Intake Room: The Capra Facility for Wayward Girls. December 8, 1921, 2pm My first day, Mustachioed Officer explains the thinking behind the uniform policy to me. He says that Science has proven that there’s barely any distance between affect and aversion. So the saggy sack dress in the uncomfortable color isn’t traditional punishment. It’s just super-traditional precaution. Mustachioed Officer is really Mustachioed Guard, but he prefers the term officer. He’s recently ulcered. Before employing at Capra, Mustachioed Officer took a degree in astronomy. But someone at the diploma printers messed up and listed his field of study as astrology. This is why Mustachioed Officer has to work here instead of one of the government’s top-secret labs like he wanted. Also, why he cares so much about precise meanings and spellings. After I calligraphy my name a couple hundred times, Mustachioed Officer takes me through three steel doors and down three candelabra-lit corridors. We are running late, or, depending on the way one tells time, we are running early. At the end of the candelabra-lit third corridor is the fourth door. It is also steel and marked with a frocked ladies symbol, like an entrance to a powder room. It’s not a powder room, though it is pungent with femme smell. Inside, there is another man sitting at a desk and Mustachioed Officer introduces this other man as Bearded Officer. Bearded Officer is also really a Bearded Guard, but he doesn’t care one way or another what you call him. This is, apparently, a relatively rare quality around here.
(red eyeleted insouciance cordials our collective bane until a jury sucks dank + scythes us in more pastel-y fixtures focused on the anthropology of leaving girls un-afflicted yet likened to bored meats stuffed w/wallflowerlies + other etceteras whilst the easily chagrined ground continues to contour aroundst our oh so fetching shacks)
Lottie’s Rathskellar. Ricochet’s Mother’s House on the West Side of Chicago. August 3, 1922 The first thing we need to do, according to Czolgosz Jr., is act competent. Underneath my trench coat, I am wearing another trench coat. That’s not what he means, hisses Ricochet. She messes with her satchel full of cigarette papers. Black and white movie screen smoke laurels the brims of our hats. All the bootleggers assimilate into the back of the bar. They seem kind of in-between faces and/or genders right now. The second thing we need to do, according to Czolgosz Jr., is promise not to snitch. He shows us how two of his finger knuckles bulge out weird on the side. Apparently, we have to be our own best critics. I don’t, I say, revel in our outsider status. Eh, of course you don’t, either Czolgosz Jr. or Ricochet responds, with a kind of nasty emphasis on the you. His eyes get kind of lost for a bit while the clean trumpet sound zigzags thru the radio’s static. I think I am no longer attracted to Ricochet or this idea of the fainting goats. I am, I say, still gravely concerned. There is still too high a probability that we’re going to end up assassinated. No, not assassinated, Czolgosz Jr. corrects, just murdered, or, if we really mess up, executed.
(we are double immigrants let’s make milk jazz + drink tornado hooch at the flop dance Horsefeathers! means Wow! our truffles swank the buggies in Clara Bow ties our garish dipsomanias take another sugared sip Spifflicated! means Drunk! just forget us preciously whilst we intersex tantrums for whenever we’re not yr first night wife)
Lake Michigan, With the City Skyline Barely Visible. August 24, 1922, 11pm We are in our rowboat with our three hostages. Our three hostages are Coast Guard, Well-Behaved Child, and Violin Player. I didn’t pick them, my job was just to get the flashlights and the boat. Tallyho and Blue Conjoined Twins’ notes insist that Lake Michigan will eventually turn into a small, secret-ish east-flowing river. This river isn’t on a map and doesn’t have an official name. It was made by the forces behind years of positive and well-directed thinking. Blue Conjoined Twins swam down this river during the McKinley Administration. Ricochet and I are rowing, Czolgosz Jr. keeps the gun aimed in the general direction of our hostages’ heads. The balance of the boat proves momentarily problematic. Coast Guard makes a half-serious attempt to charge and wrestle the gun away from Czolgosz Jr. Maybe less than half-serious—a quarter-serious. If Coast Guard actually manages to win, hard decisions will have to be made. Such as, will he shoot all three of us or just Czolgosz Jr.? And is Violin Player strong enough to help him row? Ultimately, Coast Guard feels it important to set an example for Well-Behaved Child. Czolgosz Jr., looking to set an example of his own, fires three rounds into the air. Some seagulls make some distressed seagull sounds, but nothing else seems to come of it.
(half-mapped w/indignant compass we are occult blue after the damsel blades cut the nerveball we are chloroforming in our plunder sacks whilst the mutiny moon takes a mortuary pause behindst our learning to like ourselves when nautical + perpendicular)