Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry

One millennium has passed into another. 2020 has passed. The question remains …

What is in the Pulp Fiction briefcase? Of course people have had their theories. However none have borne scrutiny. Until now at last, inspired by that most briefcase-shaped of poetical forms, in his seventh book of sonnets the essay sequence Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry, David Beach can unlock the mystery.

36.

Could eternal damnation be preferable
to a life of endless recurrence? Might
such an infesting of oneself be
damnation? Pulp Fiction’s most intriguing
loose end – the foot massage which Tony
Rocky Horror either did or didn’t give
Mia – can perhaps be tied to the hellish
torments of owning a time machine. Mia
is adamant that her sum total of
physical contact with Tony was a
handshake at her wedding. She seems to be
telling the truth. Yet there is something in
her manner which suggests that at least at
one time he hadn’t escaped her attention.

37.

Perhaps this didn’t escape Marsellus’s
attention. Perhaps he took a trip
out of town – after asking Tony to
entertain his wife, and laying bugs and
lenses – and on his return found she’d been
footloose. Previously he had written
a note to self that if he sends himself
back to a particular time that meant Mia
had meandered. He now sends himself back to
then. And shortly thereafter makes the calls
for Tony to be thrown from a building. It
appears Mia was wrong when she told Vincent
that only Marsellus and Tony knew
why. In fact only Marsellus knew.

38.

Marsellus feels as flattened as if he
was the one thrown from the building. At each
necessity he has been turning back
the dial, on each occasion feeling a
little less real, until now he’s been
reduced to using his time machine as a
retroactive chastity belt. And he’s still
racked by doubts. Was Mia’s night of hoofing
a once-only madness or inveterate
behaviour? He finds himself summoning
from Amsterdam the finest dancer
amongst his minions. The reason Buddy
Holly wasn’t much of a waiter may
have been that he was a Marsellus spy.