THE CAT-WOMAN SNARLS AND BITES SOME AIR. THE AIR IS SO FETID SHE CAN BITE SOME OF IT. THEN SHE CLAWS AT THE WINDOWS--CLAW CLAW CLAW--WINDOWS BLACK WITH AIR. SHE STREAKS THEM WITH THE INTERIOR, PURE AND CLEAR FOR MYOPIA PURPOSES, AND LAUGHS IT UP WITH HER GRUESOME LAUGH THERE ON THE LEDGE, LAUGHING AND LAUGHING, TILL THE COPS COME AND TELL HER TO SHUT UP, THE NEIGHBORS ARE PRONE TO REVOLUTION.
Minny and Kath are perverse in their love for their building. One of them loves it so much she will kill the other to prevent her from toppling it with excessive weight up three floors, the other's. She will kill the other by various means, including bewitching of the other's effects, done by tongue and heart in synchrony, loving the moments and hating the other. Boom, boom! go the steadfast entries of the one into time. Whammo, goes the other one's soul, whammo, hitting the pavement like so much backup work.
Candace reveals some horrible secrets to Mo.
"I licked so many of them damned apparitions, lick lick lick, I felt like death for some weeks thereafter. Damned if I didn't kerplunk into zeroes because of them damned apparitions."
"Same will cause you delirium, time after time."
"Same will, ditto."
Mimicry death is quite common in the building, for example among the young men, who die one after another of lethargy, smallpox (sometimes) and brutal misgovernment by Sid, a risible cow of a man in his old age, old, nearly lackluster in many ways, very unlikely to send you for loops through ecstasies of dysfunction, these days. Jaw-Bliss is one of those men.
"I am dead, a porridge of luggings at heart, lifeless and sure of my salve, dead as a crude possum lumbering chilly through woods long cut down by my employer, Sid. That is me, chill possum, still playing, and Sid is inscrutable, lumber forever, only rarely even gypsum in fine-tuned misgiving. Me, again, I am dead."
The building often collapses of its own weight, especially between one and two in the afternoon, when the screams of fetid little panickers will lunge for your matchstick decidedness. At times like those you may well catch yourself thinking, "What a horrible world we live in."
"What a horrible world we live in," says Jan, the velcro Swede who trips this way and that on a sojourner's feast, every day. No one can stand him, not even Murphy, who sings his praises to the UFOs who besiege her waking concern. "Save Jan," she sings, "for he is the trust/ the ill-massaged lust/ the snake-oil bust/ of our forefather Swedes--/ I praise him much."
No one can sleep after most events, and when of Minny and Kath one rubs the other out, sentences are read with alacrity but only the windmills continue to turn.
THE CAT-WOMAN IS HAPPY. SHE LUNCHES ON YESTERDAY'S AIR AND DESTROYS SOME LIMBO. SHE KNOWS SHE WILL NEVER FALL PREY TO THE MISTAKES OF HER MEDIUM, HUMANITY. THE COPS COME AND TELL HER TO STOP EATING AIR, AND TO FALL PREY TO SOME OF HER MEDIUM'S ERRORS, THE PEOPLE ARE STARTING TO READ FREUD. THE CAT-WOMAN LAUGHS CONSIDERABLY, GOES ABOUT LAUGHING, LAUGHING IT UP ON THE WINDOW LEDGE, FETID WITH AIR, TILL THE COPS MAKE SOME THREATENING MOTIONS.