Box Nine (48 page)

Are you still naked?

Yes, I am. When I finish with you I'll get dressed again. The point is, I had no idea this would occur when I came to work tonight. And certainly the guard didn't know. The dog didn't know. It was just this momentary occurrence. Won't happen again in a lifetime, probably. But it did happen tonight. You just never know. It jumps out at you. You have to go with it. Shake up the routine. Shake down the system. That's where the juice comes from, caller. That's where life heats up. It's that little mystery-charge that makes breathing worthwhile. You've got to stop looking for these signals to confirm everything for you. You're looking for sureties that just aren't there. You bought into this religion that says logic exists, that one and one will always equal two. And I'm sorry, but I can't say that's the case. That guard tonight had his math shaken, okay? And if you ask me, it was for the better.

So you're naked right now?

Okay, there's no helping some people. I'm pulling your plug, caller. Give your girlfriend a flare gun for Christmas. Maybe that'll help you out. This is
Libido Liveline
and we'll be back after these messages.

Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to he following works and wishes to express his gratitude to the authors:
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
, David Crystal;
Bibliography of General Linguistics
, Aleksandra K Wawryszko;
Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby
, edited by Charles S. Hardwick;
Julio Cortazar
, Evelyn Picon Garfield;
Into the Mainstream
, Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1992 by Jack O'Connell

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

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