The book established Whitehead’s intelligence and originality as a novelist, but I wasn’t too excited by the world of elevator inspection, and I was frankly irritated by the author’s choice of Lila Mae as the protagonist. Although it’s technically impressive and theoretically laudable when a male novelist succeeds in inhabiting a female persona, something about the actual practice makes me uneasy. Is the heroine doing double duty as the novelist’s fantasy sex object? Is the writer trying to colonize fictional territory that rightfully belongs to women? Or does the young literato, lacking the perks of power and feeling generally smallened by the culture, perhaps believe himself to be, at some deep level, not male at all?

From the canvas sack he pulls a handful of cloth rags, a scrub brush, a small clay jug, a large, anonymous squirt bottle, a smaller spray bottle that says Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, Orange Clove, and a pair of yellow gloves. From the paper bag he slips a plastic takeaway dish still vaguely steaming. Giorgio’s, says the label pasted on the clear plastic lid of it. 5/15. Opening the refrigerator, he sets it carefully within, the fridge light washing over him, his blue jeans, blue denim jacket, his close-cropped iron hair, winking away as he soundlessly closes the door.

Then, tugging on the yellow gloves, taking up the scrub brush and the squirt bottle, the Anvil Pyrocles sets to work.

“Girl’s in it, you know,” says the man sat in one of the lawn chairs by the fire. “You saw how she was with them boys. She ain’t just in it, she’s all the way up in it,” waving a paper-wrapped bottle for emphasis, “nothing but respect.”

“Up in what?” says the other man, leaned against the fender of a hulking pickup parked close by the stranded motorcoach. “What you got going on, Ma?” The dome light in the cab up behind him’s dimly shining, and a song is playing within, faintly chugging bass and tinny soaring horns, than the first time you placed those stale smooth cigarette lips to my mouth.

“Shut that noise off,” she rasps, but not unkindly, poking the fire again. He steps up on the running board of the pickup, reaches in through the open window. The song snaps off mid-swell. “Ma?” he says, stepping down. A cat yowls somewhere back that way, she stiffens, straightens, “That was Hot Soup,” she says, holding up a hand. “Somebody’s coming.”

“I’ve told you, Jimmy,” he lets the messenger bag slip from his shoulder, “feel free to call me Becker, just like everybody else.”

“Whatever it is you’re to be called– on which point, you’ll note, this jury is still out,” Jimmy holds up a forestalling finger, “we’d been led to believe you’d be at work tonight. Thus, the surprise.”

“Yeah, well,” says Becker, letting the messenger bag slump to the floor. “I think I, ah, well. Quit.”

Oz stops kneading. Hollis looks up from the paper on the table before him. Blood, color of the flower, emblazoned on your breast, sings the unseen phone. Jimmy blinks. “Forgive me,” he says, “but one is usually a touch more definite about such milestones.”

“I guess. I mean,” says Becker, “I’m not going back. I’m not doing that again. So.”

Jo lifts a hand, a shadow among shadows. Rubs her eyes, fingertip and thumb, pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Had us worried, girl. Come on. Sit yourself up. Water? Jack, fetch us a water.”

Footstep, creak of springs, a slithering thump. “Careful, Jack,” that voice, pitched high, creaky with smoke, or age.

“Ma’am,” another voice, the young man. She opens her eyes. She’s laid across a small and rumpled bed, legs bent over the side of it, feet somewhere on the floor. The space is long and narrow, dim despite the windows in every wall, for every curtain’s drawn with differing colors and prints, reds and yellows for the cowboy hats and boots, purples and greens and blues and pinks for floral sprays, browns and oranges for squatly happy mushrooms, all backlit by daylight without. Someone’s sat on the bed beside her, a dumpy woman, cardigan, what light there is catching rims and frame of heavy spectacles over her eyes. Jo sits up with a grimacing hiss, leaning over on one elbow, reaching to press a hand to her breast, rubbing, a soothing stroke.

“Here we go,” says the woman beside her. That young man in denim’s stood before them, holding out a short plastic bottle of water, cap of it already off. Jo takes it with a nod, sips, then drinks it down.

“Better?” says the woman. Jo holds up the empty bottle, but no one seems inclined to take it. “Where you headed?” says the woman.

“Away,” says Jo.

I think “solidarity” is what Freaky Tales would call it, a movie which, believe it or not, I’m actually going to talk about. But again: I’ve given myself permission to write the longest essay anyone will write about Freaky Tales, as an exercise, experiment, statement, and/or self-indulgence; I like writing, and I am enjoying writing this, so I am. But the more I write, the more that length gives permission to anyone who doesn’t want to read it—even encourages them—to close the browser and move on. You’re not stuck with me, after all, the way you have no choice but to see a mural as you drive past it each day. You can go find something you like better and leave me to my fun.