LUCILLE HAS a little hairless Chuwowee dog named Minnie Mutt. She carries it around in a tooled leather handbag hanging from a bicycle chain around her neck. Minnie barks relentlessly, micturates, chews the chain and struggles to get out of the purse. Lucille pets her gently and coos: “Minnie Mutt. Good girl.” The people on the metro bus complain so much, the driver has to place Lucille and Minnie on the no-fly list.

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“BAGPIPE ALERT!” It pops into Warren’s head as he pulls into the parking lot. He sees people in the bar waving banners and river dancing. “Jeez! I forgot Saint Patrick’s Day!” He steers toward the exit. That’s when a guy wearing a kilt and carrying bagpipes steps into his path. A moving vehicle and bagpipes? Seems like a no brainer, but he fights down the urge and swerves around. It was close, but he gets away clean.

THEODORE FINDS himself exhausted and lost, bogged down in a muddy plowed field. It’s a familiar sensation. He’d hoped that by running blindly for as long as could be sustained, he would escape the unhappy awareness of being himself. But, it’s just one more failed attempt. No drug, meditation practice, nor mortification of flesh is ever enough to lose that detested entity for good. Wherever Theodore goes, there he is.

ABSOLUTE MATHMATIC certainty of the existence of God was confirmed in 2010. Input errors to the Roadrunner computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory revealed an anomaly. Scientists analyzing the data recognized the implications of the proof. No announcement was issued because only about 100 people worldwide would be able to understand the complexity of the computations. The rest of us would have to take it on faith.

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NEVER WAKE sleepwalkers is the rule. The story is he’d come in her room and said “Hello Grandma.” She’d followed him through the house as he emptied ash trays, looked in cabinets, and chatted with imaginary people. He remembers nothing except looking out a window. In the moonlight a demon crawled out of a fiery hole and beckoned. Perhaps a dream? He doesn’t know what part of the night is real. He’s just a little boy.

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A FAMILIAR VAPOROUS odor, mellowed by night sea air, wafts from the man at the rail. Jimmy recognizes the drummer from the cruise ship’s lounge act and decides to be sociable. Struck by the vastness of the ocean, Jimmy muses: “I’ve never seen so much water!” There is a long pause. The drummer passes the doobie and fixes his eye on Jimmy. In a sudden wheezing exhale he replies: “Yeah man, and that’s just the surface!”

It’s a major re-write, but this idea is ripped off from an anecdote Harry Belafonte relates in the book: “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography.” After hearing a version of this joke, it became a private thing between Altman and Belafonte. When someone or something got boorish, one of them would whisper: “And that’s just the surface."

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A SKID ROW CLICHÉ beyond notice pushes a purloined shopping cart across the concrete flats. In mid-step transformation occurs. Muscular physique implies beneath multi-layered thrift store apparel. He strikes a wide martial arts stance, cranes his neck to one shoulder and extends an invisible Excalibur skyward. In Frank Frazetta tableau, he mouths urgent dialog. Then he seems to dissolve, fading back to anonymous bum.

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