FIVE: BETTIE AND PAIGE AND THE STAR-BURNED TURKEY KING

Bettie came with Paige and the star-burned turkey king. They didn’t wear their shoes when they opened for the postal office.

Hi is how they said he, and how was how they said who. They said them with the warm and with their underwear for butter.

Their shoes were on another tour, a twenty days, a trip of the rip of Nebraska, or some such. When the donkey didn’t know their way, they found it quite in mining.

There were trials for their nails and there were doors for all fours. You know that they knew it, and they fixed the odds in a peculiar sense.

Bettie was the bigger and Paige was more particular. You can tell that in the way they made you sign for the packages.

“Do I have a package or a letter or a postcard?” and Cyclops asked at their tall desk, as tall as it was taller. “Do I have something sent to me from far across the planetverse?”

Bettie looked in boxes and Paige looked down to pages. They sped their hands thru folders and they munched their toes thru foot-packets. “Were you expected?” Paige asked with her short haircut, and Bettie looked up from her bangs, as long as a museum.

Cyclops had no hair over his eye, he had eyelashes, so long and so true. He nodded his one head and thus his one eye, and this was because he simply did not know, he hadn’t a clow, he hadn’t a clue.

“We can look and we can look and we can ask the star-burned Turkey King to help,” Bettie said, “Or we can just give up and tell you all of no.”

Paige said, “We could put on a searching show, or we could tell you no.”

They decide to tell him no. If Cyclops hates them, he won’t show.

He doesn’t hate them, he does not know them, but he knows they know the world thru its letters. He knows they know the place thru its packages. He knows they know where one address or another, where one number turns into an island, where a word turns into a continent, and how to get there if you are paper.

He knows they knows this knowing, and it may be practical knowledge, so maybe they can tell him a thing or three, so maybe they have advice for he.

“I was wondering,” said Cyclops with his one eye and his one mouth. “You know so many places, from the north and from the south, and you see so many packages, and each one has its own insides, and so I was wondering if sometimes the inside disagrees with the outside, of a package, that is, and it is not good that the inside and the outside do so disagree, and so the outside must be adjusted to meet the change in the inside and maybe that must be done sometimes because it is just for the better.”

Bettie and Paige look at Bettie and Paige. They have been asked, but the answer isn’t zip code, but the answer isn’t Arizona, but the answer isn’t Winnipeg or Austin, isn’t Bozeman or Minneapolis. The answer isn’t First Street, isn’t Second, isn’t Fourth. The Answer isn’t Avenue, isn’t Unit Number, isn’t North.

“Are you making a fuss, or are you talking to us?” Bettie asks, or is it Paige, or is it the star-burned Turkey King back in the sorting station.

“I am talking to you, I am talking to you, I am asking your advice for advice is always nice. I am asking your help in making a decision, a big decision as decisions always go. You see, I am fixated, I am fanatic, I am discontent. I see on TV Dingy Bahsome, and she is so someone, I wish I were she.”

There are letters to be sorted, there are packages in need of stampages, and so Bettie and Paige hand deliver the question, they lick it like a stamp, they sort it by the numbers.

“Send her a letter,” says Bettie.

“Send her a package,” says Paige.

“And maybe she will send you one back,” says the star-burned Turkey King in his own giblet way.

“But don’t send yourself to her for good and expect anything but undeliverable,” they all three say in their own three words.

And Cyclops doesn’t want their mail, he doesn’t want it delivered if it is so disagreeable. He refuses to accept the delivery, he sends it back with his own laugh nostrils, and then he is off, and the post office is face to face with his backside, now getting smaller in perspective.