By Bill Peters

 

 

SHIRLEY* LIES UNDER A BLANKET on a large, L-shaped sofa. She has an encyclopedic memory for addresses. Her feet twitch when she speaks. She'll tell you stories: that she lost her virginity to Jim Morrison at age 14 ? at Woodstock; that Martin Luther King told her she looked like Shirley Temple; that on 9/11, she lost dozens of pen pals on the 79th floor, and a limo picked her up at 4 a.m. and drove her to Ground Zero to dig up and recode the gold at the bottom. On TV, the Discovery Channel shows a live, goopy caesarian.