3. Someone slipped me haullcinagenic something or others at dinner. I toss and turn and sweat profusely in my bed. The moon shines on the inscrutable ocean. Melville comes to me. I loan him twenty dollars. He smells. He wraps himself in the skin of a whale's penis and sings a ribald tune. "How ribald," I say, and tip him a quarter. "I really wasn't finished with The Confidence Man," he says. "I really didn't mean for it to be that weird. I was in a weird mood then. That Pierre book was super-weird, and I guess my head was still freaked a bit from all that. I was like a goddamm rock and roll star after Typee and it went straight downhill after that. What can I say, I freaked." We talk about Bartelby and cry. We are overwhelmed by the complex horrific staggering beautiful dance that is life. 4. In the morning I meet Shotwell under the palapa down by the beach. He's got the Melville in his hand. He names his price. I counter with an offer half as much. We haggle, then giggle. Like schoolgirls, we kiss each other on the cheek. At that moment the twenty pound bag of sand drops from the ceiling and hits me on the head. Shotwell steals my money and keeps the Melville. 5. I dream that I am on a cruise ship in white linen pants, sipping a mimosa. The cuffs of my pants are rolled up to the middle of my calves and I wear a snuggly-fitting pink t-shirt under my white linen jacket. As it turns out, Anna Marie and Angelina are not mother and daughter. They are instead two hot chicks who are really into weird sex. They are in my cabin "preparing" for my entrance. Melville passes me in the guise of a donkey. "Be true to your dreams," he says. "Yes," I say, scratching him gently between the ears. 1 | 2 | Home