Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization

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  Beginning of February:

  Dedra had been acting strangely. Bitchy. June worried that the little woman had maybe gotten herself knocked uppity. She was active enough sexually, but for it to happen this close to the tour? No woman wants an abortion; that would be crazy.

  The band's progress was exhilarating but post-rehearsal depressions left the singer in a vacuum of adulthood. After countless attractions and short-circuited romances, dreams of Alabama moons, Ms. Fatiuchka didn't know what to do about it. To say anything, she risked clattering away like an engine losing oil and throwing piston rod after piston rod, metal grinding metal, meltdown to seize-up. While Prez prepped and tweaked the van, she glimpsed herself a derelict hazard on the highway, a fever gone cold, headed for passion's junkyard. She wrestled with temptation to reconnect with Luke-the man who moved her to this metropolis-and weary of self-examination, she knuckled under, not caring if it was a step backward.

  Time was moving ahead.

  For the first time in their friendship the perfect housemates had trouble talking about anything other than superficial and dull concerns. June was awash in every queasy inch of it but chose not to bring it up, hoping that once they got on the road, it would all blow over. Philosophically, she tried to ignore inner dialogs of: Is she mad at me? I hope she's not mad at me. Aside from some wind shear episodes, there had been no flameouts or emergency landings in her flight attendant life, but now, their existence compressing into a space no fancier than the interior of a dingy GMC van, she braced herself.