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147 up the hill So. Here we go. Up the street and up the stairs And up the hill of Golgotha, as you told her When she answered the buzzer. “Golgotha?” Mandy said, and then looked blank. Long discussion Follows, the usual stuff, mostly about trust And how I’d begun to lack it, in Mandy, in me. Exhausting. Some refreshments, then, which I took; Then Mandy asks if I’d like to take a look At her roofgarden! Out the window and up the little ladder To the tarpaper. You shake. It’s partly because of the vodka And partly because of her, and partly because of the phobia Of heights you’ve had since you were three years old And Uncle Joe took you on the parachute ride At the World’s Fair and said he’d push you off. But not Mandy. All Mandy wanted to do (again I quote her) Was supply “an intermission to the discussion.” So you climbed the last step to Golgotha, To be greeted by spryer Mandy, who showed the way To a place where two old friends could comfortably lay Surrounded by fifty cross-shaped TV antennae. ...

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