Marilyn broke the baalic silence. “Anyway… where exactly is here?”

Bell felt unpleasantly fuzzy all over, like every interlocking piece that comprised his body, every cell of every tissue of every organ of every system, had merged to become one, uniform thing. In this case: an arm that has been slept on.

“Here?” Bell asked.

He looked around. A fig dropped from a bough of the tree and plopped into the water beneath. Tens of figs floated, decomposing, in the gentle pond, alongside sloughs of driftwood, snapped twigs, and green leaves. Above all, the sky was screaming.

“Here is nowhere special.”

He cocked his head, dislodging a leaf which slid from his hair like a slug on a waterslide. He absently traced its descent into the rusted bucket, toppled there beside. He thought, “Here is rustic.”

His eyes found her dust-deluged sandals.

“Incidentally, you're the first person I've met who didn't transpire to be a scarecrow.”

“Oh,” Marilyn implied with an alarming lack of alacrity.

“I'm Bell, by the way,” Bell said, looking up. “Which is what I would have said if you had asked. That's ‘Bell' with a ‘B,' like a glockenspiel.”

Bell blushed as Marilyn released another of her trademark sighs and sat crisscross before him.

“Are we trapped here, Bell?” Marilyn asked. “Is my future one long slog of talking cats and bird attacks?”

“He's called The Dog.”

“Who is?

“The deaf cat.”

“Okay,” Marilyn said. “I worked at an auto body before.”