WHAT PRICE PERFECT CREDIT?

Alan the moving man with a van appeared with a strange large boxy vehicle. I moved the painting down to the street level with Krunch, my co-worker. Alan's truck looked like an ice wagon from 1948. He walked around to the back and untied the rope holding the doors closed.

"I like this truck. It looks old." I said.

"Its not that old," he said. "Air Force," by way of explanation. We put the Rappenburg silkscreen inside, hoisting it bodily and setting it face up into the plywood chamber. Then I stepped over a crumpled Starbucks cup into my seat. "What made you choose my company?" he asked.

"I liked the picture on your webpage," I responded.

There was a space heater at the bottom of the pile of garbage that filled up his passenger side. I had to wedge my shoes into the pile in order to find purchase there. There was a tin of sardines on the dashboard. An electrical outlet covering glued to a photograph of someone who looked quite old, perhaps from the 19th century.

Then I noticed the third passenger in the car. A man with a very long beard smiled at me from inside the glove compartment, which was open and stuffed full of all kinds of rubbish. His jaws were moving up and down. He seemed to be enjoying the very last bites of an apple core.

We rattled down the street along gilded pastures of concrete.

"Potamkin's out of business," he noticed. "The car dealership over there."

"Potamkin- are they Russian? Like Battleship Potamkin?" I wanted to know if he was Russian. It wasn't obvious though he had a European accent of some kind.

"I don't know, what is Battleship Potamkin?" Perhaps he was playing dumb.

He turned out to be a fairly easy person to talk to, and every time the van passed by a McDonald's a gleam flashed over the seats and we two riders until I noticed that the man was weeping!

"The Christian Scientists control everything," he said, wiping a tear away on his sleeve. "They're so powerful these days. But they have some good teachings too. They went through the whole bible underlining all the parts that have to do with health."

"Look! There's one of their offices now!" he yelled as we passed a shabby storefront which read in tarnished letters, Christian Scientist Reading Room. "They teach you some good things, such as how to take care of yourself, financially. I'm learning from them how to bring my credit card debt under control. But Mary Baker Eddy- she founded the religion. Her spirit is very powerful. Its kind of like a swooping, predatory thing, like a UFO that flies over the countryside, shooting out rays. They've found cattle that have been skinned alive. Her ghost looks like a huge white flying wig. Am I making sense to you?"

"Yes, yes, it makes sense---its like a photon cannon. You get perfect credit but at what price?"