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“Oh, really!” laughs Lady sweetly. “You can tell me! Is it something I can wear?”

“You’re warm!” crows Clown mid the laughter and whacks her behind.

“Mind on your business!” whispers America, now in possession of at least half the whole bench, his eyes lost in puffing fleshfolds, suitseams parting, buttons popping. “Here it comes!”

“Would I wear it, more likely, above the waist,” Lady asks, then reddens and lowers lashes, “or below?”

“Depends on your scruples!” Clown squawks and the crowd roars.

Hah! Scruple: stickle: stickleback. Getting warm now. Warm indeed: flush against the Lovely Lady. Arc those her toes under your pantleg? Don’t jump to conclusions. Couldn’t put it past the old Clown, for example, not if there was a laugh in it.

Big A groans faintly, snorting and sucking like a team of trotters, flesh pushing out as the suit tears. Wear and tear. Wear: bear. Bearberry: Dogberry: the dog rose. Paw and tail. But what of the scute? The dog rose and — what? Rose and scrupled? Rose: rows: stichs: stickleback. Going in circles. “Depends!” gasps America. Can’t last long now. Own cells against him. Flesh dog bane pink. “Depends—!”

Depends: hangs. But what hangs or hangs on what?

Old Clown hunches, trembling uncontrollably over knotted knuckles. Humor. Lady: beauty, excitement, life itself. America: hard to guess. Prestige maybe, or justice. Inclusion. The team. And Bad Sport? Ah, clearly, it’s your mind they’re after.

Humor, passion, sobriety, and truth. On you, then, it depends, they depend, they all depend. They all hang. It may be so.

Odd silence. You look up to discover the Moderator drumming his ringed fingers on the rostrum and staring blankly at you. Yes, yes, the moment’s come! They want to know I Cameras plunge, withdraw. Lamps blaze. You, pinned, sweat. Chilled by America’s enveloping blubber, heated by the Lady pink as salmon. Pink as dog rose. As dogberry. All’s Well That Ends Well? Hardly.

Still, in the silence, or so you tell yourself, so it seems: an aura of hope. Moderator relaxed, smiling kindly. Lifts brows in calm anticipation. Audience suppressed to a patient murmur. Will he do it? Will you do it? Fat man, perishing, balloons and snorts. Lovely Lady watches, admires. Encourages. They need you. You take strength from their need, and clear your throat.

“Oh, come, cornel” exclaims the Moderator. “Reckon you not this old refrain? To replicate is but to repent and lost is less recalled!”

Applause and cheers greet his eloquence, accepting which he preens and smiles. But what does it mean? what does it mean? “Muteness is mutinous and the mutable inscrutable!” cries the Moderator, warm ing to the moment now, riding on waves of grand hosannas. “Inflexibly same and the lex of the game!”

Nothing, nothing there at all. Think back. Wear and tear. Wary. Tarry. Salmonberry. Faster I Sticklestuff and Dryden’s belly. Crowd roars. Moderator stands to bow. Crimson semen green as—? Green as—? Faster! Could she wear it? Bear it? Bare it! That’s it! Keep it going! Keep it—!

“Too—!” gasps Mr. America, blind and flaccid, nearly faceless, and he has no breath to finish, yet his mouth gapes, struggling.

You speak: “I think—”

Admirable!” smiles the Moderator grimly, bringing caustic laughter from the Audience. “So what?”

“—That, if the subject is animal—”

Unexpected crash of laughter. Lady blushes, lowers lashes.

Moderator, crimson with giggling and with tears in his eyes, cries: “Good God! I should hate to conceive of it otherwise!” Whoop! goes the Audience, louder than ever, and even the cameras twitch spasmodically.

“Keep it clean, son!” cackles the Aged Clown.

“But—!”

“I said, keep it clean!”

Immaculate butt? Incredible!

“—Late!” concludes the fat man, releases wind, and dies. Dead. Only friend in the house. No loss felt, but no relief either. The challenge is still the same one.

“Come, come, sir!” cries the Moderator, much amused, but rising now and pressing forward. “You must have contrived some concrete conjunctions from the incontrovertible commentary qua commentary just so conspicuously constituted!” Deafening applause.

Dig in! Tie it up! The truth is: “The truth is—”

“The truth is,” shouts the Moderator, jabbing at him with an angry finger, “you have lost!”

“But I haven’t even—!”

Why are you here,” the Moderator explodes, losing all patience, “if not to endeavor to disentangle this entanglement? In short, Bad Sport, you would be wise to remember that the saga of sagacity is the purse of pebspicacity!” Wild applause, cheers, hoots, screams. “Reason is the resin, the college of knowledge!” Uncontrollable uproar. Moderator rips off bowtie and flings it like a rose to the stamping shrieking crowd. Lamps flame up. “Failed! You have failed! And you must pay the consequences!”

“But the truth is—”

“The truth is,” crows the old Clown and leaps upon the table; Lovely Lady takes his quaking claw and hops up to join him:

“There once was a young bellydancer—”

Lady strips to half chemise as Audience whistles and heaves coins to the stage. Somewhere a brass band plays Eastern music. With her thumbs, she pushes the chemise to half-mast on her hips. Wear it: bare it, bright as berries, and the old dog rose…

“Who supposed that her art was the answer—”

Above or below? Waist: waste. Scruples, pink as salmon. Crimson. Female belly, darts and thrusts…

“But one night in a bump,

She fractured her rump—”

Lovely Lady halts abruptly, knees bent out, twitching like a spastic, navel aimed at you: Eye of the World — then staggers, thus in mid-bump, about the table, eyes wide and mouth puckered, to the con vulsive delight of the entire world, then drops — bam! — stiff as a scute to the table…

“—And perished grotesquely of cancerl”

Audience paroxysms reach new frenzies as Lady vibrates in last throes and ossifies, legs up toward the lenses. “Yes, the truth is,” gasps the guffawing Moderator when he’s able, wiping his eyes with a linen cloth:

“Don’t twiddle or piddle

Or diddle your middle

While riding a riddle, old Sport—

Lovely Lady miraculously revives, and with a wink of the Eye of the World, lures you to the tabletop. Laughs crash and thunder. Whistles, catcalls, hostile hoots. Cameras crouch, pounce, jab, retract. The fat man, you see, was not Mr. America after all, but Mr. Amentia. Should have known. Changes everything…

“—For the frame is the same In fame or in shame And the name of the game—”

Clown and Lady grip an arm apiece. A noose descends — yes, yes, it all depends…

“—is La Mort!”

“I thought—” But the Audience drowns you out. Well, they are happy, think about that. The noose is fitted.

“You thought—?” asks the Moderator and the crowd subsides.

“I thought it was all for fun.”

“That is to say,” smiles the Moderator wearily, “much ado about nothing.”

“That’s it! that’s it! Yes! that’s what I was trying to—!”

The Moderator shakes his head. At heart, a tough old boy.

“Sorry.” He rests his chins in his pudgy fist, smile informed by a surfeit of knowledge. Nods gravely at Clown and Lady.