THE STORY OF DESIRE
Desire stands stunned at 4 PM. She is no longer a Little Kid, she realizes. This Super-Star wants nothing more than food and a place to sleep. She has no money. Ordinarily this fact was nothing astonishing to her but today was a crisis. If only Sporty were here everything would be OK, she thinks. It starts raining. Desire is determined not to cry, and she
didn't!
THE STORY OF LORI
Lori at the bar drinking White Russians, she watches herself in the mirror, just another drunk, she thinks. Summers in Universe City were intolerable: no air conditioning at home, nothing going on there at all really, not even a cat that needs to be fed.
In a photograph long lost, Lori wore her Girl Scout uniform, dancing for the camera.
She orders another drink, her sixth, and wishes she didn't feel like crying every day.
DESIRE vs THE PUNKS
Desire spots her current enemy half a block up, she stops, stands stock-still until the idiot finally notices her. He is starkly panicked, crosses the street and walks away hurriedly in the opposite direction. Then Desire realizes that she needs to buy a Public Image Limited t-shirt!
LORI CRASHING THROUGH
Lori watches six black-and-white TV screens in a security booth at Garagetown Incidental. People shop, find something they want to buy, pay for it and leave.
While she watches Commerce-in-Action, she scans new catalogues, fills out order forms. Every five minutes she sniffs a line of coke, until the eight grams are gone. Then Lori switches to whiskey, sipping from a flask the rest of her shift. "So what?" she says to the empty room. The empty room comes up with no answer at all.
DESIRE vs THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Desire, asked to leave RatDonald's for being "disruptive," hot chocolate at United Dizzy Farmers instead. Soon she stands, awed, at the Gates of Universe City.
LORI AND THE REVOLVING DOOR
Random loser guy in her bed, she wakes sickened, sneaks out of the apartment to go to work. Cocaine in her pocket--Lori has arrived!
SUMMER 1999
This is all-out nowhere.
For ten-thousand invisible reasons, Desire stands stock-still in a parking lot facing a bank clock, 3:59, she waits. Is she waiting for a murderer? A rapist? A friend? No, she's only waiting for Four O'Clock AM, her favorite hour of the day. Then Dawn, breakfast, maybe some sleep.
She stops to sit on some church steps to write a quick letter to Sporty Spice:
I know it must be great in Heaven Magic Land but if you could stand it we could use your Charisma Powers in Ohio. Disguise yourself and appear to me, you don't even have to tell me that it's you, I'll know. Rescue us, Our Sporty Spice!
Desire replaces the notebook in her pack and sets off on her tour of the City at the Very End of the Night.
