Mitch Finds Love
at McDonald's

Michael

"I swear, I'd lose my own head if it weren't attached to my neck," Mary-Lynn says, taking the rest of the change from Mitch. "Thank you ... Mitch!" She has the slightest twang in her voice, one it seems like she might have spent time trying to carefully remove ... East Texas? Oklahoma? Anyway, it's a nice, pleasant voice. Oddly familiar. "I was just gonna spend my lunch break alone by Ronald over there," she points to a frankly unsettling plexiglass sculpture of America's Clown looming out of a similarly terrible fake tree, "but, well ... 'dja care to join me?

Jeff

"I'd love to, beats dining alone. You ever have one of the coffee shakes? They any good?" Mitch squints briefly at Mary-Lynne as he activates his aura sight and detect History-B. (Pretty lady approaching him? Seems sketchy.)

Michael

Oh yeah, so when she spilled her change, Mitch saw Mary-Lynn have to deal with a scrap of folded up newsprint that was in her tight jeans pocket as well. Hence the spillage. Again.

"I have not, I must confess. I'm a Big Mac-and-a-Coke girl. No fries, they only slow ya down." She grins, puts that very order in at the counter, pays and steps aside for Mitch to put his own order in.

Jeff

Mitch orders a Big Mac and a coffee shake and an orangeade.

"Don't really care for fries myself."

Michael

Mary-Lynn grabs her tray and takes Mitch over to her corner table. "Well, Mitch ... tell me about yourself! If I'm not mistaken I'm catching a tiny bit of an accent and I'm wondering if you and I are maybe from around the same way." She smirks.

Jeff

("Her" corner table? She hasn't been sitting here at the McDonalds waiting for Mitch, has she?)

(I assume not. Anyway.)

"Maybe," Mitch allows. "I've been to a couple of places but I grew up in Alabama."

"You sound a little further west than that. Maybe. I'm not an expert on accents, that's not my deal."

Michael

Mary-Lynn chuckles. "Yeah, you got me. I am from a little town called Antlers, Oklahoma. A stone's throw from the Red River and the Texas state line. Came out here during the, uh," a rueful chuckle, "'Summer of Love' and have never looked back." She takes a big bite of her burger, a sip of her Coke. "What do you do when you're not helping out innocent damsels who've lost their nickels and dimes in the line at McDonald's, then?"

Jeff

Mitch starts with the shake.

"Hmm. For reference, it's okay. B, B+. Chocolate's better, probably ... anyway, I play guitar a little, Tarot cards. I was hiking up on Coyote Peak this morning. Meditating on fascism ... that sounds like a bunch of unconnected stuff, but taken as a whole it adds up to most of a person. How about yourself?"

Michael

Mary-Lynn's face goes wide, "Oh wow, far out, Tarot cards? I've never learned to read them myself, but I've always... wait. You play guitar, too?" Mary-Lynn's aura swirls some more, flaring with light that Mitch's eyes seem to register. As Mitch's pupils visibly contract, Mary-Lynn catches Mitch's eye, a rare thing with that pesky "Avoids eye contact" Quirk. But she does. And she bores in.

"Mitch, you are going to have to excuse me for this, but given you just said all that, I am guessin' that this'll all maybe not sound so strange after all. I am almost never down here in Palo Alto. But I am this week. Because, I was readin' the Berkeley Barb last week and poring through the absolutely sorrr-did advertisements in the back when I came across one asking me if I've ever had premonitions or psychic flashes or connections to people far away and ever since I was a little girl? I have had all three. So I'm down here gettin' tested for, apparently, a psychic research program. They're payin' me fifty bucks for the week, which is a damn sight more than I get for ... singin' in the San Jose Airport Hilton lounge on weekends. Which is my regular gig."

"Anyway, I'm on lunch break after lookin' at a bunch of inkblots and doing word association tests and drawing trees and houses for all these fellas in lab coats and I get one of those old premonitions. 'Don't you feel like a Big Mac, Mary-Lynn?' That little voice, y'know? So I head down the street and I walk up to the counter and then this cute guy helps me pick up my change and it turns out he's meditating and reading Tarot cards and I'm like, well, Mary-Lynn, the voice put you where you're supposed to be again!"

Mary-Lynn devours another bite of the Big Mac, with relish. "So. Does that sound crazy?"

Jeff

"Nah. I mean, yeah, but we live in--you seen that picture of the cowboy clown back there?" Mitch jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "It's a crazy time... You seem like a real free spirit type. I live down on the other side of San Jose, Coyote Peak like I said, I just came up this way because, I dunno, I thought the shake would be better here." He shifts in his seat.

"They got you drawing houses, though? I never heard of that." Mitch considers, wonders for a moment why no come-get-tested-for-psi ad ever crossed his dash. "Wait, are you drawing houses like on a forty-hour work week? Time off for lunch?"

Michael

"Yes! No kidding! I mean, look at the list of tests they've got me lined up for! I feel like a dang lab rat!" She digs into her pocket, pulls out the folded-up Barb ad as well as a folded sheet of Xerox paper with a long list of tests on it.

Jeff

"Jeez."

"And that's not even the, like, premonition stuff, huh? Seems like a lot. All that before they even ask you what number they're thinking of, or whatever. Wow. What do you sing? What's your sound?"

Michael

Mary-Lynn smiles, "Well, I gotta keep things pretty middle-of-the-road for the folks at the Hilton lounge, of course, a lot of standards, show tunes, and softer pop ... but I dunno, the music I'd like to be making? Singer-songwriter stuff. I like Joni, and Carole, and Linda. Janis and Cass too, when I really feel like belting. I came out to San Francisco and it turns out Laurel Canyon was the place to be. I guess not all my premonitions are accurate." A coy smile.

"I play a little guitar too, piano of course. But I have a piano player at the Skyline. You should drop by sometime! I'll be back at it tomorrow night. Tomorrow's Friday, right? I spent my Fourth of July having my brain very loudly zapped in a giant echo chamber at the clinic. What a time."

Jeff

"Laurel Canyon wasn't that hot, you didn't miss much. At least by the time I got there, which was, uh, a little later than the good part. When's your set? You want a card?" He wolfs his Big Mac down.

Michael

"Yeah, swing by around 9 tomorrow night. My audience usually consists of leering creeps in town on business, so it'll be nice to have at least one gentleman there," Mary-Lynn says. "A card? You mean Tarot?"

Jeff

"Sure, why not?"

The cards are in his hands. Mitch considers false-shuffling and passing her the Queen of Cups, which he keeps on the bottom of the deck when he's walking around with it, for reasons that don't really merit further discussion, but instead he gives them a solid shuffle while sipping his orangeade through the straw, and pulls one card.

Jeff

Dang, she out-cooled me.

He grins as he watches her go.

Michael

She's kind of a dork, bless her, but she does ultimately believe in her vibes.

Jeff

I had a whole spiel I was winding up about the sinister undertones of Adam and Eve standing around, gormless and naked and well-separated, while an oversized winged yellow person with leaves for hair assumes a dominance pose over them. Maybe Red Wings is making Eve draw pictures of houses, we don't know.

Michael

Aw. Save it for her in-between-sets break at the Skyline Bar. You can fend off the horny, plaid-suited defense contractors in town to visit the semiconductor companies.

Jeff

Mitch puts his now-incomplete deck away, wipes his hands with a napkin, buses the remaining detritus. Then he sits for a second and basks in the experience. Then he goes back to the counter and orders some fries. Takes them and a tray back to the same place he was sitting with Mary-Lynn a couple minutes ago, sets the tray in front of him, dumps the fries out on it, trying to spread them as he does with a single wrist-flick. Then he stares at the pile of fries and attempts to divine whether Mary-Lynn is some kind of honeypot and if so, is she a Red King agent, or CIA, or BLUE STAR, or the Church of Latter-Day Saints? ("MJ -- Mitch -- it is time for you to find yourself a nice girl.")

Michael

The way the fries fall hints at a bunch of things. First of all, a pair of fries fall well off to the left, crossed, like an X. Then there's a fairly substantial pile of fries that seem to hint symbolically at obstacles, troubles, chaos, which lies between our little couple and five very tasty-looking oily fries on the right. You know, the ones that are so savory and suffused with fat that they just sort of crystallize into a golden crunch when you bite into them and let their oils coat your tongue. The McDonaldland placemat even features a little Family Circus-style dotted line leading from left to right to buoy this reading of the "motion" of this impromptu potatomancy.

The Oracle is hinting to Mitch that Mary-Lynn is not a honeypot, that she is definitely not part of SRI itself. However she, like Mitch, is somewhat special, and for the next little while she and Mitch are going to be two little fries against the world before the two of them are able to get to safety and security on the other side of things. Could Blue Star or CIA or the Quorum of the Twelve be amongst all those obstacle fries at the center of the tray? Sure. It's tough to say who or what they exactly represent. But Mitch feels it's more than just the SRI program itself: it's what is happening at the secret center of it.

Jeff

Dang.

Mitch drives in his car that he owns and has always had, shut up, to Livermore, arriving in the middle of the afternoon I think.