W: It's 4 p.m. CST and we're on I-74 in a white '98 Dodge Neon with Colorado plates heading approximately east at 76 mph. We're going to Cincinnati to find Dirk.
 
The mood is nervous but positive. I am aware that this trip will destroy me financially if not physiologically.
 
S: So, this going to be Unknown reading number what? tenth? eleventh? This time we're going to read to Norwegians.
 
W: I think there's only going to be one Norwegian there, but I'm sure that all these hypertext celebrities will have an entourage of fabulous people to hold their coattails and plug their laptops into the projectors.
 
As to how many readings, let's see:
 
Mike's House, Labor Day, 1998. Then there was the first performance on From Bard to Verse, an hour-long interactive radio reading in which Carl Estabrook, the host, chose the links. Sadly unrecorded. We alluded to The Unknown and read two scenes of it on that same show a couple of months later, at which time The Unknown had been shortlisted in the trAce/Alt-x competition. We gave a reading at the University of Cincinnati. Then two readings at Brown, one at Albany, Priceless Books in Urbana, and Illinois State University, all in late April / early May 1999. Our next reading was at Jean's Tavern in Chicago. Then at Coe College in Iowa, the Harold Washington library in Chicago, then there was a Newspoetry reading, and we appeared again on From Bard to Verse and interviewed ourselves and read some scenes. Now we are driving to Atlanta. Counting 2 out of 3 radio appearances, that makes this number 13… and it's Halloween weekend.
 
Fuck.
 
I should have read my horoscope. This seems ill-fated, indeed.

W: Scott, is 13 an unlucky number in Norway? And do they have Halloween there?
 
S: No. I don't know. They don't have Halloween in England. Or they do but I think it's just a drinking holiday. When's the Mexican Day of the Dead?
 
W: I don't know. All Hallow's Eve.
 
S: All Saints Day.

[William turns up the radio—we handpicked a box of cassettes
which we forgot—it's The Who's “Baba O'Reilly”
It will have to serve.]

NEXT