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—and Perry Yturbide that first day while Billie’s at work and we’ve just called his mother now wants me to come with him to visit a general of the U.S. Army—“Why? and what’s all these generals looking out of silent windows?” I say—But nothing surprises Perry—“We’ll go there because I want you to dig the most beautiful girls we ever saw,” in fact we take a cab—But the “beautiful girls” turn out to be 8 and 9 and 10 years old, daughters of the general or maybe even cousins or daughters of a nextdoor strange general, but the mother is there, there are also boys playing in a backroom, we have. Elliott with us whom Perry has carried on his shoulders all the way—I look at Perry and he says “I wanted you to see the most beautiful little cans in town” and I realize he’s dangerously insane—In fact he then says “See this perfect beauty?” a pony tailed 10 year old daughter of the general (who aint home yet) “I’m going to kidnap her right now” and he takes her by the hand and they go out on the street for an hour while I sit there over drinks talking to the mother—There’s some vast conspiracy to make me go mad anyway—The mother is polite as ordinarily—The general comes home and he’s a rugged big baldheaded general and with him is his best friend a photographer called Shea, a thin well combed welldressed ordinary downtown commercial photographer of the city—I dont understand anything—But suddenly little Elliott is crying in the other room and I rush in there and see that the two boys have whacked him or something because he did something wrong so I chastise them 125