack in a shutter, across the water. Rain pelts the window. The lightning is annoying, flashing, flashing, flashing. They've stopped, looking back at me. Seeing me turn to come along they turn and go ahead.

Now there are more people and... stores! These are stores! We're like... in a mall!

There are smells, like baked stuff, cooked food. Further on there are clothes. There are shoes. There are dishes and cutlery. Some of the people wear the attendant clothes, in the lighter shade of green, the lighter hue of blue. Most... shoppers... are dressed like Tinunh and Eenunh but... there are men in a richer blue, like sport coats and blue pants, black pants, gray pants. The sport coats don't have collars or lapels. They seem to fasten somehow at the edges. I don't see buttons.

Some women are in knit dresses, form-fitting, more than the A-Line pull over dresses my girls wear all the time. Some of the women... their hair seems... styled, some shorter, more... elegantly. They carry white paper bags, gray hornet paper wrapped packages, purses. Some earrings, necklaces. Not many. I know they're looking at me while I'm looking at them. Some of the knit dresses are dappled in blue and off-white, others red and off-white. They're knit like... the blankets in the girls' bed-hollow.

Suddenly three little girls pop out of a store and there's some squealing of voices as Tinunh stops to talk with them. They look at me as I pass, rapid golden irises flicker. Eenunh is looking into a store, waiting. I wait with her, sort of back to back, her looking in, me looking out, at the lightning through the shutters, up and down the hall at... people. Tinunh leaves her group, who stand and stare. I grin, wave, turn follow my girls.

We pass them all, people, stores, finally turn into a darker passage, to the right, into the mountain, less well lit, yellow light-emission application, away from the outer corridor. A short way in there are spindle doors on the left, on the right. Not far in there's a spindle door on the left. Eenunh pushes the doorway open, and enters. Tinunh follows. There's a man at a machine, a grinding noise; dark green attendant color smock. White light-emission here over his workspace.

He has a magnifying device on his head, his golden eyes looking immense behind it, the magnified flickering... ...well... just... weird to see. Eenunh speaks to him. He lifts the magnifier up onto his forehead. He hands her a small pad of yellow-orange paper... yellow-orange... color! ...and a stylus of some sort. It looks shiny and black like graphite. It's the size of a pencil or pen, but just one color, graphite. She makes blue marks on the paper with it. He makes some adjustments to her marks. He tears off that piece and makes marks on a second sheet, shows it to her. Eenunh speaks. He stands and retrieves a rectangular piece of white material. It looks like the stuff the spoons and plates are made of, stiff like plastic. I've seen plastic at the museum. They quit making it in 2097 when the Governments outlawed the Throw Away Commercial Model. They didn't so much 'outlaw' it as require companies that used plastic in packaging or products to have recovery, recycling operations. Rather than comply they simply quit using plastic.

Eenunh speaks. I look at her. Her face is studious, attentive to task. He puts it back, shows a square one. Eenunh points. He shows a piece of the material kind of diamond shaped, with rounded points. It's about three or four inches long, about an inch wide. He turns to his machine on a chest-high counter there, works his foot on a pedal underneath. I see a wheel start to turn there, see the moving connection rods to the pedal. Tinunh moves behind the counter up to his right elbow.They converse. He hands her a pair of glasses; safety glasses I think. She puts them on. He puts the piece of material in a brace, twist-tightens some clips down on it. He brings up a stylus that pivots in to the piece. It grinds! The grinding stops, starts anew, grinds again, stops, starts anew. More grinding and he frees the piece, wipes at it with his thumb. Bits fall away. He hands it to Eenunh. She smiles. He smiles. He looks at me and smiles. I forget to smile; then do.

Eenunh's introducing me! I hear my name in her buzz-voice, then in her human one.

The man says, "Ass Ooman!" and some other stuff. He reaches out his hand. Before I can grip it to shake he has simply brushed my fingertips and withdrawn it. He's talking to the girls. He and Tinunh talk. Eenunh looks at Tinunh with... great love! He reaches for the safety glasses and she takes them off.

He makes notes on a yellow-orange paper pad, hands it to Eenunh, makes more marks on a second sheet, puts it in a stack in a wooden drawer. He hands me some coins, five small coins, all the same size. I say, "Thank you!" I can't wait to look at these coins but the girls hustle me on. I put them in the watch pocket of my jeans.

We walk out, back to the main corridor. Eenunh hands me the piece of white stuff with the engraving and flips her hands up to shoulder level, and points with both hands all around, sweeping, palms up, left to right. I don't know what she's doing.

We walk down the corridor. She points into a clothing store. She walks to a wall of shelves and picks up some white shiny cloth. She unfolds it. They're like boxer brief underwear, like they wear! She holds them up to my waist. Too small. Folds it, lays it back on the shelf. Picks up another one. Holds it to me. She nods her head. "Yes!" she says in her human voice. She picks up several more. They're all white, shiny material. I think maybe she's seen my holy holey underwear. Women. There are different colors of shirts and pants, the only clothing colors I see here, green, too green, like a green wriggly, darker like cactus, light and dark brown, and light and dark blue. Oh, and that yellow-orange pad.

She nods, like she's asking me. I grin and nod. We go to a clerk, a woman who is shorter than Eenunh, taller than Tinunh. Younger than Eenunh, older than Tinunh. Eenunh says, "Ass Oomam," steps around behind me, fishes with her fingers in my left front pocket for the piece of white stuff with the marks on it, shows it to the clerk, who marks on a paper, hands it to me, marks again, and puts that one on a stack in a drawer, like the man did. She gives me three coins, like the man did. I'm smiling. She's smiling. I'm acting like I know what the hell I'm doing!

I think... I just got a credit card! Or... debit card? Or... do I have money in the bank?