\u201cOog,\u201d said Carol, dreamily.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cOog what?\u201d Janette propounded.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\u201cOver There,\u201d added Carol, pointing Over There. \u201cThe Transformerica Perambulid Tower. It\u2019s molting.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Janette shaded her eyes to look. \u201cMelting, rather, I should think,\u201d she was of the opinion.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Carol shrugged. \u201cOne and the same. Machts nichts<\/i>. \u2014Have another Caviar Cracker,\u201d she suggestified, spreading such a one on a lump of Cheese(TM)<\/font><\/sup>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Janette, still peering at the Tower of which she\u2019d been so fond since girlhood, said nothing, but had another Caviar Cracker.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cThe Caviar Crackers aren\u2019t ripe yet,\u201d Carol offered\u2014an obvious gambit, but one which Janette had unforeseen.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Startled, Janette glimpsed away from the devolving structure and bit heartily of a Cheese(TM)<\/font><\/sup> lump. \u201cWhose side are you on, anyway?\u201d she queried, via full mouth.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Below the terrace which the ladies inhabified, the entire city spread itself out like a wet picnic blanket, checkered red and white as far as the eye could look. Carol, paying no attention to her friend\u2019s discomfiture, tried another tack: \u201cSanfra Nabisco is ours for the taking, Janette. We two could rule it together, as far as the eye can look. One day, this could all be ours.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cOne hour, we could all be dazed,\u201d observed Janette, rallying. \u201cThere are a million million million stories in the dirty city, counting the cockroaches, and one day we could be one of them.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201c\u2014or two of them,\u201d she hastened to add, as Carol\u2019s brow thickened. \u201cIf you\u2019d prefer it that way, dearest.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n Carol\u2019s frown grew wide and contained multitudes. \u201cNo, no, it\u2019s not that<\/em>,\u201d she opined; \u201cbut rather the Tower, don\u2019t you know. Like a giant Caviar Cracker, splitting down its midst. Just like last week.\u201d A low chord, as from a mighty organ, grew out of the fog-dampened streets below, setting the women\u2019s hearts in sympathetic vibration; they shivered to its timbres.<\/p>\r\n\r\n And the glass balcony on which they sat began to shiver and sliver and slide as well, down into the glassy canyon below, whence none returned.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cYelp!\u201d yodeled Janette, gathering to her feet, watching the street through absolving clear splinters below.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cYelp! likewise!\u201d echoed Carol, gathering to her the Crackers and Cheese(TM)<\/font><\/sup>. \u201cMayhaps we\u2019d better part of valor to insideward.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n And they did. It was weeks before the terrace grew back; by that time Janette had departed to live in the Transformica Polymer. Carol had taken up with a young woman newly-arrived from Mizzulpi, a goldhead who had no use for Tower-watching and no time for Cracker consumption. One day Carol crumpled the last of the Cracker crumbs amid the gargoyle pigeons, and shut the sliding door to the Terrace forever.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cOr at least,\u201d she was heard to think, \u201cuntil next time.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n I wrote this sometime around 1990, and published it in our APA, SWAPA.<\/p>\r\n\r\n David Randall once wrote a delightful story, serialized in SWAPA, called \u201cJessica and the Foozlewhopper.\u201d It was rife with SWIL<\/a> in-jokes, but mostly worked as a story even without those.<\/p>\r\n\r\n I loved the story\u2019s style, which was largely whimsical (with some very sad serious bits) and which took great delight in playing with words but avoided standardized Douglas Adams-style silliness. The opening chapter included this phrase, as part of a deliriously lyrical description of a distorted alternate California: \u201cThe Crystal Terraces of Sanfra Nabisco, where gentle ladies nibble Caviar Crackers!\u201d That aside blossomed (or maybe imploded) in my head into the above piece almost by itself; I like to think this piece is set in roughly the same universe (by which I mean both physical universe and stylistic universe) as \u201cFoozlewhopper.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\nNotes<\/h2>\r\n\r\n