Seven American Nights procession

Dave Tallman · 19 Aug 2010, 04:05 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:05:37 -0600
Subject: (urth) Seven American Nights procession
Message-ID: <AANLkTikE4S+Za2Eigwu01AHjcq69GpuVCbtfsZrfFTpo at mail.gmail.com>

David Stockhoff wrote:

I thought you said the party was to be "tomorrow" night. I haven't
looked it up, but if that's the case, then today is the procession and
tomorrow is Saturday. A theater would be closed all that weekend if
Sunday is Easter.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear about the context. Let's call them Day N and Day N+1.

On Day N, Nadan sees his last performance of "Mary Rose" (actually he
performs in it himself). Afterwards he goes home with Ardis and has
sex with her. As he is leaving for his hotel, she tells him, "You will
see me tomorrow. You're going to take me boating and we'll picnic by
the water. Tomorrow night the theater will be closed for Easter, and
you can take me to a party."

Nadan returns to his hotel that night and finds his room disturbed, an
egg taken, and his journal moved. He strips certain pages out of the
journal and... (I say the police return and arrest him and he is seen
no more).

On Day N+1, the journal continues the story. Nadan and Ardis walk up
the shore from his hotel near the Arena Theater to the Jefferson
Memorial (this is impossible, if you check a Washington map). They do
all the picnic and boating things exactly as she described. On the
walk back to the hotel, they see the procession. That night they
attend a costume party (both in disguises that would easily conceal
their identities if impersonators did it in their place). They go back
to Ardis' place and Nadan lights some arrack in order to see her
naked. He supposedly sees she is a werewolf monster, perhaps the very
one he shot at before, so he kills her.

So the options are:

N = Thursday, N+1 = Friday
Symbolically this is great. Nadan gets arrested on Thursday night,
like Jesus. The story has parallel to a passion play, with Ardis as
Judas. I like this a lot, except for the theater being closed on
Friday for Easter.

N = Friday, N+1 = Saturday
Maybe this isn't so bad. Like you say, the theater could be closed the
whole weekend for Easter. There may be processions that would normally
be held Friday night or very early on Easter morning that were moved
to Saturday mid-day for safety. Nobody wants to be out at night with
werewolves around.
 N = Saturday, N+1 = Sunday
This has the theater open on Saturday but closed on Easter Sunday, and
a procession late in the day for Easter itself. Again, a mid-day hour
might be selected for safety. The symbolic revelation of a negative
Easter (either an Ardis monster or an American plot) is reasonable.
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