Skulking return; more is said by unblinking eyes and neural electronic hum than by black serif-topped columns and stakes. Staggering in the bleached plain, a sweaty ovoid hermit turns up nothing, at least worth upending oneself over.

The tumbler that he is looking for is three-fifths full of an imaginary substance that laps languidly against the metal lip, obscenely aware of its purity. Like a fresh wound on a flaccid old orange (or pomegranate or lemon, according to the prevailing taste) reluctantly releasing sour rivulets of juice, inner juices so wanly protected for a long-overdue appointment. Whoever said that purity was the special property of virginity, was clearly a middle-aged male with disappointed dreams of becoming a firefighter, with a displeasingly mottled son who was the accidental product of a half-hearted tryst with a wife who has since that unfortunate incident decided to become frigid (toward her husband, at least, I have good authority that she once manhandled the milkman into a state of near-feral agitation) in a most resolute manner--just to keep up appearances for their suburban neighbors, comprendo?

Pomegranates taste like that stuff they sell in the supermarket, they really do.

--A Recently-Rediscovered Hermit.