“Uh, no sir,” I said, picking up the cat and trying to talk first into one end of it and then the other. Both ends smelled like fish.

“Well, hurry up!” he said. “You know, you’re supposed to jump out of the cakewood tonight at the executive bake-off, jake-off, back-off! And how can you do that if you don’t have the right figures, figure, figures – figure, I mean.”

“Oh, is that tonight, sir?” I said. “I’ve got such a Wimpy hamburger and my feet hurt, too. I wanted to just go home and feed my bear – I mean, beartrap – I mean, bear.”

“We had to have that bare put to sleep,” he said. “You know that. He licked off all the frosting on the cupcakes in the employee lounge and went rabbit. Foaming at the moose and chasing tail. We just can’t have that. The company will get you a nice pussy instead.”

“But sir,” I said. “I think I’m allergic to fish.”

“Oh, you,” said his sexretary. She wrinkled her pink little nose and wriggled her pink little ears and jiggled her pink little jugs. “Doesn’t any bunny nohow to smell, tell, fell if your rabbit is?” she asked.

“Conway! Conwa-a-ay!” someone yelled.

“Connie Conway, Connie Conway!” the fat bully who lived in the treehouse by the wooden gate sneered at me.

“My name is Billie. Bill. Will. Willie. Willard Conway, not what you said,” I told him.

“Yeah, but you’re not a willie, you’re a big sissy, pussy-girl, so we’re all going to call you Connie.” And all his big fat bully friends were falling out of the treehouse and yelling “Connie Conway!” at me. “Connie Cunway! Cunnie Cumway! Bunnie Bunway!”

And then I had to ride my bike down a long tunnel with the bullies behind me and my boss riding in the basket in front of me and yelling, “If you don’t get those numb, dumb, rum, plum, gum, hummer, dumber, summer, numbers done, you’ll be pedaling your grass, glass, mass, pass, ass down Eighth Avenue in the virginity of Twenty-First Street. See the Willie. And you know what you’ll be eating?”

“Eat sum broccoli, dear,” said my mother. “You never eat enough, one two three, oh, dearie, times tables when you come over.”

“What did you say, mommie?” I never call her mum, it’s not aloud.

But she had changed to my Aunt Chris from East Virgin Way. “That nice Dr. Fraud visited yestiddy, well, he’s not that nice. He said yore maw was tryna stringle you with her aporn strange. Did you ever hare such a nigglewit? Taste this otter choke cookie, Billie, what does it taste like to you?”

We both nibbled a bit. “I think it tastes like cum,” she said.

My boss was lacing me into a corset and his sexretary was turning the key on my roller skates. “Tight as you can, Splendid, we don’t want his tits to fall off and roll into the crowd,” said my boss.

“It’s not easy having wheels,” I said.

Wendy Splendid did what she did splendidly and wriggled, jiggled and giggled. Then she started putting roller skates on my hands, too. “The more wheels the better,” she said.

“I thought that was the bigger the wheel, the sluttier the sexretary,” I said.

And she said, “Oh, you.” She put a blindfold on me, too, but I could still see. “Jose Canoosie?” she asked.

“Yes, but aren’t the dongs early this spritzen?” I said.

I skated around for awhile on all fours and won sixth prize as a float in the Bummer’s March. They hung the medal on my butt because I skated backwards into the bay. Then they took me to New Jersey and strapped me into the electric chair.

“How does it fit?” asked my boss.

“Like a bunny,” I said. “Like a Welsh rabbit all covered in cheese, I lost my poor meatballs, when somebody squeezed.”

The chair had the biggest wheels of all and Wendy Splendid to push it down the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. “I’d rather have the Scottie dog,” I said.

“Oh, you,” she said. “It’s the thimble, thumble, mumble, crumble for you, y’know. No cakewood because that’s the way the cookie feels, pop goes a measle.”

Aunt Chris passed us going the other way, carrying a bag full of money with two tycoons to carry her butt wrinkles. “I won the blottery, slottery, sluttery, Billie, Willie, Millie. Connie, Bonnie, Bunnie. I got nothing but bread so I’ll have to eat cakewood. Ain’t it grandstand hot dog, mustard runny eggs Benedict Arnold the pig? Hee haw!”

The bookstore wasn’t open so I rolled around the back and found the White Rabbit, all crunched up like a jam sandwich, hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special mojos don’t regret us, all we cash is that you pet us.

Kate Wood opened the back door and complained, “Oh, my aching back, side order of blue cheese sprinkles, crinkles, minkles. Smells like winkles in here.”

We rolled inside and she said, “Take these chains, pains, Janes. Manacles, panicles, vesicles, Checkoff, Horschack, Kolchak, Karnak, Anzac, jumbuk, good luck, let’s fuck.”

But neither of us had a skate key and Joni Mitchell drove a little yellow taxi backwards into the bay, singing bye, bye, Miss America the Splendid, spend it, blend it, bend it but don’t break it off the pigskinless wienerstiltskinful of shit. “You’re so full of shit your eyes are blue, glue, shoe. All God’s chillin’ got to Choos, Jiminy. Bimini, criminy, it’s by Eminee.”

We bought the shoes with the five-inch heels and the fuck-me backsling, sting, sing, swing, then we passed a gatewood going out and the sign said, “You got to have a wienership to get inside, no long-haired dickless willies need apply the pancakes, brakes, jakes, makes no nevermind, Porta-Potty, morbidity, Guinevere.”

So I turned around and Wendy Splendid turned into Kate Wood and turned into Connie and turned into me and she said, “You’ve got to wake up and do the right thing, Spike, Mike, Dyke. Otherwise, I’ll have to stay dead, in bed, gimme sum head, and you’ll be stuck, boy, don’t be coy, Roy, you’re just a fucktoy, now. How does your banana, Stan?”

And I said, “There must be thrifty ways to learn to like liver.”

“You’ll find out,” she said. “You’d better, butter, mutter, putter, futter me, fetter me, let it be, feathers are free to fly away.” And she turned into a moth with no shame because there ain’t no one to give you no...scream, dream, moonbeam.

The nightmare shattered into a thousand million pieces like a kaleidoscope map of the galaxy.

I woke up on the long gray limousine, uh, couch, all tangled up in my towel. At least I knew where that was.

The dream began fading away before I could sort out any of the images to see if they made sense as memories. Maybe some of them were memories of me before–before whatever it was that happened to me happened. But some of them seemed to be more likely to be memories of Constance Catewood, who seemed to be me when I looked in a mirror now.

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs away. “Maybe we’re not in Nebraska either, Koko,” I said. Then I looked up just in time to see a small multi-colored cat fall from somewhere onto the balcony outside.