I was anxious for them both, now neither was a threat to me. Jerome Bray! Ugh! Heartless Ambrose was more amused than alarmed, particularly as Morgan himself judged Horner’s fears premature and possibly misdirected. Both “patients” had been AWOL before, it seems; indeed “Bibi” had disappeared for the whole past weekend and showed up drunk on the Tuesday declaring she’d been down sailing on the Chesapeake with a new boyfriend. Since Marsha (alas) also has tidewater connexions, and the two women have struck up an alliance, it seemed as likely to Morgan that they were lushing it in Maryland together as that they were facing Worse Than Death in Lily Dale. In good Joseph’s view, the real ground for concern was not their whereabouts but their dissolution: “Bibi’s” aggravated alcoholism and (he now regretfully reported to Ambrose) “Pocahontas’s” recent taking to unspecified and unprescribed narcotics, which she shared with her new friend. Joe wished both of them off the Farm for good and “Bibi” in a proper therapeutic institution for alcoholics.

At second hand, all this sounded reasonable enough, if not exactly jolly, and on the strength of Ambrose’s assurances — which he cautioned were not guarantees except in the matter of public coupling — I went along. (Here’s the place to declare that the fortnight past has truly coupled our spirits, John, as never in the five months and stages prior.)

Face to face it was another matter, and not only because the Farm’s dining hall was rigged up with the now familiar lights, cables, microphones, and cameras. The old folks gently exercised or sat about: whatever legitimacy that queer establishment can claim must be in the nursing-home way, where it’s not half bad; the hippies for example are in principle as down on “age-ism” as on racism and sexism, and earnestly attempt not to patronise the geriatrics. Reg Prinz, his two chief assistants (that pair of curly blond thugs featured in the “1st Conception Scene” and the “Battle of Niagara,” who more and more do his talking for him), and Merry Bernstein were positioned at one end of a central table, sipping fruit juice and regarding our entry. All wore sunglasses. Prinz grows ever more pinched and intensified; Merry’s newest denims looked to me more Bloomingdale’s than Whole Earth Catalogue, and her hair was teased out in spectacular amplification of Reggie’s, as if she’d touched an even higher-voltage line. None spoke. In the center of the table, behind coffee cups, sat “St Joe” and a pale, distraught Jacob Horner, who fiddled, twitched, eyed Ambrose uneasily as if expecting him to play the Jealous Ex-Husband, and said nothing. Morgan too, though he sucked his unlit pipe and gravely buttered a croissant, appeared to me less “together” than holding together: that mad brightness of eye I’d noted from time to time in our last conversation was now his fixed aspect.

No sign of Marsha, “Bibi,” or the other promised absentees. That black militant chap, the one who calls himself Tombo X, was at the farthest table off with a squad of Brothers and Sisters in green staff uniforms, conspicuously ignoring us. Racism, it would appear, flourishes after all in that corner of the Farm.

Ambrose and I took the two remaining seats, at the opposite table-end from the Director, behind an array of note pads, pencils, ashtrays and matches, ham sandwiches, and, of all unexpected welcome things, Bloody Marys! No one else was so provided for. We said hello to the company and microphones, waved politely to the cameras recording our arrival, and expressed a proper mild concern for Ms Blank and Ms Golden. Morgan crisply reaffirmed that they had left the premises together, voluntarily but without authorisation, and that inasmuch as they were ambulatory adults whose stay at the Farm was also voluntary, there were no grounds for mounting a search.

I think, thought Horner, they’re at Lily Dale.

So go to Lily Dale, his advisor advised. Horner does not; only wipes his unperspiring brow with a clean white pocket handkerchief.

All this filmed and watched impassively by the filmists. Clearly that ongoing rerun of your End of the Road novel is off its track, sir, and like to be abandoned for want of actors! Just as clearly, some pressure is a-building twixt protagonist and antagonist, whichever of Morgan and Horner is which.

With uneasy briskness we took our seats and our Clearly Symbolic roles: i.e. (Ambrose declared aloud), that they were symbolic was clear, but not what they were symbolic of. Was this the Last Brunch, and we the only communicants? Was it Writing that was represented to be alcoholic and carnivorous, or Great Britain, or his and my generation? On the subject of national embodiments, by the way, was it not Prinz’s turn to live up to his name and play Britannia, Ambrose’s to play the Yankee Doodler, in the upcoming fracas?

What we thought, offered Prinz’s Tweedledum, we thought we’d all meet at the Old Fort Erie magazine this evening and play it by ear. See what blows.

Whereto adds Tweedledee: First ones to back off will be the redcoats.

I’m eating my sandwich, I declared, and drinking my bloody Bloody Mary, symbol or no symbol. Ambrose nodded approval and followed suit.

Joe Morgan reminded Author and Director that, if historical accuracy was to apply, the detonation of the Fort Erie magazine ought to occur in predawn darkness. Dum & Dee looked to their leader, who quietly intoned: I think evening. The light.

And those crazy lake flies (Tweedledee): there’s a major hatch on. Millions. Joe volunteered that those clouds of insects — which hatch by the billions at summer’s end in low-lying areas around the Great Lakes, swarm about harmlessly for a few evenings, and then die — have been known since 1812 on the Ontario shore of the Niagara as American Soldiers, and on the New York shore as Canadian Soldiers.

Far out, chorused the filmists. The black contingent exited. The old folks rocked, smiled, and nodded at each remark. Homer rocked too, though his chair was no rocker, like an Orthodox Jew at prayer. I was moved to suggest: Let’s let that fly hatch be the Second Conception, what?

My lover saluted me with half a ham sandwich.

What is the Second Conception? Merope innocently enquired of Prinz, who replied without turning his head: Same as the first. Bruce?

This last to Tweedledum, who promptly brandishes some sort of periodical — clearly they’d rehearsed this bit of business at their end of the table and were ready for that inadvertent cue from ours — and read (I paraphrase, but pretty closely): The question put by the film Frames, says scenarist A. M. King, comes essentially to this: Can a played-out old bag of a medium be fertilised one last time by a played-out Author in a played-out tradition? King himself invokes William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy The Country Wife, whose hero pretends to be impotent in order to cuckold his sympathetic friends. Viewers of Frames may judge this wishful thinking on its “Author’s” part.

Smirks Tweedledee: Frames is our new working title. Adds Bruce: “Author” is in quotes.

The publication he identified as a Buffalo “underground” film newsletter; the article a report on Those Crazy Goings-on in Delaware Park. He had another copy; Ambrose and I were welcome to this one.

Well, I was appropriately shocked. Not stunned, exactly, but startled for sure. But the cameras — and at least four pairs of sunglassed eyes — were on us.

Dirty pool, growled Ambrose: they left out the Author’s Trenchant Irony; his Mordant Wit.

Don’t they always, I said, as levelly as I could manage. And to Prinz: If that’s your Magazine Explosion, luv, it’s a bleedin’ dud. See you at the fort.

Exeunt Played-Out Old Bag of a Medium and Scenarist A. M. King, the latter smitten (by his own protestation) with pride in my self-possession and presence of mind, the former mad as a wet hen. He was misquoted, for Christ’s sake, Ambrose complained all the way to our motel; I must learn, as he had learnt, the Larger View of Journalism, to wit: that newspapers are no doubt necessary even though they never get anything quite right. Bugger yer Larger View, humphed I: I really am nothing but an effing symbol for you, what?