Names of businesses I like here: “César et Fièvre, Advocats,” “Épicerie Thor.” Local superstition: if you lick the tire of a car that made you puke, you’ll never be carsick again.

Good news for Scratch: inserting metal balls in a sick girl’s gut is exactly the sort of thing to occur to a Siberian ex-pat doctor. What word would she use to describe the scar? “A caramel millipede patting along my belly.”

Bad news for Scratch: having experienced needles scratching against her vinyl hood seems unlikely. Not impossible though. Her mother had bought her a pink raincoat with ducks on each breast, which she wore to distraction until the age of 6, rarely wearing any shirt underneath. Palm fronds can have needles. I love the exaggerated degree of reality achieved by placing the familiar in a tropical hut—“No, Inch, you shouldn’t be here alone” becomes wonderful when the fiancé brought over to keep her company has a pig on a leash and few teeth in.

A long talk with Glen tonite re spiritual responsibility vs artistic. Why the hell do I feel responsible to something as implausible as a religion? Why do I need to feel I am doing my duty to dead mystics? These are not things a sane person has in mind in.

Night club on the road called “Fulmoun.”