Chapter 26 - The Root of All Evil

A church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son Lloyd

In the end, Maria Escalante had grown quite rich. Having spent most of her life without money she did not feel comfortable spending on herself and so she began to make donations. A lot of money went to the obvious charities most of it, she used to improve the various institutions she had worked for or been involved with throughout her life. For instance, a large chunk went to the school district where she had been a bus driver. There were new air conditioned busses, new desks, new chairs, musical instruments, and other things that perhaps would make going to school a little more exciting for the children.

She also donated, anonymously, to the Stirring Water Christian Fellowship enough money for them to get their own building with a sanctuary and a banquet hall, a nursery, sound system and overhead projectors. Even after that, enough funds were left over to pay for mission trips to the major gambling centers of the country and major starvation centers of the world.

While Stirring Water's official stance on their sudden financial abundance was that the Lord was rewarding the faithful, James McInnis, the church treasurer had seen the signed check and was suspicious as to why a woman famous for portraying the woman who invented prostitution was giving vast amounts of money to a small charismatic church. At the time, James was fairly young. He had married into the Stirring Water administrative structure two years after the donation had been received, and therefore had not been present when Maria used to attend church services,

The issue was never formally discussed, but the church had little trouble convincing itself that that the Maria Escalante who pretended to have the Holy Spirit so many years ago could not possibly be the same Maria Escalante who was the second Persephone. The one or two times someone mentioned that the famous Ms. Escalante seemed familiar, a Church elder would put his or her hand on the mentioner's shoulder, look him or her in the eye and say, "Yes, isn't that strange."

When the check first arrived in the mail, Mrs. Pole, the woman who sorted the mail, answered the phones, and vacuumed the worship area, was alarmed. She took the check right up to Pastor Ralph, who was laying hands on a young teenager who had shown up at a youth group basketball match the previous weekend. Mrs. Pole waited patiently in the doorway until the boy, his face wet with tears, was lead out into the hallway.

"See you on Sunday Moose," Pastor Ralph said to the boy. "And see if you can't get your mother to come along too."

Mrs. Pole shoved the young Pastor into the tiny prayer cubicle and held the check out in front of him. "Is someone playing a joke on us?" she asked.

"Huh," went Pastor Ralph. "Let's go find out."

Of course it was not a joke. An emergency elder's meeting was held that evening and the next morning the check was cashed. The following Sunday, after Moose and his mother demonstrated the power of the holy spirit, Pastor Ralph delivered a well organized and persuasive sermon, announcing the miracle of the mysterious church benefactor and outlining the plans for using the money with Christian responsibility.

It should be noted that a great deal of Christian responsibility was indeed exercised with Maria's donation. No one tried to use the money for frivolous personal gain. Mrs. Pole was given a much deserved raise. Some people in financial need were given appropriate assistance and of course the Church itself was improved in the ways already mentioned.

So for the two years before James McInnis found the photocopy of Maria's Check in the back of the file cabinet, no one had ever thought to question Stirring Water's miraculous windfall. James went on a secret investigation as to why Maria Escalante would give money to his church. She was known to be a philanthropist but she had a large foundation for such things and a personal check for such a large sum to such a specific little church could not have been given arbitrarily. James had heard rumors that Maria Escalante had lived in town for a brief period and upon further research was able to discover that fifteen years ago she had occupied a small house a few blocks from the church's original location and that the house had burned down.

Mrs. Pole said she remembered something about someone named Maria attending a few services in the early days but that she could not have been the Maria Escalante. It was Pastor Ralph who finally broke down and told the whole story to James. James was shocked at first, but Pastor Ralph was able to calm him down by explaining that the church's actions had been biblically supported and even pointed out the corresponding passages. "I see," James said, and then asked if he would be able to share about fiscal stewardship the forthcoming Sunday. "Not this Sunday, but the next," was Pastor Ralph's reply.

James McInnis' sermon two Sundays later was about a lot more than fiscal stewardship. In fact the focus was on hypocrisy and the terrible injustice that was done by the church to a then not-famous Maria Escalante. The sermon was quite long and went down unchallenged, thanks mostly to Pastor Ralph, who made a discreet peace sign to a furious elder.

At the end of the week a tape of the sermon and a long letter signed by Pastor Ralph and the Elders of Stirring Water Christian Church (that now included James McInnis, replacing one of the two elders who felt it best to find new congregations) apologizing, asking sincerely for Maria's forgiveness and an invitation to become and official member if she so desired.

Maria wrote back promptly, politely thanking the church for its concern and assuring them that she had never felt they had done her wrong. She also thanked them for the invitation but said she had grown quite fond of the services at the Anglican Cathedral, may God bless them all.

Chapter 25 - Finance

a pneumatic door closer

The story of how the son of a television programmer and a librarian was able to finance a play like Persephone (although there is, of course, no play like Persephone) can be classified under fables about the Modern American Dream. Not the Classic American Dream where Horatio Alger leaves the farm to sell lemonade on a street corner in New York and uses his profits to invest in the production of his invention of the pneumatic device that keeps screen doors from slamming, but the Modern American Dream where the son of a television programmer and a librarian approaches an old man who made several billion dollars on his invention of the pneumatic screen door closer and convinces him to finance a ludicrously ambitious theatre project that would not even start performances for five years.

There are a number of occasions when Oliver Fagin Thomas has been reported to be visibly nervous but the most detailed account of this phenomenon comes from the section of Vincent Regula's memoir "Hold the Door for Me" that describes the day Oliver first approached him to finance Persephone. As the book is out of print and extremely difficult to come by at the time of this writing I have included an excerpt.

"I happened to be spending the day in my bathrobe. This was quite a nice bathrobe, green with a soft furry inside. I've never been able to find another like that one. I wasn't really thinking about my attire when I answered the door, but the young man who was standing there looked shocked. "I didn't wake you, did I?" I distinctly remember him saying that. He looked like his whole world view would have been invalidated had I said yes. I might have actually been taking a nap, I don't remember that but I know I just chuckled and shook my head and invited him in. This fellow had something about him that won my sympathy. He seemed nervous, but it was an honest nervousness, no attempts to pretend that he wasn't feeling what he was feeling. That's a rare thing to come across in a young man, and rare in anything but the best of old men, in women this can be annoying, there's a threshold of politeness past which the expressions of one’s feelings just makes those around you uncomfortable.

I thought this young man was doing door to door evangelism. He looked Mormon to me, but they always come in pairs. When I let him in I decided that I'd listen to what he had to say, argue with him to make sure he was reasonable and send him on his way. I sat him down in the sitting room. I used to keep a nice set of oversized leather chairs in there at the time. Very comfortable; good for talking. I offered him coffee, and he declined. This brought the Mormon issue back to my mind. To make sure, I offered tea and he accepted without asking about caffeine. That settled the Mormon question right there.

He told me that his name was Thomas. Still thinking that he was at my house for evangelistic purposes I assumed Thomas was his first name, had I realized he was there on business I would have known he meant his last. Still he didn't correct me when I called him Tom. "What is it you're here for, Tom?" I asked.

"Money." he replied. That was a lot blunter than I expected. I remember thinking whatever church he was peddling this was the only one I'd ever seen that was honest about its number one priority. He must have sensed my shock because he started to look ashamed.

"Tom," I told him, maybe too matter-of-factly, "I'm Jewish." The kid got pale in a way you might get pale when you think someone is going to tell you that he subscribes to a harmful stereotype about himself. "And while I'm all for religious freedom." After that he just looked about as confused as a mule in a genetics class. "Hell," I said, "I've always been open to hear someone pitch an idea about how the world works, but truth is I'm very fond of being a Jew and I'm not about to go writing checks to someone else's church."

"Church?" he said. I'll never forget the way he said that.

"Yeah, what are you? JW? You're not Mormon, I figured that out. You look too intelligent to be a scientologist and I'm fairly sure they don't go door to door. I give up." He told me weakly that his father was Episcopalian. I laughed; he sort of forced a smirk. "You're not here evangelizing, are you?" A person always gets a pleasant feeling when things start to make sense. I think our friend Tom got a pretty good sensation because he snapped right back into the role of healthy young man.

"No. Of course not. I want you to finance a play." I laughed even harder. He, of course, did not. "If this was any other play," he told me plainly. "I'd laugh right with you. There are plays that have cost a great deal of money and plays that have made a great deal of money. The play I am proposing is going to cost more money than any play before, but it's going to make more money than any company has ever made."

I've never been quite sure why Oliver Fagin Thomas chose me to be his financial backer. I've never achieved anything that anyone would call prominence. I was just an engineer who loved being an engineer. I once stumbled across a good idea and ended up with a few banks keeping records with awfully high numbers next to my name. I never knew what to do with all of that money. I just let it sit and accumulate--Pretended that it wasn't even there for the most part except to buy a nice bathrobe or sitting room chair on occasion.

I'm not sure why I felt so generous to Oliver. He was not the first person to ask for money but I had never given in before. Too afraid of giving anything to the wrong person I suppose. Not that I was worried about losing my fortune, but more because I didn't want to be scammed. I never once thought that Oliver Fagin Thomas was trying to pull one over on me. He was too honest, too confident for me to question.

That afternoon we went together to visit my lawyer. We set up Persephonia Inc. right then. I gave Oliver pretty much everything. I'm proud of that decision. The money certainly went to good use."

Chapter 24 - The Return

Michigan Wines

Eleanor Thomas had been gone for twenty-one years when she returned for the opening night of Persephone. She packed enough clothes for the weekend into a carpet bag that had been passed down from woman to woman in her family since the civil war. She read Mark Twain on the flight over, and took a cab directly to the New Globe. She sat quietly through the play, after which she checked in to a moderately priced hotel and went to sleep. The next morning she woke up early, took the subway and made a surprise visit to an elderly aunt, taking her out to lunch before heading back to the airport and taking a plane back to Moscow. Oliver knew nothing about the trip until he received a letter in a peach envelope, attached to a case of fine vodkas.

Dear Oliver

I am writing to congratulate you on your recent successes. But along with these congratulations, which I assure you are most genuine and heartfelt, I regret I must also offer you a confession. My declaration of guilt is not based just on the fame and reputation of you and your work but on the achievement itself. To speak plainly I have seen the work. I apologize for not informing you and apologize even more for not visiting you while I was there, but I know how such things are and I cannot, in good conscience accept any credit for your achievement. Anytime a mother is brought into focus in a situation like this, she is invariably congratulated. I could not bear to be congratulated. You and I both know I deserve no congratulations. I have never put this into words before but I hope you have taken for granted the considerable guilt I keep in regard to your upbringing. I, in my infinite selfishness made far too many decisions that were detrimental to you. That you have become what I at one time most hoped for you despite all of my many many mistakes is to me only more evidence that I have nothing to do with the way you turned out. Still, I want you to know that I love you and I hope you have lots of people in your life who are much better at loving you than I am.

Your Mother.

Eleanor

Oliver sent his reply in a lime green envelope attached to a sample case of Michigan Wines.

Dear Mother

I know.

Your Son,

OFT

Chapter 23 - The Chinese Characters for 'Dialogue'

Apparently the Chinese Characters for "dialogue"

Sally had spent the whole night practicing writing the Chinese character for dialogue. Not out of some desire to ingratiate herself with her teacher, but first with a genuine curiosity and soon after with intense fascination. Drawing the strange characters was not easy, even with her extensive calligraphy tools. She tried writing them over and over again, in pen, in chalk in finger paint. Her bedroom floor was covered with squiggles and boxes, few of which, to her, bore a satisfactory resemblance to what she was trying to create.

Here parents were concerned. To avoid any complications she told them that she was volunteering at an art program that taught post modern theory to Kindergarteners as a cover for her college career. She knew they would not mind her taking college courses, but they would never stand for the fake I.D., and enrolling in a college the correct way was far too inefficient.

What concerned them was the impenetrable distractedness she was displaying that evening. She kept staring at the wall, tracing strange shapes with her eyes. Food would fall off of her fork, which she would put, empty, into her mouth without seeming to notice. They had raised two teenagers before her, and had once been fairly normal teenagers themselves, they knew that there were two possibilities. She was either on drugs, or worse, in love.

But Mr. and Mrs. Pope were not ones to interfere with their children's lives based on circumstantial evidence so they let the matter go, with the intention of watching Sally's behavior a little more closely.

Sally convinced a maintenance woman to let her in to the classroom an hour early. She left the lights off, she wanted to feel the writing, and the more she could see what her hands were doing the harder it was to write. Her first attempt would have satisfied most Chinese people as adequate, Mr. Thomas certainly wouldn't have noticed that some of her angles were too steep and the proportion of the boxes in the second character was off, he had never seen "dialogue" written in Chinese before. He thought there would be one symbol and not four. Regardless, Sally felt that the attempt wasn't good enough, and, when she could still see the ghost of her failed attempt, unexorcised by the eraser she went to the woman's rest room for some wet paper towel.

Her third attempt satisfied her as a faithful representation of what she had only seen in one book and on a computer screen. No one who saw he writing knew that such perfection, such fantastic emotional expression in Chinese calligraphy, albeit in the uncouth medium of chalk would have made her a very famous person in China. The art form Sally had been searching for her whole life could well have been Chinese calligraphy, and that the circle with eyelashes that haunted her dreams was most likely the character jú symbolizing a bundle of wheat. This would seem tragic, had she not ended up being Oliver Fagin Thomas' most trusted assistant, and one of the very small number of people who could claim to have seen him naked.

Oliver had over the course of his life, three people whom he considered his assistants. The first was Langley Chelmsford, who in early elementary school was often seen on the playground with Oliver behind the large baseball backstop, writing things hurriedly in a notepad. The notepad was lost unfortunately, in a fire set by Langley after hearing that Oliver was leaving for Moscow. The fire also consumed several photographs, drawings and a set of miniature green plastic soldiers that were added just for the thrill. The second was the Pyotr, the doorman at the hotel in Moscow. This was really more of an honorary position based on the loyalty he demonstrated in the whole matter with the cigarettes, though Oliver has said that he would have been very useful if he didn't have other duties to occupy him. Sally Pope was by far the longest and most successful of the three.

The first time Sally spoke to Oliver, he was in dire need of an assistant. At this point the last details of the final phase of Persephone's composition was taking place and Oliver found he was increasingly using his spare attention span to analyze the work that his primary attention span was doing. He grew absent minded and unfocused while experiencing a profound entropy in all of his environments.

Oliver was criticizing his criticism of some particularly intricate dialogue when Sally came to his office to ask him a question. He looked up when she came in, his eyes followed her reflexively. She sat down without being invited and began talking. He instinctively nodded although his consciousness was actually putting off the task of observing anything outside of his own mind in a constant unthought, 'just a minute.'

His mental dilemma was resolved at the same time she finished talking. Oliver's external processing functions returned to him. A vaguely familiar, slightly pretty but awfully young, girl was sitting in front of him. He had the feeling she had just told him something very important and he had no idea what. He felt awful.

"Can you help me?" he asked. He did not know that was the exact question she had just asked of him. She thought he was mocking her.

"Is it inappropriate to ask?"

"I don't know," his reply was thoughtful he was still a bit stunned. "I suppose the age difference makes it a little bit questionable but I don't have any questionable intentions."

"Neither do I." she said. "No questionable intentions on my end."

"Do you cook?" he asked.

"I can follow a recipe."

"How's your memory? Can you organize a mess?"

"My memory is strong and I have an excellent sense of design."

"Will you come to my apartment tonight?" he asked, betraying a modicum of shyness.

"Yes," she said. "I will."

She did go to his apartment that night and continued to do so three nights a week and Saturday afternoons until she graduated from high school, after which she moved into a small wing of Oliver's estate. By then Oliver was more capable of taking care of himself but Sally's duties had broadened. She took on a large portion of the responsibility of planning and coordinating the details of the Persephonic empire. Perhaps they were too heavy for an eighteen year old girl who never really got a chance to experience life, but she was well paid.

Even years later, Sally's most important responsibility was that of being sure that Oliver woke up on time. A theory exists that Oliver's body needed extra sleep to compensate for having twice as many thoughts as a normal person. Although the exact mechanisms of sleep are not understood, even today, a good deal of evidence supports the theory that sleep plays a role in the storing and organizing new bits of memory formed during the day. Oliver was not an ideal subject to study for this theory, however because he was very busy and sleeping in would be a major disaster. None of this, however, changes the fact that, Oliver Fagin Thomas was very hard to wake up in the morning.

For the first few months, Sally needed between an hour and an hour and a half to complete the task. Conventional methods didn't work. Any kind of loud noise or jarring action would make Oliver retreat into an even deeper state of unconsciousness. They day she tried, out of frustration, to use ice water he curled up into a ball and refused to respond to any stimulus until the late afternoon.

Eventually, Sally discovered that the way to draw Oliver out of sleep was to take advantage of his innate curiosity. One of the first successful methods involved her simply sanding just outside of his bedroom door and whispering "you'll never guess my secret." After two days, however the subconscious Oliver had learned not to trust Sally concerning the subject of secrets and Sally had to try other methods. Eventually Sally found she could play a recording of someone reading a interesting book and slowly decrease the volume. If she did this at the correct rate, Oliver would be sitting up in bed with a hand cupped to his ear after a few minutes. This meant that she was always searching for new recordings that were both interesting and new to Oliver because anything not absolutely fresh would bore him and draw him in deeper. Anything, that is except the works of Dostoevsky which she found she could repeat every year or so, always with excellent results.

Chapter 22 - The Third Chance

The Blue Canoe Saloon is much better than this.

Many of the people who are significant in the development of Persephone were present at the opening of the Blue Canoe Saloon. This is not really a coincidence as artists have come together in groups throughout history, especially in the history of New York City.

The nightclub was opened by a young interior designer named Francis DeLisle who had earned fleeting notoriety as a trendy interior designer. His particular style was to make a space seem grandmotherly. He was into brick-a-brack, ribbon candy and crocheted afghans. He put doilies on wing chairs and dusty ceramic lamps on end tables. He did all of this, not as a matter of personal taste but because he knew the style would be popular and would make him enough money to complete his dream of owning and designing a night club.

The Blue Canoe Saloon was an experiment in sticking to the strictest of design concepts. First of all everything was a shade of blue or yellow. No light was left unfiltered so everything had a green hue that changed in value depending on from which angle it was viewed.

Oliver was at the opening because Francis considered him a friend. Langley Chelmsford was there because he was at the time a much sought-after bartender. Cassandra Calo stopped by because of the event’s prestige, this is also why she didn't remember attending. She also attended disguise, something she did often and very well. This time she was dressed, rather unattractively in an expensive black and white polka dot designer two-piece, a false nose and a curly black wig. She went straight for the dance floor where she attracted as dance partners the less affluent, more ambitious single men, most of whom danced very well.

Oliver, who at that stage preferred to find hiding places at parties where he could observe unnoticed, and who all throughout his life drank far too much at social gatherings, found his way onto the catwalk from which the club's lights were hung and, securely fastened with a stage electrician's harness, lay face down next to the base of the largest disco ball and sipped scotch from his favorite hip flask as he watched people socialize.

Langley, who expected Oliver to be there but had not seen him arrive, spent the whole party looking over his shoulder whenever someone came in through the main entrance. He had a project he wanted to pitch to Oliver and had pilfered a fifth of twenty-five year old single malt to encourage acceptance. As it went, he ended up splitting the bottle with a business card designer who was a natural blond and whom Langley would immortalize in a book of poetry.

Oliver undoubtedly saw both Langley and Cassandra from his vantage point, and we can be almost certain that he recognized them both. Cassandra, though she was an actor of both great breadth and depth, was someone who worked within a style and Oliver by that time must have known that style better than his own genitals, and Langley Chelmsford has never gone unnoticed by anyone, anywhere.

Oliver must have had a reason for not connecting with them that night, and this is most likely not the same reason that he avoided Cassandra at the airport. The play was finished, the atmosphere was perfect, Oliver, Cassandra and Langley were all together in jovial creative moods. Persephone must have been trying to chisel her way out of Oliver's skull but for some reason, Oliver refused to let her out. The night of the opening of the Blue Canoe Saloon is extremely important and worthy of intense study because, besides being a lovely evening with fine music, excellent drink and the good time had by all, that night provides only evidence we have that Oliver Fagin Thomas ever doubted his own ability.

Chapter 21 - The Second Chance

Children Interested in the Arts

The second time Oliver and Cassandra's positions intersected, Oliver was nineteen and employed as a counselor at Painted Rock Summer Camp for Children Interested in the Arts.

Age nineteen was the height of Oliver's attractiveness, his high school years had been too greasy and ungainly and after college he was always a bit too fleshy to be considered anything more than pleasant looking. At nineteen, however, in the summer Oliver was sun-bleached, a bit shaggy, an acting coach and swimming instructor, and consequently a person quite often whispered about, although he seemed unaware of this.

Cassandra Calo was quite aware of Oliver however, the night she performed at the camp. She was about to perform the role of Emilia in the last scene of Othello, but first she made a speech of her own writing.

"They asked me to come here to give you some tips on acting. I avoided laughing out loud (being an actor, I am able to control all of my natural reflexes) and I said yes. I will tell you now that there are no tips on acting. Acting is something that is impossible to teach, and impossible to learn from someone else. You probably all came to this camp expecting to learn how to act. I hope you all succeed, but understand that learning how to act is not like learning how to do long division or how to fix a car. Learning to act is more like learning how to walk; no one taught that to you. Maybe your parents held you by the wrists, but you figured out how to take those first steps on your own. That is all I am going to say, for the rest of the evening I will perform. Observe well so you will at least be able to recognize good acting if you ever see it again."

And then she went on to perform the scene fifteen times, each with a difference subtle nuance. Everyone at the camp said the lesson was the most educational experience of their lives. Everyone, that is, except Oliver, who was merely happy to find that all of his expectations of Cassandra's abilities were correct.

For Cassandra however, her superb focus and concentration were tested that evening. She had endured countless distractions in previous performances, coughing fits, telephones ringing, set pieces catching fire, even stage rushes, but that night she could not help but be distracted from the young man staring at her from the back of the theatre.

She had been stared at before of course, some would say that the only important part of acting is being able to handle being stared at, but something about the way Oliver was staring at her was different. He was studying her. Nobody had ever studied Cassandra Calo before, reviewed perhaps, observed certainly, but never studied. Cassandra could not understand what was going on and she was distracted, not completely, but there were a few upper levels of her consciousness that were focused on Oliver and his eyes. Oliver noticed this, but forgave her, she would learn in time.

Chapter 20 - The First Chance

Underground Music

Oliver Fagin Thomas found himself within touching distance of Cassandra Calo on three occasions between first seeing her play Nancy in Oliver! and selecting her to be the first Persephone fourteen years later. Oliver was fully aware of Cassandra and her talents on each of these chance encounters, while she knew nothing about him. In fact, Cassandra has openly denied ever having been to the Blue Canoe Saloon, but there are at least two existing photographs that prove her wrong.

But the Blue Canoe Saloon was the third meeting, it is best to start with the first. The first time Oliver saw Cassandra in public he was twelve years old, and both of his attention spans were concentrating on other matters. He was in an airport, alone, as the cheapest flight to Moscow left during business hours at a time that was particularly busy for Oliver's father. John Thomas did as much as possible to make up for not being present at the moment of Oliver's actual departure. They had a raucous two-man party the night before, with take out Mexican food, a clip-reel of Oliver's favorite moments in the history of television, and a full glass of red wine for each of them. "Children drink wine in Europe," his father told him. "Russia has a history of not being able to decide if it is European or not, and just in case, you should try some so you'll know whether to say yes or not." Oliver enjoyed the wine, and would enjoy wine for the rest of his life.

Still, when the next day came, Oliver came to work with his father and sat in the lobby with his luggage until one of the studio's more responsible production assistants took Oliver and his bags to the airport.

Dan Krahulik, twenty years old at the time, was the Labrador retriever or young men. He was short, blond, had a bit of an underage beer gut and not really very intelligent but was extremely friendly. Oliver's happiness in seeing him temporarily overwhelmed his fear of the future and grief for the things he was leaving behind.

Dan hoisted the over-stuffed duffle bag onto his shoulder and it bumped against the back of his shins as he picked up the suitcase. Oliver carried his own knapsack and followed him into the large passenger van owned by the studio.

Riding in the front seat of the van, Oliver suddenly felt like he had grown older, this was one of the first times he had been in a vehicle without a real adult, Dan, certainly not a teenager, was not a real adult either. Perhaps part of the feeling came being higher than the other cars; mostly it was the music that Dan was playing. Oliver had been exposed to all kinds of music. He knew more about classical music than most adults and just as much about every top 40 popular song released since 1940. This music was neither, it was underground. Music imitating this stuff would be top 40 three years later but now it was undiscovered and raw. The 'fucks' were not bleeped out, but said with a recklessness that made them seem more honest than obscene. Oliver pretended to enjoy and understand this new form of cultural expression but in truth he was scared by how much it fascinated him.

This fascination, this newly discovered notion of the underground was still occupying Oliver's attentions in the airport. Certainly Oliver was experiencing many unpleasant emotional stresses at that time, fear of getting into a machine and flying over the ocean, terror of living in a new county, meeting his mother with whom he had never had a conversation in person, grief for leaving his father, but Oliver knew that he had just realized something very important; something that would change his life far more than this plane trip. Dr. Partee would probably say that this new idea seemed so attractive because it offered Oliver a chance to escape the horrible anxieties facing him, and that is an idea that must certainly contain some truth, but however psychologically complex the situation, a short ride in a white passenger van with no real adults, might have been one of the more important cultural events in the history of cultural events.

So, when Oliver found himself sitting directly across from Cassandra Calo in the airport waiting room, he took this as a sign that these new ideas he felt gestating in his mind's womb should cause him to rethink the entire play and the character of Persephone in particular. This is not to say that Oliver was superstitious, but instead that Oliver understood superstition. He had come to realize, perhaps prematurely that people need drama, and that if they want something to have meaning they will give meaning to something that is meaningless, they will find a mystery plot in the gasoline prices, a romance in the stock market, and a coincidence to be a sign from God. If Oliver was going to write the most popular play ever written, he was going to have to find the drama in its creation.

Oliver recognized Cassandra immediately; he knew that he was looking at the woman who would be his star actress twelve years in the future. He also knew that he had to pretend that she was only a stranger, because to make contact this early would ruin everything. So on this particular afternoon, Oliver could only watch Dan Krahulik flirt successfully with the future most famous woman in the world, while in his mind he started over from scratch.

Chapter 19 - Like Father

Pointing to Eleanor Thomas as the Major earthly influence to Oliver's Genius is easy. She did intend to develop a child genius and she did have a genius child. Still, the amount of direct contact between Eleanor and Oliver is almost insignificant in comparison to the time spent with his father, John. Oliver's love for so-called higher culture is due almost exclusively to his mother's care but there is also a near certainty that Oliver's superior understanding of lower popular culture, and perhaps the genetic capacity for intelligence (if such a thing exists) came exclusively from his father, John.

John was a second generation television programming executive. His father George Thomas had been mildly successful developing the early situation comedies. John himself was most famous for helping make Saturday morning cartoons a cultural phenomenon.

He Married Eleanor when they were both 27 and Oliver was born just before his 32nd birthday. The idea of being a father was a great excitement to John. Upon learning that his wife was pregnant, he immediately, began to assemble an archive of all of the greats in children's programming that he kept locked up for a time when the new son or daughter would be able to appreciate television, and also perhaps to hide it from Eleanor who might not have understood.

By the time the archive came out, Oliver was eight years old. Every evening when the homework was done and the dishes were clean, John and Oliver would watch an hour of classic television together then the two would discuss what they had watched over dessert.

The discussions always began with John asking the same two questions. First, 'did you like the program?' and second, 'why?' The greatest sin in the two-man household was to say that one liked or disliked something 'just because.' There had to be a reason backing every opinion. This wasn't often a problem for young Oliver who had inherited his fathers propensity for considering many aspects of an idea. Often, if Oliver could not say right away why he felt a certain way he could make a hypothesis and intuitively find his way to something that rang true. John was very patient and encouraging and the evening conversations did much to foster a love of both logic and opinions that was a defining part of Oliver's character.

Chapter 18 - Because it is There

The theatre must be absolutely dark. Cover the exit signs, bribe the fire marshal if you have to, but when the play starts there must not be one free photon in the auditorium. Of course we cannot provide for the light leaked by glow-in-the-dark writing on an audience member's wrist-watch, but therefore we must be all the more diligent in blocking the light we can.

It will help if you imagine the darkness first. Pretend that you are in the audience. You are there with your Mother or the girl that you met last week at the theatre when your coats got mixed up. Come up with a good story for why you are at the theatre, going to see this play in particular. Don't read any further until you have done this.

Now pretend you have been sitting in this dark dark theatre for, say, thirty seconds. Probably you are thinking this is the darkest theatre you've ever been to. You start to get a little bit nervous, perhaps because you can't see your proverbial hands. Most people at this point will think that they felt something strange about the lighting even when they had first entered the auditorium. This means that you have an observant audience because you have managed to tint all of the house lights slightly orange. And then, just at the breaking point when the slowest audience member has started to worry that someone could be stealing his wallet, just then, and no later, the curtain parts.

You see, the whole time the audience had been sitting and thinking and worrying in total darkness, behind the curtain, which is extra thick and hung with great care to not give this away, the brightest blue and brightest white lights you can afford are shining. The set itself, which is completely white is reflecting this ultra-bright light and it's bouncing around all over the stage trying with all its might to get through that curtain, which it can not do because the curtain is so well-sealed.

So with that in mind, when just the tiniest little crack between the curtain opens the excited light bursts into the theatre. The audience is momentarily blinded. And when their irises adjust they see what appears to be vast sheet of broken ice.

In reality they are seeing an assortment of 21 platforms all in various interlocking shapes. Each platform must be quadrilateral and between 1.5 and 3 feet thick. These platforms are also all suspended from the fly space by sturdy cables and can move up and down into different configurations when needed. Right now all of the platforms are resting on the stage. Things look very jagged and cold.

Once the audience has regained its sight, it is time for the actors. There are five characters, three of them male and two female and they enter in the following order.

James Masterson, 32 a novice professor of history.

Cynthia Van Loon, 28, author of a best selling fitness book.

Francis McStier, 18, college freshman and apprentice of sorts to Masterson.

Sid Cawley, 40, writer of creative nonfiction, adventurer.

Daisy Edison, 21, actress, and lover of sorts to Cawley.

They convene in the center of the stage, each person carries a large knapsack and stands on a separate platform. Daisy sits down, pooped.

SID: You all right Daisy?

DAISY: Yes, yes of course. I just wanted to have a sit.

FRANCIS: How far do you suppose we've gone Jim?

JIM: I'd say we're a third of the way up.

FRANCIS: (Writing in a note book) Day 3: 3:45 P.M. one third of the way up.

CYNTHIA: One third eh? I happened to have brought three bottles of champagne. I say we drink one for each third we go.

DAISY: And not save any for the way down?

CYNTHIA: Who cares about the way down? We'll have already seen the world from its highest point.

DAISY: It does sound nice. Just don't let Sid have more than one glass.

FRANCIS: I'd like some champagne.

CYNTHIA: You're not old enough boy.

JAMES: Of course he's old enough. This mountain doesn't have a drinking age. Give me that bottle. We're going to toast the mountain.

Cynthia takes a bottle from her knapsack.

JAMES: Do you need help with that Cynthia?

CYNTHIA: Of course I do not.

Cynthia lets the cork fly off stage left. The audience should jump at the sound, and before they have landed back in their seats, the loudest, most catastrophic noise your audience has ever heard in a theatre goes off.

The lights get brighter, the stage fills with mist and the platforms shake. Seconds later the platforms begin to shift into a configuration where each is at a drastically different height level. It is also of utmost importance that the five platforms carrying actors are at such a configuration that it is believable that none of the actors can see the others. From now until the final pages whenever an actor speaks he should be hit with a pure white follow spot. If he is not currently speaking he should be hit with an ice-blue follow spot.

Chapter 17 - A New Beauty

a floral-themed outfit

Just slightly after the tenth anniversary of Persephone (which was not celebrated in any way) Oliver and Cassandra met for lunch between shows two and three for the day.

“You abuse me,” she said. “You know what I am good for and you make me do it anyway.” Then she got into her car and was driven away.

Oliver first realized at that moment—made of those words and that action—that nothing would make sense any more. He knew that she would not be back, he could tell by the way none of the people in the restaurant reminded him of her anymore. Still, he did not feel sad. Not too sad at least and he was practical enough to know that the best thing to do in that situation was to find another actress immediately.

At first, it seemed no one would be able to take on the role. They had all of course, seen and studied Cassandra. The board had narrowed the one million applicants down to the seven hundred who most looked and sounded like Cassandra. Each applicant tried very hard to imitate her. Her unique accent, her calculated gracefulness, her award-winning make up effects. A number of them imitated her very well and there were at least three, which even Oliver could not be sure, were not actually Cassandra. But he was tired of her. He decided that she did no justice to the spirit of Persephone.

Although it was only nine in the morning, he cancelled the rest of the auditions and walked down the street and into a small Laundromat. Immediately he approached a short, round woman in mismatched flower print shirt and pants. She knew who he was; everyone did, and blushed when she saw him. When he spoke to her she scowled.

“But Persephone is the mother of all beautiful women…the first prostitute, the inventor of fashion. I am not even attractive. No. I could never play her.”

“The concept of beauty has changed over time,” Oliver replied. “Beautiful women do not decide who is or is not beautiful, that is up to the artists... and I think the time has come for beauty to have a revolution.”

The round lady stood close to the closed curtain. She had begun to sweat and in an effort to top the nervousness, she looked at her feet. He had forbidden her to change her clothes or to put on makeup. He did not even let her see the script, saying he was sure she knew every line by heart anyways. Even though that was true, she did know the play right down to the lighting cues, she was afraid that she would not know what to do when the curtains opened.

But the curtains did open and the audience saw her, alone on the empty stage in her mismatched flower print suit.

They stared but she stepped close to the edge of the stage and bent down pushing her head as close to the audience as possible. She paused to stare back at them as hard as they were staring at her. The first line rang in her head: ‘I am Persephone.’ She thought about the line for a second. ‘I am not Persephone’ she thought. ‘I am not the mother of beauty, the first of the prostitutes, the inventor of fashion. I am not Persephone.’

She stopped thinking and spoke instead.

“I may not be what you expected to see but I don’t care. If you had expectations of me then you are a fool because I am Persephone. I have always been here, but you—you have just come here tonight. You have come to learn from me. And because—and only because—I am in a generous mood, teach you, I will.”

Later that evening the curtain closed and the audience when home to bed and in the morning everyone knew that Maria Escalante was beautiful.

Chapter 16 - The March of the Siamese Children

Some production of The King and I

Cassandra's first time on stage occurred at the age of four when she played a yawning munchkin in a neighborhood production of the Wizard of Oz. At that time her name was still Siobhan Bobker and her performance went understandably unnoticed. This would not even be worth mentioning if the role were not the first in a decade of small shows in which young Siobhan was an invisible chorus child. From Siamese Child to Von Trapp child to Depression Orphan to Orphan Pickpocket she learned at a young age the importance of being part of a whole. We can be certain that, even at the age of four, Cassandra was in possession of enough of acting ability to captivate all of the community theatres put together, but something inside her told her to keep this to herself and to play the lowliest parts first. Besides, she could never have appeared on stage in a curly red wig

Chapter 15 - Russia

Dolly, the cloned sheep

Moscow was a strange period for Oliver. His mother had grown to regret leaving him and did her best to make up. She was pleased that he could now speak and that although he may not be a child prodigy in any apparent way he was at least appreciative of the things of high culture. His education in his "Russian Period," as he would later call this phase of his life, was strictly informal. During the mornings, Oliver would read at the Stanislavski museum library. Lunch was a time to study the finest of the culinary arts and lasted two hours, an hour of eating and an hour of writing about what he had eaten. In the afternoons he was tutored by rotating college students in the more technical subjects of mathematics and physics that his mother had always believed were too masculine for her to master.

#

The house in Russia was in many ways an ideal atmosphere for a boy like Oliver but he always spoke of the period as merely pleasant. He would explain, if pestered, that Russia simply was not challenging, that he felt a bit guilty about having advantages over other children and the most of all he felt his life was false. False or not, the volumes of information that Oliver was able to absorb during that year and a half provided what has been described has Persephone's historical fullness--That quality that Persephone is the culmination of all of the art and history that preceded it, that no artistic revelation is unaccounted for. Perhaps we have Mrs. Thomas to thank for that.

It was also while in Russia the Oliver was ambushed by puberty. He had been well informed about the changes that would one day happen to him and they did not come early, but he had not expected the experience to be such an interruption. But once the first signs appeared he became secretly and shamefully obsessed with everything about his physical self. He would lie in bed with a hand mirror and examine himself for changes. Any difference excited him not just more obvious occurrences either. When his skin became oily, when his shoe-size changed. He would giggle with glee for every high note he could no longer hit. Becoming an adult made him so happy he was scared, mostly because he had no desire to be a prodigy. He was sure enough that he was as good as an adult in many ways, and he did not really have any desire to hold onto his childhood, he just found the status of child star to be tacky. He knew that premature fame was something that one could never escape and that worse than being subjected to the harmful effects of fame at a young age, after maturity he would be constantly scrutinized to see what permanent damage those effects had caused. He saw that the world treats a prodigy who has grown up like a cloned sheep. The world feels guilty about having created such a thing, and wants to find a definitive excuse not to make the mistake again.

It may seem unrelated, but since we are on the subject of cloning, Oliver Fagin Thomas had the particularly odd reputation for being a supporter of cloning of all kinds.

"People are against cloning for only one reason, and that is fear," Oliver is recorded as saying in his first Nobel Prize acceptance speech. "And I think that is wrong. I will never understand not doing something because we don't know the consequences. Pandora is going to open the box. I see that some of you are surprised about that one. I can see you thinking that opening the box was a bad thing, that because of her opening the box, evil, pestilence, famine, and all that were released upon the Earth. That makes me very sad, I am always sad when someone stops reading two sentences before the end of the story. The story of Pandora's box is not the story of a girl who can't control herself and do what she's told and then unleashes pestilence upon the world. The story is about a girl who, despite the fears implanted in her by others, ventured into the unknown and, because of that bravery, allowed hope to come into the world. Sure murder and hate and body odor slipped out too, but so what? Isn't hope worth it?"

When the newspapers printed their reports they replaced Oliver's speech with someone else's speech from the year before. Only the people who were there noticed the difference, but the Nobel Prize crowd tends to be a polite, unassuming group.

Chapter 14 - Other People's Children

Maria Escalante was not Costa Rican either, but this school bus is.

Maria took a job driving a school bus. At the interview, she was worried that the school board would look into her record and not trust her with the safety of children but fortunately, the issue never came up and she was offered the position on the spot. She decided right then and there that she would not let seeing other people’s children every day would not make her sad, but instead she would concentrate on being the best of all possible bus drivers. Maria had concentrated on a lot of things in her life but before she had become a bus driver, external circumstances prevented her from getting any benefit out of her focus. However, though she never realized it, she did actually become the best of all possible bus drivers.

The big city school district had a hard time assigning drivers to routes for any extended period of time. The sort of people who were willing to drive pre-pubescent children around town for near minimum wage generally had neither the work ethic nor the strength of character to stay in the position long. The children in Maria's bus had already seen seven drivers that semester. They still talked about the one who would call sports talk radio to scream, the lady who cried all of the time, the mean one who gave assigned seats and did a graffiti inspection at each stop before anyone could get off. The other three were frightening unspoken memories.

But when Maria drove, the kids looked forward to taking the bus. She was the first driver they had seen who actually knew their names and she never had to call anyone young man or young woman. The kids felt that she really knew them and she understood the children in a most un-adult kind of way. She may not know the names of the latest cartoon characters or the popular T-Shirt band but she understood why the kids liked them, why they were important.

She was also very good at divining the flavor of each child's family life and knew how to provide, just by driving the bus, whatever the child missed the most. For some kids a smile was all that was needed. For some it was a steady voice of reason. With one child in particular she found a way to pack him a lunch each day and give it to him without anyone noticing.

On her fifth anniversary of being a bus driver, Maria’s boss gave her a card with a gift certificate for the local coffee shop. Maria didn’t drink coffee but she enjoyed the cup hot cider and cinnamon doughnut very much

Chapter 13 - Sally

Red Circle by Pablo Picasso (no blue eyelashes though)

For most of her young life, Sally Pope had been a struggling artist. She did not struggle with money, she had plenty, but with art. She knew that she wanted to be an artist but had difficulty finding a medium. She was not lazy or fickle or unfocused. It would be more accurate to say that she had a very strong, beautiful feeling in her head and she wanted only to be able to get it out, to make it physical, to substantiate it. This is probably not an uncommon phenomena. Sally herself thought she could recognize it in others. There was a rock singer whom she admired, and every album had one or two odd songs that on their own may have seemed like filler, like a B grade song. But all of them together felt like a desperate attempt to say one thing. That each of those songs might capture just a little bit of the song that is trapped in his head. She had a theory that Monet painted the same haystack over and over, not because he was experimenting with the way seasonal and daylight changes affected the scene but because each haystack painting contained something that was almost right. Unfortunately for Sally she had never had the luck of even being able to glimpse some substantiation of her idea.

This is evident in even the earliest artifacts of her childhood. There exists a collection of thirty-seven finger paintings, the powder paint flaking off, that Sally did in kindergarten, all some sort of variation of a red circle with blue "eyelashes" It is not immediately evident upon viewing these pieces that they contain the red circle with blue eyelashes because on most occasions the painting was so far away from Sally's idea of beauty that she obliterated the work with formless scribbles. They are very attractive formless scribbles, but formless none the less.

Christmas of her sixth year, she received the camera she had begged for. She had been allowed to take five pictures with the family camera on a field trip to a farm in the country. The adults praised her picture-taking skills and Sally was overcome with the hope that through photography she could find the thing that was missing. The camera was attached to her eye for three weeks before the thought occurred to her that when an adult praised a six-year-old's art, this did not mean that the art was any good or that said six-year-old had any talent, and the camera fell into disuse. When she was twenty-four, Sally came upon the five farm pictures and was surprised to find them to be of gallery quality.

The art forms progressed from there at a rate of about one per year. At seven she explored pottery; all red pots and blue handles. At eight decoupage, but she ran into copyright problems. At nine, textiles. At ten, sculpture. Eleven, dance. Twelve, music. Thirteen, poetry. Fourteen sculpture again. Fifteen, literature. Sixteen, at last, Drama.

Sally would be the first to admit her early plays were dreadful. Most of them centered around a hero or heroine who happened to be, or to be stuck inside, a red circle with blue eyelashes. This in itself was not the cause of the dreadfulness, however. Not that the plays weren't well-conceived, nor were they trite, or impossible to stage but Sally simply lacked any talent for writing dialogue. It seems likely that Sally would have given up trying to express her idea altogether at this point. It is possible, that upon realizing that she did not have an essential talent, after ten years marked by realizations that she did not have essential talents, Sally would have given up. She could have thrown herself into sports, or schoolwork or boys or romance novels. Or else she might have moved on to yet another art form, to fashion design or macramé. She, of course, did none of these things. Instead she got herself a fake I.D., quit her job at the art gallery, and enrolled in a college course entitled "The Art of Writing Dialogue." The class began with an in depth study of Plato's Dialogues, and then through all of the famous dialogues in drama, with the goal of trying to figure out what made them famous. This was not unhelpful to Sally and she felt that she was beginning to understand, and might have quite soon actually mastered the art of dialogue if the professor, suddenly called away to play Prospero on the West End, was not replaced by a young graduate student with the oddly paradoxical name of Oliver Fagin Thomas.

She fell in love with the way he lectured first. He did nothing but speak, there were no overhead projectors, no chalkboard, and no handouts. He would just stand in front of the class and speak, and not a memorized speech, or even a preplanned lesson, but he would simply tell the class things that were true and things that were memorable. Yet another amazing stroke of fortune lies in the fact that the original dialogue professor had stressed the importance to a student of dialogueology of always carrying a mini cassette recorder on his or her person. And to add to the fortune, of the thirty-six students who listened to the advice, seven of them had brought their recorders to class on Oliver's first day, two of whom had the presence of mind to record the lecture, and therefore audio of what was said on that day is available in stereo. However, being able to read a transcript of the lecture is also a valuable privilege, and therefore a selection is included here:

"You are here because you want to learn about dialogue. I know that you have studied for weeks now, and I'm sure that you can tell me a lot about dialogue, and unfortunately, being able to tell someone a lot about dialogue and actually being able to create good dialogue are almost mutually exclusive.

"Dialogue is words of course. What kind of a word is 'dialogue' though? I'll tell you this: it's a weird word. I almost could say that it is a stupid word, but not quite. 'Dialogue' is a hard word to spell, a hard word to pronounce if you haven't heard it. Those are not bad things. Most likely they're good things. If anyone ever tried to make all words easy to spell and easy to pronounce then we might as well be speaking Chinese.

That probably sounds offensive, but trust me it's not. Much can be said about the Chinese Language. Chinese would be a stupid language if it was like English, but thankfully it is not. Those of you who have taken linguistic classes are probably itching to tell me right now that there is no such thing as a stupid language, and I'll tell you that you forgot about French.

But we're talking about Chinese and how it would be stupid if it were English. By that I mean if they used a phonetic alphabet, and if they didn't have tones. The next time Chinese people are sitting next to you in the diner, listen to them. The language is not 'ching chang chong' at all. These people are singing all the time, and if they want to put a word on paper, they don’t' stick a bunch 'letters' together. Look at Chinese characters some time. Really look at them. After a few minutes they stop looking like someone tried to make waffles without enough batter and you'll realize that this is what words should look like.

Has anyone seen the Chinese character for dialogue? Someone out there learn how to draw the Chinese character for dialogue, come to class early and draw it on the board for me before next class."

Sally was that person. Actually she was one of a dozen people, but Sally got there first.

Chapter 12 - Affective Memory

Konstantin Stanislavsky as Dr. Astrov in Uncle Vanya

Cassandra sat in the alley and cried. Her costume floated atop a puddle of motor oil. The motor oil floated atop a puddle of water. Her hands rubbed the dampness into her face, smearing a mixture of makeup and tears and sweat that beaded up and ran down her neck as though her flesh was melting.

Oliver watched from a window above. His feelings we're not clear. He had warned her against the evil of affective memory. He had banned the practice from his theatre and he had believed that Cassandra, more than anyone, would be able to resist the temptation.

"I didn't mean to do it. It just happened to me." was the last thing she said before she ran offstage sobbing. The chorus girls sat frozen in their positions, one or two of them crying without moving. Oliver did not look at her or follow her or stop the rehearsal. He simply moved his eyes across the auditorium, recording the moment for his gallery of experiences.

Finally he walked away himself, out of the doors at the back of the theatre, and up to his office to watch her from above.

"You should go talk to her," said Sally who had been sitting unacknowledged at her desk. "You push her too hard."

"I never push," said Oliver. "That would be unnatural."

Chapter 11 - Act I, Scene 1

Rosetti's Proserpine

Lights are very dim and golden. A red piece of fabric, perfectly round, covers the slightly raised, square stage. In an instant, pure bright white light hits the fabric. Looking at it directly is quite difficult. The center of the fabric begins to bulge, it is being blown upward by a wind of unknown origin. The fabric seems to stretch as it takes the shape of a tower. Soon the stage is dominated by a red phallus of cotton. The wind stops and the phallus falls. The fallen fabric reveals the shape of a woman. The fabric is sliced open from the inside by a large sword, PERSEPHONE, pokes her head through the slit.

PERSEPHONE: I am Persephone, the first of the prostitutes, the inventor of fashion, and you have come here to learn from me. You men, you women, you have never seen what I can show you. You have never heard what I can tell.

A chorus of twenty young girls encircles her. Each wears a long thin cord and carries a large sheet of fabric dyed a slightly different shade of red, they drape the fabric on her, some around her waist some around her arms,

CHORUS: (singing) Teach us. Teach us. Teach us.
PERSEPHONE: Teach you I will. But all my lessons begin with weaving.
Persephone holds out her hands and golden ropes descend from the ceiling. The girls split into groups of two. One Girl from each pair holds on to a rope, the other cuts it with her sword. Soon every couple is holding onto a rope and stretching it across the stage. The first five line up their ropes in one direction, the next five line up perpendicular to that and they do a dance jumping over and crawling under ropes until they have woven a net.

PERSEPHONE: The invention of weaving is the beginning of all things. The weave is the first pattern made by man for man’s own benefit. Under over under over under over and it all becomes fabric. Before there was fabric there was not fashion, there was only skin.

Chapter 10 - A Time for Every Purpose

King Solomon and The Queen of Sheba

In bed one night, when Oliver was old, his mind was warm with the flowing liquid ideas of someone who is searching. He felt, although he could not say why, that he must justify his art, not to a court of humans, for his work had been scrutinized, venerated and even in these late times, remembered, but to some unnamed thing, some creature that stands guard at the mouth of the river of all art--a justification of Oliver’s soul to be admitted into that river.

One question bubbled to the top, burst and fell back down like a raisin in ginger ale: Did originality exist? This question was being asked by the part of his imagination that, at this moment, had become King Solomon.

Solomon stood, balanced on the edge of a blank sheet of paper, reciting Ecclesiastes. Oliver sat below, at first only watching and listening. But then in a fit of boldness, he interrupted the king.

"Everything is new,” he said.