Sun is rising over Cheesy D’s. It’s rising over Watershed Grill & Tavern’s snow-covered roof and over Reed in a camo baseball hat and bomber jacket with an American flag patch on the shoulder. He goes back and forth between the restaurant and his black Chevy truck, carrying different items. This time it’s a neon green hose, a black bucket, a red generator… he carries everything like a baby animal after a dry, acid rain, like it’s about to suffocate, like he alone can sustain its life. Then he’s locking the Chevy, shutting the door, going inside the tavern for good.

“The apparatus is complete. I’m extracting her milk into this bucket via the hose and analyzing immunofluorescence with the digital cash register which organizes molecular structures by table… It’s a coarse way to get at the data, but hey, I work with what I’m given.”

“Just make sure you clear the cache before opening. We’re serving extra-loaded Bloody Mary’s tonight and the whole AMGEN factory is going to be here celebrating the release of their new bio-product, an experimental recombinant human prolactin formulation, aka, White Venus.”

“White Venus, isn’t that the name of that toxic lotus flower on Lakini Island? Curious.”

Lactowoman is laid out on table 6 in the back section, tied down to the table posts with black waitress aprons, over a red and white gingham tablecloth. Her head rests on a basket of paper napkins, eyes closed, body clean and glowing white as though covered in a thin layer of wet milk, more pale than yesterday…

…when she was with her little girls, the twins, pushing them in the swings at Patriarche Park, saying, “Don’t you think it’s time to jump down now, to climb and play on the slides, get out some energy?” “No,” they had said, as though energy didn’t need diversion or a medium through which to travel, as though energy was meant to be latent and unexpressed, withheld from other continuums and realities, like a time capsule with forgotten coordinates, underground, a digested potential regurgitated through larval rituals, instinctually, one thing morphs into another and is gone.

“Can you hear me? Are you conscious?” Lactowoman, knocked-out since the tranquilizer shot yesterday, spasms irregularly, her tongue involuntarily licking her mouth, wetting the skin outside the buccal cavity. Her eyes open, grazing the room spontaneously, and her pelvis, her thighs, arch and twitch toward the Watershed’s kitschy 70’s lantern over table 6 then crack down…

*wokt!*

shaking the ketchup bottles into the Worcester sauce on tables 7 and 5.

Dawn stops buffing wine glasses and observes. “Woah. Look at those white eyes! Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“This isn’t the time for superficialities, Dawn. It looks like she’s having an epileptic fit.”

*bam!*

“Or maybe its tardive dyskinesia, a side-effect from metoclopramide prescribed for lactational performance increase.”

*ket-uh-punk ket-uh-punk ket-uh-punk!*

“That would explain the milk tsunami we mopped up yesterday. Dawn–get me the gingko tincture, and the Amantadine to antagonize the M2 proton channel preventing endosomal escape.”

Reed feeds the tincture down Lacto’s throat with a to-go straw with a red stripe down the middle. She stops spasming instantly. Her eye movements relax. “Where am I?” she asks. “Who are you?”

“I’m Reed,” he says. “You’re at the Watershed Grill.”

Dawn leans over. “Want a Mimosa?”