– North & Ashland, Chicago IL

Reggie’s alone tonight. She’s sucking on a sucker that she got at this diner, the one her father took her to as a kid, the mural of Elvis Presley and Mickey and all the all-Americans kissing and chewing on french fries, stenching it up with their fat ugly overfed mugs. She’s on less drugs than she’d like to be. Chicago’s where Bill her ex-husband used to live, Mr. Indiana Man. She’s thinking about his mess of hair, his nose. The mole on it. A green code in her head is scrolling like The Matrix. It glows but she doesn’t understand the message. She’s hesitant— this is where the guys with guns who her daughter’s been hanging with are from. How did Reggie get here? She slept weird on the bus. A Greyhound! She couldn’t sleep for 48 hours so she decided to go somewhere, wherever, for the weekend. Euphonia hasn’t been home for days so she thought she might bump into her while eating, here at this 24-hour diner somewhere in their family’s DNA. So much of Reggie’s imagination is shared with her funny father’s. Could the same be said for her daughter? She feels deja vu, staring at the post-dusk traffic on North and Ashland. Where is her daughter tonight? Are Bugs and Taz and all the Looney Tunes co. keeping her safe? Did her daughter walk through that mural, like she feels the urge to do right now, and go skipping into that golden-red center? Disappear like Bugs when the show’s about to begin? Or when it ends?