Chapter 7: Velveeta Cheese and Blackberry Jelly
Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6.

     “Would you like a sandwich, Elizabeth?” I asked, gently caressing her shoulder. I’d woken up early and toweled off, then drained the tub in which she and I had spent the night. I left a clean white towel on the ledge.
     Elizabeth was slow to respond. The heavy door from her dream world back to my bathroom was swollen shut from humidity, and it took her several sharp tugs before she was able to find her way through it.
     When her eyes finally opened she glanced around uneasily, then stood, pale and shivering, her nipples stiff and pointing skyward like two eskimos who’d just spotted a flying saucer. She took a moment to gather herself, then climbed out of the tub and wrapped the towel around her waist. “A sandwich sounds wonderful,” she said hoarsely. “But call me Liz. All my friends call me Liz.”
     I made four sandwiches of Velveeta Cheese and blackberry jelly, cutting each into symmetrical triangles. My mother, when she was still alive, would perform the same operation on bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches, arranging her triangles into perfect stacks, which she’d then garnish with a sprig of parsley and place on a wooden serving tray. The serving tray I used was made from sassafrass root, hand-woven and given to me by a legless Mexican gentlemen I’d met once in San Diego, in exchange for a bottle of port wine and a handful of pistachio nuts. I had no parsley to speak of.
     Liz ate quickly, wolfing down three triangles for every one I ate.
     Evidently garnish was not a priority to her.
     “So tell me something about yourself,” she said, reaching for yet another triangle. “Tell me about when you were alive.”
     I finished my Pepsi and tossed the empty can into the stream. “Nothing much to tell,” I said, for lack of a better cliche.
     “C’mon,” she said without looking up. “You can do better than that.”
     When she said, “You can do better than that,” it sounded more like “Thyu cuhn dthu bettheh un thath,” but then that’s what Velveeta Cheese and blackberry jelly can do to a novice.
     “OK,” I said, reaching out with my big toe to caress one of her breasts. “But it’s not a pretty picture I paint . . . “
     “Thyu beh thuh panthe un aill beh thuh quitik,” she said.
     “Naturally,” I said.

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Chapter 8

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