Ocean. He leaps into the surf and a moment later pops up like a cork and comes tearing out again.

Bono is like Sergeant Fury, always ready to take the lead. He howls naked down the sand and right into the sea, bobbing, diving, and calling for everyone to follow. Pretty soon everyone's in, splashing beneath the stars. The pixie waitress marches in as relaxed as if she were alone in her bathtub. A second car has followed us—the table dancer and her friends from the disco. Bono is body surfing on a big wave when she swoops up under him like a dolphin and breaks the water, startling him. Bono can hear Eric back on shore shouting, "Don't go out too far! There's an undertow! Don't go out too far!"

"Don't worry," the table dancer tells him. "I'm a lifeguard!" A little later everyone's sitting in the sand, shivering in their table-cloths, watching the sun rise. The pixie waitress turns out to be a student of political science and is cross-examining Bono about some of his onstage political statements, which has him red-eyed and flabber­gasted as he stumbles to form intelligent replies. Meanwhile our dolphinlike Salome is gazing at Bono as if she fully expects to begin bearing his children and Fintan is trolling the beach looking for the lost Fly shades. "Found them!" Fintan calls, which means we can leave.

Bono stands up, wipes off some sand, and says so long. The kid­napped waitress says, "Not so fast." Uh-oh. "You pulled me out of work in the middle of my shift," she reminds Bono. "You're going to come back and explain it to my boss."

This woman is going to be president of Australia someday. Our shoes are soggy, our seats are sandy, and the sky is sunny as we pull back up to the restaurant. The late-night customers at the tables outside have turned into a breakfast crowd and clearly the legend of the lost waitress has been a topic hotter than the pancakes. As Tinkerbell steps out of the car the diners clap and whistle. She left a barmaid, she's returning a legend.

She grabs Bono by the arm and hauls him toward the restaurant. Her boss comes out to meet her in the doorway. "Didn't you used to work here?" he says.

"I'd like you to meet Bono," she says evenly. "He can explain.' Bono looks around. A crowd had gathered to hear what he has to say. "There's a perfectly good explanation," Bono says, vamping while he tries to think of one. "See ... we needed a lifeguard . . ."

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He rambles on, spinning a long cock-and-bull story as the patrons applaud and call for the boss to forgive the waitress.

"Okay," the boss says, "you can have your job back." Cheers from the audience. She goes back inside to finish her shift, carrying an armload of damp tablecloths.

World AIDS Day

Flight of the zoo crew/ bono's soul leaves his body/ wine tasting in new Zealand/ the english-irish problem rears its head/ a meditation on rock stardom/ ascending mt. cavendish in a creaky gondola

THERE IS no Zoo plane to carry U2 from Australia to New Zealand or from New Zealand to Japan. The band and crew instead take commercial airlines, often buying up all the tickets on a flight. This means that U2 and the twenty or thirty Principles travel the Pacific air with many of the two hundred grips, riggers, carpenters, and other hard-core roadies who have had the better part of two years to perfect their airline etiquette. As our flight sits on the runway in Sydney waiting to take off for Christchurch, the flight attendant steps up to issue the safety instructions and realizes she is stewardess on the voyage of the damned.

"Please make sure your safety belts are buckled," she says, and two hundred seat belt buckles clickclickclickclick for thirty seconds. "The exits are located—" Four hundred arms flaps up in the air, mimicking her instructional gestures. She steels herself to continue. "In case of sudden loss of cabin pressure oxygen masks will descend." She dangles a plastic oxygen mask in front of her face and two hundred hands hold up two hundred dirty sneakers and dangle them by the shoestrings. "Place the oxygen mask over your face and breath normally." The roadies all hold their sneakers over their noses and inhale loudly. "To inflate the lifejacket—" Two hundred inflated airsickness bags pop at once. "There is a whistle to attract attention—" Everyone whistles. "Your safety card is in the seat pocket in front of you." Two hundred plastic safety cards are held aloft and flapped. "Please be careful when opening the overhead compartments, as objects may shift during flight." Two hundred little

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