DAY 10 (Sacramento)

Today our horoscope, because we have the same horoscope, because we have the same birthday, says "Do not sign anything today." We are to hold off until Monday, in fact. How unfortunate for our fans! We read at California State University, Sacramento, and though the reading was advertized wrongly for 12, we have a great, full audience. I introduce Kelly, who reads from The Girl Detective, I read Cancer. People ask for my signature with some trepidation. I defy the stars and sign.

We eat crepes and then drive north on 5. It is grotesquely hot. I read to Kelly from the Courtship of Sea Creatures: "'That the oyster is an emblem, a coat of arms of the female, is obvious and borne out by our touch (timid and then insistent), and then our tasting.'" We laugh at it. "Now he's saying all women should shave," I say: "'Still, the sexual organ has no shell, and the true lover prefers it naked. There is no doubt that, side by side with the guild of hairdressers and barbers, a class should be created of experts in the intimate, perfect, and smooth shearing.'"

We pass a line of trucks that lift their buckets like glasses for a toast. We pass a pen of sheeps with a sign that says Eucalyptus Trees. It is absurdly hot. We discover to our disgust that the chocolate around Kinder Eggs does not melt, it is so full of wax. The bag of truffles that City Lights gave us, however, which we have been saving, has become a bag of chocolate syrup. Kelly, who is driving, does not quite understand this, and asks if she can have one. I say, "There is no 'one.'" I scoop some out and wipe it on her finger.

We stop for gas in Weed and smell, yes, weed, emanating from the car behind us at the gas station. I make a phone call. I hear that a Seattle paper says that I could have been a great Northwest writer, but instead I moved to New York with my cute rockabilly husband, and now I'm just another New York writer -- but that we must put resentment and envy aside and acknowledge a good book when we see one. This is a weird statement in about five ways. (I am not married, etc.) Another Seattle paper says I write gorgeous prose but don't care about my characters. I tell this to Kelly and she says, "When people say things like that it always has a moral tone, as if your characters were real people and you're not being nice to them." She says someone in a workshop she took part in regularly accused her of being mean to her characters, and manipulating their fates for her own reasons.

"Yeah, who do you think you are?" I say. This cheers me up.

We keep passing huge lots full of identical trucks sleeping in rows under bluish lights. Every time, we cry out and point them out to each other. "They're zombies," I say. I misread Pear Tree Motel as Fear Itself Motel. "Nothing to fear but the Fear Itself Motel," I say.

We drive much farther than we mean to, because there are no vacancies anywhere, though we even try the door of the Umpqua Inn, which is in a small deserted neon-pink town over a bar with one drinker in it who cranes his neck when we slow down, and has a Confederate flag pinned up drooping over one window. The door does not open and we drive away quick, giggling, as if we have done something shameful. Everything has become funny, in a horrible way. It gets dark and cold. Finally, near Roseburg, we drive miles off the highway to the Sweet Breeze Inn near the Wild Life Safari, which has a clean air theme and a shocking mint green and magenta decorating scheme; also, hand-painted morning glories on the toilet. In a laminated message TO OUR GUESTS we read that the Wild Life Safari has an excellent restaurant. "Watch the little ape while you enjoy breakfast or lunch," it says. We are checked in by a woman whose eyebrows are two different colors, grey and ginger, and who has, Kelly says, though I don't notice this, strange scars on her cheeks. "It often happens, when driving across the country, that you encounter unusual eyebrows," I tell Kelly later. In an aquarium in the foyer there is a clipper ship with an attached dinghy, sailing across hard cranial ridges. It has become cold. We unpack, saying "Brrr, brrr." The man going into the room next door says, "My one true love used to say, "Brr-rumpelmeyer!" "Wow," we say. We go into our room. "Brr-rumpelmeyer," says Kelly. We become hysterical.

DAY 11 (Eugene: Tsunami Books)

In the morning, there is coffee with powder in it in the office. Kelly asks if I saw the small dog, possibly a stroke victim, whose very long tongue was hanging out of the side of its mouth. We drive the wrong way out of the motel, which in the light looks even stranger, and pass a restaurant advertizing SH IMP. "Shh, imp," we say. We are feeling spunky. We pass a billboard that poses the question: "Sunday or Sabbath? Before you choose, weigh all the facts." It is illustrated with a sort of rebus: a question mark, a tombstone, a Jesus radiating light.

Kelly belches with vigor. I say, "I'm putting that in my tour diary. Kelly belches with-"

"Vigor," Kelly says.

"I'm writing that I say I'm writing that," I say. This is real life as it happens. This is reality programming. "This is real life as it happens. This is reality programming," I say.

We pass motorcyclists driving in slow circles around orange cones. They are learning to drive. "Aren't they embarrassed? Motorcyclists aren't supposed to go to school!" I say. We pass graves. "We're passing dead people," I say. We pass stacked trees. We pass a gift store with giant mushrooms on the roof. The town of Drain goes by.

"Look how nude the top of that mountain is, that's horrible!" says Kelly.

"Come on, it's really sexy."

"It's shaved, like an oyster!"

I get out the Courtship of Sea Creatures again. "It's making me really want to eat oysters for breakfast," says Kelly.

"You know what you're really confessing," I say.

We arrive at Tsunami Books early, though we don't know we're early, because we have not read our own itinerary. Some day, when we are seasoned travellers, we will know what time our readings are. We wonder why Tsunami is so unconcerned that no one is there to see us. I stash my computer bag and my guitar and our sandwiches behind the counter and browse. It occurs to us that we may have bought more books than we have sold on this trip and that we should bill this not as a reading but a shopping tour. Tsunami has great books: the Inner Life of Plants and Minerals; The Breast: Its Role in Erotic something-or-other, and many beautiful pulp paperbacks that make my fingers itch with desire. I buy:

Madame Buccaneer ("With cutlass and pistol she ruled the Spanish Main")
After The Big House ("Hoodlums, Call Girls and Ex-Cons on the Town")
Charlie Dell ("They Were No Good For Each Other")
The Hero ("Steve was made for football…Melissa was made for love") which boasts, "This book has been slightly abridged for your greater reading pleasure."
Footprint of Cinderella
Blowdown ("When Walter Lane turned up on Puerto Muso, he had more on his mind than herding bananas.")
Dagger Of Flesh: this one I bought for the title.

Also, Sheridan LeFanu, In a Glass Darkly
Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins
Margot Benary-Isbert, The Wicked Enchantment

I read Dildo and everyone laughs. Afterwards, a man compliments my "poem." We leave in high spirits. Two hundred miles later, we get a call from Tsunami Books. I have left my computer behind.

I despair.