K01 1 <#FROWN:K01\>Geno called B&B taxi, which took him to the K01 2 Barrington campus along Route 9 in a rusty blue '84 Chevy. This K01 3 road had been nothing but a slice of macadam through a cornfield K01 4 when Geno arrived in Barrington seventeen years ago, but for him it K01 5 was ruined now. Neon signs had arrived a decade ago, advertising a K01 6 pizza shop and a bowling alley. Gas stations went up quickly, K01 7 followed by an A&P, a Super Drug, and a Miracle Mart.

K01 8 Soon after their wedding, Geno and Susan had moved into a K01 9 redbrick apartment building two blocks off campus on a leafy K01 10 elm-shaded street. First the elms died, then a Pizza Hut opened up K01 11 across the street, and the traffic worsened. Frustrated, they began K01 12 hunting for a farmhouse outside of town.

K01 13 Geno loved the remoter parts of Vermont, places where one could K01 14 imagine the twentieth century had barely begun. The farmhouse he K01 15 and Susan found, with a long view of Mount Isaac, was perfect. K01 16 Sitting in an Adirondack chair on the front lawn, one could believe K01 17 the year was 1911.

K01 18 The main thing about Vermont, for Geno, was that it wasn't New K01 19 Jersey. His home state embodied the worst aspects of this K01 20 catastrophic century. At one time its small towns were full of K01 21 gingerbreaded wood-frame houses, redbrick Federals, neoclassical K01 22 granite banks, and shimmering limestone court-houses. These K01 23 had given way to 'developments' of split-level eyesores with K01 24 aluminum siding and screened-in patios.

K01 25 Geno had grown up in the standard prefab with a two-car garage K01 26 beneath a master bedroom. His father put a basketball hoop over the K01 27 garage doors when he was eight, making his son instantly popular in K01 28 the neighborhood. A gang of boys filled the driveway every K01 29 afternoon in summer, and a running pick-up game continued until K01 30 Geno's father, who sold wall-to-wall carpeting for a building K01 31 supply company in Meadow Pond, arrived home at five-thirty sharp K01 32 for supper.

K01 33 Mr. Genovese always came home frazzled, and he gulped a double K01 34 Manhattan to calm his nerves. Mrs. Genovese made sure the boys K01 35 abandoned the hoop just before her husband's black Buick nosed into K01 36 the driveway.

K01 37 An only child, Geno was raised to believe the universe revolved K01 38 around him, although he'd been conscious of his father's business K01 39 troubles from an early age. Mr. Genovese began in sales after the K01 40 war, working first in automotive supplies. He moved, briefly, to a K01 41 feed supply store. His cousin, Nick Giacometti, hired him at the K01 42 building supply company in 1957, and Mr. Genovese gravitated to K01 43 industrial carpeting. He wore a suit to work every day with a K01 44 starched shirt and a flowery tie, and it meant a great deal to him K01 45 that he had a 'white collar' job. It upset him that business was K01 46 never very good.

K01 47 Mr. Genovese wanted Geno to pursue a career in sales, but his K01 48 son's academic bent scratched that idea. The scholarship to K01 49 Dartmouth sealed Geno's fate. From then on, he was never not in K01 50 school, as student or teacher. And never in New Jersey.

K01 51 The disturbing thing was that Barrington had come to resemble K01 52 his hometown more than ever, with condos and tracts of prefab K01 53 houses spreading like cancer cells on the town's periphery. The K01 54 village green, with its churches and banks and nineteenth-century K01 55 storefronts, was - thank God - preserved by tourism. Kitsch had its K01 56 up side, too. But Geno hadn't quite noticed, until now, how K01 57 terrifyingly ugly the place was becoming.

K01 58 The college remained pristine, but its unreality hit Geno hard K01 59 as the taxi passed through its stone gates. What was he doing here K01 60 anyway? He must call his father-in-law soon about that loan. If K01 61 only he could buy, say, twenty thousand dollars of penny stocks in K01 62 gold mining companies in Peru, his future would be assured. If his K01 63 calculations were correct, in five years that stock would K01 64 appreciate tenfold, and he could quit his teaching job, move to the K01 65 Caribbean, and write poetry till the world turned cold.

K01 66 Geno walked into Milton House with a heavy heart, trying not to K01 67 breathe in the smell of institutional floorwax. The corridor was K01 68 dark.

K01 69 "Hi, Geno," a voice cried, rather K01 70 pleasantly.

K01 71 Geno startled, turning to face Agnes Wild.

K01 72 "Did I frighten you?"

K01 73 "You always frighten me."

K01 74 "I'm glad I ran into you," she said.

K01 75 "Ditto."

K01 76 "Really?"

K01 77 "You really fucked me this time, Agnes."

K01 78 Agnes looked at him. "You think I put Lizzie up to K01 79 this, don't you?" She seemed hurt.

K01 80 "I do."

K01 81 "Well, I didn't. I had nothing to do with K01 82 it."

K01 83 Geno stared at her, uncertain.

K01 84 "I'd tell you if I did. You know that. Nothing is K01 85 gained by going behind people's backs."

K01 86 Geno sighed. She was probably telling the truth. Indeed, he K01 87 often told Susan that Agnes was too unimaginative to lie. K01 88 "I assumed you were pissed off about that Virginia Woolf K01 89 thing."

K01 90 "I thought that I was more interested in Woolf than you K01 91 were."

K01 92 "You are."

K01 93 "So it was natural that I should want to supervise K01 94 Lizzie."

K01 95 "It was." He looked down like a small boy. K01 96 "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have jumped to K01 97 conclusions."

K01 98 "I accept your apology. But you've got a lot of work to K01 99 do with Lizzie Nash."

K01 100 "And the Committee on Human Relations."

K01 101 "I don't know what's going to happen there."

K01 102 "You're the chairperson!"

K01 103 "The materials you presented are ...well ...hard to K01 104 digest. We're not legal experts, you know. I don't think we're K01 105 looking at a legal situation in any case. But there's a point of K01 106 morality here."

K01 107 "Ah ...morality. Yes."

K01 108 Geno went into his office, closed the door, and drew the K01 109 blinds. He sat back in his desk chair, his feet on the desk, and K01 110 closed his eyes, feeling a sharp throb in each temple. His head was K01 111 killing him now. It seemed that his life - his teaching life, his K01 112 writing life, his family life - had hit its nadir. It was difficult K01 113 to imagine how he could regain his wife's trust or find a way to K01 114 relate to the boys that felt solid and real. The idea of divorce K01 115 appalled him. A marriage was a mystical unit, consecrated by human K01 116 and divine love. And he was determined to act responsibly and well K01 117 - and to earn the union he desired - even if it meant uprooting, K01 118 moving to a new country, burning his house to the ground to begin K01 119 again, with bricks and mortar. The time had come, he decided, to K01 120 rebuild.

K01 121 A knock came to the door, and he shuddered. Not Lizzie Nash, he K01 122 hoped. Or Agnes.

K01 123 "Hello?" he called weakly.

K01 124 "Excuse me?" said Chap Baloo, pushing the door K01 125 wide. "That you, old boy?"

K01 126 "Nobody here but us chickens."

K01 127 Baloo made himself comfortable in the chair by the K01 128 book-case. "I had a call from Botner this K01 129 morning," Baloo said. "They apparently don't have a K01 130 decision on your case. Not yet."

K01 131 "Fuck them," Geno said.

K01 132 Baloo shifted uncomfortably, twisting his mouth to one side K01 133 unconsciously. "That's not a good attitude, Geno," K01 134 he said.

K01 135 "Frankly, I don't care anymore."

K01 136 Baloo said, "I don't mean to frighten you, but they K01 137 could suspend you for a term. Maybe dock your salary."

K01 138 "Can they fire me?"

K01 139 "You've got tenure, but I reckon anything's K01 140 possible." His Southern accent seemed to thicken. K01 141 "It's a dark mood this country's in."

K01 142 "I didn't do anything wrong."

K01 143 Baloo took a pipe from his jacket pocket, though he didn't K01 144 intend to light it. Pipes were conversation props for him - a K01 145 residue of Southern gentility. "I'm sorry if this seems to K01 146 be ruining your summer," he said.

K01 147 "My summer is fine."

K01 148 "I saw Susan at the post office just a while ago. She K01 149 looked awful."

K01 150 "She's had a bad year," Geno said. "And K01 151 I guess I haven't made life easy for her."

K01 152 "Women," said Baloo. "You know the old saying, K01 153 'Can't live with them, can't live without them.'" With K01 154 this, he winked and left, closing the door behind him.

K01 155 On the way home in the taxi, Geno thought about Baloo's silly K01 156 old saw. He'd heard it many times, and it typified a familiar male K01 157 way of regarding women as a kind of foreign country. As an only K01 158 child, he hadn't really known a woman close up until quite late in K01 159 adolescence, unless you counted his mother. Susan was the first K01 160 woman he'd lived with intimately, and he recalled the strangeness K01 161 of their first months together. Everything about her intrigued him: K01 162 her smells, her daily habits, the way she stood in front of the K01 163 mirror and looked into her own eyes. He could never look into his K01 164 own eyes so intensely.

K01 165 Susan was bending over a row of flowers when he arrived. She K01 166 wore a big straw sombrero and jeans, and even though she must have K01 167 heard the taxi grinding over the pebbles as it climbed the K01 168 driveway, she didn't look around.

K01 169 Geno paid the driver and walked to where she was clawing up K01 170 weeds, and he stood quietly behind her. "We could use some K01 171 rain, huh?" he said, at last.

K01 172 She continued with her claw, piling the granular leaves of K01 173 dandelions in a clump beside her.

K01 174 "I guess you're not talking, is that it?"

K01 175 Susan sighed, rocking back on her thighs. Then she started K01 176 crying. She put her head in her gloved hands, and her shoulders K01 177 shook.

K01 178 He knelt beside her. It was so hard to think of anything to say K01 179 to someone so obviously in pain. What was worse, he felt K01 180 responsible for that pain.

K01 181 "I'm sorry, Susie," he said.

K01 182 She rose slowly, wiping her eyes on a flannel shirtsleeve.

K01 183 "I guess I'm out of control these days." He was K01 184 looking at the ground as he talked. "Sometimes I wish we K01 185 could just get out of here, you know. Start again somewhere else. I K01 186 might quit teaching."

K01 187 "You're broke," she said, laughing through the K01 188 tears now - like sun tearing through a scrim of rain.

K01 189 "So what?"

K01 190 "Like hippies, huh?"

K01 191 He became excited now as a green floating image - an island - K01 192 appeared in his mind. He closed his eyes to see it more clearly. It K01 193 was the Dominican Republic, he was sure.

K01 194 "We could house-sit in Maine," Susan said.

K01 195 "Maine?"

K01 196 "Help on a lobster boat or something."

K01 197 "How about the Dominican Republic? Maine is too K01 198 cold," he said. "The D.R. is perfect - never too K01 199 cold or hot."

K01 200 Susan studied his face like a math problem, saying nothing.

K01 201 Geno said, "I'm serious."

K01 202 "I know you are," she said.

K01 203 Geno came close to her now, wiping the wetness from her eyes K01 204 with his thumbs. Then he didn't kiss her exactly. He just stood K01 205 with his lips pressed to hers, slowly breathing her in - the smell K01 206 of dirt and sweat, tears and sun. She was earth and air, he K01 207 thought. She was fire and water.

K01 208 "I love you," he said. "I like you. And K01 209 I never hate you."

K01 210 "I'm glad you never hate me," she said.

K01 211 She put her head on his shoulder, and he let his fingers cup K01 212 her gourdlike head, feeling her skull beneath the scalp. And he K01 213 knew he loved her, loved her.

K01 214 Chapter 21

K01 215 Charles had spent five days in the mountains with Yellow Moon, K01 216 a mud-spattered woman in her midtwenties. She was from Arkansas, K01 217 with an accent thick as kudzu, though she had most recently lived K01 218 in Boulder. Her name made sense if you looked at her without K01 219 preconceptions: the whites of her eyes were indeed yellow, while K01 220 her head was moonlike; even her scalp - visible beneath her K01 221 bleached-out hair - glowed with a yellowy tint.

K01 222 She and Charles pitched a tent in the north field adjacent to K01 223 Geno and Susan's house, and it was established that they could K01 224 either use the kitchen to cook for themselves or, if they K01 225 preferred, eat with the family.

K01 226 "I'm certainly a cook," Yellow Moon volunteered K01 227 on the first night, her words like mismatched beads on a string. K01 228 "I do a rice and beans dish much like the K01 229 Caribbeans."

K01 230 Geno wondered how was it possible that Charles, who was so K01 231 intelligent, could have stuck himself with such a woman.

K01 232 "The Cubans eat rice and beans, don't they?" K01 233 Susan asked.

K01 234 K02 1 <#FROWN:K02\>"Not really. It's more like seeing things K02 2 as they are. Kind of like the old acid days."

K02 3 "Well, it gets you rolling in the morning." She K02 4 stood up abruptly with her purse under her elbow. "Call K02 5 me," she said, and went out.

K02 6 Frank felt a little gust and thought, I will. He paid for K02 7 breakfast and went outside where a parking lot full of cars rested, K02 8 seemed to await their mission. Wonderful when day had not begun, K02 9 when only the breakfast waitresses and airline crews were K02 10 conspicuously there and ready for the rest of the world if it ever K02 11 woke up. Frank looked off to the silhouettes of the city and the K02 12 mountains beyond. Odd hours always took him back to the days of K02 13 weirdness, to the exhilaration of being out of step. He went on K02 14 contemplating the way the world was reabsorbing him and his K02 15 friends, terrified people coming to resemble their parents, their K02 16 dogs, their country, their seatmates, after a pretty good spell of K02 17 resembling only themselves. This, thought Frank, lacks tragic K02 18 dimension almost as certainly as podiatry does. But it holds me in K02 19 a certain ache to imagine I'm actually as much a businessman as my K02 20 father.

K02 21 But Frank was apprehensive about going to work. He was, after K02 22 all, across the hall from Lucy. That hadn't changed. And he was K02 23 disquieted about seeing her this morning. Despite twenty years of K02 24 trying to reduce sex to the same status as the handshake, its K02 25 reduction was unreliable and it frequently had an unwelcome larger K02 26 significance. Lovemaking still seemed to test the emotional K02 27 assumptions that led up to it, and in Frank's case he somehow found K02 28 out that he was never going to be in love with Lucy. It was K02 29 important to act on this perception before her nose seemed to grow K02 30 or her mouth to hang open vacantly, her vocabulary to shrink or her K02 31 feet to slap awkwardly on the linoleum. He was going to have to K02 32 drum up some drippy conversation about friendship, a deadening K02 33 policy statement that would reduce everything to awkwardness.

K02 34 He needn't have worried. She was in the hallway when he K02 35 arrived. She wrinkled her face at the sight of him, shook her head K02 36 and disappeared into her office. He went into his own without K02 37 greeting Eileen, his secretary. He tore down the Eskimo poster with K02 38 disgust and, briefly, hated himself. A new set of tickets and K02 39 itinerary lay on his desk. He opened the itinerary. It said, K02 40 "Hell." Nothing else.

K02 41 He picked up his phone.

K02 42 "Eileen."

K02 43 "Yes, Mr. Copenhaver."

K02 44 "Good morning."

K02 45 "Good morning."

K02 46 "My mind was elsewhere."

K02 47 "Don't worry about it."

K02 48 "Thank you. Now, can you get me Lucy across the K02 49 hall."

K02 50 The phone rang only once.

K02 51 "Lucy, Frank."

K02 52 "Yes."

K02 53 "Is there something wrong?"

K02 54 "Is there something wrong..." she said. He knew K02 55 now, of course, that there was.

K02 56 "I thought we'd had a nice evening."

K02 57 "We had, to a point."

K02 58 "And at what point did you think it went K02 59 downhill?"

K02 60 "At the point you called me Gracie."

K02 61 "I did that, did I?"

K02 62 "About seven times."

K02 63 "Sorry."

K02 64 "I suppose it's not your fault, Frank. But I'm not your K02 65 old wife."

K02 66 "Of course not."

K02 67 He hung the phone up and leaned on his hands. He could have K02 68 said, "No, you're not my old wife. You're my wife's old K02 69 friend. Some friend!"

K02 70 For some reason, he called June up at the dealership. They had K02 71 to page her on the lot. By the time she came to the phone, he had K02 72 forgotten why it had seemed so necessary to call her. Nevertheless, K02 73 he told her what had happened. She listened quietly. He explained K02 74 as discreetly as he could that he had said one or two inappropriate K02 75 things during a spell of delightful lovemaking and it had ruined K02 76 everything. June said,"I can't get into it. When they're K02 77 doing their job, they can call me John Brown for all I K02 78 care." Frank thanked her anyway and hung up, then thanked K02 79 her to himself for this burst of redneck health.

K02 80 He went down to Lucy's office and sat under the waterfall while K02 81 Lucy watched him and waited for him to say something.

K02 82 "Are you still angry?" he said finally.

K02 83 "No. I never was angry."

K02 84 "I don't want to lay this on you, but if you weren't K02 85 angry, you were hurt."

K02 86 "Then I was angry, but I'm not angry now."

K02 87 Some hours ago, he thought, she was chewing sheets and going K02 88 "Oof, oof, oof!" while, evidently, I was going, K02 89 "Oh, Gracie, oh, Gracie!" Quite a picture. Oh, K02 90 dear.

K02 91 Then she smiled and said, "This time, I'm not sending K02 92 you anywhere." The air had apparently cleared. Frank left K02 93 her office, thinking, What a nice person.

K02 94 Frank straightened up his desk and went back out through the K02 95 reception area. "I'm going to the ranch," he K02 96 said.

K02 97 "Can you be reached there?" asked Eileen.

K02 98 "No, but I'll be back."

K02 99 Frank drove north out of town, cutting through the subdivisions K02 100 that lay around the old town center. Frank had a reluctant K02 101 affection for these suburbs, with their repetitious shapes and K02 102 lawns and basketball hoops and garages. He appreciated their K02 103 regularity.

K02 104 The road wound up through dryland farms of oats and malting K02 105 barley, golden blankets in the middle of sagebrush country, toward K02 106 the tall brown of snowy mountains. The city had almost disappeared K02 107 behind him, yet from the front gate of the home place he could K02 108 still make it out. A bright serration against the hills.

K02 109 Frank stopped right in front of the house where his family once K02 110 lived, a substantial farmhouse with a low, deep porch across the K02 111 entire front, white with blue shutters and a blue shingled roof. K02 112 The house sat on a fieldstone cellar with deep-set airyway windows K02 113 at regular intervals beneath the porch. The house was locked up. In K02 114 front, the tall hollyhocks his grandmother had taken such care of K02 115 stood up boldly through the quack grass and competed along the K02 116 border of the porch with the ocher shafts of henbane. The junipers K02 117 hadn't been trimmed and streaks of brown penetrated their dark K02 118 green masses. It was a fine old house that gave Frank the K02 119 creeps.

K02 120 He drove slowly past it toward the barn and outbuildings, K02 121 looking for Boyd Jarrell, his hired man. He had already seen K02 122 Jarrell's truck from the house, and when he crossed the cattle K02 123 guard into the equipment compound, he watched Jarrell walk past the K02 124 granary without looking up at Frank's car. He saw that Jarrell K02 125 would be in a foul mood, and felt a slight sinking in his stomach. K02 126 Boyd liked Mike but didn't like Frank. Mike came out here and K02 127 played rancher with Boyd, building fence on the weekends or K02 128 irrigating, and in general dignifying Boyd's job by doing an K02 129 incompetent imitation of it. Frank could never understand why this K02 130 would ingratiate Mike to Boyd, but he guessed it was a form of K02 131 tribute.

K02 132 Frank parked the car and walked toward the granary. Jarrell now K02 133 crossed the compound going the other way, carrying an irrigating K02 134 shovel and a length of tow chain over his shoulder.

K02 135 "Boyd," Frank called, and Jarrell stopped, paused and K02 136 looked over at Frank. "Have you got a minute?"

K02 137 "I might."

K02 138 Frank walked over to him.

K02 139 "I spoke to Lowry Equipment on Friday," said K02 140 Frank, "and the loader's fixed on the tractor. So, that's K02 141 ready to go whenever you need it."

K02 142 "If that's all it was."

K02 143 "That's right. But I assume it's okay."

K02 144 Jarrell looked away and smiled. Frank let it fall silent for a K02 145 minute.

K02 146 "I've got a buyer to look at our calves on K02 147 Monday."

K02 148 "I hope he can find them."

K02 149 Frank looked at Jarrell. Jarrell had him by fifty pounds and K02 150 ten years. But he had put down his mark.

K02 151 "He'll find them," Frank said. "You'll K02 152 take him to them. Or you'll get out."

K02 153 Frank turned to go to his car.

K02 154 "Fuck you, Copenhaver," he heard Jarrell say, K02 155 like a concussion or a huge sneeze, and Frank kept walking. He K02 156 heard Jarrell walk up behind him, and in a moment Frank's hat was K02 157 slapped off his head. He bent to pick it up, then kept going to his K02 158 car. Jarrell laughed and went to his truck, parked alongside the K02 159 barn.

K02 160 Frank stopped, then turned. He went back to where Jarrell K02 161 stood. "Why did you do that, Boyd?"

K02 162 "Because I don't like people telling me what to K02 163 do."

K02 164 "Well, Boyd, you should have thought of K02 165 that."

K02 166 "Thought of that when, you goddamn sonofabitch? When I K02 167 let you tell me what to do?"

K02 168 "When you came to work for us, Boyd. You knew what the K02 169 deal was. I told you what the deal was. And I might have been the K02 170 guy to give you your last chance." Jarrell crossed his arms K02 171 and smiled at a faraway place. "I wouldn't hesitate to fire K02 172 you right now except for the thought you might go back and beat up K02 173 your wife like you did last time." Jarrell swung his gaze K02 174 from the cloudy faraway and stared hard and flat into Frank's face. K02 175 If it happens it happens, Frank thought. I couldn't live with K02 176 myself if I shut up now. "Don't look at me, it was in the K02 177 papers. And you know what? I had the same thought everybody else K02 178 did: what kind of guy puts a hundred-ten-pound woman in the K02 179 Deaconess Hospital? What kind of man is that? Good luck on your K02 180 next job, Boyd."

K02 181 Frank turned and began to walk toward his car. He hadn't gone K02 182 many steps before he heard Jarrell behind him again. He kept K02 183 walking and the steps ceased. He got in his car and drove out of K02 184 the drive, past the unlucky house, and tried to picture the exact K02 185 spot where Jarrell stood when he left.

K02 186 When he got back to the office, he called Mrs. Jarrell and K02 187 explained that he had had to let Boyd go, that Boyd was a fine man K02 188 and a fine worker but that the time had come for each of them to K02 189 get on with their lives in a different way. He had had to tell K02 190 people before that it was time to get on with their lives. He said K02 191 this in a conciliatory voice that sounded, after a bit, like that K02 192 of a radio announcer or an advertisement for a commercial halfway K02 193 house for disturbed youths. Mrs. Jarrell at least let him finish, K02 194 then called him every foul name he had ever heard, including a few K02 195 he was unsure of, like "spastic morphodite." Frank K02 196 squinted in pain through this barrage and said that, nevertheless, K02 197 he wished them all the luck in the world. His voice was a croak.

K02 198 "Eat shit," said Mrs. Jarrell. "I hope K02 199 you have a stroke."

K02 200 Pause for thought. Some direct suggestions from Mrs. Jarrell. K02 201 The same day Hell was suggested as a travel destination -and by a K02 202 lover of the previous night! He went to see his brother Mike.

K02 203 Mike was an orthodontist, and Frank had to wait until almost K02 204 noon in his office, with bucktoothed preteens, reading kids' K02 205 magazines before Mike had him in. They sat in the dental lab and K02 206 talked, fat Mike still in his pale green smock, his round red face K02 207 revealing the constant optimism that came of doing some one small K02 208 thing in the world, namely pushing young teeth back and keeping K02 209 them there. Frank looked around at the instruments, at the K02 210 remarkable order.

K02 211 "Mike," said Frank, "the ranch is making me K02 212 crazy."

K02 213 "You always tell me this when irrigation K02 214 starts."

K02 215 "I fired that cocksucker Jarrell."

K02 216 "I wish you hadn't done that. He's a hard K02 217 worker."

K02 218 "I went out there today and he was in one of his cowboy K02 219 snits."

K02 220 "You shouldn't have gone out there. You know this K02 221 happens when irrigation water runs. Everybody becomes an K02 222 animal."

K02 223 "I have to go out there. I had the tractor fixed for K02 224 the filthy shit. He busted it, bent the bucket and blew the K02 225 hydraulics. But he can't talk to anyone so I got it fixed. I tell K02 226 him this and it just seems to make him madder. K02 227 K03 1 <#FROWN:K03\>There she is. No dancing brothers are in this K03 2 place, nor any breathless girls waiting for the white bulb to be K03 3 exchanged for the blue. This is an adult party - what goes on goes K03 4 on in bright light. The illegal liquor is not secret and the K03 5 secrets are not forbidden. Pay a dollar or two when you enter and K03 6 what you say is smarter, funnier, than it would be in your own K03 7 kitchen. Your wit surfaces over and over like the rush of foam to K03 8 the rim. The laughter is like pealing bells that don't need a hand K03 9 to pull on the rope; it just goes on and on until you are weak with K03 10 it. You can drink the safe gin if you like, or stick to beer, but K03 11 you don't need either because a touch on the knee, accidental or on K03 12 purpose, alerts the blood like a shot of pre-Pro bourbon or two K03 13 fingers pinching your nipple. Your spirit lifts to the ceiling K03 14 where it floats for a bit looking down with pleasure on the K03 15 dressed-up nakedness below. You know something wicked is going on K03 16 in a room with a closed door. But there is enough dazzle and K03 17 mischief here, where partners cling or exchange at the urging of a K03 18 heartbreaking vocal.

K03 19 Dorcas is satisfied, content. Two arms clasp her and she is K03 20 able to rest her cheek on her own shoulder while her wrists cross K03 21 behind his neck. It's good they don't need much space to dance in K03 22 because there isn't any. The room is packed. Men groan their K03 23 satisfaction; women hum anticipation. The music bends, falls to its K03 24 knees to embrace them all, encourage them all to live a little, why K03 25 don't you? since this is the it you've been looking for.

K03 26 Her partner does not whisper in Dorcas' ear. His promises are K03 27 already clear in the chin he presses into her hair, the fingertips K03 28 that stay. She stretches up to encircle his neck. He bends to help K03 29 her do it. They agree on everything above the waist and below: K03 30 muscle, tendon, bone joint and marrow cooperate. And if the dancers K03 31 hesitate, have a moment of doubt, the music will solve and dissolve K03 32 any question.

K03 33 Dorcas is happy. Happier than she has ever been anytime. No K03 34 white strands grow in her partner's mustache. He is up and coming. K03 35 Hawk-eyed, tireless and a little cruel. He has never given her a K03 36 present or even thought about it. Sometimes he is where he says he K03 37 will be; sometimes not. Other women want him - badly - and he has K03 38 been selective. What they want and the prize it is his to give is K03 39 his savvy self. What could a pair of silk stockings be compared to K03 40 him? No contest. Dorcas is lucky. Knows it. And is as happy as she K03 41 has ever been anytime.

K03 42 <*_>three-dots<*/>

K03 43 "He's coming for me. I know he is because I know how K03 44 flat his eyes went when I told him not to. And how they raced K03 45 afterward. I didn't say it nicely, although I meant to. I practiced K03 46 the points; in front of the mirror I went through them one by one: K03 47 the sneaking around, and his wife and all. I never said anything K03 48 about our ages or Acton. Nothing about Acton. But he argued with me K03 49 so I said, Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Get away from me. K03 50 You bring me another bottle of cologne I'll drink it and die you K03 51 don't leave me alone.

K03 52 "He said, You can't die from cologne.

K03 53 "I said, You know what I mean.

K03 54 "He said, You want me to leave my wife?

K03 55 "I said, No! I want you to leave me. I don't want you K03 56 inside me. I don't want you beside me. I hate this room. I don't K03 57 want to be here and don't come looking for me.

K03 58 "He said, Why?

K03 59 "I said, Because. Because. Because.

K03 60 "He said, Because what?

K03 61 "I said, Because you make me sick.

K03 62 "Sick? I make you sick?

K03 63 "Sick of myself and sick of you.

K03 64 "I didn't mean that part ... about being sick. He didn't. Make K03 65 me sick, I mean. What I wanted to let him know was that I had this K03 66 chance to have Acton and I wanted it and I wanted girlfriends to K03 67 talk to about it. About where we went and what he did. About K03 68 things. About stuff. What good are secrets if you can't talk to K03 69 anybody about them? I sort of hinted about Joe and me to Felice and K03 70 she laughed before she stared at me and then frowned.

K03 71 "I couldn't tell him all that because I had practiced the other K03 72 points and got mixed up.

K03 73 "But he's coming for me. I know it. He's been looking for me K03 74 all over. Maybe tomorrow he'll find me. Maybe tonight. Way out K03 75 here; all the way out here.

K03 76 "When we got off the streetcar, me and Acton and Felice, I K03 77 thought he was there in the doorway next to the candy store, but it K03 78 wasn't him. Not yet. I think I see him everywhere. I know he's K03 79 looking and now I know he's coming.

K03 80 "He didn't even care what I looked like. I could be anything, K03 81 do anything - and it pleased him. Something about that made me mad. K03 82 I don't know.

K03 83 "Acton, now, he tells me when he doesn't like the way I fix my K03 84 hair. Then I do it how he likes it. I never wear glasses when he is K03 85 with me and I changed my laugh for him to one he likes better. I K03 86 think he does. I know he didn't like it before. And I play with my K03 87 food now. Joe liked for me to eat it all up and want more. Acton K03 88 gives me a quiet look when I ask for seconds. He worries about me K03 89 that way. Joe never did. Joe didn't care what kind of woman I was. K03 90 He should have. I cared. I wanted to have a personality and with K03 91 Acton I'm getting one. I have a look now. What pencil-thin eyebrows K03 92 do for my face is a dream. All my bracelets are just below my K03 93 elbow. Sometimes I knot my stockings below, not above, my knees. K03 94 Three straps are across my instep and at home I have shoes with K03 95 leather cut out to look like lace.

K03 96 "He is coming for me. Maybe tonight. Maybe here.

K03 97 "If he does he will look and see how close me and Acton dance. K03 98 How I rest my head on my arm holding on to him. The hem of my skirt K03 99 drapes down in back and taps the calves of my legs while we rock K03 100 back and forth, then side to side. The whole front of us touches. K03 101 Nothing can get between us we are so close. Lots of girls here want K03 102 to be doing this with him. I can see them when I open my eyes to K03 103 look past his neck. I rub my thumbnail over his nape so the girls K03 104 will know I know they want him. He doesn't like it and turns his K03 105 head to make me stop touching his neck that way. I stop.

K03 106 "Joe wouldn't care. I could rub anywhere on him. He let me draw K03 107 lipstick pictures in places he had to have a mirror to K03 108 see."

K03 109 Anything that happens after this party breaks up is nothing. K03 110 Everything is now. It's like war. Everyone is handsome, shining K03 111 just thinking about other people's blood. As though the red wash K03 112 flying from veins not theirs is facial makeup patented for its K03 113 glow. Inspiriting. Glamorous. Afterward there will be some chatter K03 114 and recapitulation of what went on; nothing though like the action K03 115 itself and the beat that pumps the heart. In war or at a party K03 116 everyone is wily, intriguing; goals are set and altered; alliances K03 117 rearranged. Partners and rivals devastated; new pairings K03 118 triumphant. The knockout possibilities knock Dorcas out because K03 119 here - with grown-ups and as in war - people play for keeps.

K03 120 "He's coming for me. And when he does he will see I'm not his K03 121 anymore. I'm Acton's and it's Acton I want to please. He expects K03 122 it. With Joe I pleased myself because he encouraged me to. With Joe K03 123 I worked the stick of the world, the power in my hand."

K03 124 <*_>three-dots<*/>

K03 125 Oh, the room - the music - the people leaning in doorways. K03 126 Silhouettes kiss behind curtains; playful fingers examine and K03 127 caress. This is the place where things pop. This is the market K03 128 where gesture is all: a tongue's lightning lick; a thumbnail K03 129 grazing the split cheeks of a purple plum. Any thrownaway lover in K03 130 wet unlaced shoes and a buttoned-up sweater under his coat is a K03 131 foreigner here. This is not the place for old men; this is the K03 132 place for romance.

K03 133 "He's here. Oh, look. God. He's crying. Am I falling? K03 134 Why am I falling? Acton is holding me up but I am falling anyway. K03 135 Heads are turning to look where I am falling. It's dark and now K03 136 it's light. I am lying on a bed. Somebody is wiping sweat from my K03 137 forehead, but I am cold, so cold. I see mouths moving; they are all K03 138 saying something to me I can't hear. Way out there at the foot of K03 139 the bed I see Acton. Blood is on his coat jacket and he is dabbing K03 140 at it with a white handkerchief. Now a woman takes the coat from K03 141 his shoulders. He is annoyed by the blood. It's my blood, I guess, K03 142 and it has stained through his jacket to his shirt. The hostess is K03 143 shouting. Her party is ruined. Acton looks angry; the woman brings K03 144 his jacket back and it is not clean the way it was before and the K03 145 way he likes it.

K03 146 "I can hear them now.

K03 147 "'Who? Who did this?'

K03 148 "I'm tired. Sleepy. I ought to be wide awake because something K03 149 important is happening.

K03 150 "'Who did this, girl? Who did this to you?'

K03 151 "They want me to say his name. Say it in public at last.

K03 152 "Acton has taken his shirt off. People are blocking the K03 153 doorway; some stretch behind them to get a better look. The record K03 154 playing is over. Somebody they have been waiting for is playing the K03 155 piano. A woman is singing too. The music is faint but I know the K03 156 words by heart.

K03 157 "Felice leans close. Her hand holding mine is too tight. I try K03 158 to say with my mouth to come nearer. Her eyes are bigger than the K03 159 light fixture on the ceiling. She asks me was it him.

K03 160 "They need me to say his name so they can go after him. Take K03 161 away his sample case with Rochelle and Bernadine and Faye inside. I K03 162 know his name but Mama won't tell. The world rocked from a stick K03 163 beneath my hand, Felice. There in that room with the ice sign in K03 164 the window.

K03 165 "Felice puts her ear on my lips and I scream it to her. I think K03 166 I am screaming it. I think I am.

K03 167 "People are leaving.

K03 168 "Now it's clear. Through the doorway I see the table. On it is K03 169 a brown wooden bowl, flat, low like a tray, full of spilling with K03 170 oranges. I want to sleep, but it is clear now. So clear the dark K03 171 bowl the pile of oranges. Just oranges. Bright. Listen. I don't K03 172 know who is that woman singing but I know the words by K03 173 heart."

K03 174 Sweetheart. That's what the weather was called. Sweetheart K03 175 weather, the prettiest day of the year. And that's when it started. K03 176 On a day so pure and steady trees preened. Standing in the middle K03 177 of a concrete slab, scared for their lives, they preened. Silly, K03 178 yes, but it was that kind of day. I could see Lenox widening K03 179 itself, and men coming out of their shops to look at it, to stand K03 180 with their hands under their aprons or stuck in their back pockets K03 181 and just look around at a street that spread itself wider to hold K03 182 the day. K03 183 K04 1 <#FROWN:K04\>At last I applied for the commission of ensign K04 2 (deck volunteer general) and became a 'ninety-day wonder' after K04 3 training for that period of time aboard the U.S.S. Prairie K04 4 State, moored in the Hudson the upper west bank of K04 5 Manhattan.

K04 6 And then my fate took a curious turn. Instead of being sent to K04 7 sea, I was assigned to Vice Admiral Clarke's staff at 90 Church K04 8 Street, where I found myself a kind of personal secretary to the K04 9 old man, running errands, writing letters, accompanying him on K04 10 social occasions and even handling some of the delicate problems of K04 11 his rather difficult children. It was no fault of mine that he K04 12 became so dependent on me that he opposed my transfer to more K04 13 active duty, and Amanda, delighted to have me home, argued strongly K04 14 that it was a quite sufficient contribution to the war effort to K04 15 guard from distracting botherations the high officer who was K04 16 responsible for the safety of our whole eastern sea frontier. But K04 17 as I had always concentrated on looking the part of a man of K04 18 courage, it now surely behooved me not to look the part of his K04 19 opposite, and I suspected that few of my friends appreciated the K04 20 stranglehold that my chief had on my naval career and deemed me the K04 21 willing and complaisant captive of his personal needs. And so I K04 22 found myself in the position of having actually to throw away the K04 23 shield that a kind fate seemed to be interposing between me and my K04 24 old nemesis!

K04 25 The call for more officers on sea duty was now so urgent that K04 26 Admiral Clarke was obliged to endorse my application for assignment K04 27 to the amphibious fleet. I had decided that I might do better on a K04 28 ship such as an LST, where one had only, so to speak, to follow the K04 29 leader in a line of transports, than on an attacking destroyer, K04 30 where any moment of panic might paralyze the brain and endanger the K04 31 vessel. What I had not counted on was the favoritism of my admiral, K04 32 who followed my career from his desk in Church Street (as a naval K04 33 officer he could not resent my desertion) and was instrumental in K04 34 my being made captain of a landing ship tanks.

K04 35 Well, it started off well enough. I had nine officers and a K04 36 hundred men under me, and being reasonable in my expectations of K04 37 them and polite and friendly in my dealings, I soon found myself K04 38 popular. We crossed the Atlantic to take part in the invasion of K04 39 Normandy and had the good luck to unload our troops on one of the K04 40 less guarded sectors of the beaches. After returning to the Solent K04 41 three days later and dropping the hook exactly in our assigned K04 42 position, I wondered whether the murky god of my adolescence had K04 43 not been appeased at last.

K04 44 Alas, he was only waiting for a more opportune moment. Some K04 45 weeks later, ordered to London to take on Canadian troops, we K04 46 passed at night through the Straits of Dover within range for some K04 47 hours of the German shore batteries. They opened up on the convoy, K04 48 and despite the British jamming of their radar, they managed to hit K04 49 the merchant vessel directly ahead of us.

K04 50 Now I learned what hell is. My crew, of course, were at their K04 51 battle stations, and I at mine on the bridge with the officer of K04 52 the deck, the executive officer, the chief quartermaster and a K04 53 signalman. The night was black but lit with the flare of gunfire K04 54 and the blazing wreck of the merchant ship, which we now had to K04 55 pass and leave astern. I was suddenly absolutely convinced that we K04 56 were going to be struck. The shell would land directly on the K04 57 bridge itself. There was no doubt in my mind; it was the simplest K04 58 and grimmest of facts. I opened my mouth to suggest some kind of K04 59 evasive maneuver to the exec, whose figure I could just make out in K04 60 the darkness, but no sound emerged. And then I knew that the horror K04 61 choking me was simply unbearable. Anything, even death was K04 62 preferable.

K04 63 Suddenly I was walking aft. I was leaving the bridge. Leaving K04 64 my battle station without even transferring the 'conn' to the exec! K04 65 I think I meant to jump off the ship. At least I can recall leaning K04 66 over the side on the stern, vaguely aware of the staring white K04 67 faces of the gun crew of the three-inch fifty close beside me, and K04 68 peering into the hissing foam of our wake. Did I hope to be picked K04 69 up by a lifeboat of survivors from the wreck astern? Was I deterred K04 70 by the apprehension of being sucked into our screws and cut to K04 71 bits? I am not sure.

K04 72 All I know is that I remained there, a miserable shivering K04 73 wretch, until the firing ceased and I returned to the bridge. I K04 74 mumbled something about an attack of the 'trots.' Nobody said K04 75 anything.

K04 76 So there it was. Nemesis. The final blow had fallen at last. K04 77 Yet in the next days nothing happened. I was treated in the K04 78 wardroom with the same good manners, and I began to wonder whether K04 79 it was my imagination that these now veiled an unspoken scorn. I K04 80 knew that the episode must have been discussed by every man on that K04 81 vessel. But only in the eyes of the exec, a strange saturnine K04 82 fellow in whom I fancied I could detect a resemblance to Andy K04 83 Ritter, did I really believe I could make out a glimmer of K04 84 contempt, and I suspected him of having felt that for me all K04 85 along.

K04 86 At last I realized something about LSTs. The ship's company K04 87 does not depend on the guts and skill of the commanding officer to K04 88 anything like the degree it does on vessels of attack. These big K04 89 naval marine trucks perform their semi-automatic tasks under the K04 90 orders of a group or flotilla commander, who is apt to be a K04 91 competent and almost certainly courageous regular navy officer. The K04 92 skipper of the individual unit is important to his crew largely K04 93 because of his power to make their lives uncomfortable. If they K04 94 have the good fortune to have drawn a reasonably easygoing and K04 95 pleasant captain, how much does it matter if he has a yellow K04 96 streak? The vessel, anyway, is rarely under direct attack.

K04 97 So my defection was overlooked if not forgotten. I even dared K04 98 to draw a breath of something like relief at the idea that the K04 99 worst was now over. When we returned to the States, after some K04 100 months of uneventful Channel ferrying, for an overhaul in the K04 101 Brooklyn Navy Yard, I was generous in granting liberty to the crew K04 102 and entertained the officers on several occasions at night K04 103 clubs.

K04 104 I was still afraid, however, that one of the officers might K04 105 tell Amanda of the horrid incident. The exec had left us to take K04 106 command of another LST, and I did not believe that any of the K04 107 friendly junior officers would do so vile a thing consciously, but K04 108 we drank a good deal at our parties, and I could not be sure what K04 109 distorted joke might emerge from the lips of a young and K04 110 intoxicated ensign. I decided at last it would be safer to give her K04 111 my own version of what had happened.

K04 112 She listened closely and without interrupting. She did not seem K04 113 surprised. But also did she not minimize it.

K04 114 "It could have been a good deal worse," was her K04 115 first comment. "If the ship had been hit while you were K04 116 away from the bridge, I suppose you might have been in some sort of K04 117 official trouble. Anyhow, you're due now for shore duty. And with K04 118 any luck the war should be over before you go back to K04 119 sea."

K04 120 I did not at all like her implication that the episode was apt K04 121 to be repeated. "But even if I should go back to K04 122 sea," I protested, "there's no reason to assume I'd K04 123 have another attack of nerves. I have a funny gut feeling that this K04 124 was the kind of thing that always was going to happen to me, K04 125 but now it's happened, it may not come again."

K04 126 "But why risk it? You're home, my darling, and you're K04 127 safe, thank God. I'm sure Admiral Clarke will be tickled pink to K04 128 have you back in your old slot. And he won't let you go again, K04 129 either. Oh, Ally, don't tempt fate! You've done your bit. Let well K04 130 enough alone."

K04 131 But I felt trivialized. There was a distinct discomfort in her K04 132 minimization of a lifetime's trial. If my ancient inner enemy had K04 133 been merely something that could be kept at bay by a silly staff K04 134 job in Church Street, what did the long agony of my resistance K04 135 amount to?

K04 136 "I wonder whether I shan't apply for an LST command in K04 137 the Pacific," I said moodily. "The war there may go K04 138 on for years."

K04 139 "You might stop to consider what you owe me and the K04 140 baby," she said in a sharper tone. But then her expression K04 141 suddenly changed, and she struck a deeper note. She even stretched K04 142 out her arms to me. "Oh, my dearest, do you think I don't K04 143 know?"

K04 144 "Know what?" I did not rush to her arms. Every K04 145 part of me was throbbing with alarm.

K04 146 "Know everything, of course. How could I not, loving K04 147 you as I do? Don't you see, that's got to be the answer? Oh, my K04 148 poor suffering sweet, if you could only relax and love and let K04 149 yourself be loved, how easily things would work themselves out! All K04 150 your bad dreams would fade away, and you and I would be afraid of K04 151 nothing in the world."

K04 152 So there it was, Jonathan. A woman's answer to everything. Open K04 153 the floodgates and let the damned-up sentiment come thundering out K04 154 to obliterate all the ugly-bugly things in the big bad universe. K04 155 And she may have been right, too. That's the sorry part. She may K04 156 have been offering me my last clear chance. And I, like the ass I K04 157 was doomed to be, or had doomed myself to be, had to turn away from K04 158 her appeal. Perhaps I felt that otherwise I should be giving up my K04 159 soul or my ego or even, silly as it sounds, my manhood. When all K04 160 she was asking was that I give up the foolish little comedy that I K04 161 had been making of my life! The absurd little piece that I had been K04 162 desperately trying to turn into a noble tragedy! But lives that K04 163 won't bow to a hurricane can bend to a gust of wind. Maybe what I K04 164 couldn't bear was being called "my poor suffering K04 165 sweet."

K04 166 Anyway, I mixed her a cocktail and we changed the subject. That K04 167 night we made love. The next day brought the news of the bombing of K04 168 Hiroshima, and we knew that I should not have to go to sea again. I K04 169 remember my gall in reminding myself, as a way of putting the whole K04 170 matter behind me, of Gibbon's statement that the courage of a K04 171 soldier is the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.

K04 172 3 K04 173 Alistair and I sat in silence for a minute in my office after K04 174 he had finished. The room was darkening in the winter twilight. I K04 175 switched on my desk lamp.

K04 176 "But you and Amanda had another ten years of happy K04 177 marriage life after that, did you not?"

K04 178 "Oh, yes." He spoke in a tone of faint K04 179 weariness. "She was never a nag. She didn't return to the K04 180 subject. As you know, we had another daughter." He smiled K04 181 wryly. "Born nine months after that discussion. We went on K04 182 as before. Ours was what you might call a temperate union. Only, of K04 183 course, because I made it that way. She would have been pleased K04 184 with something a good deal hotter. But she was always a good K04 185 sport."

K04 186 "Until now?"

K04 187 "Well, who could blame her for leaving me now? K04 188 Hadn't she offered me a way out? Hadn't she given me fair K04 189 warning?"

K04 190 K05 1 <#FROWN:K05\>But the milliseconds distinguished the good from K05 2 the merely adequate. Time enough for a spin or a half turn, a dip - K05 3 and there should still be a moment left to smile before hands K05 4 touched and moved apart again. "They called it 'off-timing' K05 5 in our parents' day," Clayton had explained at the K05 6 fraternity dance, "because the Lindy three-step is imposed K05 7 on a four-four rhythm."

K05 8 Terry reached out for her again, his body buoyed by the K05 9 exultant wash of strings, tethered by the beat. Transmutation. K05 10 He swung her into his arms, and they moved without break into a K05 11 slow song: saxophones and a hundred strings, blue-cool eunuchs K05 12 harmonizing It feels so good. She had forgotten how it K05 13 felt to be touched and found desirable, to want with a will not K05 14 one's own.

K05 15 A man and a woman relieved of the weight of speech watched K05 16 light slide from the windshield, the outside air offering no K05 17 resistance, the car easing forward with barely a tremor. Earlier K05 18 this evening, seduction had been verbal - words teased, provoked. K05 19 Now, immersed in the familiar world of his scent, talk was no K05 20 longer an issue.

K05 21 He draped an arm over her shoulder as they walked toward his K05 22 house, and her arm slipped around his waist. Then his tiny grunt of K05 23 satisfaction, the key in the lock, the dark vestibule, hands K05 24 slipping under her blouse, his lips. Her exposed skin chilled, the K05 25 unexpected heat from his palms. She gasped as he sucked her tongue K05 26 into him.

K05 27 Down the hallway she held his hand like a lost waif, neither of K05 28 them daring to speak. The bedroom door creaked, one dim lamp gave K05 29 light enough to see that the sheets were blue, a bachelor's detail, K05 30 marine-blue, a waiting ocean. When he touched her again their K05 31 bodies merged into one long, yearning curve, and the sea rose up to K05 32 meet them.

K05 33 Thirteen K05 34 She stirred at the aroma of coffee, the comforting cluck of K05 35 percolation. It smells so brown, she thought, stretching, K05 36 then snapped awake as she remembered where she was, the deep blue K05 37 sheets and (she slowly opened her eyes) the peach-and-white-striped K05 38 wallpaper. She jumped out of bed, headed for the shower, then K05 39 decided against it. Instead, she splashed water on her face, rubbed K05 40 along her teeth with a finger full of Crest, and scooted into her K05 41 clothes. A quick pick through her Afro, and she walked into the K05 42 kitchen.

K05 43 "Up already? And here I was planning to spoil you: K05 44 breakfast in bed with all the trimmings, down to the rose." K05 45 Arrayed on the tray were plate and napkin, a glass of orange juice, K05 46 two pats of butter on a saucer, and a rose the color of coral in a K05 47 crystal vase. Terry was at the sink pouring milk into a creamer, K05 48 freshly showered and drenched in some exotic scent, clad in one of K05 49 those white terry-cloth robes Virginia had seen only in the K05 50 movies.

K05 51 "Breakfast is served." He held out her chair K05 52 and she felt warmth radiating from him as he pushed her gently up K05 53 to the table, then the moisture of his lips on the back of her K05 54 neck. "My Lord, I've found an angel," he whispered, K05 55 and slid into the chair to her right.

K05 56 She had rarely felt less angelic, unwashed and unflossed, with K05 57 her rumpled blouse and her hair full of lint. If there was anyone K05 58 who looked beatific it was this gorgeous man calmly sprinkling K05 59 pepper over his scrambled eggs.

K05 60 He looked up, smiling. "I've been thinking, princess. K05 61 There's got to be more schools around here that have room for a K05 62 Puppet Lady. You should try to get another gig as soon as this K05 63 one's finished."

K05 64 "I do have another 'gig,'" she replied.

K05 65 "You do? Why didn't you tell me?"

K05 66 "You never asked."

K05 67 " Liar."

K05 68 "Okay. You asked, but I didn't know you well enough K05 69 yet. I still don't know you well enough - "

K05 70 "Oh, no," he said, and they both laughed.

K05 71 "But I'll tell you anyway," she continued. K05 72 "I'm doing a month at the high school in K05 73 Oberlin."

K05 74 He frowned slightly. "Oberlin? Where's K05 75 that?"

K05 76 "Fifty miles from here, silly! Near Elyria." K05 77 Then, to smooth over his ignorance: "It's tiny place. Six K05 78 thousand people, two or three thousand college K05 79 students."

K05 80 "Oh, yeah - that radical hippy college, right? Lots of K05 81 rich cultural-type families from New York send their kids K05 82 there."

K05 83 "Not just rich kids - smart kids. And I don't know what K05 84 you mean by radical, unless you call being the first college to K05 85 admit blacks and women radical."

K05 86 "Whoa, whoa!" He lifted his hands, waving his K05 87 napkin in mock surrender. "Look, I was out of line. More K05 88 coffee?"

K05 89 She nodded.

K05 90 "Anyway, I shouldn't talk about things I don't know K05 91 firsthand. Which I'll soon remedy. But I do know I like the idea of K05 92 you being in the neighborhood." He deposited another kiss, K05 93 this time on her forehead, and suddenly Virginia felt panic. The K05 94 prospect of last night repeated over and over during the next month K05 95 and more - to lean across a dinner table to kiss and exchange K05 96 stories from the past, all the little intimacies of new lovers - K05 97 the thought both enraptured and terrified her.

K05 98 "But I won't be in the neighborhood," she K05 99 stammered. "Not really."

K05 100 He looked at her with amusement. Then he tried to convince her K05 101 to stay at his house for the day - "a lazy Sunday" K05 102 was how he put it - but Virginia needed breathing space.

K05 103 "I can't," she said. "I've promised to K05 104 visit an aunt this afternoon whom I haven't seen since I was K05 105 nine."

K05 106 "You won't spend all day with her, will you? Tonight - K05 107 "

K05 108 "Listen, Terry, I've got class preparations. I also K05 109 have to plan my opening sessions for Oberlin. That starts up first K05 110 thing the week after next, and it's a totally different K05 111 bag."

K05 112 "We can plan them together."

K05 113 She smiled, and leaned over to kiss his chin. "Oh no we K05 114 can't. If I stay, we'd get zero done, that's for K05 115 certain."

K05 116 "Well, lady, since you're calling the shots ... will K05 117 you call me?" He leaned back, studying her expression. K05 118 "You know" - she saw him swallow hard - K05 119 "I'm in this for the distance. I mean it."

K05 120 No. 118 Furnace. Ruts and crabgrass, acrid air, the horizon K05 121 smeared with the lurid sediment of pollution. Hugging herself K05 122 against the chill, Virginia trudged across the street, up the K05 123 sunken steps, onto the sagging porch. The door of the small house K05 124 opened, and she was swallowed in that massive bosom, spongy and K05 125 instantly comforting, redolent with the mingled disclosures of K05 126 sweet cologne, mothballs and wool warmed on the skin. Then she was K05 127 bustled in, her coat peeled off and in a flurry of exclamations and K05 128 questions - "My, my, what a sight for sore eyes you are! K05 129 Tea or coffee? Water's on, sit down; I'll be with you in a K05 130 minute" - she found herself alone in the room.

K05 131 She sat down on the sofa, pale gold brocade kept immaculate by K05 132 a plastic slipcover that clung to the backs of her thighs; she K05 133 scooted forward, finally settling for a ladylike perch on the edge K05 134 of the cushion. The coffee table, maple-veneered and from another K05 135 decade, carried several month's worth of Ebony and Jet K05 136 magazines; the pale green wall-to-wall carpet had probably been K05 137 extolled by the salesclerk as 'sea mist' or 'mint frost' but here, K05 138 with daylight filtering weakly through heavy yellow drapes, it K05 139 exuded the melancholia of hospital waiting rooms.

K05 140 She had the feeling she'd come back to something, like a K05 141 sleepwalker. The modest yearning this room represented, this K05 142 acceptance of one's vulnerability toward the exigencies of life - K05 143 she had denied it and now, through a stroke of good luck or bad, K05 144 the Arts Council had accepted her application for K05 145 artist-in-residence and she had reason to return, back to the K05 146 sulfurous skies and camphorated rooms where she first drew breath. K05 147 Running and getting nowhere, round and round and faster and faster K05 148 like Sambo until everything melted down to the antimacassars and K05 149 hidden peppermints and tasseled pillows, the white leather-bound K05 150 Bible on a doily and the table in the corner with its phalanx of K05 151 yellowed family photographs framed and propped up under oval mats. K05 152 ...

K05 153 "My, my, will you look at that. The spittin' K05 154 image."

K05 155 Aunt Carrie stood in the doorway to the kitchen, teacups in one K05 156 hand and a plate of cookies in the other. She shook her head slowly K05 157 as she clucked her tongue. "Same eyes, same long neck and K05 158 that way of holding yourself like someone attached a string to the K05 159 top of your head and pulled it tight. Ernest must be proud enough K05 160 to bust." She set the dishes down.

K05 161 Virginia smiled. And Grandma Evans said her eyes were like K05 162 Belle's.

K05 163 Aunt Carrie was wearing a navy blue straight skirt and matching K05 164 V-neck sweater stretched so tightly across the prow of her bosom K05 165 that two ghostly circles of white shone through where her brassiere K05 166 strained against the weave. It was an unusual outfit for a woman at K05 167 home; Virginia had expected a muumuu or one of those loose K05 168 shirtwaist dresses and a dun-colored cardigan with the K05 169 sleeves pushed midway to elbow and two buttons buttoned at the top K05 170 - instead, this attempt at sophistication. The effect was K05 171 startling: from the wrappings of a legal secretary rose a vaguely K05 172 gourd-shaped, jowled face whose pendulous lower lip revealed a K05 173 crescent of deep pink mucous membrane whenever she smiled - as she K05 174 did now, showing a row of uneven and widely spaced teeth. Her large K05 175 eyes drooped slightly at the corners and seemed constantly on the K05 176 point of tearing, giving her the appearance of a chocolate-brown K05 177 beagle.

K05 178 Virginia realized she had been staring; quickly, she reached K05 179 for the teapot. Why, she looks just like I thought she would. K05 180 I remembered her all along.

K05 181 "Here, let me pour," she offered. "What K05 182 do you take in yours, Aunt Carrie?"

K05 183 "The same as you, dear. I don't take much to tea K05 184 usually - never had occasion to, I guess."

K05 185 "Oh, I'm sorry! I would have drunk coffee as K05 186 well."

K05 187 Aunt Carrie chuckled. "You must have learned that in K05 188 the university."

K05 189 "Learned what?"

K05 190 "Having tea in the middle of the day. Anyway, I ain't K05 191 so old I can't pick up a new habit. It's good to see you, sugar. K05 192 Mrs. Evans said you was here, said you was bound to K05 193 call."

K05 194 "Aunt Carrie, I want to apologize for not getting in K05 195 touch with you. I've been so busy..."

K05 196 "Don't go apologizing to me. I'm not one for apologies, K05 197 makes me blush. You young people got all that life ahead of you, K05 198 it's no wonder you're busy. We may talk a lot about you not coming K05 199 round to see us often as we'd like, but we know how it K05 200 is."

K05 201 She took a thin white handkerchief from her waistband and K05 202 dabbed at her eyelids. There was a pink rose embroidered in one K05 203 corner. "I remember baby-sitting you and your brother, how K05 204 you liked to draw. You drew up every piece of paper you could get K05 205 your hands on. Your dad had to lock his desk." She wrapped K05 206 he hanky around her right index finger, pulled it straight, then K05 207 started in again with the left index finger.

K05 208 "May I ask you something, Aunt Carrie? I don't know if K05 209 it means anything, really."

K05 210 "What, dear?"

K05 211 "Well, you mentioned the old station the other day, and K05 212 then I dreamed that night - I mean, I had a dream about it - not a K05 213 very pleasant dream, I'm afraid. But you were in it, and me, and my K05 214 mother. I don't know if you can help me or not. I've always K05 215 wondered why we had to move to Arizona in such a hurry. I don't K05 216 remember anyone being too happy about it."

K05 217 "Your father got a good job offer - "

K05 218 "I know. But there has to be something K05 219 else." She stared at the old woman's hands twisting the K05 220 handkerchief; sometimes the rose could be seen among the coiled K05 221 ends of the cotton, a delicate blemish. "One day, not long K05 222 after Claudia was born, I overheard my parents arguing. K05 223 K06 1 <#FROWN:K06\>Sometimes even now I think I see him in the street K06 2 or standing in a window or bent over a book in a coffee shop. And K06 3 in that instant, before I understand that it's someone else, my K06 4 lungs tighten and I lose my breath.

K06 5 I met him eight years ago. I was a graduate student then at K06 6 Columbia University. It was hot that summer and my nights were K06 7 often sleepless. I lay awake in my two-room apartment on West 109th K06 8 Street listening to the city's noises. I would read, write, and K06 9 smoke into the morning, but on some nights when the heat made me K06 10 too listless to work, I watched the neighbors from my bed. Through K06 11 my barred window, across the narrow airshaft, I looked into the K06 12 apartment opposite mine and saw the two men who lived there wander K06 13 from one room to another, half dressed in the sultry weather. On a K06 14 day in July, not long before I met Mr. Morning, one of the men came K06 15 naked to the window. It was dusk and he stood there for a long K06 16 time, his body lit from behind by a yellow lamp. I hid in the K06 17 darkness of my bedroom and he never knew I was there. That was two K06 18 months after Stephen left me, and I thought of him incessantly, K06 19 stirring in the humid sheets, never comfortable, never relieved.

K06 20 During the day, I looked for work. In June I had done research K06 21 for a medical historian. Five days a week I sat in the reading room K06 22 at the Academy of Medicine on East 103rd Street, filling up index K06 23 cards with information about great diseases - bubonic plague, K06 24 leprosy, influenza, syphilis, tuberculosis - as well as more K06 25 obscure afflictions that I remember now only because of their names K06 26 - yaws, milk leg, greensickness, ragsorter's disease, housemaid's K06 27 knee, and dandy fever. Dr. Rosenberg, an octogenarian who spoke and K06 28 moved very slowly, paid me six dollars an hour to fill up those K06 29 index cards, and although I never understood what he did with them, K06 30 I never asked him, fearing that an explanation might take hours. K06 31 The job ended when my employer went to Italy. I had always been K06 32 poor as a student, but Dr. Rosenberg's vacation made me desperate. K06 33 I hadn't paid the July rent, and I had no money for August. Every K06 34 day, I went to the bulletin board in Philosophy Hall where jobs K06 35 were posted, but by the time I called, they had always been taken. K06 36 Nevertheless, that was how I found Mr. Morning. A small handwritten K06 37 notice announced the position: "Wanted. Research assistant K06 38 for project already under way. Student of literature preferred. K06 39 Herbert B. Morning." A phone number appeared under the K06 40 name, and I called immediately. Before I could properly introduce K06 41 myself, a man with a beautiful voice gave me an address on K06 42 Amsterdam Avenue and told me to come over as soon as possible.

K06 43 It was hazy that day, but the sun glared and I blinked in the K06 44 light as I walked through the door of Mr. Morning's tenement K06 45 building. The elevator was broken, and I remember sweating while I K06 46 climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. I can still see his intent K06 47 face in the doorway. He was a very pale man with a large, handsome K06 48 nose. He breathed loudly as he opened the door and let me into a K06 49 tiny, stifling room that smelled of a cat. The walls were lined K06 50 with stuffed bookshelves, and more books were piled in leaning K06 51 towers all over the room. There were tall stacks of newspapers and K06 52 magazines as well, and beneath a window whose blinds had been K06 53 tightly shut was a heap of old clothes or rags. A massive wooden K06 54 desk stood in the center of the room, and on it were perhaps a K06 55 dozen boxes of various sizes. Close to the desk was a narrow bed, K06 56 its rumpled sheets strewn with more books. Mr. Morning seated K06 57 himself behind the desk, and I sat down in an old folding chair K06 58 across from him. A narrow ray of light that had escaped through a K06 59 broken blind fell to the floor between us, and when I looked at it, K06 60 I saw a haze of dust.

K06 61 I smoked, contributing to the room's blur, and looked at the K06 62 skin of his neck; it was moon white. He told me he was happy I had K06 63 come and then fell silent. Without any apparent reserve, he looked K06 64 at me, taking in my whole body with his gaze. I don't know if his K06 65 scrutiny was lecherous or merely curious, but I felt assaulted and K06 66 turned away from him, and then when he asked me my name, I lied. I K06 67 did it quickly, without hesitation, inventing a new patronym: K06 68 Davidsen. I became Iris Davidsen. It was a defensive act, a way of K06 69 protecting myself from some amorphous danger, but later that false K06 70 name haunted me; it seemed to move me elsewhere, shifting me off K06 71 course and strangely altering my whole world for a time. When I K06 72 think back on it now, I imagine that lie as the beginning of the K06 73 story, as a kind of door to my uneasiness. Everything else I told K06 74 him was true - about my parents and sisters in Minnesota, about my K06 75 studies in nineteenth-century English literature, my past research K06 76 jobs, even my telephone number. As I talked, he smiled at me, and I K06 77 thought to myself, It's<&|>sic! an intimate smile, as if he has K06 78 known me for years.

K06 79 He told me that he was a writer, that he wrote for magazines to K06 80 earn money. "I write about everything for every K06 81 taste," he said. "I've written for Field and K06 82 Stream, House and Garden, True Confessions, True Detective, K06 83 Reader's Digest. I've written stories, one spy novel, poems, K06 84 essays, reviews - I even did an art catalog once." He K06 85 grinned and waved an arm. " 'Stanley Rubin's rhythmical K06 86 canvases reveal a debt to Mannerism - Pontormo in particular. The K06 87 long, undulating shapes hint at ... ' " He laughed. K06 88 "And I rarely publish under the same name."

K06 89 "Don't you stand behind what you write?"

K06 90 "I am behind everything I write, Miss Davidsen, usually K06 91 sitting, sometimes standing. In the eighteenth century, it was K06 92 common to stand and write - at an escritoire. Thomas Wolfe wrote K06 93 standing."

K06 94 "That's not exactly what I meant."

K06 95 "No, of course it isn't. But you see, Herbert B. K06 96 Morning couldn't possibly write for True Confessions, but K06 97 Fern Luce can. It's as simple as that."

K06 98 "You enjoy hiding behind masks?"

K06 99 "I revel in it. It gives my life a certain color and K06 100 danger."

K06 101 "Isn't danger overstating it a bit?"

K06 102 "I don't think so. Nothing is beyond me as long as I K06 103 adopt the correct name for each project. It isn't arbitrary. It K06 104 requires a gift, a genius, if I may say so myself, for hitting on K06 105 the alias that will unleash the right man or woman for the job. K06 106 Dewitt L. Parker wrote that art catalog, for example, and Martin K06 107 Blane did the spy novel. But there are risks, too. Even the most K06 108 careful planning can go awry. It's impossible to know for sure K06 109 who's concealed under the pseudonym I choose."

K06 110 "I see," I said. "In that case, I K06 111 should probably ask you who you are now."

K06 112 "You have the privilege, dear lady, of addressing K06 113 Herbert B. Morning himself, unencumbered by any other K06 114 personalities."

K06 115 "And what does Mr. Morning need a research assistant K06 116 for?"

K06 117 "For a kind of biography," he said. K06 118 "For a project about life's paraphernalia, K06 119 <}_><-|>is<+|>its<}/> bits and pieces, treasures and refuse. I need K06 120 someone like you to respond freely to the objects in question. I K06 121 need an ear and an eye, a scribe and a voice, a Friday for every K06 122 day of the week, someone who is sharp, sensitive. You see, I'm in K06 123 the process of prying open the very essence of the inanimate world. K06 124 You might say that it's an anthropology of the present.

K06 125 I asked him to be more specific about the job.

K06 126 "It began three years ago when she died." He K06 127 paused as if thinking. "A girl - a young woman. I knew her, K06 128 but not very well. Anyway, after she died, I found myself in K06 129 possession of a number of her things, just common everyday things. K06 130 I had them in the apartment, this and that, out and about, objects K06 131 that were lost, abandoned, speechless, but not dead. That was the K06 132 crux of it. They weren't dead, not in the usual way we think of K06 133 objects as lifeless. They seemed charged with a kind of power. At K06 134 times I almost felt them move with it, and then after several K06 135 weeks, I noticed that they seemed to lose that vivacity, seemed to K06 136 retreat into their thingness. So I boxed them."

K06 137 "You boxed them?" I said.

K06 138 "I boxed them to keep them untouched by the here and K06 139 the now. I feel sure that those things carry her imprint - the mark K06 140 of a warm, living body on the world. And even though I've tried to K06 141 keep them safe, they're turning cold. I can tell. It's been too K06 142 long, so my work is urgent. I have to act quickly. I'll pay you K06 143 sixty dollars per object."

K06 144 "Per object?" I was sweating in the chair and K06 145 adjusted my position, pulling my skirt down under my legs, which K06 146 felt strangely cool to the touch.

K06 147 "I'll explain everything," he said. He took a K06 148 small tape recorder from a drawer in his desk and pushed it toward K06 149 me. "Listen to this first. It will tell you most of what K06 150 you want to know. While you listen, I'll leave the room." K06 151 He stood up from his chair and walked to a door. A large yellow cat K06 152 appeared from behind a box and followed him. "Press K06 153 play," he commanded, and vanished.

K06 154 When I reached for the machine, I noticed two words scrawled on K06 155 a legal pad near it: "woman's hand." The words K06 156 seemed important, and I remember them as if they were the passwords K06 157 to an underground life. When I turned on the tape, a woman's voice K06 158 whispered, "This belonged to the deceased. It is a white K06 159 sheet for a single bed ... " What followed was a K06 160 painstaking description of the sheet. It included every tiny K06 161 discoloration and stain, the texture of the aged cotton, and even K06 162 the tag from which the words had disappeared in repeated washings. K06 163 It lasted for perhaps ten minutes; the entire speech was delivered K06 164 in that peculiar half-voice. The description itself was tedious and K06 165 yet I listened with anticipation, imagining that the words would K06 166 soon reveal something other than the sheet. They didn't. When the K06 167 tape ended, I looked over to the door behind which Mr. Morning had K06 168 hidden and saw that it was now ajar and half of his face was K06 169 pressed through the opening. He was lit from behind, and I couldn't K06 170 see his features clearly, but the pale hair on his head was K06 171 shining, and again I heard him breathe with difficulty as he walked K06 172 toward me. He reached out for my hand. Without thinking, I withdrew K06 173 it.

K06 174 "You want descriptions of that girl's things, is that K06 175 it?" I could hear the tightness and formality in my voice. K06 176 "I don't understand what a recorded description has to do K06 177 with your project as a whole or why the woman on the tape was K06 178 whispering."

K06 179 "The whisper is essential, because the full human voice K06 180 is too idiosyncratic, too marked with its own history. I'm looking K06 181 for anonymity so the purity of the object won't be blocked from K06 182 coming through, from displaying itself in its nakedness. A whisper K06 183 has no character."

K06 184 The project seemed odd to the point of madness, but I was drawn K06 185 to it. Chance had given me this small adventure and I was pleased. K06 186 I also felt that beneath their eccentricity, Mr. Morning's ideas K06 187 had a weird kind of logic. His comments about whispering, for K06 188 example, made sense.

K06 189 "Why don't you write out the descriptions?" I K06 190 said. "Then there will be no voice at all to interfere with K06 191 the anonymity you want." I watched his face closely.

K06 192 K07 1 <#FROWN:K07\>Naanabozho, the first born manidoo, who had become a K07 2 trickster spirit, was much too eager to hunt and kill what he could K07 3 find, even the first little birds in their nests. Like a domestic K07 4 animal he brought what he had killed to show to his mother. She K07 5 told him never to kill little birds again. Naanabozho did not K07 6 listen, and he did not stop killing little spirits on the earth. He K07 7 was a trickster child.

K07 8 Stone, the last born manidoo, seldom moved from his place on K07 9 the earth. The birds, flowers, and animals came with his birth. K07 10 Naanabozho and his other brother were together most of the time, K07 11 but not with their brother Stone. At night the brothers shared K07 12 their adventures with Stone because he could not travel.

K07 13 Naanabozho was bothered that his travels and adventures were K07 14 limited by his mother to the time it would take him to return to K07 15 his brother Stone, so he asked his other brother if he could kill K07 16 Stone.

K07 17 Naanabozho listened for a time, but his brother was silent. He K07 18 never answered the question. So, the first born manidoo child on K07 19 the earth decided to listen to himself and planned to kill his K07 20 brother Stone. This would be the first and most terrible crime on K07 21 the earth, the death of the first born stone.

K07 22 The trickster borrowed an axe from his grandmother and used it K07 23 to kill his brother Stone but the axe broke in two places. Stone K07 24 was hard and could not be killed with an axe. Then Naanabozho asked K07 25 his brother Stone how to kill him.

K07 26 "I will do whatever you tell me to do to kill K07 27 you."

K07 28 "Build a fire," said the manidoo trickster K07 29 Stone. "Put me in the fire and when my body is red hot then K07 30 throw cold water on me and watch what will happen to K07 31 me."

K07 32 Naanabozho built a huge fire. He threw more wood on the fire as K07 33 his brother stone instructed him to do from the very heart of the K07 34 fire, and then the trickster waited until his brother was red hot K07 35 in the coals.

K07 36 "Are you hot enough, is it time now?"

K07 37 "No, not yet," said Stone.

K07 38 "Wait, wait, more fire, is it time now?"

K07 39 "Yes, it is the time," said Stone.

K07 40 "Here comes the cold water then," said K07 41 Naanabozho as he poured the water on his brother Stone. Stone was K07 42 red hot and cracked in several places when the cold water touched K07 43 him, and then he broke into thousands and thousands of pieces and K07 44 flew in the four directions of the earth. At first it seemed that K07 45 one of the first manidoo children had died on the earth, that the K07 46 first stone had come to a wild death in a fire.

K07 47 Naanabozho believed that he had killed Stone. The distance he K07 48 could travel would never be limited by his brother. He could travel K07 49 great distances at night and not bother to return to his brother, K07 50 but Stone had outwitted his brother the trickster, the one who K07 51 liked to kill.

K07 52 Stone had broken into several families and covered the earth in K07 53 the four directions. Stone families lived everywhere, in the K07 54 mountains, on the rivers, in the meadows, in the desert. No matter K07 55 where that trickster traveled he would not be far from his brother K07 56 and the families of the stone. One break of the stone became a bear K07 57 in the cities. Stone is in a medicine pouch. Stone is in the K07 58 mirror.

K07 59 Stone created the world of nature and the wanaki cards, and K07 60 taught the tribes how to meditate. He created three sets of seven K07 61 cards with pictures of animals, birds, insects, and the picture of K07 62 his brother the trickster on one card in each set.

K07 63 Naanabozho heard that his picture was on the cards so he buried K07 64 two of the sets. He was tired and bored so one set of the cards K07 65 survived. The third set of wanaki cards has been used to teach the K07 66 tribes to remember stories and to meditate. The players create K07 67 their own cards, but the seven must picture the bear, beaver, K07 68 squirrel, crow, flea, praying mantis, and the trickster.

K07 69 The player arises at dawn, turns one of the seven cards, K07 70 meditates on the picture, and imagines he has become the animal, K07 71 bird, or insect on the card for the day. Then stories are told K07 72 about the picture and the plural pronoun we is used to be sure K07 73 nature is not separated from humans and the wanaki game.

K07 74 Stone created a meditation that would never leave him out. He K07 75 taught that on each day a card is selected the player walks on a K07 76 familiar trail and gathers fallen leaves, flowers, feathers, and K07 77 other natural things of the season. Then he meditates on these K07 78 things and places them in a room or on a table according to where K07 79 they were found on the trail.

K07 80 When animals, birds, insects, and living things are seen on the K07 81 trail a stone is placed to remember the place. In this way, stone K07 82 is always present where life would be in the wanaki game.

K07 83 The game goes on for seven days, a new picture and identity at K07 84 dawn. The last card in the game is the picture of the trickster. K07 85 The last card leaves the choice of identities to the player, an K07 86 imaginative picture for the last day of the game. Many players K07 87 become eagles, and cranes, some become beavers and other water K07 88 animals, and others become beautiful birds on the last card of the K07 89 wanaki game.

K07 90 Stone created a game that remembers him in stories. To end the K07 91 game his brother would have to end the world, and he would never do K07 92 that because he would be too bored and lonesome. Stone became a K07 93 bear in his own trickster meditation. The wanaki game is his war K07 94 with loneliness and with human separations from the natural K07 95 world.

K07 96 BEARS

K07 97 March 1979

K07 98 Turn the first card at dawn.

K07 99 Bears in the wanaki circle, bears in the east.

K07 100 The bears are with me now on this first turn of the cards. The K07 101 stones are broken into bears and land in the east. We are the bears K07 102 of chance, bears turned over on the mountain wind, turned over on K07 103 the cards. We are bears on that slow burn at dawn, down from the K07 104 wild treelines to our tribal agonies in the cities.

K07 105 We are bears in the rain this morning, the picture of the bear K07 106 and the bear in the mirror. We are more than a word, more than a K07 107 word beast, we are remembered in stories. We return to the heart in K07 108 stories, a return to nature in the pictures of the wanaki cards. We K07 109 are bears on the rise in the cities this morning. The wordies held K07 110 our name in isolation, even caged us on the page. We are bears not K07 111 cold separations in the wilderness of dead voices.

K07 112 We are together at dawn. No other bears are on the same trail K07 113 around the lake. The caged eagle and the crows hear our stories, K07 114 but the wordies would think we were strange at this hour, talking K07 115 out loud to the crows in plural pronouns. Not many wordies would K07 116 see me as the bear, and that is how bears have survived the hunters K07 117 and the tourists. They might wonder who is with me, but few would K07 118 see the real me in our stories.

K07 119 Someone hears us with the crows at the cage, a fresh wordy in K07 120 loose clothes, and he reeks of perfume and laundry soap. Even the K07 121 crows move back, out of his poison scent. How can we remember who K07 122 the wordies are when they smell the same, as if they came from the K07 123 same box of soap. Their animals are lost, and no one can hear the K07 124 stories in their blood.

K07 125 The laundry boy follows us to the bench near the wisteria. His K07 126 mouth moves with dead voices. How can he be so young and so dead? K07 127 How could he kill all the animals and birds in his heart? How can K07 128 he go on? He has no stories to remember because he asks us about K07 129 our stories. He must be a trickster who played so hard he killed K07 130 the animals in his own heart.

K07 131 Laundry must think we are separated, he must think he K07 132 understands our loneliness at this hour, but he is so easy to K07 133 distract with the obvious in the natural world. Had he taken the K07 134 scent of magnolia we might have heard his voice.

K07 135 We crisscrossed the street and he was sure to follow that K07 136 morning, so we turn to the right and circle around, but he K07 137 continued on our trail. The mongrels were roused by the bear and K07 138 shied by our shadows. The laundry boy lurched at the words and the K07 139 mongrels barked him down to the animals in his heart. Too bad, he K07 140 turned to the darkness not the treeline, and the mongrels sensed K07 141 that he holds back the light in his own stories. The wordies close K07 142 their books at the first bark and lose their way without a K07 143 sentence.

K07 144 Laundry believes he discovers people on the street, as if he K07 145 landed as some pioneer of tribal stories, but he got lost in his K07 146 own wilderness of words. How could he hear our stories? He never K07 147 had his own stories to remember.

K07 148 Laundry sees the darkness behind his eyes and waits to discover K07 149 the last words that might hold back his death. How does he go on K07 150 without stories? He comes so clean to the cage and dies over words K07 151 in a dream.

K07 152 We are seen as circus bears under a clear umbrella. We can jump K07 153 rope to the crack of a whip and ride a small motorcycle in a tight K07 154 circle on the sawdust. We are bears with an audience, bears in the K07 155 word, and we are alone at night in a chemical civilization.

K07 156 Some wordies laugh at us from their windows on the block. K07 157 Children reach out at a great distance in their dreams to touch our K07 158 nose, to hide in our maw, and pull our thick hair high around their K07 159 thin necks in winter.

K07 160 There, at that clean pink house with the wild shutters, a thin K07 161 woman leans over the fence as we pass. We were invited to touch her K07 162 high breasts, the breasts steam in the cold rain. She was silent K07 163 and never moved. Would she be worried that we were bears?

K07 164 Laundry cursed the mongrels, and we were alone under the K07 165 umbrella. We were alone with our pronouns and stories, and there K07 166 were distances even in our pictures. We might have been a mourning K07 167 dove, or an otter on the great river. We are bears this morning, K07 168 and later the cards might turn us into birds at dawn. We could be K07 169 cockroaches, and we are tricksters in the end. The cards protect us K07 170 from the dead voices of the wordies.

K07 171 Broken windows on a truck.

K07 172 Beer cans and chicken cartons at the bus stop. Cigarettes K07 173 buried in the concrete.

K07 174 Printed flowers on a wet scarf distract us from the trees and K07 175 flowers behind the building. There, spread like a sacred shield K07 176 over the wire near the storm sewer, the wet red flowers and leaves K07 177 on the scarf seem more real than the trumpet vines that decorated K07 178 the center of the cedar trees across the barrier.

K07 179 The cedars were moist and gentle in the rain, but the cotton K07 180 flowers bound a culture that made more sense in the cities. So, we K07 181 were circus bears with a bright silk scarf. First we smelled it, K07 182 our nostrils flared over the neck perfume of a hesitant blonde, a K07 183 teacher at the public school. She left a scent of beer and beans, K07 184 garlic, chalk, and she takes her place in our memories.

K07 185 We heard more than stories of trees and flowers, so we hounded K07 186 the material world on the block. We brushed a fence woven with K07 187 bamboo, pounded a rock garden, and touched an iron bird over a K07 188 mailbox, and we laid our paws on houses, window frames, fences, and K07 189 golden doors. K07 190 K08 1 <#FROWN:K08\>They were often in harmony, even if for different K08 2 reasons. You're feeling better, he asked. The Cavaliere had not K08 3 married a monkey. The carriage rolled on. It began to rain. London K08 4 expired behind them. The Cavaliere's entourage was wending its way K08 5 back to his passions - ruling passions. The Cavaliere went on with K08 6 Candide and valet to El Dorado, Catherine stared down at her own K08 7 book, the maid's chin dropped to her breast, the panting horses K08 8 tried to pull ahead of the whip, the servants in the rear coach K08 9 giggled and tippled, Catherine continued to labor for breath, and K08 10 soon London was only a road.

K08 11 2 K08 12 They had been married, and childless, for sixteen years.

K08 13 If the Cavaliere, who like so many obsessive collectors was a K08 14 natural bachelor, married the only child of a wealthy Pembrokeshire K08 15 squire to finance the political career he embarked on after ten K08 16 time-serving years in military regalia, it was not a good reason. K08 17 The House of Commons, four years representing a borough in Sussex K08 18 in which he never set foot, turned out to offer no more scope for K08 19 his distinctive talents than the army. A better reason: it had K08 20 brought him money to buy pictures. He also had something richer K08 21 than money. Yielding to the necessity of marrying - somewhat K08 22 against my inclination, he was to tell another impecunious younger K08 23 son, his nephew, many years later - he had found what he called K08 24 lasting comfort. On the day of their marriage Catherine locked a K08 25 bracelet on her wrist containing some of his hair. She loved him K08 26 abjectly but without self-pity. He developed the improbable but K08 27 just reputation for being an uxorious husband. Time evaporated, K08 28 money is always needed, comforts found where they were not K08 29 expected, and excitement dug up in barren ground.

K08 30 He can't know what we know about him. For us he is a piece of K08 31 the past, austerely outlined in powdered wig and long elegant coat K08 32 and buckled shoes, beaky profile cocked intelligently, looking, K08 33 observing, firm in his detachment. Does he seem cold? He is simply K08 34 managing, managing brilliantly. He is absorbed, entertained by what K08 35 he sees - he has an important, if not front-rank, diplomatic K08 36 posting abroad - and he keeps himself busy. His is the K08 37 hyperactivity of the heroic depressive. He ferried himself past one K08 38 vortex of melancholy after another by means of an astonishing K08 39 spread of enthusiasms.

K08 40 He is interested in everything. And he lives in a place that K08 41 for sheer volume of curiosities - historical, natural, social - K08 42 could hardly be surpassed. It was bigger than Rome, it was the K08 43 wealthiest as well as the most populous city on the Italian K08 44 peninsula and, after Paris, the second largest city on the European K08 45 continent, it was the capital of natural disaster and it has the K08 46 most indecorous, plebeian monarch, the best ices, the merriest K08 47 loafers, the most vapid torpor, and, among the younger aristocrats, K08 48 the largest number of future Jacobins. Its incomparable bay was K08 49 home to freakish fish as well as the usual bounty. It had streets K08 50 paved with blocks of lava, and, some miles away, the gruesomely K08 51 intact remains, recently rediscovered, of two dead cities. Its K08 52 opera house, the biggest in Italy, provided a continual ravishment K08 53 of castrati, another local product of international renown. Its K08 54 handsome, highly sexed aristocracy gathered in one another's K08 55 mansions at nightly card parties, misleadingly called K08 56 conversazioni, which often did not break up until dawn. On the K08 57 streets life piled up, extruded, overflowed. Certain court K08 58 celebrations included the building in front of the royal palace of K08 59 an artificial mountain festooned with meat, game, cakes, and fruit, K08 60 whose dismantling by the ravenous mob, unleashed by a salvo of K08 61 cannon, was applauded by the overfed from balconies. During the K08 62 great famine of the spring of 1764, people went off to the baker's K08 63 with long knives inside their shirts for the killing and maiming K08 64 needed to get a small ration of bread.

K08 65 The Cavaliere arrived to take up his post in November of that K08 66 year. The expiatory processions of women with crowns of thorns and K08 67 crosses on their backs had passed and the pillaging mobs disbanded. K08 68 The grandees and foreign diplomats had retrieved the silver that K08 69 they had hidden in convents. The court, which had fled north K08 70 sixteen miles to the colossal, grimly horizontal residence at K08 71 Caserta. was back in the city's royal palace. The air intoxicated K08 72 with smells of the sea and coffee and honeysuckle and excrement, K08 73 animal and human, instead of corpses rotting by the hundreds on the K08 74 streets. The thirty thousand dead in the plague that followed the K08 75 famine were buried, too. In the Hospital of the Incurables, the K08 76 thousands dying of epidemic illness no longer starved to death K08 77 first, at the rate of sixty or seventy a day. Foreign supplies of K08 78 corn had brought back the acceptable level of destitution. The poor K08 79 were again cavorting with tambourines and full-throated songs, but K08 80 many had kept the long knives inside their shirts which they'd worn K08 81 to scout for bread and now murdered each other more often for the K08 82 ordinary, civil reasons. And the emaciated peasants who had K08 83 converged on the city in the spring were lingering, breeding. Once K08 84 again the cuccagna would be built, savagely dismantled, K08 85 devoured. The Cavaliere presented his credentials to the K08 86 thirteen-year-old King and the regents, rented a spacious K08 87 three-story mansion commanding a heart-stopping view of the bay and K08 88 Capri and the quiescent volcano for, in local money, one hundred K08 89 fifty pounds a year, and began organizing as much employment as K08 90 possible for his quickened energies.

K08 91 Living abroad facilitates treating life as a spectacle - it is K08 92 one of the reasons that people of means move abroad. Where those K08 93 stunned by the horror of the famine and the brutality and K08 94 incompetence of the government's response saw unending inertia, K08 95 lethargy, a hardened lava of ignorance, the Cavaliere saw a flow. K08 96 The expatriate's dancing city is often the local reformer's or K08 97 revolutionary's immobilized one, ill-governed, committed to K08 98 injustice. Different distance, different cities. The Cavaliere had K08 99 never been as active, as stimulated, as alive mentally. As K08 100 pleasurably detached. In the churches, in the narrow, steep K08 101 streets, at the court - so many performances here. Among the bay's K08 102 eccentric marine life, he noted with delight (no rivalry between K08 103 art and nature for this intrepid connoisseur) one fish with tiny K08 104 feet, an evolutionary overachiever who nevertheless hadn't made it K08 105 out of the water. The sun beat down relentlessly. He trod steaming, K08 106 spongy ground that was hot beneath his shoes. And bony ground K08 107 loaded with rifts of treasure.

K08 108 The obligations of social life of which so many dutifully K08 109 complain, the maintenance of a great household with some fifty K08 110 servants, including several musicians, keep his expenses rising. K08 111 His envoy's salary was hardly adequate for the lavish K08 112 entertainments required to impose himself on the imagination of K08 113 people who counted, a necessary part of his job; for the K08 114 expectations of the painters on whom he bestows patronage; for the K08 115 price of antiquities and pictures for which he must compete with a K08 116 host of rival collectors. Of course he is eventually going to sell K08 117 the best of what he buys - and he does. A gratifying symmetry, that K08 118 collecting most things requires money but then the things collected K08 119 themselves turn into more money. Though money was the faintly K08 120 disreputable, necessary byproduct of his passion, collecting was K08 121 still a virile occupation: not merely recognizing but bestowing K08 122 value on things, by including them in one's collection. It stemmed K08 123 from a lordly sense of himself that Catherine - indeed, all but a K08 124 very few women - could not have.

K08 125 His reputation as a connoisseur and man of learning, his K08 126 affability, the favor he came to enjoy at court, unmatched by any K08 127 other of the envoys, and made the Cavaliere the city's leading K08 128 foreign resident. It was to Catherine's credit that she was no K08 129 courtier, that she was revolted by the antics of the King, a youth K08 130 of stupefying coarseness, and by his snobbish, fertile, intelligent K08 131 wife, who wielded most of the power. As it did him credit that he K08 132 was able to amuse the King. There was no reason for Catherine to K08 133 accompany him to the food-slinging banquets at the royal palace to K08 134 which he was convened three or four times a week. He was never K08 135 bored when with her; but he was also happy to be alone, out for K08 136 whole days on the bay in his boat harpooning fish, when his head K08 137 went quiet in the sun, or gazing at, reviewing, itemizing his K08 138 treasures in his cool study or the storeroom, or looking through K08 139 the new books on ichthyology or electricity or ancient history that K08 140 he had ordered from London. One never could know enough, see K08 141 enough. Much longing there. A feeling he was spared in his K08 142 marriage, a wholly successful marriage - one in which all needs K08 143 were satisfied that had been given permission to arise. There was K08 144 no frustration, at least on his part, therefore no longing, no K08 145 desire to be together as much as possible.

K08 146 High-minded where he was cynical, ailing while he was robust, K08 147 tender when he forgot to be, correct as her table settings for K08 148 sixty - the amiable, not too plain, harpsichord-playing heiress he K08 149 had married seemed to him pure wife, as far as he could imagine K08 150 such a being. He relished the fact that everyone thought her K08 151 admirable. Conscientiously dependent rather than weak, she was not K08 152 lacking in self-confidence. Religion animated her; her dismay at K08 153 his impiety sometimes made her seem commanding. Besides his own K08 154 person and career, music was the principal interest they had in K08 155 common. When Leopold Mozart and his prodigy son had visited the K08 156 city two years ago Catherine had becomingly trembled as she sat K08 157 down to play for them, and then performed as superbly as ever. At K08 158 the weekly concerts given in the British envoy's mansion, to which K08 159 all of local society aspired to be invited, the very people who K08 160 most loudly talked and ate through every opera during the season K08 161 fell silent. Catherine tamed them. The Cavaliere was an K08 162 accomplished cellist and violinist - he had taken lessons from the K08 163 great Giardini in London when he was twenty - but she was the K08 164 better musician, he freely allowed. He liked having reasons to K08 165 admire her. Even more than wanting to be admired, he liked K08 166 admiring.

K08 167 Though his imagination was reasonably lascivious, his blood, so K08 168 he thought, was temperate. In that time men with his privileges K08 169 were usually corpulent by their third or fourth decade. But the K08 170 Cavaliere had not lost a jot of his young man's appetite for K08 171 physical exertion. He worried about Catherine's delicate, K08 172 unexercised constitution, to the point of sometimes being made K08 173 uneasy by the ardor with which she welcomed his punctual embraces. K08 174 There was little sexual between them. He didn't regret not taking a K08 175 mistress, though - whatever others might make of the oddity. K08 176 Occasionally, opportunity plumped itself down beside him; the heat K08 177 rose; and he found himself reaching from moist palm to layered K08 178 clothes, unhooking, untying, fingering, pushing. But the venture K08 179 would leave him with no desire to continue; he was drawn to other K08 180 kinds of acquisition, of possession. That Catherine took no more K08 181 than a benevolent interest in his collections was just as well, K08 182 perhaps. It is natural for lovers of music to enjoy collaborating, K08 183 playing together. Most unnatural to be a co-collector. One wants to K08 184 possess (and be possessed) alone.

K08 185 It is my nature to collect, he once told his wife.

K08 186 "Picture-mad," a friend from his youth called him - one K08 187 person's nature being another's idea of madness; of immoderate K08 188 desire.

K08 189 As a child he collected coins, the automata, then musical K08 190 instruments. Collecting expresses a free-floating desire that K08 191 attaches and re-attaches itself - it is a succession of desires. K08 192 The true collector is in the grip not of what is collected but of K08 193 collecting. By his early twenties the Cavaliere had already formed K08 194 and been forced to sell, in order to pay debts, several small K08 195 collections of paintings.

K08 196 Upon arriving as envoy he started collecting anew. Within an K08 197 hour on horseback, Pompeii and Herculaneum were being dug up, K08 198 stripped, picked over; but everything the ignorant diggers K08 199 unearthed was supposed to go straight to the storerooms in the K08 200 nearby royal palace at Portici. K08 201 K09 1 <#FROWN:K09\>She kept staring at him.

K09 2 ÒHow could I have lived under the same roof and not K09 3 known what was transpiring in that room all these years. Forever K09 4 transpiring! Wait a minute, come closer, Harlan. I wonÕt bite you, K09 5 you fool. Let me look at you. Kneel down.Ó

K09 6 Harlan knelt down. She touched his dark face and straight black K09 7 hair.

K09 8 ÒThe face does not tell all, does it? The face is a K09 9 liar, and your face has lied to me. No, you do not look like one of K09 10 them.Ó

K09 11 ÒOne of who,Ó Harlan could not control his K09 12 anger.

K09 13 ÒLike the children of Sodom,Ó she muttered. K09 14 ÒDegenerate, abandoned by God and man. The kingdom of K09 15 forever damned.Ó

K09 16 ÒI am going to stay the night, Mrs. Vane,Ó K09 17 Harlan said, Òwhether you will it or not. I will stay to K09 18 see you are all right. You will have to allow it for your own K09 19 good.Ó

K09 20 ÒI have no good, I have nothing. The photographs have K09 21 sealed off everything from me, past present future, kingdom come, K09 22 all gone up in one cataclysm. Had there been a hundred stacked K09 23 corpses in there it would have been a less gruesome K09 24 sight.Ó

K09 25 Her color began to return. She worked the rings on her two K09 26 hands frantically.

K09 27 ÒWill you make me some strong coffee,Ó she said K09 28 in a voice more like that of a great star.

K09 29 ÒDo you think coffee is right after your K09 30 medicine?Ó Harlan wondered.

K09 31 ÒWhen I tell you what it is I want, it is what I want, K09 32 and it is of course right. So march!Ó

K09 33 Harlan was gone so long that when he came back she had fallen K09 34 asleep in his chair. She stirred and opened her eyes. She stared at K09 35 the cup of hot coffee.

K09 36 ÒAh well, ah well,Ó she said and received the K09 37 cup. ÒI feel I have come back from the deepest part of the K09 38 infernal kingdom. I walked down to hell and here I am sitting K09 39 drinking coffee prepared by one of the participants in hell K09 40 rites.Ó

K09 41 Olga Petrovna raised her coffee cup.

K09 42 She tasted the brew.

K09 43 ÒYes, itÕs perfect. You have many talents, all hidden K09 44 of course from a woman who was only his spouse. How fortunate he K09 45 was in having solicited your assistance for so long.Ó

K09 46 Harlan sat down in a small chair nearby. To his shame he burst K09 47 into tears and sobbed.

K09 48 ÒAll the tears of the seven seas will not wash away K09 49 what you are, were, and probably will go on being as you leave K09 50 these premises.Ó

K09 51 Harlan wept on. She threw him a huge ornately embroidered linen K09 52 handkerchief and he dried his eyes.

K09 53 Abner Blossom was so engulfed in the writing of his new opera, K09 54 a kind of postlude he later called it to The Kinkajou, K09 55 that he had perhaps failed to take into account the magnitude of K09 56 the scandal of Cyril Vane's funeral, and the successive scandals K09 57 like intermittent explosions in a firecracker factory which came K09 58 after the disgrace of the funeral.

K09 59 The maenad of course of all of the tumult and the shouting was K09 60 Olga Petrovna herself. Everybody said she had gone mad, but the K09 61 fact was if that were so then she had always been mad, but had not K09 62 had the right script by which her madness could be so completely K09 63 expressed. Yet in a deeper sense the photographs and the K09 64 photographic suite itself long sealed to her inquiring eye and K09 65 nervous fingers had altered her faculties, disordered her senses, K09 66 and unleashed in her an energy, a shameless bravado, as she went K09 67 flinging to the winds of any restraint.

K09 68 Other aging screen stars remembered perhaps Alla NazimovaÕs K09 69 estimate of Olga Petrovna. Nazimova, the great Russian actress, K09 70 once said when Olga had paid her a visit in her dressing room: K09 71 ÒAlways remember, my dear, that it is the firm hand on the K09 72 reins and not the untamed fury of the steed that wins the K09 73 day.Ó

K09 74 Olga Petrovna might have remembered the great NazimovaÕs words K09 75 the day she flung all reason and restraint to the winds, but had K09 76 she placed herself under continuous restraint there would have been K09 77 no explosions of scandal and obloquy. Cyril Vane would probably K09 78 have sunk into even greater oblivion than he had achieved before K09 79 his death.

K09 80 Scandal is the breath of fame in the United States of America. K09 81 No one can be perfectly famous unless he has fallen into the glue K09 82 pot. The press lives on lies, and where truth impedes its progress, K09 83 truth is easily changed to headlines. The press had had lean years, K09 84 and the scandal arising from the death of the old K09 85 photographer-novelist brought the corpse of journalism briefly back K09 86 to life.

K09 87 Usually as Abner took his breakfast in his bed, Ezekiel seated K09 88 himself in a chair that almost impinged on the bed itself, for K09 89 AbnerÕs deafness required proximity when one spoke to him, and K09 90 Ezekiel relished booming out the latest newspaper instalments of K09 91 infamy and vilification. All was of course disseminated by the K09 92 servant in the interest of decency, decorum and the fitness of what K09 93 one can impart.

K09 94 But there was a sudden vigorous insistent ringing of the front K09 95 doorbell. Ezekiel and his ÔmasterÕ exchanged worried glances.

K09 96 ÒBest to answer it,Ó Abner finally said, and K09 97 rose out of the layers of bedclothes, fastened the cord of his K09 98 pajama bottoms, and threw on a faded Chinese dressing gown.

K09 99 He could barely make out a long sequence of whisperings, K09 100 clearing of the throat, grumbling and then nervous guffaws.

K09 101 A flustered but still regal Ezekiel entered the bedroom.

K09 102 ÒCount Alexander Ilitch, Sir.Ó

K09 103 Abner gave Ezekiel a look of disbelief and irritation.

K09 104 ÒWhat shall I tell him?Ó

K09 105 ÒWhat have you told him?Ó Abner almost K09 106 shouted.

K09 107 ÒThat you are occupied.Ó

K09 108 ÒGood,Ó Abner seated himself in the little alcove next K09 109 to the bedroom. "Tell him then I will see him.Ó

K09 110 Count Alexander Ilitch had passed his best years. His face K09 111 which had once been superlatively handsome was now careworn and K09 112 flaccid. His hair on the other hand had retained much of the color K09 113 and luxuriance of his youth and gave him from a distance a look of K09 114 a man in his prime.

K09 115 Count Ilitch always carried a small cane which helped him keep K09 116 his balance. He had a gunshot wound in his left leg sustained K09 117 during a duel he had fought near the Volga River, at least K09 118 according to his own story.

K09 119 ÒThis is an unexpected pleasure,Ó Abner took K09 120 the CountÕs hand and pressed it briefly.

K09 121 ÒI am intruding, dear Mr. Blossom," the Count K09 122 apologized.

K09 123 Abner bowed faintly.

K09 124 ÒMay we speak in private?Ó the visitor stared K09 125 at Ezekiel.

K09 126 ÒWe are in private, Count,Ó Abner Blossom K09 127 assured Ilitch.

K09 128 Count Ilitch nodded, placed his cane carefully almost lovingly K09 129 by the side of his chair.

K09 130 Ezekiel picked the cane up despite a motion of displeasure from K09 131 Count Ilitch and placed the cane just out of reach of the K09 132 visitor.

K09 133 ÒI will be brief and to the point,Ó Count K09 134 Ilitch spoke now with considerable effort. It was perhaps this K09 135 effort which brought the blood to his countenance, and all at once K09 136 cleared his features of the look of age. Abner BlossomÕs mouth K09 137 opened in a kind of surprise, for Count Ilitch all at once appeared K09 138 as a relatively young and extremely fetching person. His great mass K09 139 of yellow hair suddenly came loose and fell indolently about his K09 140 ears.

K09 141 ÒBut before I begin,Ó Count Ilitch entreated, K09 142 all the while trying to brush back his unruly shock of hair, K09 143 Òwould it be possible for your young servant to fetch us a K09 144 footstool by chance?Ó He pointed to his injured leg.

K09 145 Ezekiel brought forth a footstool with an ornate American K09 146 Indian design and placed the CountÕs rather dainty feet accurately K09 147 and securely on the stool.

K09 148 ÒThank you, oh thank you,Ó the Count cried and K09 149 grasped EzekielÕs hand tightly in gratitude.

K09 150 Abner now resembled in his mien more than ever that of a K09 151 presiding judge.

K09 152 ÒMr. Blossom, you must not write the opera,Ó K09 153 the Count all at once blurted out.

K09 154 There was no immediate response from Abner, but Ezekiel paused K09 155 at the door with an air of surprise, even shock at the sudden K09 156 utterance of Count Ilitch. Then he hurried out.

K09 157 ÒMust not! Cannot!Ó the Count repeated.

K09 158 From the CountÕs voice now Abner recalled that his visitor had K09 159 once sung in a charming male alto and had given recitals to other K09 160 titled Russians living in exile.

K09 161 Ezekiel returned bearing a tray with two large glasses filled K09 162 with wine.

K09 163 Count IlitchÕs powerful right hand shook as he accepted the K09 164 refreshment and he had finally to hold the glass with both hands as K09 165 he thirstily sipped the wine.

K09 166 ÒLovely bouquet,Ó the Count sipped again and K09 167 again appreciatively. Little drops of sweat appeared on his brow K09 168 and his right cheek. ÒBut allow me to return to our K09 169 problem, dear Mr. Blossom. An opera based on her husbandÕs life - I K09 170 refer of course to Madame Olga Petrovna. It would come at the worst K09 171 possible time for her - Remember, dear Mr. Blossom, may I call you K09 172 Abner in remembrance of your kindness to me in times past when I K09 173 was honored by being invited to your sumptuous banquets here at the K09 174 Enrique ....Ó

K09 175 Abner Blossom raised his own glass in gracious K09 176 condescension.

K09 177 ÒThank you,Ó Count Ilitch whispered. K09 178 ÒRemember, then, dear Abner,Ó he spluttered a bit K09 179 and sipped more wine, and raised his nearly empty glass to Ezekiel K09 180 who immediately filled it to the brim. ÒRemember, then, my K09 181 gracious host, that I knew Olga Petrovna in our native land, in K09 182 long ages past. She was then known as Vassila. Yes, K09 183 Vassila,Ó Count IlitchÕs eyes were a bit moist. ÒWe K09 184 were the dearest of friends. That is why, dear Abner, I have dared K09 185 to come here today because I am her friend and compatriot although K09 186 I was much younger than Vassila of course in our Russian days. I K09 187 have dared to come, then, partly because of knowing her so long ago K09 188 and partly because I used to be your honored guest at your K09 189 banquets.Ó

K09 190 Count Ilitch now sighed heavily as he used to do when as a male K09 191 alto he entertained his friends with singing arias from K09 192 TchasikowskyÕs lesser-known operas.

K09 193 ÒShe has sent me to you as her interlocutor!Ó K09 194 For some reason now Count Ilitch rose, but then remembering his K09 195 wounded calf muscle he sat abruptly down.

K09 196 ÒVassila, pardon me, I mean Olga Petrovna begs you on K09 197 bended knee,Ó Count Ilitch concluded his request, and K09 198 almost feverishly finished his second glass of wine, again filled K09 199 to overflowing by the attentive Ezekiel.

K09 200 Gazing over at his employer, for a moment Ezekiel thought that K09 201 Abner had fallen asleep for his employer had his eyes closed K09 202 tightly to the added discomfiture of Count Ilitch.

K09 203 "We once spent an entire long evening together on the K09 204 Volga," Count Ilitch spoke so low at that moment that Abner K09 205 Blossom could not possibly have heard him, and had kept in any case K09 206 his eyes tightly closed.

K09 207 "I greatly appreciate your taking time from your own K09 208 pressing affairs to come here, Count Ilitch, all on behalf of our K09 209 dear friend Olga Petrovna, or as you called her of yore, Vassila K09 210 .... But see here -" Abner now opened both his eyes widely K09 211 - "I cannot even acknowledge I have heard such a request on K09 212 your part or hers."

K09 213 "Cannot?" Count Ilitch asked in an amazed theatrical K09 214 tone, and again Abner Blossom imagined he could hear the Count's K09 215 male alto voice in recital.

K09 216 "Cannot, will not, never shall countenance such a K09 217 request, even when it comes from so prepossessing, so winsome, so K09 218 elegant and manly a gentleman as yourself, Count Ilitch. I have K09 219 always admired you. I have always wanted to be of service to you K09 220 now and in the future. But I cannot help you because in the first K09 221 place there is no such opera in progress."

K09 222 "No such opera," Count Ilitch asked K09 223 hopefully.

K09 224 "None whatsoever. Certainly, dear Count, none based on K09 225 the life of - you did call her Vassila I believe. No such opera K09 226 based on Vassila's life or that of her dead and departed spouse K09 227 exists!"

K09 228 K10 1 <#FROWN:K10\>Oriental fabrics being fashionable in Europe ever K10 2 since Napoleon's Egyptian foray, permitted glimpses in the warm K10 3 candlelight of her plump shoulders' ivory skin and of the powdered K10 4 embonpoint the d<*_>e-acute<*/>colletage of her high-waisted gown K10 5 of well-set silks revealed. He bent low, placing K10 6 his beaver hat, with its own fashionable iridescence, between his K10 7 boots, his Philadelphia boots, of a thinner black leather than his K10 8 Lancaster boots, their tops cut diagonally in the hussar style.

K10 9 "You disclaim, to elicit flattery," his new K10 10 companion gaily accused him. "You have lost your mountain K10 11 manners, if ever you had them."

K10 12 "My dear mother is a woman of some graces, who loved K10 13 the old poets as well as the Bible, and my father a man of K10 14 sufficient means to send me to college, though he missed my strong K10 15 back on his farm. He began on the road to prosperity as the K10 16 sack-handler in a frontier trading post; in his youth in K10 17 County Donegal, his own father had deserted him, and when the dust K10 18 of our Revolution settled he quit his dependency on his dead K10 19 mother's brother, and sailed." Lest this self-description K10 20 which he impulsively confided seem boastful, he added, "But K10 21 the simple Christian virtues remain my standard of success, and K10 22 when my second term in the Assembly ended three years ago last K10 23 June, I with great pleasure surrendered all political K10 24 ambition."

K10 25 Mary Jenkins loyally protested, "Yet the Judge Franklin K10 26 case has kept you in the public eye, and there is talk," K10 27 she explained to her sister, giving their guest the dignity of the K10 28 third person, "of the Federalists putting up Mr. Buchanan K10 29 for the national Congress in next year's election. And just the K10 30 other day he and Mr. Jenkins and James Hopkins were appointed to K10 31 form a committee to advise our Congressman on the question of K10 32 slavery in Missouri."

K10 33 Buchanan hastened to disclaim, "Lancaster is a small K10 34 city, Miss Hubley, and a few dogs must bark on many street K10 35 corners."

K10 36 "I assume you will advise to vote against K10 37 extending slavery; I think it wicked, wicked, the way those K10 38 planters want to spread their devilish institution over all of K10 39 God's terrain!"

K10 40 Such fire of opinion, the tongue and heart outracing reason, K10 41 attracted Buchanan, and alarmed him. "We do so advise, Miss K10 42 Hubley, though in terms less fervently couched than your own. K10 43 Myself, since the Constitution undeniably sanctions slavery, I see K10 44 no recourse but accommodation with it pro tempore. A K10 45 geographical compromise, such as rumor suggests Senator Clay will K10 46 soon propose, to maintain the balance of power within the Senate, K10 47 would, I am convinced, allay the sectional competition that has K10 48 heavily contributed to the present panic of selling and suing. For K10 49 unless the spirit of compromise and mediation prevail, this young K10 50 nation may divide in three, New England pulling one way and the K10 51 South the other, and the states of middling disposition shall be K10 52 left as ports without a nation to supply their commerce. Disunited, K10 53 our fair States may become each as trivial as Bavarian K10 54 princedoms!"

K10 55 Grace said, theatrically addressing her sister, "Oh, I K10 56 do adore men, the sensible way they put one thing against K10 57 another. Myself, Mr. Buchanan, I cannot calmly think on the K10 58 fate of those poor enslaved darkies, the manner in which not only K10 59 the men in the fields are abused but the colored ladies also - I K10 60 cannot, it is a weakness of my nature, I cannot K10 61 contemplate such wrongs without my heart rising up and yearning to K10 62 smite those monstrous slavedrivers into the Hades that will be K10 63 their everlasting abode!"

K10 64 Buchanan tut-tutted, "Come now, the peculiar K10 65 institution presents more sides than that. You speak as a soldier's K10 66 daughter, Miss Hubley, but here in peaceable Pennsylvania we take a K10 67 less absolute view. The slavedrivers, for one, are themselves K10 68 driven, by circumstances they did not create. Chattel slavery, K10 69 though I, too, deplore its abuses, is as old as warfare, and to be K10 70 preferred to massacre. In some societies, such as that of ancient K10 71 Greece, the contract between master and slave allowed the latter K10 72 considerable advantages, and our Southern brethren maintain that K10 73 without the institution's paternal guidance the negro would perish K10 74 of his natural sloth and inability. At present, our friends in the K10 75 South see their share of the national fortune dwindling; much of K10 76 the urgency would be removed from the territorial question, it is K10 77 my belief, if new territories - to the south of the South, so to K10 78 speak - were to be mercifully removed" - he made a nimble K10 79 snatching gesture, startling both members of his little audience - K10 80 "from the crumbling dominions of the moribund Spanish K10 81 crown. Cuba, Texas, Chihuahua, California - all begging to be K10 82 plucked."

K10 83 He settled back, pleasantly conscious of the breast-fluttering K10 84 impression his masculine aggressiveness had made. Now he directed K10 85 his attention, with a characteristic twist of his head, K10 86 specifically toward Mrs. Jenkins, who had remained standing, held K10 87 upright by the strands of hostessly duty. "But I mustn't K10 88 tarry, delightful though tarrying be," he said. K10 89 "Inform Mr. Jenkins, if you will, that the Columbia Bridge K10 90 Company matter took some hopeful turns under my prodding, and if he K10 91 wishes to be apprised of their nature, and of the distance I K10 92 estimate we have left to travel, he will find me in my chambers K10 93 tomorrow all day."

K10 94 "I will indeed inform him," the excellent wife K10 95 agreed. "But please, Mr. Buchanan, you shame me by not K10 96 letting me offer you a beverage, and then a spot of supper. My K10 97 sister and I were to sit down to a simple meal - salt-pork roast, K10 98 fried potatoes, dried succotash, and peach-and-raisin pie. It would K10 99 brighten our dull fare if you could join us, and would keep you out K10 100 of the taverns for an evening."

K10 101 "People exaggerate my tavern attendance, even in my K10 102 unattached days," Buchanan said, in mock rebuke, and with a K10 103 jerk of his head rested his vision on Miss Hubley's alabaster upper K10 104 chest, bare of any locket or sign of affection pledged. His K10 105 attachment to Ann nagged at him awkwardly; he should be speeding K10 106 from this house and presenting at the Colemans' door live evidence K10 107 of his safe return from Philadelphia.

K10 108 "Oh, do stay with us," Grace Hubley K10 109 chimed. "It would be a kindness even after you are gone, K10 110 for sisters continually need something to gossip about."

K10 111 Between folded wings of peacock-shimmery Persian silk, the K10 112 woman's powdered skin glowed in his imperfect vision, which needed K10 113 for focus constant small adjustments of his head. "I would K10 114 be honored to serve as helpless fodder for your sororal K10 115 interchange," he pronounced, "but there can be no K10 116 question of imposing my presence for the length of a meal. I will, K10 117 Mrs. Jenkins," he announced, relaxing into conviviality, K10 118 "upon your kind urging have tea to keep Miss Hubley K10 119 company, and a thimbleful of port to keep company with the K10 120 tea."

K10 121 When Mrs. Jenkins, to arrange these new provisions, left the K10 122 room, its glittering glow seemed to intensify; the purring blaze in K10 123 the fireplace - its mantel in the form of a Grecian temple carved K10 124 with fluted pillars and classic entablature of which the frieze was K10 125 decorated with acanthus garlands in bas-relief - added its flickers K10 126 and flares to the eddying web of candlelight. Cocking her head in K10 127 unconscious imitation of Buchanan's own, Miss Hubley said prettily, K10 128 since he had referred to his attached state, "I have heard K10 129 the most wonderful things concerning Miss Coleman. She is as K10 130 original as she is beautiful, and her family of an unchallenged K10 131 prominence."

K10 132 "The Colemans are seldom challenged, it is K10 133 true," he said, permitting himself the manner if not the K10 134 substance of irony in such a serious connection. "Even at K10 135 the age of seventy-one, the Judge keeps a good grip on his K10 136 interests, and his grown sons greatly extend his K10 137 influence."

K10 138 "Mary tells me all Lancaster thinks you are a knight K10 139 errant to brave the Coleman castle and carry away the languishing K10 140 princess." When this apparition laughed, the shadowed space K10 141 between her breasts changed shape. Her voice formed cushions in the K10 142 air, into which Buchanan sank gratefully after days of nasal legal K10 143 prating in an oppressive metropolis.

K10 144 "She would not languish long, were this particular K10 145 knight to take a fatal lance."

K10 146 Grace Hubley thoughtfully pursed her plump, self-pleasing lips. K10 147 "It makes a woman unsteady, perhaps, to have too many K10 148 attractions; it prevents in her mind the resigned contentment of a K10 149 concluded bargain." Here she spoke, less mischievously than K10 150 usual, from experience, absorbed and foreshadowed: we are told K10 151 Grace Hubley was a young woman of three negative romances, not K10 152 including the part she played in the Buchanan-Coleman episode. K10 153 Thrice engaged to be married, misfortune and a fickleness of K10 154 temperament ordained her ultimately to spinsterhood.

K10 155 Buchanan, too, may have suffered from a surfeit of K10 156 attractiveness. A decade later, he excited the Washington K10 157 journalist Anne Royall to gush, in the third volume of her K10 158 Black Book (1828-29), No description that the most K10 159 talented writer could give, can convey an idea of Mr. Buchanan; he K10 160 is quite a young man (and a <{_><-|>batchelor<+|>bachelor<{/>, K10 161 ladies) with a stout handsome person; his face is large and fair, K10 162 his eyes, a soft blue, one of which he often shuts, and has a habit K10 163 of turning his head to one side. He had been his mother's K10 164 first son and, with the death of his older sister, Mary, in the K10 165 year he was born, her eldest child. Five sisters followed, four of K10 166 them surviving to form playmates and an audience. His capacity for K10 167 basking in female approval was essentially bottomless, and Ann K10 168 Coleman's good opinion had to it a certain bottom, reinforced by K10 169 her family. Grace Hubley, in turn, we are told, possessed a K10 170 beauty and vivaciousness of disposition that made her the pet K10 171 adorable of her acquaintance. Her feathery banter was to his K10 172 vanity, we might conceive, as a deep barrel of sifted flour is to a K10 173 man's forearm. He stirred her, he took her tinge. The shadows the K10 174 Colemans cast in his head were dispersed by the light of this K10 175 social conversation very adroitly guided by the keen objective mind K10 176 of Miss Hubley. Golden minutes fled by on winged feet. As the K10 177 embrace of the November evening tightened around them, and the K10 178 windows of the tall sitting room with its fine provincial furniture K10 179 gave back only tremulous amber reflections of the lights burning K10 180 within, and Mary Jenkins absented herself to supervise details of K10 181 the impending meal, possibly the conversation between these two K10 182 strangers, the pet adorable and the favorite son, whose K10 183 ages flanked the turning point of thirty, deepened in intimacy and K10 184 dared probe the innermost source of consolation and anxiety K10 185 harbored by Americans of the early nineteenth century, the K10 186 strenuous maintenance of which so remarkably consumed and yet also K10 187 supplied their energy - the Christian faith. Struck by her repeated K10 188 righteous rejection of black slavery in all its forms, indeed K10 189 scandalized by her airy, quick-tongued condemnation of an K10 190 institution so extensively and venerably bound up in the nation's K10 191 laws of property and means of production, he ventured," Miss K10 192 Hubley, I envy you the clarity of your views. God's design, it is K10 193 evident, presents no riddles to your vision."

K10 194 "What riddles there are, Mr. Buchanan, I leave to the K10 195 Lord to solve." By this hour her own sipping had moved from K10 196 tea to a brandy cordial in a tulip-shaped glass, and certain rosy K10 197 warmth and confident languor broadened her gestures, beneath the K10 198 loosening exotic length of Persian shawl.

K10 199 He inclined his stout handsome person forward from K10 200 the delicate lyre-back chair with fluted legs, so that his vision K10 201 won for its field slightly more of the radiant expanse of Miss K10 202 Hubley's bosom. "May I ask - " He hesitated. K10 203 "I ask in all respectfulness, with full solemnity - have K10 204 you known, then, an inner experience of election, that supports K10 205 this lovely certainty of yours?"

K10 206 She adjusted her shawl, to achieve an inch more concealment, K10 207 then relaxed into self-exposition, saying, "I would not K10 208 express it in so political a phrase - but for as long as I can K10 209 remember, I have sensibly felt the closeness of the Lord. He looks K10 210 over me - He approves of me - He rebukes me - He enjoys me." K10 211 K11 1 <#FROWN:K11\>31 K11 2 The night of the long knives.

K11 3 Or one long knife - the guillotine.

K11 4 If only I had known, as the heroes in mystery novels used to K11 5 say.

K11 6 When it was over, I was reminded of Elijah at the gangplank or K11 7 myself in Beverly Hills in the bookshop buying my portable Melville K11 8 and hearing that strange woman's prophecy of doom: "Don't K11 9 go on that journey."

K11 10 And my naive response, "He's never met anyone like me K11 11 before. Maybe that will make the difference."

K11 12 Yep. Sure. The difference being it took a bit more time to K11 13 prepare the pig's head for the hammer, the razor at the throat, and K11 14 the hanging on the tender-hook.

K11 15 Lenin referred to dumbclucks like me as "useful K11 16 idiots."

K11 17 Which is to say the image of Chaplin - remember? - crossing a K11 18 street as a lumber truck passes and drops a warning red flag off K11 19 the load. Chaplin picks it up and runs after the truck, to warn K11 20 them they've lost the flag. Instantly, a mob of <}_><-|> K11 21 Bolshevicks <+|>Bolsheviks<}/> rounds the corner behind him, K11 22 unseen, as Chaplin stands waving the flag after the truck. Enter K11 23 the cops. Who promptly seize Chaplin, trample the red flag, and K11 24 beat the hell out of him before throwing him in the hoosegow. The K11 25 mob, of course, escapes. So ...

K11 26 There I am, in Dublin, with a red flag, waving it at John. Or K11 27 there I am in the Place de la Concorde as the Bastille wagons park K11 28 and I offer to help folks up the guillotine steps. Only when I K11 29 reach the top do I realize where I am, panic, and come down in two K11 30 pieces.

K11 31 Such is the life of the innocent, or someone who kids himself K11 32 he is innocent. As someone once said to me: "Let's not be K11 33 too naive, shall we?"

K11 34 I wish I had heard and followed that advice on that night in a K11 35 Chinese restaurant somewhere in the fogs and rains of Dublin.

K11 36 It was one of those nights when the prophet Elijah did not K11 37 prevent me - nor did I prevent myself - from drinking too many K11 38 drinks and spilling too many beans in front of Jake Vickers and his K11 39 Parisian lady and three or four visitors from new York and K11 40 Hollywood.

K11 41 It was one of those nights when it seemed you can't do anything K11 42 wrong. One of those nights when everything you say is brilliant, K11 43 honed, sharpened to a razor edge of risibility, when every word you K11 44 speak sends the house on a roar, when people hold their ribs with K11 45 laughter, waiting for your next shot across their bows, and shoot K11 46 you do, and laugh they do, until you are all bathed in a warm love K11 47 of hilarity and are about to fall on the floor writhing with your K11 48 own genius, your own incredible humor raised to its highest K11 49 temperature.

K11 50 I sat listening to my own tongue wag, aim, and fire, damn well K11 51 pleased at my own comic genius. Everyone was looking at me and my K11 52 alcohol-oiled tongue. Even John was breaking down at my wild K11 53 excursions into amiable insult and caricature. I imagined I had K11 54 saved up tidbits on everyone at the table, and like those K11 55 handwriting experts we encounter on occasion in life who read more K11 56 in our hairlines, eyebrows, ear twitchings, nostril flarings, and K11 57 teeth barings than are written in our Horatio stars or inked on K11 58 plain pad with pencil, guessed at the obvious. If we do not give K11 59 ourselves away in our handwriting or clothes or the percentage of K11 60 alcohol on our breaths, our breathing does us in or the merest nod K11 61 or shake of the head as the handwriting expert sniffs our K11 62 mouthwash, or our genius. So lining up my friends one after K11 63 another, against the stockade wall, I fired fusillades of wit at K11 64 their habits, poses, pretensions, lovers, artistic outputs, lapses K11 65 in taste, failures to arrive on time, errors in observation, and on K11 66 and on. Most of it, I would hope, gently done with no scars to K11 67 bandage later. So I drilled holes in masks, poured sulphur in, and K11 68 lit the fuse. The explosions left darkened faces but no lost K11 69 digits. At one point Jake cried, "Someone stop K11 70 him!"

K11 71 Christ, I wish they had.

K11 72 For my next victim was John himself.

K11 73 I paused for breath. Everyone stilled in their explosive roars, K11 74 watching me with bright fox eyes, urging me to get on with it. K11 75 John's next. Fix him!

K11 76 So there I was with my hero, my love, my great good fine K11 77 wondrous friend, and there I was reaching out suddenly and taking K11 78 his hands.

K11 79 "Did you know, John, that I, too, am one of the K11 80 world's great hypnotists?"

K11 81 "Is that so, kid?" John laughed.

K11 82 "Hey!" everyone cried.

K11 83 "Yep," I said. "Hypnotist. World's greatest. K11 84 Someone fill my glass."

K11 85 Jake Vickers poured gin in my glass.

K11 86 "Go it!" yelled everyone.

K11 87 "Here goes," I said.

K11 88 No, someone inside me whispered.

K11 89 I seized John's wrists. "I am about to hypnotize you. K11 90 Don't be afraid!"

K11 91 "You don't scare me, kid," John said.

K11 92 "I'm going to help you with a problem."

K11 93 "What's that, kid?"

K11 94 "Your problem is - " I searched his face, my K11 95 intuitive mind. "Your problem is, ah."

K11 96 It came from me. It burst out.

K11 97 "I am not afraid of flying to London, John. I do K11 98 not fear. It is you that fears. You're afraid."

K11 99 "Of what, H.G.?"

K11 100 "You are afraid of the D<*_>u-acute<*/>n Laoghaire K11 101 ferry boat that travels over the Irish Sea at night in great waves K11 102 and dark storms. You are afraid of that, John, and so you say K11 103 I am afraid of flying, when it is you afraid of seas and boats K11 104 and storms and long night travels. Yes, John?"

K11 105 "If you say so, kid," John replied, smiling K11 106 stonily.

K11 107 "Do you want me to help you with your problem, K11 108 John?"

K11 109 "Help him, help him," said everyone.

K11 110 "Consider yourself helped. Relax, John. Relax. Take it K11 111 easy. Sleep, John, are you getting sleepy?" I murmured, I K11 112 whispered, I announced.

K11 113 "If you say so, kid," said John, his voice not K11 114 so amused but half amused, his eyes watchful, his wrists tense K11 115 under my holding.

K11 116 "Someone hit him over the head," exclaimed K11 117 Jake.

K11 118 "No, no," laughed John. "Let him go. Go K11 119 on, kid. Put me under."

K11 120 "Are you under, John?"

K11 121 "Halfway there, son."

K11 122 "Go further, John. Repeat after me. It is not H.G. who K11 123 fears flying."

K11 124 "It is not H.G. who fears flying - "

K11 125 "Repeat, it is I, John, who fear the damned black night K11 126 sea and fog on the ferry from D<*_>u-acute<*/>n Laoghaire to K11 127 Folkestone!"

K11 128 "All that, kid, all that. Agreed."

K11 129 "Are you under, John?"

K11 130 "I'm sunk, kid."

K11 131 "When you wake you will remember nothing, except you K11 132 will no longer fear the sea and will give up flying, K11 133 John."

K11 134 "I will remember nothing." John closed his K11 135 eyes, but I could see his eyeballs twitch behind the lids.

K11 136 "And like Ahab, you will go to sea with me, two nights K11 137 from now."

K11 138 "Nothing like the sea," muttered John.

K11 139 "At the count of ten you will waken, John, feeling K11 140 fine, feeling fresh. One, two ... five, six ... ten. K11 141 Awake!"

K11 142 John popped his pingpong eyes wide and blinked around at us. K11 143 "My God," he cried, "that was a good sleep. K11 144 Where was I? What happened?"

K11 145 "Cut it out, John!" said Jake.

K11 146 "John, John," everyone roared. Someone punched K11 147 me happily in the arm. Someone else rumpled my hair, the hair of K11 148 the idiot savant.

K11 149 John ordered drinks all around.

K11 150 Slugging his back, he mused on the empty glass, and then eyed K11 151 me, steadily.

K11 152 "You know, kid, I been thinking - "

K11 153 "What?"

K11 154 "Mebbe - "

K11 155 "Yes?"

K11 156 "Mebbe I should go on that damned ferryboat with K11 157 you, ah, two nights from now ... ?"

K11 158 "John, John!" everyone roared.

K11 159 "Cut it out," shouted Jake, falling back, K11 160 splitting his face with laughs.

K11 161 Cut it out.

K11 162 My heart, too, while you're at it.

K11 163 How the rest of the evening went or how it ended, I cannot K11 164 recall. I seem to remember more drinks, and a sense of overwhelming K11 165 power that came with everyone, I imagined, loving my outrageous K11 166 jokes, my skill with words, my alacrity with responses. I was a K11 167 ballet dancer, comically on balance on the high-wire. I could not K11 168 fall off. I was a perfection and a delight. I was a Martian love, K11 169 all beauteous bright.

K11 170 As usual, John had no cash on him.

K11 171 Jake Vickers paid the bill for the eight of us. On the way out, K11 172 in the fog-filled rainy street, Jake cocked his head to one side, K11 173 closed one eye, and fixed me with the other, snorting with K11 174 mirth.

K11 175 "You," he said, "are a maniac!"

K11 176 That sound you hear is the long whistling slide of the K11 177 guillotine blade rushing down through the night ...

K11 178 Toward the nape of my neck.

K11 179 The next day I wandered around without a head, but no one said. K11 180 Until five that afternoon. When John unexpectedly came to my room K11 181 at the Royal Hibernian Hotel.

K11 182 I don't recall John's sitting down after he came in. He was K11 183 dressed in a cap and light overcoat, and he paced around the room K11 184 as we discussed some minor point to be revised before I sailed off K11 185 for England, two days later.

K11 186 In the middle of our Ahab/Whale discussion John paused and, K11 187 almost as an afterthought, said, "Oh, yeah. You'll have to K11 188 change your plans."

K11 189 "What plans, John?"

K11 190 "Oh, all that bullshit about your coming to England on K11 191 the ferryboat. I need you quicker. Cancel your boat ticket and fly K11 192 with me to London on Thursday night. It'll only take an hour. K11 193 You'll love it."

K11 194 "I can't do that," I said.

K11 195 "Now, don't be difficult - "

K11 196 "You don't understand, John. I'm scared to death of K11 197 airplanes."

K11 198 "You've told me that, kid, and it's time you got over K11 199 it."

K11 200 "Maybe sometime in the future, but, please forgive me, K11 201 John, I can't fly with you."

K11 202 "Sounds like you're yellow, kid."

K11 203 "Yes! I admit it. You've always known that. K11 204 It's nothing new. I am the damnedest shade of yellow you ever K11 205 saw."

K11 206 "Then get over it. Fly! You'll save a whole day at K11 207 sea."

K11 208 "God," I moaned, falling back in my chair. "I K11 209 don't mind being at sea all night The ferry leaves around ten K11 210 p.m. It doesn't get across to the English port until three of four K11 211 a.m., an ungodly hour. I won't sleep. I might even be seasick. Then K11 212 I take the train to London, it gets in Victoria at seven thirty in K11 213 the morning. By eight fifteen I'll be in my hotel. By eight K11 214 forty-five I'll have had a quick breakfast and a shave. By nine K11 215 thirty I'll be at your hotel ready to work. No time lost. I'd be K11 216 busy on the white whale as soon as you - "

K11 217 "Well, screw that, son. You're coming on the airplane K11 218 with me."

K11 219 "No, no."

K11 220 "Yes, you are, you cowardly bastard. And if you don't - K11 221 "

K11 222 "What, what?"

K11 223 "You'll have to stay in Dublin!"

K11 224 "What?" I yelled.

K11 225 "You won't get your vacation. No final weeks in K11 226 London."

K11 227 "After seven months?!"

K11 228 "That's right! No vacation."

K11 229 "You can't do that!"

K11 230 "Yes, I can. And not only that, Lorry, our secretary, K11 231 she won't get her vacation. She'll be trapped here with K11 232 you."

K11 233 "You can't do that to Lorry. She's worked twenty-four K11 234 hours a day, seven days a week for six months!"

K11 235 "Her vacation's canceled unless you fly with K11 236 me."

K11 237 "Oh, no, John! John, no!"

K11 238 "Unless you change color, kid. No more K11 239 yellow."

K11 240 I was on my feet.

K11 241 "You'd really do that to her? Because of K11 242 me?"

K11 243 "That's the way it is."

K11 244 "Well, the answer is no."

K11 245 "What?"

K11 246 "You heard me. Lorry goes to London. I go to London. K11 247 And we go any damn way I please, as long as I don't interfere with K11 248 our writing, my finishing, the script. I'll travel all night, and K11 249 be on time at your room at Claridge's Friday morning. You can't K11 250 fight that, argue that, I'll be there. I'm going on the ferry. You K11 251 can't force me into flying on any goddamn plane."

K11 252 "What?"

K11 253 "That's it, John."

K11 254 "Your final word?"

K11 255 K12 1 <#FROWN:K12\>4 K12 2 I didn't see him again for close to two years. Maria was the K12 3 only person who knew where he was, and Sachs had made her promise K12 4 not to tell. Most people would have broken that promise, I think, K12 5 but Maria had given her word, and no matter how dangerous it was K12 6 for her to keep it, she refused to open her mouth. I must have run K12 7 into her half a dozen times in those two years, but even when we K12 8 talked about Sachs, she never let on that she knew more about his K12 9 disappearance than I did. Last summer, when I finally learned how K12 10 much she had been holding back from me, I got so angry that I K12 11 wanted to kill her. But that was my problem, not Maria's, and I had K12 12 no right to vent my frustration on her. A promise is a promise, K12 13 after all, and even though her silence wound up causing a lot of K12 14 damage, I don't think she was wrong to do what she did. If anyone K12 15 should have spoken up, it was Sachs. He was the one responsible for K12 16 what happened, and it was his secret that Maria was protecting. But K12 17 Sachs said nothing. For two whole years, he kept himself hidden and K12 18 never said a word.

K12 19 We knew that he was alive, but as the months passed and no K12 20 message came from him, not even that was certain anymore. Only bits K12 21 and pieces remained, a few ghostlike facts. We knew that he had K12 22 left Vermont, that he had not driven his own car, and that for one K12 23 horrible minute Fanny had seen him in Brooklyn. Beyond that, K12 24 everything was conjecture. Since he hadn't called to announce he K12 25 was coming, we assumed that he had something urgent to tell her, K12 26 but whatever that thing was, they never got around to talking about K12 27 it. He just showed up one night out of the blue ("all K12 28 distraught and crazy in the eyes," as Fanny put it) and K12 29 burst into the bedroom of their apartment. That led to the awful K12 30 scene I mentioned earlier. If the room had been dark, it might have K12 31 been less embarrassing for all of them, but several lights happened K12 32 to be on, Fanny and Charles were naked on top of the covers, and K12 33 Ben saw everything. It was clearly the last thing he expected to K12 34 find. Before Fanny could say a word to him, he had already backed K12 35 out of the room, stammering that he was sorry, that he hadn't K12 36 known, that he hadn't meant to disturb her. She scrambled out of K12 37 bed, but by the time she reached the front hall, the apartment door K12 38 had banged shut and Sachs was racing down the stairs. She couldn't K12 39 go outside with nothing on, so she rushed into the living room, K12 40 opened the window, and called down to him in the street. Sachs K12 41 stopped for a moment and waved up at her. "My blessings on K12 42 you both!" he shouted. Then he blew her a kiss, turned in K12 43 the other direction, and ran off into the night.

K12 44 Fanny telephoned us immediately after that. She figured he K12 45 might be on his way to our place next, but her hunch proved wrong. K12 46 Iris and I sat up half the night waiting for him, but Sachs never K12 47 appeared. From then on, there were no more signs of his K12 48 whereabouts. Fanny called the house in Vermont repeatedly, but no K12 49 one ever answered. That was our last hope, and as the days went by, K12 50 it seemed less and less likely that Sachs would return there. Panic K12 51 set in; a contagion of morbid thoughts spread among us. Not knowing K12 52 what else to do, Fanny rented a car that first weekend and drove up K12 53 to the house herself. As she reported to me on the phone after she K12 54 arrived, the evidence was puzzling. The front door had been left K12 55 unlocked, the car was sitting in its usual place in the yard, and K12 56 Ben's work was laid out on the desk in the studio: finished K12 57 manuscript pages stacked in one pile, pens scattered beside it, a K12 58 half-written page still in the typewriter. In other words, it K12 59 looked as though he were about to come back any minute. If he had K12 60 been planning to leave for any length of time, she said, the house K12 61 would have been closed. The pipes would have been drained, the K12 62 electricity would have been turned off, the refrigerator would have K12 63 been emptied. "And he would have taken his K12 64 manuscript," I added. "Even if he had forgotten K12 65 everything else, there's no way he would have left without K12 66 that."

K12 67 The situation refused to add up. No matter how thoroughly we K12 68 analyzed it, we were always left with the same conundrum. On the K12 69 one hand, Sachs's departure had been unexpected. On the other hand, K12 70 he had left of his own free will. If not for that fleeting K12 71 encounter with Fanny in New York, we might have suspected foul K12 72 play, but Sachs had made it down to the city unharmed. A bit K12 73 frazzled, perhaps, but essentially unharmed. And yet, if nothing K12 74 had happened to him, why hadn't he returned to Vermont? Why had he K12 75 left behind his car, his clothes, his work? Iris and I talked it K12 76 out with Fanny again and again, going over one possibility after K12 77 another, but we never reached a satisfactory conclusion. There were K12 78 too many blanks, too many variables, too many things we didn't K12 79 know. After a month of beating it into the ground, I suggested that K12 80 Fanny go to the police and report Ben as missing. She resisted the K12 81 idea, however. She had no claims on him anymore, she said, which K12 82 meant that she had no right to interfere. After what had happened K12 83 in the apartment, he was free to do what he liked, and it wasn't up K12 84 to her to drag him back. Charles (whom we had met by then and who K12 85 turned out to be quite well off) was willing to hire a private K12 86 detective at his own expense. "Just so we know that Ben's K12 87 all right," he said. "It's not a question of K12 88 dragging him back, it's a question of knowing that he disappeared K12 89 because he wanted to disappear." Iris and I both thought K12 90 that Charles's plan was sensible, but Fanny wouldn't allow him to K12 91 go ahead with it. "He gave us his blessings," she K12 92 said. "That was the same thing as saying good-bye. I lived K12 93 with him for twenty years, and I know how he thinks. He doesn't K12 94 want us to look for him. I've already betrayed him once, and I'm K12 95 not about to do it again. We have to leave him alone. He'll come K12 96 back when he's ready to come back, and until then we have to wait. K12 97 Believe me, it's the only thing to be done. We just have to sit K12 98 tight and learn to live with it."

K12 99 Months passed. Then it was a year, and then it was two years, K12 100 and the enigma remained unsolved. By the time Sachs showed up in K12 101 Vermont last August, I was long past thinking we would ever find an K12 102 answer. Iris and Charles both believed that he was dead, but my K12 103 hopelessness didn't stem from anything as specific as that. I never K12 104 had a strong feeling about whether Sachs was alive or dead - no K12 105 sudden intuitions, no bursts of extrasensory knowledge, no mystical K12 106 experiences - but I was more or less convinced that I would never K12 107 see him again. I say 'more or less' because I wasn't sure of K12 108 anything. In the first months after he disappeared, I went through K12 109 a number of violent and contradictory responses, but these emotions K12 110 gradually burned themselves out, and in the end terms such as K12 111 sadness or anger or grief no longer seemed to apply. K12 112 I had lost contact with him, and his absence felt less and less K12 113 like a personal matter. Every time I tried to think about him, my K12 114 imagination failed me. It was as if Sachs had become a hole in the K12 115 universe. He was no longer just my missing friend, he was a symptom K12 116 of my ignorance about all things, an emblem of the unknowable K12 117 itself. This probably sounds vague, but I can't do any better than K12 118 that. Iris told me that I was turning into a Buddhist, and I K12 119 suppose that describes my position as accurately as anything else. K12 120 Fanny was a Christian, Iris said, because she never abandoned her K12 121 faith in Sachs's eventual return; she and Charles were atheists; K12 122 and I was a Zen acolyte, a believer in the power of nothing. In all K12 123 the years she had known me, she said, it was the first time I K12 124 hadn't expressed an opinion.

K12 125 Life changed, life went on. We learned, as Fanny had begged us, K12 126 to live with it. She and Charles were together now, and in spite of K12 127 ourselves, Iris and I were forced to admit that he was a decent K12 128 fellow. Mid to late forties, an architect, formerly married, the K12 129 father of two boys, intelligent, desperately in love with Fanny, K12 130 beyond reproach. Little by little, we managed to form a friendship K12 131 with him, and a new reality took hold for all of us. Last spring, K12 132 when Fanny mentioned that she wasn't planning to go to Vermont for K12 133 the summer (she just couldn't, she said, and probably never would K12 134 again), it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps Iris and I would K12 135 like to use the house. She wanted to give it to us for nothing, but K12 136 we insisted on paying some kind of rent, and so we worked out an K12 137 arrangement that would at least cover her costs - a prorated share K12 138 of the taxes, the maintenance, and so on. That was how I happened K12 139 to be present when Sachs turned up last summer. He arrived without K12 140 warning, chugging into the yard one night in a battered blue Chevy, K12 141 spent the next couple of days here, and then vanished again. In K12 142 between, he talked his head off. He talked so much, it almost K12 143 scared me. But that was when I heard his story, and given how K12 144 determined he was to tell it, I don't think he left anything K12 145 out.

K12 146 He went on working, he said. After Iris and I left with Sonia, K12 147 he went on working for another three or four weeks. Our K12 148 conversations about Leviathan had apparently been helpful, and K12 149 he threw himself back into the manuscript that same morning, K12 150 determined not to leave Vermont until he had finished a draft of K12 151 the whole book. Everything seemed to go well. He made progress K12 152 every day, and he felt happy with his monk's life, as happy as he K12 153 had been in years. Then, early one evening in the middle of K12 154 September, he decided to go out for a walk. The weather had turned K12 155 by then, and the air was crisp, infused with the smells of fall. He K12 156 put on his woolen hunting jacket and tramped up the hill beyond the K12 157 house, heading north. He figured there was an hour of daylight K12 158 left, which meant that he could walk for half an hour before he had K12 159 to turn around and start back. Ordinarily, he would have spent that K12 160 hour shooting baskets, but the change of seasons was in full swing K12 161 now, and he wanted to have a look at what was happening in the K12 162 woods: to see the red and yellow leaves, to watch the slant of the K12 163 setting sun among the birches and maples, to wander in the glow of K12 164 the pendant colors. So he set off on his little jaunt, with no more K12 165 on his mind than what he was going to cook for dinner when he got K12 166 home.

K12 167 Once he entered the woods, however, he became distracted. K12 168 Instead of looking at the leaves and migrating birds, he started K12 169 thinking about his book. Passages he had written earlier that day K12 170 came rushing back to him, and before he was conscious of what he K12 171 was doing, he was already composing new sentences in his head, K12 172 mapping out the work he wanted to do the next morning. K12 173 K13 1 <#FROWN:K13\>HAPPY HOUR

K13 2 Bernadine was glad to get out of the house. Gloria prayed she K13 3 wouldn't be bored to death. Savannah was hoping she'd meet somebody K13 4 worth giving her phone number to, and Robin kept her fingers K13 5 crossed that she wouldn't run into anybody she'd slept with.

K13 6 They agreed to meet at Pendleton's around six-thirty. Robin K13 7 offered to pick up Savannah when she found out her meeting would be K13 8 over much earlier than expected. This gave her enough time to zip K13 9 by Oasis to get a nail repaired and stop at home to change into K13 10 something flashier.

K13 11 More than anything, Robin wanted an excuse to see Savannah's K13 12 apartment. Bernadine had bragged about Savannah's artworks and said K13 13 she had very good taste. Robin wanted to see for herself. She knew K13 14 her apartment didn't exactly look like it came out of K13 15 Architectural Digest, but it was colorful. When K13 16 Robin rang her bell, Savannah came to the door wearing a K13 17 form-fitting orange dress with a wide white belt and orange K13 18 sling-back sandals. Her hair was cut close on the sides, and K13 19 skewered-looking curls stuck straight up on the top. It was K13 20 different from anything Robin had ever seen on anybody down at K13 21 Oasis. "Hi," Robin said. "I'm Robin."

K13 22 "No shit," Savannah said, and gave her a hug. K13 23 "Come on in," she said. "Have a seat. I'll K13 24 be ready in ten seconds. As you can see," she said, walking K13 25 down a hallway, "I haven't had a chance to unpack K13 26 everything yet, so forgive the place."

K13 27 "It looks to me like you've done a lot in two K13 28 days," Robin yelled, and sat down on the couch. She ran her K13 29 hands over the forest-green cushion. This wasn't cheap leather by K13 30 any means, she thought. There were six mint-green and peach throw K13 31 pillows strewn along the back. Stacks of boxes were pushed in K13 32 corners, but there were sculptures sitting on at least four K13 33 different pedestals, silk flowers on tables, ceramic vases such as K13 34 Robin had never seen before: copper-colored; metallic green; K13 35 blackish-silver; each a different shape, and some with blotches of K13 36 color that made them look like a map of the world. The movers had K13 37 obviously broken a few, because some were badly cracked, but Robin K13 38 didn't want to say anything. Savannah already had pictures up on K13 39 three walls. Robin didn't particularly care for this kind of art, K13 40 because half of them didn't look like they were finished. The few K13 41 she was able to make out - what they were supposed to be - K13 42 didn't match anything in here.

K13 43 "I'm ready," Savannah said, and came out of the K13 44 bathroom.

K13 45 "Your place is gorgeous," Robin said, standing K13 46 up. "Is this a one or two bedroom?"

K13 47 "One. It's not much to see, but come on back if you K13 48 want to."

K13 49 "I'm nosey," Robin said, and followed Savannah K13 50 down the hall.

K13 51 "This is me," Savannah said, waving her hand K13 52 like the women on game shows who show contestants what they can K13 53 win.

K13 54 A queen-sized platform bed with four oversized stuffed pillows K13 55 sat in the middle of the room. Behind it was a picture of a nude K13 56 man and woman. Next to the fireplace was an ice-cream parlor table K13 57 with a black and rose floral tablecloth; oak chairs with K13 58 wrought-iron backs, and more unpacked crates and boxes stacked in a K13 59 corner. One whole wall looked like the millinery section of a K13 60 department store. At least twenty hats hung on hooks.

K13 61 "So I guess you're into hats," Robin said.

K13 62 "I am," Savannah said, and headed toward the K13 63 living room.

K13 64 "Well, you should've called. I would've been glad to K13 65 help you unpack."

K13 66 "Girl, this stuff was in storage, and everything was K13 67 all mixed up. I'm having a hard enough time finding things myself, K13 68 but thanks."

K13 69 "Some people just have the knack of knowing how to put K13 70 things together, and some don't. I think you missed your calling. K13 71 You should've gone into interior decorating."

K13 72 "Bernadine said your place was pretty nice too. So K13 73 stop. I wish I could've brought my plants."

K13 74 "Why couldn't you?"

K13 75 "They wouldn't let me bring them across the state K13 76 border. They worry about bugs. It broke my heart. But it's okay. K13 77 I've got to get some. I can't stand being in here without live K13 78 plants."

K13 79 "Well, I've got about three, and they're on their last K13 80 legs." Robin started rubbing her eyes, because they were K13 81 itching all of a sudden, and the next thing she knew she was K13 82 sneezing.

K13 83 "You're allergic to cats, right?" Savannah K13 84 asked.

K13 85 "Yes. Lord," she said. "Where is the K13 86 little sucker?"

K13 87 "In the back," she said. "I'm K13 88 ready."

K13 89 As Savannah reached for her purse and keys, she looked at K13 90 Robin, particularly her cleavage, which was extremely prominent in K13 91 that white top. "You're looking pretty snazzy yourself. If K13 92 I had legs as long as yours, I'd probably wear miniskirts too. How K13 93 tall are you?"

K13 94 "Almost five nine," Robin said, taking a K13 95 handkerchief from her purse and wiping her eyes. "I wish I K13 96 had some of your ass," she said, and sneezed again.

K13 97 "Well, in that case, I'd like to borrow about sixteen K13 98 ounces of your boobs."

K13 99 "Then buy you some. How do you think I got K13 100 these?"

K13 101 They both laughed, and Robin sneezed again.

K13 102 "Well, I know one thing. I won't have to worry about K13 103 you wearing out your welcome."

K13 104 "You got that right," Robin said. "Now K13 105 get me the hell outta here."

K13 106 "What kind of resort is this?" Savannah asked K13 107 Robin. It seemed as if they had driven through Little Mexico to get K13 108 here, and the place looked as though it could stand to be K13 109 remodeled.

K13 110 "Girl, I don't know. This is my first time here K13 111 too."

K13 112 They were standing in the entry, when a black man in his early K13 113 thirties came over to greet them. He looked pleased and excited to K13 114 see them. Robin pinched Savannah, as if to say, "He's all K13 115 yours." Savannah pinched her back, as if to say, "I K13 116 don't want him, either."

K13 117 "Thanks for coming," he said. "Is this K13 118 your first time here, ladies?"

K13 119 They both shook their heads yes.

K13 120 "Well, I'm Andre Williams, and me and a few of my K13 121 partners have formed the Stock Exchange group. We're trying to get K13 122 some exciting things happening in Phoenix, a place where K13 123 professional sisters and brothers can network and get to know one K13 124 another in an informal setting and, you know, dance a little, eat a K13 125 little, and drink a little."

K13 126 "Are all of you stockbrokers?" Robin asked.

K13 127 "No, sister. We just wanted to come up with a catchy, K13 128 sophisticated name. It's the one we all liked. Do you two ladies K13 129 have a business card?"

K13 130 Robin did, but Savannah didn't have hers yet; she hadn't K13 131 anticipated needing one so soon. The moment this man said K13 132 "network," Savannah cringed. She hated the whole notion. It K13 133 was as if black folks couldn't get together and have a good time K13 134 anymore unless they were in a position to do something for each K13 135 other. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned fun? There was a K13 136 little basket for the cards, and Robin tossed hers in. What were K13 137 they going to do with them? Savannah wondered. "I'll bring K13 138 mine next time," she said, and peeked around a partition K13 139 into the adjoining room. There were fifteen or twenty people in it. K13 140 What a helluva turnout, she thought. It was easy to see that K13 141 Bernadine and Gloria weren't here yet, so she turned her attention K13 142 to Robin, who had walked over by the windows, where a woman with K13 143 long dreadlocks stood behind two tables. One was filled with books K13 144 by and about black people, the other with various African crafts: K13 145 silver and brass jewelry, kinte cloths, wooden and soapstone K13 146 sculpture, handmade cards, T-shirts with Africa on front, as well K13 147 as little bottles of fragrant oils. There were posters of Nelson K13 148 and Winnie Mandela, Malcolm X, and Martin, as well as Magic Johnson K13 149 and Michael Jordan.

K13 150 Robin had her wallet out and two black bangles already on her K13 151 wrists. Bernadine had told Savannah that the girl was a die-hard K13 152 shopaholic and terrible at managing her money. Savannah smiled at K13 153 the sister selling the merchandise, eyed one of the soapstone K13 154 sculptures, but kept her distance. She hadn't come here to shop. K13 155 Besides, she was now on something she'd never been on before: a K13 156 budget.

K13 157 "Come on, Robin," Savannah said, and headed for K13 158 one of the forty or so empty tables. When they sat down, it felt as K13 159 if they were on display, which Robin didn't seem to mind. She liked K13 160 getting attention, and it showed. There were ten men sitting at the K13 161 bar, a few of whom turned around and looked at them, and then K13 162 turned back toward the bar.

K13 163 "I thought this thing started at six," Robin K13 164 said. "That's what Bernadine told me."

K13 165 "This is your world, I'm just in it," Savanna K13 166 said.

K13 167 "I wonder where everybody is. Well, at least the music K13 168 is good."

K13 169 'Forever Your Girl' was playing. "I can't stand Paula K13 170 Abdul," Savannah said. "She can't sing. Jodey K13 171 Watley can't sing, and if you want to know the truth, Janet Jackson K13 172 can't sing, either, I'm sick of all three of them." But, K13 173 she thought, if somebody was to ask her to dance right now, she K13 174 would. But nobody did.

K13 175 A waitress came over and took their order. Robin ordered a K13 176 glass of wine, and Savannah, a margarita. "That must be K13 177 where you dance," Robin said, pointing to a wide doorway, K13 178 and within a minute she had walked over to it, peered in, come K13 179 back, and sat down. "Yep, they've got a DJ in there and K13 180 everything. There's some tables in there too. And not a soul on the K13 181 dance floor."

K13 182 Savannah was staring out the window at the golf course when the K13 183 waitress brought their drinks. "I'll buy this K13 184 round," Robin said. "And let's get some of that K13 185 food over there, girl. It's free, and I haven't eaten.

K13 186 They weren't stingy with the food, Savannah was thinking as she K13 187 filled her plate up with fresh fruit salad, tossed green salad, K13 188 pasta salad, and buffalo wings. Normally, she never ate chicken in K13 189 public because it always got stuck between her teeth, and plus, she K13 190 forgot to put her dental floss in her purse. But hell, nobody worth K13 191 worrying about was in here.

K13 192 Robin made two trips to the food table and drank her wine in K13 193 between plates. On the way here, she had told Savannah her life K13 194 story, which didn't seem to start until she met Russell. She told K13 195 Savannah all about him. And Michael. And how she wanted to K13 196 have a baby before it was 'too late.' When she finally mentioned K13 197 her job as an underwriter and all it entailed, particularly how she K13 198 sometimes wrote proposals that brought in million-dollar accounts, K13 199 it sounded to Savannah like the only time Robin used common sense K13 200 was at work. "It looks good on paper," Robin said, K13 201 "but I'm still not making any real money, and I'm K13 202 seriously thinking about looking for another job, at a bigger K13 203 company. The way things stand now, I'm living from paycheck to K13 204 paycheck and can't even afford to help pay for a nurse for my K13 205 daddy. That's pitiful," she said, as if she was talking to K13 206 herself. "What the hell did I get a degree for?"

K13 207 The place was starting to fill up, but there was still no sign K13 208 of Gloria or Bernadine. Now on her second glass of wine, Robin went K13 209 back to her favorite subject: Russell. She apologized for his K13 210 philandering. "Could he help it if he was so fine that K13 211 women flocked to him? If I'd been a little more patient and not K13 212 pressured him, maybe he would've married me," she said. K13 213 "But it's not over till it's over."

K13 214 Savannah didn't say a word. She just sat there listening to the K13 215 shit and wanted to slap Robin. Knock some sense into her. Savannah K13 216 agreed with Bernadine: the woman was a little on the dizzy K13 217 side when it came to men.

K13 218 Savannah sipped at her second margarita, thinking: This woman K13 219 is pitiful. Too hard up. K13 220 K14 1 <#FROWN:K14\>"At the moment, my true wad could not be K14 2 farther from shooting. It is work getting the two of you K14 3 together. I feel that any second I'm going to misstep in telling K14 4 this. It's very stressful."

K14 5 "Now listen," she said. "Harvey leaves, K14 6 slamming the door, so the sign says CLOSED, and I, me, I am left, K14 7 abandoned right in the middle of things by Harvey, and I'm standing K14 8 there in the shop with the taciturn and very rich guy Forky, Forky K14 9 Pigtail, who's holding the necklace that I made in his big knuckly K14 10 fingers. He sits down on a step stool, he looks down at the K14 11 necklace, looks up at me. What does he do?"

K14 12 "He says, 'I really do have to see what it looks like K14 13 on someone before I know whether it's something I want.' And you K14 14 look down at your shirt with the green and black stars and you sort K14 15 of pluck at it and smile and say, 'I'm sorry, I'm not wearing the K14 16 clothes for that piece. It's really an evening piece, for a low-cut K14 17 dress.' With your finger you trace the ideal curve of the neckline K14 18 of the dress. And Fork says, 'Then unbutton your shirt.' Well, what K14 19 can you do? You unbutton the top three buttons of your shirt. With K14 20 each button, you feel the fabric shift slightly against your K14 21 collarbone. Fork stands up, letting the necklace dangle from his K14 22 left hand, and, to your astonishment, he begins unbuttoning the K14 23 buttons of his fly. Because of course he's a button-fly kind of K14 24 guy. He unbuttons three buttons. The two of you are still about ten K14 25 feet apart. You fold your shirt down, trying to make it follow the K14 26 line of the dress that you should be wearing to wear the necklace, K14 27 but looking down at yourself you see that you really need to undo K14 28 one more button, and you dart a glance at him - has he reached the K14 29 same conclusion? Oh no, he has! He is shaking his head. He says, 'I K14 30 think really you'll need to go down one more in order to wear your K14 31 necklace.' So you unbutton one more button, and he responds by K14 32 unbuttoning the last button of his fly. He doesn't do anything, he K14 33 doesn't reach in, you almost couldn't tell that his fly was undone, K14 34 if it weren't for the fact that you've just seen him undo it. Oh, K14 35 he is a bold bastard! What is he up to? He takes the necklace in K14 36 both his hands, by both ends, and he shakes it, indicating for you K14 37 to walk toward him, which you do. When you are standing close to K14 38 him, he says, 'I think it'll be easier if you turn around. Then K14 39 I'll be able to see the clasp.' So you turn around, and you see K14 40 this necklace, your own handiwork, descend very slowly in front of K14 41 your face, and you feel the dangly elements just touch your skin K14 42 and you try to hold your shirt so it doesn't get in the way, but K14 43 instead of doing the clasp, he lowers the necklace further and lets K14 44 it accommodate itself to your breasts, and you hear him say, K14 45 thoughtfully, 'Hmm, no, I really think the shirt has to come off K14 46 entirely before I can evaluate this necklace. K14 47 The green and black stars clash with the stones.' So you K14 48 unbutton the shirt completely and let it fall off your arms. You're K14 49 wearing a black cotton undershirty thing, with very thin shoulder K14 50 straps. Very gently he drags your piece of jewelry up again, K14 51 against you, and then finally he fastens it, holding the ends away K14 52 from your neck so that his hands hardly touch you. You look down at K14 53 it. It's hard to tell, but you think it looks kind of beautiful. K14 54 Your nipples are visible through the black material. He's silent K14 55 behind you. You say, 'Don't you want to see it now?' But he says, ' K14 56 Wait, let me just do something.' And you hear a slight scrape of K14 57 the step stool against the floor, and you hear his shoes on the K14 58 steps, and then you hear some rustling, and the a very soft K14 59 rhythmic sound, the sound of the sleeve of his suit jacket making K14 60 repeated contact with one side of the jacket itself, and, as the K14 61 speed of the rhythm increases slightly, you hear every once in a K14 62 while a little sort of plick or click, a wet little K14 63 sound, and you know exactly what he's doing, and you hear his K14 64 voice, with a bit of strain in it, say, 'I think I'm ready to see K14 65 it now.' And you turn, and there he is, on the top step of this K14 66 little stool, with his cock and both balls pulled out of his pants, K14 67 and with each pull he makes on his cock you can see the skin pull K14 68 up slightly on his balls. I mean is this guy for real? And you K14 69 touch your shoulders with your hands, and you pull the straps of K14 70 your black undershirt down, and you pull it down around your waist, K14 71 so your breasts are right there, out, and now you take hold of your K14 72 breasts, your frans, and you lift them, so that each of the two K14 73 side stones of your necklace touches a nipple, and by moving your K14 74 breasts back and forth, you move your nipples, which are hard, back K14 75 and forth under the two cool dangly stones, and you see him K14 76 stroking faster and faster, he's starting to get the about-to-come K14 77 expression, and you smile at him and move a step closer, so your K14 78 breasts and your silver necklace and your collarbone are ready for K14 79 him, and then you look straight at him and you say, 'Well, what do K14 80 you think? Do you like it? As you see, it's really an evening K14 81 piece.' And the, stroking very fast, he bends his legs slightly and K14 82 then straightens them and he goes 'Ooh!' and then he comes in a hot K14 83 mess all over your art."

K14 84 There was a pause. She said, "Does he buy the necklace K14 85 or does he just take his fixed fork and go home?"

K14 86 "I don't know. I assume he takes the paper towel that K14 87 he'd wrapped his fork in and uses it to wipe you off and wipe off K14 88 your necklace and then he buys it and gives it to you."

K14 89 "That's good. He sounds like an honorable sort. A bit K14 90 precipitate maybe. Um - would you excuse me for a K14 91 second?"

K14 92 "Sure."

K14 93 "I just - my mouth's dry - I want to get some more - K14 94 "

K14 95 "Sure," he said.

K14 96 There was a long pause. She returned.

K14 97 "It's funny that you cast me as an arts-and-craftsy K14 98 type," she said.

K14 99 "Not aggressively arts-and-craftsy. Are K14 100 you?"

K14 101 "Well, no. I'm really not, I don't think. Do you have a K14 102 ponytail?" she asked.

K14 103 "No."

K14 104 "Then do you have an old-world smell?"

K14 105 "I don't think that would be the word for K14 106 it."

K14 107 "I wonder what your smell is."

K14 108 "I've been told I smell like a Cont<*_>e-acute<*/> K14 109 crayon," he said.

K14 110 "Hm."

K14 111 "Or I guess it was that I smelled like what a K14 112 Cont<*_>e-acute<*/> crayon would smell like if it had a K14 113 smell."

K14 114 "Well, that's good to know," she said. K14 115 "Of course I have no idea what you're talking about. But K14 116 no, you know what your story reminded me of, when I was in the K14 117 kitchen just now?"

K14 118 "What?"

K14 119 "I was in a museum in Rome with my mother, and we K14 120 passed a statue that had all these discolorations on it, a nice K14 121 statue of a woman, and my mother pointed to a sort of mottled area K14 122 and she shook her head and said, 'You see? It's so realistic that K14 123 men feel they have to ... ' She didn't explain. And I don't know K14 124 now if she was serious or not. I was - I guess I was eighteen. I K14 125 thought, oh, okay, in churches in Italy, men come on the statues of K14 126 women."

K14 127 "Yes," he said, "I think I do remember coming K14 128 on that statue. It's all a blur, though. There were so many statues K14 129 in those years."

K14 130 "Do you, as they say, like to travel?" she K14 131 asked.

K14 132 "You mean get in a plane and fly somewhere for K14 133 recreation? No. I've never been to Rome. I spend my vacation money K14 134 in more important ways."

K14 135 "Like this call."

K14 136 "That's right. Now tell me, though, really, when your K14 137 mother pointed out that statue, was it faintly K14 138 arousing?"

K14 139 "I don't think it really was," she said. K14 140 "It was just interesting, an interesting sexual fact, like K14 141 something in Ripley's. I'm not, by the way, to get back to K14 142 your story for a second, I'm not wearing a black undershirt K14 143 under my shirt."

K14 144 "What are you wearing under your shirt?"

K14 145 "A bra."

K14 146 "What kind of bra?"

K14 147 "A nothing bra. A normal, white bra bra."

K14 148 "Oooo!"

K14 149 "It's shrunk slightly in the wash but it was my last K14 150 clean one."

K14 151 "It's always impressive to me that bras have to be K14 152 washed like other clothes. Does it clip on the front or on the K14 153 back?"

K14 154 "The back."

K14 155 "Shouldn't it come off?"

K14 156 "I don't think so," she said.

K14 157 "Oh, I can hear in your voice the sound of you frowning K14 158 and pulling in your chin to look down at them" Oh boy."

K14 159 "Hah hah!"

K14 160 "The idea of women looking down at their own breasts K14 161 drives me nutso. They do it while they're walking. Some walk K14 162 with their arms sort of hovering in front of their breasts, or K14 163 awkwardly crossed in front of them, or they pretend to hold the K14 164 strap of their pocketbook so their hands are bent in front of them, K14 165 or they pretend to be adjusting their watch, or their bracelets, K14 166 and the fact that even fully clothed the helpless obviousness of K14 167 their breasts is embarrassing to them drives me absolutely K14 168 nutso."

K14 169 "They see you staring, with your eyes <}_><-|> K14 170 sproinging<+|> springing<}/> out of your skull, of course they're K14 171 embarrassed."

K14 172 "No, I'm very discreet. And this is only in certain K14 173 moods, of course. Once I got into an wild state just standing at a K14 174 bus stop. It was rush hour, and there were all these women driving K14 175 to work, and they would drive by, and I would get this flash, this K14 176 briefest of glimpses, of the wide shoulder strap of their safety K14 177 belt crossing their breasts. That thick, densely woven material, K14 178 pulling itself tight right between them. That's all I could see, K14 179 hundreds of times, different colors of dresses, shirts, blouses, K14 180 over and over, every bra size and Lycra-cotton balance imaginable, K14 181 like frames of a movie. By the time the bus came, I was literally K14 182 unsteady, I could barely get the fare in the machine. What's that K14 183 noise?"

K14 184 "Nothing. I was just changing the phone to the other K14 185 ear."

K14 186 "Oh," he said. "Did you see that thing about K14 187 the Chinese kid who suffered an episode of spontaneous human K14 188 combustion?"

K14 189 "No."

K14 190 "You really missed something. It was originally in one K14 191 of the tabloids, I think, but I heard about it on the radio. You K14 192 know about spontaneous combustion, right?"

K14 193 "I'm familiar with the general concept."

K14 194 "All right, well this kid apparently spontaneously K14 195 human combusted, but the combustion was confined to his genitals. K14 196 Boom! He was very uncomfortable. But see, I understand perfectly K14 197 how that could happen. I fear for my own genitals sometimes. I get K14 198 so fricking horny ... now there's another inadequate word ... so K14 199 porny, so gorny, so yorny ... I get so yorny that I look down K14 200 at my cock-and-balls unit, and it's like I could take the whole K14 201 rigid assembly and start unscrewing it, around and around, and it K14 202 would come off as one solid thing, like a cotterless crank on a K14 203 bicycle, and I would hand it over to you to use as a K14 204 dildo."

K14 205 "Okay then, hand it over. Although I've never cottoned K14 206 to dildos particularly. I used one once, to oblige someone, and I K14 207 got a yeast infection. I think it was called a 'Mighty Mini Brute.' K14 208 "

K14 209 "That's a fair description of my ... crank."

K14 210 K15 1 <#FROWN:K15\>The urge, she knew, was crazy - a lifetime, or K15 2 much of one, had passed since she had last touched her mother's K15 3 living hand. Yet the urge to go back, to escape the years, to be K15 4 her mother's young child rather than the crabby grandmother of her K15 5 dead daughter's children, was so sharp that tears came to her eyes. K15 6 She flung the phone book off the bed and buried her face in the K15 7 pillow. Hector Scott must not see what she was feeling - it was too K15 8 crazy, and he'd think it was his fault.

K15 9 The General did think it was his fault, and he was K15 10 horrified. What had he done now? Things were getting impossible. He K15 11 and Aurora were both so sensitized on the subject of sex that the K15 12 most casual reference to it was likely to send them over the edge. K15 13 He didn't really know a thing about Aurora's mother's affairs, and K15 14 even if she had had a lot, so what? That was in New Haven, and a K15 15 long time ago. Besides, Yale was in New Haven, and people who lived K15 16 around colleges were always apt to be having affairs. Being at Yale K15 17 was not like being at the Point. Now he had hurt Aurora's feelings, K15 18 and they hadn't even had breakfast. If the slightest reference to K15 19 sex was going to cause her to burst into in tears, he might as well K15 20 move out - but where would he go to? He had no children - he and K15 21 Evelyn had kept putting it off, and then Evelyn got too old. Teddy K15 22 was the only one of Aurora's grandchildren who really liked him, K15 23 but Teddy was at least half crazy and could barely manage his own K15 24 life. It was a grim picture he faced, filled with nothing but old K15 25 soldiers' homes, endless bridge games, and widows who probably K15 26 wouldn't turn out to be half as interesting as Aurora. And even if K15 27 they were half as interesting, he loved Aurora, not them. She'd get K15 28 another boyfriend, she'd never come to visit, and he'd be alone. K15 29 Perhaps he'd do better just to join the homeless, once he got off K15 30 his crutches. The papers maintained that most of the homeless were K15 31 Vietnam veterans, and he had to admit that a good many of the K15 32 homeless he'd spotted in his drives around Houston looked as if K15 33 they might be veterans. Well, he was a veteran himself - he could K15 34 go back to his own and live in a tent in a park when Aurora threw K15 35 him out.

K15 36 The grimness of it all reduced the General to a state not far K15 37 from tears. He had never supposed he would end up in a tent in a K15 38 park - he had never been very good at erecting tents, for one K15 39 thing. Most enlisted men could erect tents far more efficiently K15 40 than he could. It might be that he'd have to pay one of the K15 41 homeless enlisted men to set up his tent for him. That would be K15 42 rather a sorry pass for a general to come to, but if that was the K15 43 best he could do, then so be it.

K15 44 Aurora felt the General fumbling for her hand and let him hold K15 45 it, but she didn't immediately remove her face from the pillow. She K15 46 enjoyed, for a few moments, the ridiculous fantasy that her mother K15 47 was once more holding her in her arms, as her mother had often done K15 48 during her childhood. It was a ridiculous fantasy, but at the K15 49 same time it was deeply comforting, and Aurora clung to it as long K15 50 as she could before reluctantly raising her face and resuming the K15 51 taxing life of someone who had miserable grandchildren and a K15 52 played-out lover.

K15 53 Looking over at the played-out lover, she noticed that his K15 54 Adam's apple was quivering, a sign that he was in distress. K15 55 Hector's Adam's apple quivered only on those occasions when she had K15 56 vexed him almost to tears. Now it seemed to have happened again, K15 57 although, as she recalled, he was the one who had accused her and K15 58 her mother of being loose, an accusation to which she had only made K15 59 the mildest reply. What could have happened to hurt the man's K15 60 feelings now?

K15 61 "Hector, are you getting ready to cry, and if not, why K15 62 is your Adam's apple behaving that way?" Aurora asked.

K15 63 "Sorry," the General said. "I guess I just K15 64 never thought I'd end up in a tent. Old age is full of K15 65 surprises."

K15 66 "Life is full of surprises." Aurora said. K15 67 "They are apt to come at all ages, in my observation. I K15 68 must say I was quite surprised to look over just now and see your K15 69 Adam's apple bobbing like an apple in a barrel. What's the matter? K15 70 All I was doing was looking up psychoanalysts in the phone book. K15 71 Are you going to begrudge me even that mild pleasure?"

K15 72 "No, no, you can have all the analysts you K15 73 want," the General said. It was perfectly obvious that she K15 74 had had her little fit and was now in a good humor, and yet the K15 75 fact that she had surprised him in a low mood was as likely as not K15 76 going to cast her back into a low mood, and this time she K15 77 would blame him. Sometimes it was so hard to get through a morning, K15 78 not to mention a day, with Aurora that on the whole he thought it K15 79 might be easier to be homeless and live in a tent.

K15 80 "I was just worrying about my tent," the K15 81 General said, not quite able to detach himself from the grim vision K15 82 he had just conjured up.

K15 83 "What tent?" Aurora asked, surveying her nice K15 84 sunny bedroom. "Have you been dreaming of the Battle of the K15 85 Somme again? Does this look like a tent we're quarreling K15 86 in?"

K15 87 "No, it's a bed, but I've decided to go live in a tent K15 88 in Herman Park when you finally throw me out," the General K15 89 said. "For one thing, I won't last long in a tent, and a K15 90 short end is about the best prospect I have to look forward to K15 91 now."

K15 92 Aurora saw to her amazement that the man was genuinely upset, K15 93 and for no reason - when had she ever said anything about throwing K15 94 him out?

K15 95 "A tent in Herman Park would be a damn sight better K15 96 than one of those stupid old soldiers' homes with no old soldiers K15 97 in them," the General said, his Adam's apple still K15 98 aquiver.

K15 99 "Hector, I'm baffled," Aurora admitted. K15 100 "You brought up my mother, and the thought of her undid me K15 101 for a moment. I loved my mother very much and she died much too K15 102 young. I think I have every right to be undone by her memory, but K15 103 that's all that happened. I don't have the least desire to dispatch K15 104 you to a tent in the park and I don't know how you can have K15 105 conceived such a notion. This convinces me that we had better make K15 106 an appointment with Dr. Bruckner quickly. You might be beginning to K15 107 drift off your moorings or something."

K15 108 The General was both relieved and annoyed: relieved that Aurora K15 109 was no longer angry, annoyed that she kept slipping into nautical K15 110 metaphors.

K15 111 "Aurora, I'm a general, not an admiral," he K15 112 reminded her, for at least the hundredth time. "Generals do K15 113 not drift off their moorings. Generals aren't moored. Even admirals K15 114 aren't moored. Boats are moored."

K15 115 "Well, touchy, touchy," Aurora said. K15 116 "Perhaps the word I was seeking was 'mired.' You can hardly K15 117 deny that we're mired in a rather quarrelsome embrace."

K15 118 "The hell we are," the General said. K15 119 "This isn't an embrace. I remember our embraces. I wish I K15 120 was dead. Then you could embrace anyone you could K15 121 catch."

K15 122 "I can anyway," Aurora informed him. K15 123 "It's obviously not doing me much good, but I've always K15 124 claimed the right to embrace people at will. That's where this K15 125 conversation started, remember? You said I was loose, and my mother K15 126 before me."

K15 127 The General recalled that he had said something like that. K15 128 He said it not long before he decided to go live in a tent. Now he K15 129 couldn't remember why the subject had come up in the first place. K15 130 They had been talking about Vienna or something and then the K15 131 quarrel started.

K15 132 "Well, I suppose I popped off." he admitted. K15 133 "Did she have affairs or didn't she? Let's get this K15 134 settled."

K15 135 "She loved the gardener," Aurora said. K15 136 "Before he arrived I certainly hope she had a few affairs. K15 137 What's a girl to do?"

K15 138 "What do you mean, what's a girl to do?" the K15 139 General asked. "She was married. Why can't a girl who's K15 140 married sleep with her husband?"

K15 141 Aurora was remembering a conversation she had had with her K15 142 mother once - it was after a concert in Boston. They were walking K15 143 across the Commons and it was snowing. She could not remember the K15 144 program, but it seemed to her Brahms had been on it. Her mother K15 145 confessed to a considerable weakness for Brahms. The evening snow K15 146 was beautiful, falling on the Commons; the air was wintry and K15 147 clean. Her mother, Amelia, had evidently been somewhat more stirred K15 148 by the music than Aurora - just about to marry her beau Rudyard - K15 149 had realized. Out of the blue her mother made a startling K15 150 statement.

K15 151 "I ought to tell you that your father has abandoned my K15 152 bed," her mother said. "The truth is he abandoned K15 153 it eleven years ago."

K15 154 Aurora did not immediately comprehend.

K15 155 "Why?" she asked. "Isn't it a comfortable K15 156 bed?"

K15 157 Her mother who rarely looked happy but even more rarely looked K15 158 sad - who made it a point of principle never to look sad, in fact - K15 159 pursed her lips for a moment and gave her daughter a look that was K15 160 unmistakably sad.

K15 161 "It's not the bed he finds uncomfortable," she K15 162 said. "It's the woman in it. It's me he doesn't K15 163 like."

K15 164 Aurora did not remember how the conversation ended, though now K15 165 she wished she could. As soon as she got her memory project really K15 166 cranked up she meant to go through her vast collection of old K15 167 engagement books and concert programs and pin down the concert. If K15 168 she could recover the program, she might be able to recall the end K15 169 of the conversation. The two things she was sure of were that her K15 170 mother had used the word "abandoned," and that she had K15 171 mentioned eleven years.

K15 172 "My father didn't sleep with her for eleven years, or K15 173 possibly longer," Aurora said. "My mother lived for K15 174 six years after she told me that - so it was probably more like K15 175 seventeen years that he didn't sleep with her. What do you think of K15 176 that, General?"

K15 177 "If you're thinking it's some kind of record, forget K15 178 it," the General said. "I went more than twenty K15 179 years without sleeping with Evelyn."

K15 180 "But did you dislike her?" Aurora asked.

K15 181 "No, not particularly," the General said. K15 182 "She was a little chirpy, but I didn't exactly dislike K15 183 her."

K15 184 "Then what happened?" Aurora asked.

K15 185 "I really have no idea," the General said. K15 186 "We just lost the habit, somehow. There came a time when I K15 187 don't think it would have occurred to either one of us to go near K15 188 the other sexually. Otherwise we got along pretty well."

K15 189 "Goodness," Aurora said. "I believe I'll have K15 190 to think this over, Hector. If nothing else it explains why you K15 191 were so enthusiastic when we were first getting to know one K15 192 another. At the time I was quite swept away by your K15 193 enthusiasm."

K15 194 "Swept away, my ass," the General said. K15 195 "It took me a good five years to seduce you. Or to convince K15 196 you to seduce me, whichever it was that finally K15 197 happened."

K15 198 "I remember it as me being swept away," Aurora K15 199 said. "If you didn't sleep with your wife for more than K15 200 twenty years, then it's no wonder. I hope we can discuss this K15 201 matter with Dr. Bruckner at our first session, if that's what you K15 202 call them. I find it intensely interesting, particularly in light K15 203 of what I've just been remembering about my mother. I want to hear K15 204 more about it."

K15 205 "We just stopped sleeping together, there isn't any K15 206 more to hear," the General said. K15 207 K16 1 <#FROWN:K16\>Twice a week in every week of summer except the K16 2 last in July and the first in August, their mother shut the front K16 3 door, the white, eight-panel door that served as backdrop for every K16 4 Easter, First Holy Communion, Confirmation, and graduation photo in K16 5 the family album, and with the flimsy screen leaning against her K16 6 shoulder turned the key in the black lock, gripped the curve of the K16 7 elaborate wrought-iron handle that had been sculpted to resemble a K16 8 black vine curled into a question mark, and in what seemed a brief K16 9 but accurate imitation of a desperate housebreaker, wrung the door K16 10 on its hinges until, well satisfied, she turned, slipped away from K16 11 the screen as if she were throwing a cloak from her shoulders, and K16 12 said, "Let's go."

K16 13 Down the steps the three children went before her (the screen K16 14 door behind them easing itself closed with what sounded like three K16 15 short, sorrowful expirations of breath), the two girls in summer K16 16 dresses and white sandals, the boy in long khaki pants and a thin K16 17 white shirt, button-down collar and short sleeves. She K16 18 herself wore a cotton shirtwaist and short white gloves and heels K16 19 that clicked against the concrete of the driveway and the sidewalk K16 20 and sent word across the damp morning lawns that the Daileys (Lucy K16 21 and the three children) were once again on their way to the K16 22 city.

K16 23 The neighborhood at this hour was still and fresh and full of K16 24 birdsong and the children marked the ten shady blocks to the bus K16 25 with three landmarks. The first was the ragged hedge of the K16 26 Lynches' corner lot where lived, in a dirty house made ramshackle K16 27 by four separate, slapdash additions, ten children, three K16 28 grandparents, a mother, a father, and a bachelor uncle who was K16 29 responsible, no doubt, for the shattered brown bottle that lay on K16 30 the edge of the driveway. The second was a slate path that K16 31 intersected a neat green lawn, each piece of slate the exact smooth K16 32 color, either lavendel or gray or pale yellow, of a Necco candy K16 33 wafer. Third was the steel eight-foot fence at the edge of the K16 34 paved playground of the school they had all attended until June and K16 35 would attend again in September, although it appeared to them as K16 36 they passed it now as something forlorn and defeated, something K16 37 that the wind might take away - something that could rumble with K16 38 footsteps and shriek with bells and hold them in its belly for six K16 39 hours each day only in the wildest, the most terrible, the most K16 40 unimaginable (and, indeed, not one of the three even imagined it as K16 41 they passed) of dreams.

K16 42 At the bus stop, the tall white sign with its odd, flat, K16 43 perforated pole drew them like magnets. They touched it, towing the K16 44 pebbles at its base. They jumped up to slap its face. They held it K16 45 in one hand and leaned out into the road looking for the first K16 46 glint of sun against the white crown and wide black windshield of K16 47 the bus that would take them to the avenue.

K16 48 Their mother smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk behind them, as K16 49 she did on each of these mornings, her pocketbook hung in the crook K16 50 of her arm, the white gloves she would pull on as soon as the bus K16 51 appeared squeezed together in her free hand. The sun at K16 52 nine-fifteen had already begun to push its heat through the soles K16 53 of her stockings and beneath the fabric-covered cardboard of her K16 54 belt. She touched the silver metal of its buckle, breathed in to K16 55 gain a moment's space between fabric and flesh. Across the street a K16 56 deli and a bar and a podiatrist's office shared a squat brick K16 57 building that was shaded by trees. Beyond it a steeple rose - the K16 58 gray steeple of the Presbyterian church - into a sky that was blue K16 59 and cloudless. Swinging from the bus-stop sign, the children failed K16 60 to imagine for their mother, just as they had failed to imagine for K16 61 the building where they went to school, any other life but the K16 62 still and predictable one she presented on those mornings, although K16 63 even as she dropped her cigarette to her side and stepped on the K16 64 butt with her first step toward them (it was a woman's subtle, K16 65 sneaky way of finishing a smoke) she was aware of the stunned K16 66 hopelessness with which she moved. Of time draining itself from the K16 67 scene in a slow leak.

K16 68 Briefly terrified, the younger girl took her mother's hand as K16 69 the bus wheezed toward the curb.

K16 70 Even the swift, gritty breeze that rushed through the slices of K16 71 open window seemed at this hour to be losing the freshness of K16 72 morning - some cool air clung to it, but in patches and tatters, as K16 73 if the coming heat of the afternoon had already begun to wear K16 74 through.

K16 75 The children squinted their eyes against it and shook back K16 76 their hair. Watching the houses go by, they were grateful that K16 77 theirs was not one of them to be left, after each stop, in the K16 78 expelled gray exhaust, and as the bus moved past the cemetery they K16 79 felt - all unconsciously - the eternal disappointment of the people K16 80 whose markers lay so near the road. Who saw (because they imagined K16 81 the dead to be at eye level with the ground, the grass pulled like K16 82 a blanket up to their noses) the walking living through the black K16 83 stakes of the iron fence and the filtered refuse of what seemed K16 84 many summers - ice-cream wrappers, soda cans, cigarette butts, and K16 85 yellowed athletic socks - that had gathered at its base.

K16 86 Where the cemetery ended, the stonecutter's yard began, a K16 87 jumble of unmarked and broken tombstones that parodied the order of K16 88 the real graves and seemed in its chaos to indicate a backlog of K16 89 orders, a hectic rate of demand. (Their father's joke, no matter K16 90 how many times they drove this way: "People are dying to K16 91 get in there.") Then, at the entrance to the yard, a K16 92 showroom - it looked for all the world like a car showroom - that K16 93 displayed behind its tall plate glass huge marble monuments and K16 94 elaborate crypts and the slithering reflected body of their bus, K16 95 their own white faces at three windows.

K16 96 They passed another church, a synagogue, and then a last K16 97 ramshackle yard where chickens pecked at the dirt in speckled K16 98 sunlight and what the children understood to be a contraption in K16 99 which wine was made (although they couldn't say how they knew this) K16 100 hulked among the vines and the shadows, through which they also K16 101 glimpsed, passing by, a toothless Italian man named (and they could K16 102 not say how they knew this, either) Mr. Hootchie-Koo, as he K16 103 shuffled through the dirt in baggy pants and bedroom slippers.

K16 104 Now the large suburban trees fell away. There was another K16 105 church and then on both sides of the road a wide expanse of K16 106 shadeless parking lot, the backs of stores, traffic. Their mother K16 107 raised her hand to pull the cord that rang the buzzer and then K16 108 waited in the aisle for them to go before her toward the front, K16 109 hand over hand like experienced seamen between the silver edges of K16 110 the seats. Their first sight as they touched the ground was always K16 111 the identical Chinese couple in the narrow laundromat, looking up K16 112 through the glass door from their eternal pile of white and pale K16 113 blue laundry.

K16 114 As they stood on the corner the bus they had just deserted, K16 115 suddenly grown taller and louder and far more dangerous, passed K16 116 before their noses, spilling its heat on their thin shoes.

K16 117 When the light changed they crossed. Here the sidewalk was K16 118 wider, twice as wide as it was where they lived, and they began to K16 119 catch a whiff, a sense, of their destination, the way some sailors, K16 120 hundreds of miles out, are said to catch the first scent of land. K16 121 There was a bar - a saloon was how the children thought of it - K16 122 with a stuccoed front and a single mysterious brown window, a K16 123 rounded doorway like the entrance to a cave that breathed a sharp K16 124 and darkly shining breath upon them, a destillation of night and K16 125 starlight and Scotch. Two black men passed by. In a dark and narrow K16 126 candy store that smelled exotically of newsprint and bubble gum K16 127 they were each allowed to choose one comic book from the wooden K16 128 rack and their mother gathered these in her gloved hand, placed K16 129 them, a copy of the Daily News, and a pack of K16 130 butterscotch Life Savers on the narrow shelf beside the register, K16 131 and paid with a single bill.

K16 132 Outside, she redistributed the comics and placed a piece of K16 133 candy on each tongue, fortifying the children, or so it seemed, for K16 134 the next half of their journey. She herded them into the shaded K16 135 entry of a clothing store, another cave formed by two deep windows K16 136 that paralleled each other and contained, it seemed, a single K16 137 example of every item sold by the store, most of which was worn by K16 138 pale mannequins with painted hair and chipped fingers or mere K16 139 pieces of mannequins: head, torso, foot. The store was closed at K16 140 this hour and the aisles were lined with piles of thin gray K16 141 cardboard boxes that sank into one another and overflowed with K16 142 navy-blue socks or white underpants as if these items had somehow K16 143 multiplied themselves throughout the night.

K16 144 When the bus appeared it was as if from the next storefront and K16 145 they ran across the wide sidewalk to meet it, their mother pausing K16 146 behind them to step on another cigarette. She offered the driver K16 147 the four slim transfers while the children picked their way down K16 148 the aisles. There was not the luxury of empty seats there had been K16 149 on the first bus and so they squeezed together three to a narrow K16 150 seat, their mother standing in the aisle beside them, her dress, K16 151 her substantial thigh and belly underneath blue-and-white cotton, K16 152 blocking them shielding them, all unaware, from the drunks and the K16 153 gamblers and the various tardy (and so clearly dissipated) K16 154 businessmen who rode this bus though never the first because this K16 155 was the one that both passed the racetrack and crossed the city K16 156 line.

K16 157 All unaware, noses in their comics, her three children leaned K16 158 together in what might have been her shadow, had the light been K16 159 right, but was in reality merely the length that the warmth of her K16 160 body and the odor of her talc extended.

K16 161 At the subway, the very breath of their destination rose to K16 162 meet them in the constant underground breeze that began to whip the K16 163 girls' dresses as soon as they descended the first of the long set K16 164 of dirty stairs. ('No spitting' a sign above their heads read, K16 165 proving to them that they were entering an exotic and dangerous K16 166 realm where people might, at any given moment, begin spitting.) The K16 167 long corridors echoed with their mother's footsteps and roared K16 168 distantly with the comings and goings of the trains. There were ads K16 169 along the walls, not as large or as high as billboards but somehow K16 170 just as compelling, and if it had not been for their mother's K16 171 sudden haste, for she had begun rushing as soon as they left the K16 172 bus, they would have lingered to read them more carefully, to study K16 173 their bold messages and larger-than-life faces and garish cartoons, K16 174 to absorb more fully what appeared to them to be a vivid, K16 175 still-life bazaar.

K16 176 And then bars, prison bars, a wall of bars, and, even more K16 177 fantastically, a wall of revolving doors all made of black iron K16 178 bars. Their mother passed another bill through the tiny half-moon K16 179 aperture in what otherwise seemed a solid box lit green from within K16 180 and received, in reply to her shouted "Four, K16 181 please," a sliding handful of tokens and coins.

K16 182 They were each given their own, given only the time it took to K16 183 cross the dim expanse from token booth to turnstile to feel between K16 184 their fingers the three opened spaces in the center of the embossed K16 185 coin (a tactile memory that would return to them years later when K16 186 they drew their first peace symbols) before they slipped it into K16 187 the eternity of the machine and pressed with hands or waist or K16 188 heart the single wooden paddle that clicked, gave way, and admitted K16 189 them.

K16 190 K16 191 K17 1 <#FROWN:K17\>10 K17 2 "YOU HAVE an Academy ring," the woman at the K17 3 stall opposite said to Browne. She was dark and slim, wearing K17 4 sneakers and jeans. Her booth advertised a patented star-finder for K17 5 the northern hemisphere.

K17 6 Browne turned the class ring on his finger.

K17 7 "Yes. Class of sixty-eight."

K17 8 It was opening day at the Maritime Exposition at the 42nd K17 9 Regiment Armory in New York. The crowds were sparse. All day he had K17 10 been sitting beside a screen on which he himself appeared, K17 11 extolling the virtues of Altan boats. He was heartily tired of K17 12 hearing himself.

K17 13 "My ex-husband graduated from the Academy. His name is K17 14 Charlie Bloodworth. Ever run into him?"

K17 15 "Never," Browne said.

K17 16 "He's at Green Cove Springs now. That's where they make K17 17 the old ships into razor blades."

K17 18 "So I've heard," Browne said.

K17 19 "We lived in Atsugi," she said. "Guam, K17 20 too."

K17 21 Looming above them were the hulls of two Altan stock boats. One K17 22 was the Highlander Forty-five, which from his own experience Browne K17 23 knew was badly made. The second was the Altan Forty, which he K17 24 regarded highly. Before sailing south, Browne had actually made a K17 25 tape on which he praised the Highlander Forty-five. He did not play K17 26 it. Instead he played his pitch for the Altan Forty. stand-up sign K17 27 beside the Forty proclaimed it to be the stock version of the boat K17 28 Matty Hylan would sail around the world. There was a picture of K17 29 Hylan on the stand-up.

K17 30 "I like your tape," the slim dark woman said. K17 31 She was deeply suntanned. "I'm really hung K17 32 over."

K17 33 In the stuffy, humming air of the armor, he could not be sure K17 34 he had heard her correctly.

K17 35 "Too bad," he said politely.

K17 36 "Know any cures?"

K17 37 "No," he said. "I don't drink much."

K17 38 The woman laughed.

K17 39 "How about watching my booth?" she asked.

K17 40 Browne agreed and she walked away, still laughing.

K17 41 As the afternoon wore on, the crowds became even smaller. The K17 42 woman did not return to her star-finder booth. Browne had brought K17 43 along a volume of naval history. That afternoon, he read about K17 44 Trafalgar, Nelson and Collingwood advancing in separate columns K17 45 toward the Franco-Spanish fleet, breaking the line.

K17 46 At some point, he decided to get up and take an aspirin. Well K17 47 over an hour had passed since the woman at the stall opposite had K17 48 disappeared. Browne set out in pursuit of a drinking fountain.

K17 49 Searching for water, he passed through the wing in which the K17 50 powerboats were displayed. It was much more crowded than the K17 51 sailing section. There were overweight matrons in yachting caps and K17 52 couples with matching tattoos. There were cabin cruisers and sleek K17 53 cigarette boats with gleaming fins. Model interiors blazed with K17 54 chrome and tiger-striped upholstery. Browne walked through it all K17 55 feeling light-headed. When he came to the beige curtain that K17 56 divided the displays from the storage and receiving section, he K17 57 slipped past it into the gloom.

K17 58 The storage area was a wilderness of crates and cardboard boxes K17 59 piled to the forty-foot ceiling. Beyond the crates, on a buffed K17 60 concrete floor, stood two armored personnel carriers of the New K17 61 York National Guard. Near them was a drinking fountain.

K17 62 On his way to the fountain, Browne heard something like a K17 63 sensual moan from the area behind the crates. Looking more closely, K17 64 he saw the balding head of a middle-aged man above one rank of K17 65 boxes. Extending from the boxes along the floor was a woman's foot K17 66 with a tanned ankle and sneaker. Between one thing and another, K17 67 Browne formed the impression that a sexual act was taking place. K17 68 Drinking from the fountain, downing his aspirin, he felt angry and K17 69 revolted. He avoided the area on his way back.

K17 70 The woman from the star-finder booth returned fifteen minutes K17 71 after Browne got back to his own booth. She seemed pleased with K17 72 herself and he thought somehow it must have been she he had seen K17 73 sporting among the stacked boxes. The exposition could be a wild K17 74 scene, the top of the year for certain people. Browne had heard K17 75 stories about the casual sex but he had never seen any evidence of K17 76 it before.

K17 77 A little before six o'clock, Pat Fay, the designer whom Browne K17 78 had pressed into service at the Staten Island yard, came up and K17 79 looked at the stand-up ad for the Altan Forty that had Matty K17 80 Hylan's picture on it.

K17 81 "You might as well take it down," Fay said.

K17 82 "Why?" Browne asked. He could see that the designer had K17 83 been drinking.

K17 84 Fay handed him a copy of the New York Post, open to K17 85 page three. The headline over a three-column story inquired, K17 86 "Where's Matty?"

K17 87 There was a metal chair handy at a table piled with Altan K17 88 brochures, so he sat down to read the story. Its substance was that K17 89 in the face of bankruptcy and mounting scandal, Matty Hylan, bon K17 90 vivant and captain of commerce, had vanished.

K17 91 "They might have that race," Fay said. K17 92 "Matty won't be in it."

K17 93 "What I'm wondering," Browne said, "is K17 94 what does this mean to us?"

K17 95 Fay shrugged and walked away.

K17 96 Browne stayed seated at the table for a while, trying to ponder K17 97 the results of Hylan's disappearance. All at once the idea came to K17 98 him of volunteering to enter the race on his own. If he could not K17 99 sail the boat Hylan was having made in Finland, he might sail the K17 100 stock model on the floor in front of him. He was sure it was a good K17 101 boat. He felt a surge of confidence in his own abilities as a K17 102 sailor. Immediately he began composing, with a pencil on a sheet of K17 103 lined yellow paper, a letter to Harry Thorne.

K17 104 He had finished the letter and pocketed it when he saw the K17 105 woman who sold star-finders still lounging before her stall. She K17 106 sat on the ledge of industrial carpeting at the corner of the booth K17 107 with one leg folded under her. Browne thought she was watching him K17 108 suggestively.

K17 109 "Matty's gone," she said. "How about K17 110 that guy?"

K17 111 "Off for more congenial climes," Browne K17 112 said.

K17 113 "I guess he won't be sailing."

K17 114 "Too bad," said Browne. He began to gather up K17 115 his papers. There were very few show-goers about. "It was a K17 116 good boat."

K17 117 "If I was Matty," the woman said, "I K17 118 would have disappeared during the race. I'd vanish at K17 119 sea."

K17 120 "Guess he couldn't wait," Browne said.

K17 121 The dark woman looked at him with a kind of affectionate K17 122 insolence. He thought she must be on something.

K17 123 "Or I'd give them something to bellyache about. I'd not K17 124 sail around the world but say I did. Hole up in Saint Barts and let K17 125 the other guys sail and cross the finish line first."

K17 126 "I don't think that's possible anymore," Browne K17 127 said.

K17 128 "Matty could do it," the woman said.

K17 129 Browne told her good evening and went home.

K17 130 11 K17 131 NO WORD awaited Strickland in Helsinki. Hylan was not booked K17 132 into any of the major hotels. Since it was the weekend, he called K17 133 Joyce Manning at home to leave a message on her machine. No reply K17 134 was forthcoming. On Sunday, he arranged a meet with a local K17 135 cinematographer and a sound man. They met a few blocks from K17 136 Strickland's hotel, in a place called O'Malley's. As an earnest of K17 137 their seriousness, everyone ordered soda water.

K17 138 The Finns were called Holger and Pentii. They had recently K17 139 worked on location in Florida for a Finnish-language TV thriller; K17 140 they read Variety and were conversant with the picture K17 141 business. Strickland explained his needs to them; he was charming K17 142 and hesitant and they were patient with his stammer. Once satisfied K17 143 with his assistants' bona fides, he became more composed. Everyone K17 144 relaxed and called out to the Irish girl behind the bar for Harp K17 145 lager. Her name was Maeve and Holger said she worked for the K17 146 Marxist-Leninist wing of the IRA.

K17 147 They spent the rest of the evening talking movies. Pentii was a K17 148 Russ Meyer fan and his favorite among the master's oeuvre was K17 149 Faster Pussycat. For Holger, who seemed the more K17 150 thoughtful of the two, it would always be Heaven's Gate. K17 151 When they broke up, Strickland told them to meet him in Sariola the K17 152 next evening. He would drive himself there in the morning for some K17 153 preliminary conversations with the boatyard management.

K17 154 After breakfast the following day, Strickland telephoned the K17 155 yard in Sariola. The man with whom he spoke was very polite but K17 156 cautious to the point of evasion. It was all very odd. Around K17 157 mid-morning, he piled his gear into a rented Saab and took off down K17 158 the autobajn for Sariola.

K17 159 The town lay deep in scented oak forests along the Gulf of K17 160 Finland. It was an old place, with a Swedish cathedral, cobbled K17 161 squares and rambling wooden houses that suggested Chekhovian K17 162 Russia. The air was clean and dry and the skies overhead as blue as K17 163 June in California. The dark woods around the town were losing K17 164 their winter silence but a surprising cold lurked in the groves and K17 165 shadows.

K17 166 At his new pastel plastic hotel, Strickland changed into K17 167 clothes which he hoped seafaring types might find congenial: K17 168 Topsiders, khaki slacks and a bulky naval sweater. Then he K17 169 shouldered his camera case and set off on foot for the boatyard. K17 170 Before he had gone a mile, he was light-headed with the sun and the K17 171 smell of warm evergreen, his eyes dazzled, his nose and forehead K17 172 reddening.

K17 173 At the sign of Lipitsa Ltd., he followed a dirt road off the K17 174 highway. Bird calls of a mystical complexity seemed to announce his K17 175 passage. He walked out into the seaside meadow in which the Lipitsa K17 176 yard stood to find three men waiting for him. Behind them a freshly K17 177 laminated boat with a sexy curved transom and a shark-fin keel lay K17 178 up on blocks. Beside it stood a graying, flaxen-haired man with the K17 179 build of an oak stump and eyes the color of wild grapes.

K17 180 "I'm Strickland," Strickland told him. K17 181 "I've come to film."

K17 182 "Lipitsa," the man said softly. He seemed to hesitate K17 183 for a moment before extending his hand.

K17 184 "Is that the boat?" Strickland asked. They K17 185 looked at the shiny creature in its perch.

K17 186 Lipitsa nodded.

K17 187 "I've been trying to find Mr. Hylan," K17 188 Strickland explained. "He doesn't seem to be K17 189 available."

K17 190 The old man's eyes twinkled over his high cheekbones, alight K17 191 with boreal suspicion.

K17 192 "I was hoping to ask you about that, sir. Can you come K17 193 inside?"

K17 194 Lipitsa's offices were on the second floor of a converted K17 195 farmhouse, a solemn exercise in wood whose silent varnished spaces K17 196 held a churchly resonance. There was an oak desk, some ancient K17 197 photographs that appeared to represent the age of sail, and a long K17 198 line of model boats in token of the ones he had designed. K17 199 Strickland took a chair and faced the old man across the stern K17 200 surface of his desk.

K17 201 "Tell me what you want to do," Lipitsa said.

K17 202 Strickland explained that a documentary film had been K17 203 commissioned by the Hylan Corporation and that he was there to K17 204 shoot it.

K17 205 "Do I understand you to mean," old Lipitsa K17 206 asked him, "that you have been paid?"

K17 207 "I've been paid a retainer. And I've been given K17 208 expenses."

K17 209 "And you have no idea where our Mr. Hylan has K17 210 gone?"

K17 211 "Absolutely none," Strickland said. "I K17 212 didn't know he was missing."

K17 213 "You saw him when, please?"

K17 214 Strickland began but had to start over.

K17 215 "I ... I've never seen him. Now that you mention K17 216 it."

K17 217 "Ho," old Lipitsa said gravely. They looked at each K17 218 other in silence for a moment. "I'm ahead of you," K17 219 said the Finn. "I saw him in London two months ago. But you K17 220 have been paid and I have not. So there you are ahead of K17 221 me."

K17 222 "What," Strickland asked him, "do you think is K17 223 going on?"

K17 224 "Don't think me impolite," Lipitsa said. K17 225 "But I'm very curious and you are coming from over there. K17 226 What do you think?"

K17 227 "Quite honestly," Strickland said, "I K17 228 have no idea what to think."

K17 229 Old Lipitsa passed him a copy of the Financial Times. K17 230 There was a story on the front page which reported growing concern K17 231 as to the whereabouts of the youthful tycoon in question. The story K17 232 contained, as rumor, a report that a number of grand juries in the K17 233 United States had also expressed interest. K17 234 K18 1 <#FROWN:K18\>Francesca heard the out-of-tune pickup go by. She K18 2 lay there in bed, having slept naked for the first time as far back K18 3 as she could remember. She could imagine Kincaid, hair blowing in K18 4 the wind curling through the truck window, one hand on the wheel, K18 5 the other holding a Camel.

K18 6 She listened as the sound of his wheels faded toward Roseman K18 7 Bridge. And she began to roll words over in her mind from the Yeats K18 8 poem: "I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in K18 9 my head ..." Her rendering of it fell somewhere between K18 10 that of teacher and supplicant.

K18 11 He parked the truck well back from the bridge so it wouldn't K18 12 interfere with his compositions. From the small space behind the K18 13 seat, he took a knee-high pair of rubber boots, sitting on the K18 14 running board to unlace his leather ones and pull on the others. K18 15 One knapsack with straps over both shoulders, tripod slung over his K18 16 left shoulder by its leather strap, the other knapsack in his right K18 17 hand, he worked his way down the steep bank toward the stream.

K18 18 The trick would be to put the bridge at an angle for some K18 19 compositional tension, get a little of the stream at the same time, K18 20 and miss the graffiti on the walls near the entrance. The telephone K18 21 wires in the background were a problem, too, but that could be K18 22 handled through careful framing.

K18 23 He took out the Nikon loaded with Koda-chrome and K18 24 screwed it onto the heavy tripod. The camera had the 24-millimeter K18 25 lens on it, and he replaced that with his favorite 105-millimeter. K18 26 Gray light in the east now, and he began to experiment with his K18 27 composition. Move tripod two feet left, readjust legs sticking in K18 28 muddy ground by the stream. He kept the camera strap wound over his K18 29 left wrist, a practice he always followed when working around K18 30 water. He'd seen too many cameras go into the water when tripods K18 31 tipped over.

K18 32 Red color coming up, sky brightening. Lower camera six inches, K18 33 adjust tripod legs. Still not there. A foot more to the left. K18 34 Adjust legs again. Level camera on tripod head. Set lens to f/8. K18 35 Estimate depth of field, maximize it via hyperfocal technique. K18 36 Screw in cable release on shutter button. Sun 40 percent above the K18 37 horizon, old paint on the bridge turning a warm red, just what he K18 38 wanted.

K18 39 Light meter out of left breast pocket. Check it at f/8. K18 40 One-second exposure, but the Kodachrome would hold well for that K18 41 extreme. Look through the viewfinder. Fine-tune leveling of camera. K18 42 He pushed the plunger of the shutter release and waited for a K18 43 second to pass.

K18 44 Just as he fired the shutter, something caught his eye. He K18 45 looked through the viewfinder again. "What the hell is K18 46 hanging by the entrance to the bridge?" he muttered. K18 47 "A piece of paper. Wasn't there yesterday."

K18 48 Tripod steady. Run up the bank with sun coming fast behind him. K18 49 Paper neatly tacked to bridge. Pull it off, put tack and paper in K18 50 vest pocket. Back toward the bank, down it, behind the camera. Sun K18 51 60 percent up.

K18 52 Breathing hard from the sprint. Shoot again. Repeat twice for K18 53 duplicates. No wind, grass still. Shoot three at two seconds and K18 54 three at one-half second for insurance.

K18 55 Click lens to f/16 setting. Repeat entire process. Carry tripod K18 56 and camera to the middle of the stream. Get set up, silt from K18 57 footsteps moving away behind. Shoot entire sequence again. New roll K18 58 of Kodachrome. Switch lenses. Lock on the 24-millimeter, jam the K18 59 105 into a pocket. Move closer to the bridge, wading upstream. K18 60 Adjust, level, light check, fire three, and bracket shots for K18 61 insurance.

K18 62 Flip the camera to vertical, recompose. Shoot again. Same K18 63 sequence, methodical. There never was anything clumsy about his K18 64 movements. All were practiced, all had a reason, the contingencies K18 65 were covered, efficiently and professionally.

K18 66 Up the bank, through the bridge, running with the equipment, K18 67 racing the sun. Now the tough one. Grab second camera with faster K18 68 film, sling both cameras around neck, climb tree behind bridge. K18 69 Scrape arm on bark- "Dammit!" - keep climbing. High up now, K18 70 looking down on the bridge at an angle with the stream catching K18 71 sunlight.

K18 72 Use spot meter to isolate bridge roof, then shady side of K18 73 bridge. Take reading off water. Set camera for compromise. Shoot K18 74 nine shots, bracketing, camera resting on vest wedged into tree K18 75 crotch. Switch cameras. Faster film. Shoot a dozen more shots.

K18 76 Down the tree. Down the bank. Set up tripod, reload Kodachrome, K18 77 shoot composition similar to the first series only from the K18 78 opposite side of the stream. Pull third camera out of bag. The old K18 79 SP, rangefinder camera. Black-and-white work now. Light on bridge K18 80 changing second by second.

K18 81 After twenty intense minutes of the kind understood only by K18 82 soldiers, surgeons, and photographers, Robert Kincaid swung his K18 83 knapsacks into the truck and headed back down the road he had come K18 84 along before. It was fifteen minutes to Hogback Bridge northwest of K18 85 town, and he might just get some shots there if he hurried.

K18 86 Dust flying, Camel lit, truck bouncing, past the white frame K18 87 house facing north, past Richard Johnson's mailbox. No sign of her. K18 88 What did you expect? She's married, doing okay. You're doing okay. K18 89 Who needs those kinds of complications? Nice evening, nice supper, K18 90 nice woman. Leave it at that. God, she's lovely, though, and K18 91 there's something about her. Something. I have trouble taking my K18 92 eyes away from her.

K18 93 Francesca was in the barn doing chores when he barreled past K18 94 her place. Noise from the live-stock cloaked any sound from K18 95 the road. And Robert Kincaid headed for Hogback Bridge, racing the K18 96 years, chasing the light.

K18 97 Things went well at the second bridge. It sat in a valley and K18 98 still had mist rising around it when he arrived. The 300-millimeter K18 99 lens gave him a big sun in the upper-left part of his frame, with K18 100 the rest taking in the winding white rock road toward the bridge K18 101 and the bridge itself.

K18 102 Then into his viewfinder came a farmer driving a team of light K18 103 brown Belgians pulling a wagon along the white road. One of the K18 104 last of the old-style boys. Kincaid thought, grinning. He K18 105 knew when the good ones came by and could already see what the K18 106 final print would look like as he worked. On the vertical shots he K18 107 left some light sky where a title could go.

K18 108 When he folded up his tripod at eight thirty-five, he felt K18 109 good. The morning's work had some keepers. Bucolic, conservative K18 110 stuff, but nice and solid. The one with the farmer and horses might K18 111 even be a cover shot; that's why he had left the space at the top K18 112 of the frame, room for type, for a logo. Editors liked that kind of K18 113 thoughtful craftsmanship. That's why Robert Kincaid got K18 114 assignments.

K18 115 He had shot all or part of seven rolls of film, emptied the K18 116 three cameras, and reached into the lower-left pocket of his vest K18 117 to get the other four. "Damn!" The thumbtack pricked his K18 118 index finger. He had forgotten about dropping it in the pocket when K18 119 he'd removed the piece of paper from Roseman Bridge. In fact, he K18 120 had forgotten about the piece of paper. He fished it out, opened K18 121 it, and read: "If you'd like supper again when 'white moths K18 122 are on the wing,' come by tonight after you're finished. Anytime is K18 123 fine."

K18 124 He couldn't help smiling a little, imagining Francesca Johnson K18 125 with her note and thumbtack driving through the darkness to the K18 126 bridge. In five minutes he was back in town. While the Texaco man K18 127 filled the tank and checked the oil ("Down half a K18 128 quart"), Kincaid used the pay telephone at the station. The K18 129 thin phone book was grimy from being thumbed by filling station K18 130 hands. There were two listings under 'R. Johnson,' but one had a K18 131 town address.

K18 132 He dialed the rural number and waited. Francesca was feeding K18 133 the dog on the back porch when the phone rang in the kitchen. She K18 134 caught it at the front of the second ring: "Johnson's."

K18 135 "Hi, this is Robert Kincaid."

K18 136 Her insides jumped again, just as they had yesterday. A little K18 137 stab of something that started in her chest and plunged to her K18 138 stomach.

K18 139 "Got your note. W. B. Yeats as a messenger and all K18 140 that. I accept the invitation, but it might be late. The weather's K18 141 pretty good, so I'm planning on shooting the - let's see, what's it K18 142 called?- the Cedar Bridge ... this evening. It could be after nine K18 143 before I'm finished. Then I'll want to clean up a bit. So I might K18 144 not be there until nine-thirty or ten. Is that all K18 145 right?"

K18 146 No, it wasn't all right. She didn't want to wait that long, but K18 147 she only said. "Oh, sure. Get your work done; that's what's K18 148 important. I'll fix something that'll be easy to warm up when you K18 149 get here."

K18 150 Then he added, "If you want to come along while I'm K18 151 shooting, that's fine. It won't bother me. I could stop by for you K18 152 about five-thirty."

K18 153 Francesca's mind worked the problem. She wanted to go with him. K18 154 But what if someone saw her? What could she say to Richard if he K18 155 found out?

K18 156 Cedar Bridge sat fifty yards upstream from and parallel to the K18 157 new road and its concrete bridge. She wouldn't be too noticeable. K18 158 Or would she? In less than two seconds, she decided. "Yes, K18 159 I'd like that. But I'll drive my pickup and meet you there. What K18 160 time?"

K18 161 "About six. I'll see you then. Okay? 'Bye."

K18 162 He spent the rest of the day at the local newspaper office K18 163 looking through old editions. It was a pretty town, with a nice K18 164 courthouse square, and he sat there on a bench in the shade at K18 165 lunch with a small sack of fruit and some bread, along with a Coke K18 166 from a cafe across the street.

K18 167 When he had walked in the cafe and asked for a Coke to take K18 168 out, it was a little after noon. Like an old Wild West saloon when K18 169 the regional gun-fighter appeared, the busy conversation K18 170 had stopped for a moment while they all looked him over. He hated K18 171 that, felt self-conscious; but it was the standard procedure in K18 172 small towns. Someone new! Someone different! Who is he? What's he K18 173 doing here?

K18 174 "Somebody said he's a photographer. Said they saw him K18 175 out by Hogback Bridge this morning with all sorts of K18 176 cameras."

K18 177 "Sign on his truck says he's from Washington, out K18 178 west."

K18 179 "Been over to the newspaper office all morning. Jim K18 180 says he's looking through the papers for information on the covered K18 181 bridges."

K18 182 "Yeah, young Fischer at the Texaco said he stopped in K18 183 yesterday and asked directions to all the covered K18 184 bridges."

K18 185 "What's he wanna know about them for, K18 186 anyway?"

K18 187 "And why in the world would anybody wanna take pictures K18 188 of 'em? They're just all fallin' down in bad shape."

K18 189 "Sure does have long hair. Looks like one of them K18 190 Beatle fellows, or what is it they been callin' some of them other K18 191 people? Hippies, ain't that it?" That brought laughter in K18 192 the back booth and to the table next to it.

K18 193 Kincaid got his Coke and left, the eyes still on him as he went K18 194 out the door. Maybe he'd made a mistake in inviting Francesca, for K18 195 her sake, not his. If someone saw her at Cedar Bridge, word would K18 196 hit the cafe next morning at breakfast, relayed by young Fischer at K18 197 the Texaco station after taking a handoff from the passerby. K18 198 Probably quicker than that.

K18 199 He'd learned never to underestimate the K18 200 tele-communicative flash of trivial news in small towns. K18 201 Two million children could be dying of hunger in the Sudan, and K18 202 that wouldn't cause a bump in consciousness,. But Richard Johnson's K18 203 wife seen with a long-haired stranger - now that was news! News to K18 204 be passed around, news to be chewed on, news that created a vague K18 205 carnal lapping in the minds of those who heard it, the only such K18 206 ripple they'd feel that year.

K18 207 He finished his lunch and walked over to the public phone on K18 208 the parking of the courthouse. K18 209 K19 1 <#FROWN:K19\>Carmody had lashed a walk from the flying bridge K19 2 to the scow's rail instead of using the fishing boat's regular K19 3 walkway lower down. A plank was all it was, not quite a foot wide, K19 4 no ropes or railings. Billy raised his head from the stretcher K19 5 enough to get a look. He groaned and cursed. Greer, carrying the K19 6 lead end, agreed. "Maybe we better think about this K19 7 ..."

K19 8 "Psht now, Emil," Carmody called. "Haul K19 9 your old load right on across. Nothin' to it, nothin' at K19 10 all."

K19 11 A loud laugh snorted from the blonde at his side. "How K19 12 would you know? You haven't hauled your old load acrost it, I K19 13 noticed." It was a laugh that should have been derisive, K19 14 but there was no derision in it. It was as sunny and good-natured K19 15 as her face. Ike judged her to be about fifty, perhaps older - not K19 16 anywhere near as old as Carmody's seventy-so, but a good decade or K19 17 two the senior of Alice. Yet there was something about her that was K19 18 still quite childlike. She had a lopsided tomboy grin that she held K19 19 wide open in spite of chapped lips and missing teeth, and there was K19 20 a bratty twinkle in her blue eyes. A twinkle at lot like Carmody's. K19 21 Their complexions were nearly identical - a wind-buffed and K19 22 sun-polished pink. They had the same corn-colored eyebrows, the K19 23 same pug nose. When Ike saw them side by side, grinning at the K19 24 spectacle of Billy the Squid being carried precariously across the K19 25 narrow plank, he wondered if they might not be close kin, perhaps K19 26 even big brother and little sister. That would explain the K19 27 hip-to-hip familiarity.

K19 28 "Welcome aboard, laddybucks," Carmody said as K19 29 they stepped down from the plank. "Stow your kips and K19 30 secure your wounded. And step lively about if; I'm yearnin' to haul K19 31 anchor and catch this tide and I really mean K19 32 yearnin'."

K19 33 The blonde winked. "What the old donkey really K19 34 means," she confided, "is we got to hightail out of K19 35 here before the owner of that powerboat by the pumps yonder comes K19 36 down and sees the hole we bashed in his bulkhead while we was K19 37 gassing up. And we have two posses on our tail."

K19 38 Carmody looked hurt. "He should not've parked the K19 39 flouncy piece o' fluff so close to the pumps, the stupid K19 40 gob."

K19 41 "Close? I wouldn't call that so close. a container K19 42 barge big as a goddamn football field steamed in between that K19 43 sailboat and those pumps this morning, didn't ding a K19 44 thing."

K19 45 "I was seriously undermanned," Carmody K19 46 protested.

K19 47 "You was foolishly overconfident is what you was. Good K19 48 morning, boys. I'm Willimina Hardesty-" She held out a big K19 49 pink hand, rough as a reef. "I'm known as Wild Willimina K19 50 from Waco, but you boys may call me Willi. I'm hired on as chief K19 51 software officer for this ritzy high-tech tub."

K19 52 "Haw!" It was Carmody's turn to snort. K19 53 "Software officer. What do you think, Ike? Would I hire a K19 54 software officer? Especially a software office names K19 55 Hard-assy, gnheh-heh-heh ..."

K19 56 Ike shook the hand and introduced her to his three friends. K19 57 Archie flushed. Greer kissed her knuckles and said something in K19 58 French. Billy just grunted into the metal case he had padded with K19 59 towels for a pillow. Archie started to explain about Mr. K19 60 Bellisarius' supine condition, but the woman said, oh, they knew K19 61 all about it - that the gang's daring and spectacular escape on the K19 62 runaway railcar had been the talk in all the bars hours before K19 63 Isaak phoned.

K19 64 "Right!" Carmody added. "All about it. Now put K19 65 him down and cast us off, we'll swap yarns later." He K19 66 frowned at the two big net bags Archie was carrying. "What K19 67 in the hell's all this?"

K19 68 "One's wine," Archie shrugged.

K19 69 "I can see that," Carmody said. "A K19 70 reasonable cargo. but what about the other bag?"

K19 71 "Books," Archie answered.

K19 72 "I can bloody see they're books, Culligan. what K19 73 did you do, enroll in one of those self-improvement K19 74 courses?"

K19 75 "They're the Squid's books, Mr Carmody. You know I K19 76 don't read. Mr Bellisarius made us check them out of the Juneau K19 77 Community College Library. They're scientific K19 78 books."

K19 79 "That's what took you so damn long? Lord love a K19 80 duck. Well, stash the whole shitteree somewhere out from K19 81 underfoot if you please ... because, lads and lady, we K19 82 are about to foam straightaway home. Nels! Flip us free forward - K19 83 I'm firing this ritzy bitch up!"

K19 84 They foamed all right, but not straightaway home. To Isaak's K19 85 surprise, as soon as they were out of sight of Juneau Carmody K19 86 wheeled the metal prow left, south, back down the Inland Passage K19 87 exactly the way he'd just come. "Evasive action, to confuse K19 88 the pursuers," he called from the flying bridge by way of K19 89 explanation. Then he instructed the woman to key them in a course K19 90 around Admiralty Island and north up Chatham Strait, which would K19 91 loop them back to almost the exact spot where they began their K19 92 so-called evasive action. When Ike mentioned this the old man K19 93 confided that what he really wanted to do was scope the other side K19 94 of Admiralty for bears on the beach, maybe pick one off with his K19 95 new tranque rifle. A half hour later Ike overheard him tell Greer K19 96 what he really wanted to do was "give this Texas K19 97 Tootsie a look at An-goon. Three years she's been up here and K19 98 says she ain't yet seen an authentic Indian village." And a K19 99 day later, creeping up the strait on auto at no-wake speed, K19 100 everybody heard him tell the Texas Tootsie herself that what he had K19 101 in mind was long-lining for some of the legendary sea sturgeon that K19 102 were supposed to prole the mud off Hoonah. That's when Ike finally K19 103 figured it out - that what the old dunk actually wanted to do K19 104 was take just as long as he could getting home.

K19 105 This was all right with Ike. He had never been in too much of a K19 106 hurry to deal with Alice in any event, and he had bad feelings K19 107 about her prodigal son's ambitious return. This was pleasant, K19 108 cruising leisurely along the calm channel in a deck chair like a K19 109 tourist on a ten-day special, sipping wine and playing spit in the K19 110 ocean and scoping the shorelines. Sometimes they put away the cards K19 111 and trolled off the fantail with spinning rigs and flashers ... K19 112 they were cruising that slow. Carmody kept the choice catches to K19 113 eat - the occasional native coho, the rare sockeye with his neon K19 114 meat - and tossed the hatchies back. Or sold them over the side to K19 115 the little pirate processors that winked codes from every cove and K19 116 cranny.

K19 117 They cruised and played poker and yarned, and Carmody sang. In K19 118 the evenings, amid the dirty dishes in the galley, he crooned old K19 119 love songs, like a young swain serenading his lady. Tin Pan Alley K19 120 tunes, and sixties stuff, even New Age ballads. But as the nights K19 121 darkened and the bottles emptied, he always got back to the Old K19 122 World Traditional, and, at last, to his theme song: 'O, the K19 123 prickle-eye bush ...' It was so ever-present it began to K19 124 seem to Ike that it had been in his head from the moment he was K19 125 startled from his peaceful slumber by the cat in Kuinak.

K19 126 Naturally, at first, Ike had tried to get back into that K19 127 slumberous peace. It should have been easy enough; the crew was K19 128 certainly in a slumberous mode. Especially Greer. The chemical K19 129 uplift Greer had been hoping to find in Billy the Squid's briefcase K19 130 would not be complete until they rendezvoused with the other half K19 131 of the stimulant's formula in Kuinak. So Isaak's customarily K19 132 jacked-up partner spent most of his time below decks in a narrow K19 133 bunk, zeed out. Archie Culligan was no scoot-head, but he was K19 134 exhausted by his sojourn in Beulahland; he could usually be found K19 135 slumped against the water heater in the galley, snoring away. The K19 136 industrious young Nels Culligan tried to remain at least upright, K19 137 propped against the rail of the flying bridge, stifling yawns while K19 138 he awaited orders from the captain. But the captain was no ball of K19 139 fire himself. Never, in the decade they had worked together, had K19 140 Ike seen the old fisherman so kicked back and languid.

K19 141 The cushy new boat was part of it; the software in the Loranav K19 142 pilot was especially programmed for these coasts, user-easy and K19 143 voice-activated and in constant contact with sea and sky K19 144 satellites. A ten-year-old with a coastal chart and a mouse could K19 145 have commanded the course - "Juneau to Kuinak at fifteen K19 146 knots" - then gone back to watching his Slitman goggles. It K19 147 was a superb vessel, built when they were still building boats for K19 148 high-end diversifishing. It had probably been priced originally at K19 149 a mil-and-a-half or more, back before the Trident leak. Carmody had K19 150 picked it up for a fraction of that.

K19 151 But it was more than the new cruising vessel. The old K19 152 Cornishman had also picked himself up the perfect cruising K19 153 companion. Wild Willi from Waco might not have been as cushy and K19 154 modern as the new boat, but she was just as user-easy. It wasn't K19 155 hard to understand why Carmody had been dawdling along. This was a K19 156 long-deserved vacation for the old dunker, with a new playmate. K19 157 Everybody on board enjoyed her company, except for Billy K19 158 Bellisarius, who was still brooding too deeply about his recent K19 159 run-in with Greener to have enjoyed anybody. In the days since K19 160 Juneau they had found Willi to be a good worker and capable sailor, K19 161 plus she offered them a whole new library wing of dirty stories and K19 162 ribald sayings - a southern wing. The trip had been a lot of fun, a K19 163 lot of drinking and laughing and gambling and eating.

K19 164 Especially eating. It looked to Ike like Carmody had picked out K19 165 his ritzy new boat as much on the basis of its galley as on its K19 166 computer-sensor channel-charting fish-finding features. Maybe more. K19 167 The old fisherman spent a lot more time around the kitchen dials K19 168 than the computer dials.

K19 169 "Fish are best eaten absolutely fresh," Carmody K19 170 maintained. "I love fresh fish, by God, right in the K19 171 galley. All these years busting my butt hauling the bastards in? K19 172 Don't seem like I remember getting to eat one really truly fresh K19 173 fish supper. I truly feel I have been deprived, by God I K19 174 do!"

K19 175 The size of the man's stomach bespoke otherwise; he had an K19 176 absolutely enormous midsection, round and pink and wrinkle-free as K19 177 his shaved ball of a head, and as hard. Carmody's girth was the K19 178 result of a lifetime of hard labor and good appetite, laced K19 179 liberally with drink and dance whenever possible. The belly he had K19 180 produced was the accomplishment of nearly three-quarters of a K19 181 century's dedicated effort; he was famous for it and proud of it. K19 182 He used it like a sumo wrestler uses his kee, or center. It K19 183 was his workbench, his fulcrum on the booms, his block and tackle K19 184 on the ropes. Now, as they hummed along, he had it bellied up K19 185 against the round cedar table that occupied the center of the K19 186 galley, leaning on it while he chopped a ten-pound halibut into K19 187 steaks.

K19 188 "A fish don't really object to being caught and K19 189 consumed," Carmdoy was explaining, "long as it K19 190 happens fresh."

K19 191 The fish was truly fresh, the glimmer of life had not yet K19 192 completely left the animal's freakish eyes, and the body was still K19 193 quivering there on the table, though big slabs of him were already K19 194 hissing in butter and chopped parsley in the wavepan.

K19 195 "Fish understand the fishy facks of life. They get et. K19 196 It's their destiny from the get-go, from the least to the largest, K19 197 to get et. What a fish objects to is being wasted. 'If you need me, K19 198 catch me; if you don't, let me be.' Back in the days we really K19 199 needed whale oil you never heard any whales complaining, did K19 200 ye? They knew they was greasing the wheels of progress. They didn't K19 201 commence complaining about it until they found out their oil had K19 202 become obsolete, progress-wise, and all we wanted them for K19 203 was food for cats. That's when they organized Greenpeace. K19 204 K20 1 <#FROWN:K20\>Rebecca's Theory

K20 2 I trust water. I know my limitations in water. And I don't K20 3 press beyond them. My name is Clarissa; I'm twenty-five. Lately, I K20 4 swim a lot. Swimming toughens the vital organs: lungs and heart. A K20 5 swallow of air measures every stroke. When I'm underwater, I can't K20 6 see or hear clearly and can't smell anything. I'm humble. I'm K20 7 forgiving with others and myself. Maybe I'd have been better off K20 8 living somewhere like Cuzco, in Peru, when it was the capital of K20 9 the Inca. Water streamed down from the Andes and flowed in ditches K20 10 throughout the city. When hot, I'd have knelt under a fountain. A K20 11 vicu<*_>n-tilde<*/>a would have sipped at a trough near K20 12 my feet. More often, I think of another place, Atlantis. That is my K20 13 favorite myth. The island was rich and no doubt lush. But I imagine K20 14 its splendor after an earthquake sank it.

K20 15 My grandmother was afraid of the water. She never swam. Her K20 16 name was Rebecca Lyon, always known to us as Nanny. She was my K20 17 father's mother and the only grandparent I ever met. I know little K20 18 about my mother's past. She tells me that she lost both her parents K20 19 during the Second World War. She is British and her name is K20 20 Julia.

K20 21 My father, David, was brought up in Hidden Gorge, a small town K20 22 in upstate New York. His father ran a nine-hundred-square-foot K20 23 grocery store called The Lyon Den Mart. The family lived on top. In K20 24 1952, my grandfather died of a heart attack. A few months later, K20 25 Nanny gave my father and his sister enough money to build a K20 26 supermarket in Puerto Rico. At the time, the island had only small K20 27 grocery stores, or colmados. Nadia, my father's sister, K20 28 moved to Puerto Rico shortly after my father did. Today they have K20 29 several stores on the island and throughout the Caribbean: in Saint K20 30 John, Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, Tortola and Venezuela. They named K20 31 the supermarkets Isla.

K20 32 As our father puts it, my brother, my sister and I are K20 33 "pampered." We've been given some money. Sometimes we K20 34 justify our good fortune by feeling guilty. The guilt lets us K20 35 pretend we're noble. Our father is sometimes noble. A friend of his K20 36 once said, "Your dad is one of the few honest people left K20 37 on earth." He appears to find a goodness in almost every K20 38 man he meets. But he's not always sociable. He likes small islands K20 39 where there are few people. Maybe that's his way of pretending he K20 40 has only himself to answer to.

K20 41 I look like my father. I'm tall and my skin is more olive than K20 42 white. Like him, I have a high forehead and a dimple on my left K20 43 cheek when I smile. He tells me I also have his poise. I keep my K20 44 chin high; I'm never clumsy.

K20 45 I grew up in a small suburb of Puerto Rico called Santa K20 46 Mar<*_>i-acute<*/>a. Our house had white gates, or rejas, K20 47 Spanish ceramic roof tiles, white plaster walls and a cupola with a K20 48 horse weather vane. I was born in 1955 and stayed an only child for K20 49 four years.

K20 50 Nanny kept me company. She visited me every week. She drove in K20 51 from Santurce, where she lived with her housekeeper. Nanny would K20 52 bounce me high on her knee. She taught me gin rummy. She'd slap K20 53 down cards. She'd say, I win, over and over. The day I won, she K20 54 accused me of cheating.

K20 55 In September 1959, Cora was born. She doesn't look like me. She K20 56 has blue eyes, like our father's. Otherwise, she looks like our K20 57 mother. She has her round face and fair skin. She is K20 58 small-boned.

K20 59 Michael came a year after Cora. As a baby he had straight blond K20 60 hair. When it turned dark brown, I remember thinking he looked a K20 61 lot like my brother. He grew to be six feet. But he doesn't seem K20 62 big. His legs, his neck, his fingers are all slender and almost K20 63 graceful.

K20 64 Nanny's attentions turned to Cora and Michael. So I started to K20 65 lie. I told my sister and brother stories of what I'd done before K20 66 they were born. I told them I rode an albino horse in the rain; I K20 67 cantered for hours. I told them I took a helicopter to a volcano K20 68 top in Sicily; the volcano had just erupted. I told them stories of K20 69 what I'd just read as if they were true. I read a lot. My mother K20 70 had given me reading lessons every morning since I was three. I K20 71 taught Cora and Michael how to read. I wanted them to look up to K20 72 me. Nanny taught them how to play cards.

K20 73 When I was six, my father found me a piano teacher. He was a K20 74 short man with a red mustache. He used to carry a stack of old K20 75 music sheets under his arm. He made me copy the music by hand. He K20 76 used to tell me, "You're the kind of student who can't K20 77 become too polished. You'll lose your gut feeling for the K20 78 music." We had a Pianola. When I wasn't playing, my mother K20 79 pedaled it. We'd all sing to 'Caravan,' 'Stella by Starlight,' K20 80 'Making Whoopee.' But the Pianola was eight keys short. My teacher K20 81 never complained. He said I practiced a lot and that was all he K20 82 could ask for.

K20 83 I liked the certainty of notes. They were less ambiguous than K20 84 words. When I made a mistake, I knew it right away. The fewer K20 85 mistakes I made, the more Nanny cooed. She began taking me on her K20 86 lap again. I played with her under me. She made Cora and Michael K20 87 stand next to me and listen. Nanny said I was a natural musician; I K20 88 was meant to be a famous pianist. But I never thought of myself as K20 89 gifted.

K20 90 The year Nanny turned ninety, she came to visit for a few days. K20 91 I was eight. My mother took us to the supermarket. Nanny frightened K20 92 me: she began ranting about tomatoes and lettuces tumbling out of K20 93 the bins. She said there were rats in the aisles poking their K20 94 snouts at her toes. My mother had no desire to listen to her. So K20 95 she drove her to my father's office. She told him to take her home. K20 96 Then my mother picked up our housekeeper, Rosa, and drove us all to K20 97 the Japanese gardens, almost an hour away.

K20 98 The gardens were in a hotel off a San Juan beach. The hotel was K20 99 always busy with businessmen and tourists. Cubans and Europeans K20 100 gambled in the casino. They sauntered on the garden paths. Cora and K20 101 I watched them as if to learn from their motions. My mother called K20 102 certain women the 'gentry.' They were pearl-skinned and had K20 103 black hair. Descendants, my mother said, of the K20 104 conquistadores. One or two such women lived in Santa K20 105 Mar<*_>i-acute<*/>a. My mother knew them but thought they were too K20 106 proud.

K20 107 We entered the garden from the north on a path of stones laid K20 108 in the grass. The path snaked up a hill. On top of the hill there K20 109 was a pond with lily pads. A wooden gazebo with a bridge had been K20 110 built in the middle of the pond. The gazebo was our sanctuary. We K20 111 had picnics there. Then we threw bread crumbs to the garden birds. K20 112 Pelicans balanced on one leg; peacocks dragged their tails in the K20 113 grass; ducks stepped in and out of the pond. The pond streamed over K20 114 the south side of the hill and turned into a waterfall. Cora, K20 115 Michael and I used to roll down a dry part of the hill. At the K20 116 bottom there was an abandoned art gallery, rotting under a mango K20 117 tree. We used to play around the gallery.

K20 118 Mom said to Rosa, "What a relief to escape that K20 119 Rebecca." We were sitting in the gazebo. It was almost K20 120 five, and we'd been at the gardens since noon.

K20 121 Rosa was from Peru. She'd been with us since I was three. She'd K20 122 learned English for Mom. But Michael, Cora and I liked to talk to K20 123 her in Spanish. Her clothes smelled of garlic. Her skin smelled K20 124 like pine. She had a flat nose and paper-thin ears. The whites of K20 125 her eyes had yellow shades in them. She was showing Michael how to K20 126 whistle with a blade of grass. I was bent over the pond, catching K20 127 guppies in a paper cup. Cora sat Indian-style next to me. She wore K20 128 a yellow dress she'd already soiled.

K20 129 "Rosa, that woman keeps him up all night K20 130 sometimes," Mom said and lit a cigarette. "She was K20 131 a wild one. She had her men. Plenty, too. She loves to tell me all K20 132 about them."

K20 133 Rosa said, "Do<*_>n-tilde<*/>a Rebecca is a good woman. K20 134 She doesn't know what she says."

K20 135 "She knows exactly what she's saying. She told me I K20 136 should stop trying to have children. Imagine! Now she's begun this K20 137 raving. Don't underestimate her power, Rosa. That was my mistake. K20 138 She's a mighty one."

K20 139 Mom caught me listening and blew me a kiss. She wore her hair K20 140 short and behind her ears. Her hair is blond-red and her eyes are K20 141 green; the left one slopes down a little. When angry, she closes K20 142 both eyes halfway.

K20 143 She took off her hat and fanned herself with it. Even in the K20 144 shade Mom felt the heat. She left to call Dad. When she returned, K20 145 she said, "I told your father we'd be late. I packed K20 146 sweaters in case it gets chilly."

K20 147 Cora leaned forward to watch the guppies writhing in the cup. K20 148 She said, "Do we have to wait until dark? After dark, God K20 149 comes out."

K20 150 I giggled. I didn't believe in God. My father made me go to K20 151 Hebrew school. I skipped lessons. I never liked the quiet of K20 152 synagogues, the small talk after the services. Passover or Yom K20 153 Kippur was a chore to me. My mother is Catholic. She has, to all K20 154 appearances, converted. Yet when frightened or nervous, she crosses K20 155 herself.

K20 156 "I have some juice and cookies," Mom said.

K20 157 "Let's leave before it's dark,"Cora said.

K20 158 "Have a go at more of those tadpoles."

K20 159 "Do<*_>n-tilde<*/>a Julia," Rosa said, K20 160 "Michael hasn't had his nap."

K20 161 And Mom said, "He'll live."

K20 162 Cora and I headed for the waterfall at the bottom of the hill. K20 163 We splattered our ankles in the mango pulp and mud. We looked K20 164 through a cracked window of the art gallery. I said, "Look K20 165 at the shadows on the pedestals. Let's go in." We'd never K20 166 been inside.

K20 167 Cora didn't want to. I said I'd go in myself and she changed K20 168 her mind. We crawled through a window. The glass was missing. There K20 169 were two rooms. The back one had a dirty desk in it. I sat behind K20 170 the desk and pretended to play Mozart.

K20 171 "Look at me," I heard Cora shout.

K20 172 In the other room, she'd climbed onto a pedestal. She was K20 173 holding her hands up. She looked like a skinny cherub. I climbed K20 174 onto a larger pedestal and thought there was no way a living thing K20 175 could look like art.

K20 176 Mom came to the window and watched us.

K20 177 When we got home, she said, "You looked so quiet. Just K20 178 like statues. I couldn't disturb you."

K20 179 Standing on the pedestal made me feel composed. My mother would K20 180 tell me she always sees me that way. She believes people like to K20 181 assess our graces. I believe we ask people to judge us. Sometimes K20 182 we even insist.

K20 183 Michael fell asleep during dinner. Rosa carried him to his K20 184 room. His room was blue, with white floors and a white ceiling. His K20 185 bed was near the window. He could look out to the top of palm trees K20 186 and the sky. I liked where his room was: above Mom and Dad's and K20 187 between Cora's and mine. My room faced the backyard, the pool and K20 188 the forest that belonged to the church. We had a flamboyan tree. K20 189 When the tree was flowering, I didn't mind my view.

K20 190 Nanny ate slowly. She toyed with the lacy collar of her yellow K20 191 robe. Her face was long and smooth. Her eyes seemed to have clouds K20 192 in them. K20 193 K21 1 <#FROWN:K21\>I am the Grand Inquisitor. My piercing Spanish K21 2 eyes are wide with righteous indignation beneath my great black K21 3 hood and cowl. I have the Jew in my grasp, but he refuses to K21 4 recant. He assaults me with his spurious Hebrew logic. My mind K21 5 storms at the sacrilege. I must restrain myself from wringing his K21 6 neck like the chicken he resembles. Instead, I survey my armory of K21 7 more persuasive implements and consider, with pleasure, which to K21 8 use on this very special day: the tongs, the thumb screw, the rack, K21 9 the fire. I sneeze.

K21 10 This dungeon, my domain, is raw with winter. I can hear the K21 11 wind rushing through the cracks between the enormous gray stones. K21 12 Odors of mold and putrefaction are borne along like fish in the K21 13 sea. Gusts find their way under my cassock, ripple my thighs like a K21 14 horse's flanks. My arthritic fingers clutch Ecclesiastes to my K21 15 chest, and I think that the Jew must suffer similar pangs without K21 16 similar comfort. At least I am accustomed to this spiritual K21 17 netherworld, while all he knows is his warm thatched cottage, homey K21 18 with the moist heat and smell of his grandmother's soup. Not soon K21 19 will he feast on beans and the blood of Christian children. Not K21 20 soon will he escape the benevolent clutches of the Inquisition. I K21 21 hold my lantern aloft to examine his fear, but when I sneeze again K21 22 I drop it and the flame gutters and dies.

K21 23 Despite the intense cold, I am sweating as I make my way down K21 24 the darkened corridor. Is it the supernatural illumination that K21 25 guides me through the pitch labyrinth beneath the castle which is K21 26 burning me up from within or merely my hatred of the Jew? A fire K21 27 out of control on a glacial slope, the extremes of temperature K21 28 wrack and contort me to their whim. Tapping this bone this way and K21 29 that bone that, they play upon my brittle spine like a musician. We K21 30 undergo the same tortures, myself and the Jew, but it is a small K21 31 price to pay for eternal salvation. Each howl of agony that drifts K21 32 through the walls is bringing some lucky soul closer to God. I envy K21 33 them. Then I feel it, an awesome winged presence in the corridor K21 34 with me. A silent, dreadful, magnificent visitation. The Holy K21 35 Ghost?

K21 36 From somewhere in the midnight passage comes a voice. K21 37 "Who are you?"

K21 38 "Your faithful servant," I reply, and drop to K21 39 genuflect.

K21 40 "I see no servant of the God of the Cross," the K21 41 angry voice intones. "I see only ... a Jew."

K21 42 A Jew? "No, no, my Lord. Here," I tear at my K21 43 hood, but where the black crest was is a knitted skullcap. K21 44 "Here," I rip my shirt to reveal the crucifix ever upon my K21 45 heart, but in place of the penitential hairshirt is a flannel K21 46 nightgown, and beneath it a star of David.

K21 47 What a dream, what a terrible, frightening dream! I am back in K21 48 my Toledo four-poster bed, Spanish lace hanging from its carved K21 49 mahogany peaks. My red-cassocked junior brothers surround me, K21 50 praying. Their voices are sweet, and far away, beneath my chamber, K21 51 I can make out the restful undertone of the prisoners' cries. My K21 52 court physician is in attendance, bending over me, peering intently K21 53 through his gold-rimmed spectacles, attaching a leech to suck the K21 54 fevered blood from my still pulsing forehead. I try to speak, but I K21 55 have been too exhausted by my recent ordeal. Even now it is not K21 56 over, and there is something wrong about these people I think I K21 57 know so well. They are engaged in a hushed consultation, so I only K21 58 hear fragments.

K21 59 "A judgment."

K21 60 "Raving since he got home."

K21 61 "... could have happened?"

K21 62 Gradually their mellifluous Iberian accents become harsher, K21 63 more guttural. Then their words themselves grow vague, then K21 64 strange.

K21 65 "On his way home from cheder."

K21 66 "Church," I rasp to correct them.

K21 67 "It was something the blacksmith's son K21 68 said."

K21 69 "The blackness. What the blackness said."

K21 70 But they ignore me, so I scrutinize them. I catch a whiff of K21 71 something fishy. My God, protect me, the court physician smells of K21 72 herring! He is an imposter. I try to writhe from his insidious K21 73 grip, but he and his aides hold me down. Sweat springs to my K21 74 forehead, floods into my eyes, burns them with salt. I shut them K21 75 against the pain and sight of the Jew.

K21 76 It is not enough to banish the vision of treachery. Words come K21 77 through, in Yiddish. Miraculously, I understand the infidel tongue. K21 78 I reopen my eyes in wonder at their magic and in order to remember K21 79 their faces on the day of retribution.

K21 80 "Who was the last to see him?"

K21 81 A man dressed as a schoolteacher answers, "The students K21 82 all left together, but he ran ahead of the others. He often K21 83 does."

K21 84 "This wouldn't have happened if he were more K21 85 friendly."

K21 86 "So then Zevchik, the blacksmith's son, went up to him. K21 87 There were words, then a fight."

K21 88 "That Zevchik is a terror."

K21 89 "Nonsense," a new voice declares. "When haven't K21 90 young blacksmiths beat up young Jews? Zevchik is neither better nor K21 91 worse than any Pole." This speaker's face is different from K21 92 the others. It is less cared for but more caring. It is sensible, K21 93 but it is also sensitive, and despite its lowly position on a K21 94 straight-backed wooden chair in the corner it obviously commands a K21 95 great deal of respect.

K21 96 A mournful woman beside the chair sniffs, "He shouldn't K21 97 fight." Her face is soft, madonnalike, haloed by a K21 98 checkered handkerchief, but I will not allow myself to be seduced. K21 99 It smells of soap and the other domestic chores of the faithless K21 100 Jewish home.

K21 101 The schoolteacher continues: "They were pulled apart, K21 102 and he could hardly walk. Already he was crazy. So we brought him K21 103 here, and he's been like this ever since."

K21 104 The physician says: "I can find nothing drastically K21 105 wrong with him. There are bruises but they're minor." He K21 106 pulls the engorged slug off my forehead and drops it into a glass K21 107 container, which he seals. "I don't usually advocate K21 108 leeching, but in this case I thought there might be too much K21 109 pressure on the brain. It will make him weak and light-headed, K21 110 neither of which can hurt him more than his delirium."

K21 111 Delirium, they say! Just because I can see through their K21 112 pitiful masquerade they are desperate to convince me that I am mad. K21 113 Endangered, yes, insane, never. I have fallen into the hands of K21 114 Marranos, false converters, mockers of the sacrosanct baptismal K21 115 ceremony. Pretending to be good Spaniards, they are merely cowards K21 116 evading the snares of the Inquisition, secret Jews. I shall tear K21 117 their disguises from them, strip them bare, flay them, burn them, K21 118 and consecrate their ashes to the greater glory of Christ. K21 119 "Jews!" I scream at them.

K21 120 "Yes," the quiet man in the corner responds.

K21 121 "Jews! Jews!" There is no worse insult.

K21 122 "You are a Jew," he says.

K21 123 "That's a filthy, degenerate lie. I was born to a K21 124 sainted Christian woman, brought up in the household of the Lord, K21 125 and have taken my place as the father of his earthly ministry ... I K21 126 am Torquemada."

K21 127 Most everyone in the room blanches and starts back in horror. K21 128 They cannot help but accord the truly righteous a certain esteem. I K21 129 can see the effect my name has on all of them - except the one in K21 130 the corner. He seems saddened but not fazed. He says, "Then K21 131 Torquemada is a Jew."

K21 132 I spring up and at his neck. My fingers are ten wriggling K21 133 snakes reaching to sink their fangs through the soft flesh.

K21 134 He does not move to defend himself. It is the other Jews who K21 135 subdue me and tie me to the bed.

K21 136 "A dybbuk," the mystic utters.

K21 137 "No, a delirium," the rationalist maintains.

K21 138 "Who," the woman hovering by the man in the corner K21 139 pleads, "can help?"

K21 140 First it is the doctor's turn. Besides leeching me he forces me K21 141 to drink a vile liquid that tastes like tree bark. I feel it K21 142 knotting my stomach, coursing through, and purging me from within. K21 143 My pillow is drenched with sweat, but I will not succumb. When he K21 144 lays hands on me, intruding on my privacy, I must endure the K21 145 offense. Wrapped as securely as a baby in swaddling clothes, I have K21 146 only my words. "Do you not see the error of your ways, Jew? K21 147 How dare you refuse to acknowledge the divinity of the one Lord K21 148 above?"

K21 149 As this is a matter for theology, the Rabbi steps in. He is an K21 150 ugly, cantankerous old goat, a pious criminal. I can smell his K21 151 beard and rank gabardine coat. I can smell the pungent reek of his K21 152 faith, like rotting moss caught in a castle wind. "We are K21 153 the ones who recognize the one Lord," he says. "It K21 154 is you that divide him into three."

K21 155 "The Trinity, most hallowed, most ineffable of K21 156 mysteries. One in three, three in one. You cannot K21 157 understand."

K21 158 "Then how can we believe?"

K21 159 "You claim to understand your Lord, Rabbi? A minor God K21 160 he must certainly be."

K21 161 The Rabbi steps warily about this bed that imprisons me, as if K21 162 afraid that I might break loose. He explains, "No, we do K21 163 not understand our Lord. His ways are beyond human comprehension. K21 164 But we do know that he is One."

K21 165 "As is mine," I tell him. "One in K21 166 three, three in one. A mystery greater than yours. If there are two K21 167 great mysteries, must not the greater be attributed to the greater K21 168 God?"

K21 169 The Rabbi tugs at his smelly beard, then replies, "Then K21 170 why not one in five, five in one, one in a million, a million in K21 171 one, the greater the mystery ...."

K21 172 I have underestimated him. He has a point. Stalemate. I try K21 173 another tack. "And the words of Christ on the K21 174 cross?"

K21 175 "Moses in the wilderness."

K21 176 "Saint Paul."

K21 177 "Elijah."

K21 178 "Pope Innocent III."

K21 179 "The Baal Shem Tov."

K21 180 "We can banter religious authorities all night, Rabbi, K21 181 but how can you deny the lay opinion of the citizens of the world? K21 182 How can you deny their choice, which has given the community of K21 183 Christ to be fruitful and multiply while you shrivel in this Polish K21 184 backwater? How can you deny history?"

K21 185 "Truth is not a matter of majority rule. How could we K21 186 otherwise deny the words of the ancients as to the circulation of K21 187 the blood, the roundness of the earth. A minority with truth on its K21 188 side will always prevail, must always deny."

K21 189 I am exasperated. I cannot contain myself. "Your K21 190 minority is a rag-ridden, flea-bitten race of whorish, usurious, K21 191 inbreeding Christ-killers and should be exterminated."

K21 192 The Rabbi sighs, "No doubt if you have anything to say K21 193 about it, we shall."

K21 194 "Yes, I can see such a day, and not so long from now. K21 195 It will be a splendid day, bathed in light and blood. There, on the K21 196 white shore of the eternal kingdom, the good people shall be K21 197 gathered. At sea, aboard a raft as large as an ark, the total K21 198 remains of international Jewry are tied one to the other. The K21 199 angels demand an end to the pestilence. I am proud to dip my torch K21 200 to the scattered bundles of straw, which crackle and smoke until K21 201 the oils of the wood and the sinews of the flesh catch fire. The K21 202 flames mount. The last blasphemous prayers to a pagan God are K21 203 drowned by the hosannas of the righteous Christian multitude as the K21 204 final glorious auto-da-f<*_>e-acute<*/> sinks sizzling beneath the K21 205 waves. Rid forever of the Jewish contagion, it shall be a day of K21 206 universal thanksgiving and universal belief in the one true K21 207 God."

K21 208 They are mute, agape before the power of my vision. Again, it K21 209 is only the quiet man in the corner who can summon the will to K21 210 speak to me. He asks, calmly, "Are you a priest or a K21 211 prophet?"

K21 212 I could confound the doctor, refute the Rabbi, but this strange K21 213 man's soft-spoken questions are beyond my ability to scorn. I can K21 214 see the marks of my hands on his neck. I feel obligated to explain K21 215 as best I can, and I do so with surprising modesty, in a voice K21 216 almost like his. K21 217 K22 1 <#FROWN:K22\>MAUNDY

K22 2 A FEW days before Easter, Maggie's father found a man in a K22 3 sanitary lane, and took him home. All through Badminton, our K22 4 housing estate, sandy, stony sanitary lanes ran between the houses K22 5 on Edward Avenue and Henry Street and Elizabeth Crescent. They had K22 6 been built so that the night-soil men, coming like ghosts after K22 7 dark, could remove the black rubber buckets without being seen.

K22 8 Our fathers returned home from the desert war in Egypt and K22 9 Libya and began battling the bare veldt. Every weekend they K22 10 wrestled the hard, red earth into gardens. Badminton was a new K22 11 housing estate, built outside Johannesburg for returning soldiers. K22 12 Its streets were named after English kings and queens, because we K22 13 were English South Africans. The boxy new houses, with their K22 14 corrugated-iron roofs, ran down a slope to a small stream and a K22 15 copse of giant blue gums. Seven years after the war ended, soldiers K22 16 who had gone to fight against Germans had turned into gardeners in K22 17 uniform. My father worked in his Army boots. Gus Trupshaw wore a K22 18 sailor's blue shirt. Nathan Swirsky put on his leather flying K22 19 helmet when he took out his motorbike.

K22 20 Our fathers looked up from their zinnias, mopped their brows, K22 21 and said, "It's hotter down south than it was up north, K22 22 make no mistake." They cursed the African heat. They cursed K22 23 the stubborn shale that had to be broken up with picks, forked K22 24 over, sieved, spread and sweetened with rich brown earth, delivered K22 25 by Errol the topsoil man.

K22 26 They cursed the burglars. My mother said that there were swarms K22 27 of burglars hiding among the blue gum trees. They ran down the K22 28 sanitary lanes at night and slipped into the houses like greased K22 29 lightning. As I lay in bed at night, I saw the sanitary lanes K22 30 teeming with burglars and night-soil men, coming and going. Nobody K22 31 talked about the night-soil men. They came and went in our sleep, K22 32 though in the morning we caught the scent of something we wished to K22 33 forget.

K22 34 Nobody talked about Maggie, either. She lived next door and K22 35 took off all her clothes from time to time and ran around her K22 36 house. And we all pretended not to notice. She was the fastest K22 37 ten-year-old on the estate.

K22 38 My mother was next door in a flash when she saw the man working K22 39 in Maggie's garden. He wore old khaki shorts. His legs ended in K22 40 stumps, inches below the shorts, and the stumps were tied up in K22 41 sacking. He pulled himself everywhere in a red tin wagon, hauling K22 42 himself along with strong arms. His muscles were huge. The legless K22 43 man sat upon a paper bag that he had spread in the bottom of his K22 44 wagon. It read "Buy Your Brand-New Zephyr at Dominion Motors."

K22 45 "Hell's bells! What could I do? He just followed me K22 46 home," said Maggie's father. "He tells me his K22 47 name's Salisbury."

K22 48 "I don't care if he's the King of Siam," my K22 49 mother said to my father a little while later. "It's bad K22 50 enough when that little girl tears about the place in the K22 51 you-know-what, for all the world and his wife to stare. Now they K22 52 have a cripple in their garden!"

K22 53 My father was studying the annual report of the South African K22 54 Sugar Association. "Figures for 1952 show exports K22 55 up."

K22 56 "Some of us cannot lose ourselves in sugar K22 57 reports," my mother said, "Some of us have to look K22 58 life in the eye."

K22 59 "For heaven's sake, Monica," my father said. K22 60 "The poor sod's lost his legs. I'm sure he doesn't like it K22 61 any more than you do. But he's still human. Well, more or K22 62 less."

K22 63 Then Maggie appeared, running around the side of her house. K22 64 "Speak of the devil!" my mother said. Maggie was K22 65 skinny and very brown. Her bare legs flashing, round and round the K22 66 house she ran. Her dog, a Doberman called Tamburlaine, ran after K22 67 her, barking loudly.

K22 68 "Martin," said my mother, "come away from the K22 69 window. It only encourages her if you stare."

K22 70 Maggie's father was chasing her with a blanket. He caught up, K22 71 and threw it over her. Like a big gray butterfly net.

K22 72 "You'd hardly think this was Easter," said my K22 73 mother. "I don't know where to put my face."

K22 74 Salisbury sat in his red wagon, doing some weeding. K22 75 "What on earth do you think is going through his K22 76 head?" my mother demanded. "That little girl might K22 77 be less keen to parade in the altogether if she knew what was going K22 78 through his head."

K22 79 "I see that Henry's been planting out beardless K22 80 irises," said my father. "The beardless iris loves K22 81 a sunny spot and a good bit of wall."

K22 82 "Heavens above, where will it all end?" my K22 83 mother asked. "Our neighbors have a cripple in their K22 84 garden. Easter is almost on us. There are burglars in the blue K22 85 gums. Soon the streets will be full of servants. Did you know that K22 86 they've taken to asking for Easter boxes? First Christmas boxes, K22 87 now Easter boxes. I suppose they'll be asking for Michaelmas boxes K22 88 next. Dressed to the nines, some of them. And worse for K22 89 wear."

K22 90 I went to bed that night and thought about the burglars down K22 91 among the blue gums that grew thickly across the road from the big K22 92 houses in Edward Avenue. All over Badminton our fathers, home from K22 93 the war, slept with their Army-issue pistols in their sock drawers, K22 94 ready at any moment to rush naked into the African night, blasting K22 95 away. The burglars were said to creep up on the houses and cast K22 96 fishing lines through the burglar bars to hook wallets and handbags K22 97 from our bedrooms.

K22 98 We all believed in the burglars. Everyone except for Ruthie K22 99 Swirsky, the chemist's new wife. But she was English, from K22 100 Wimbledon. Swirsky had travelled to Europe and brought her home K22 101 with him. "Burglars with fishing rods," Ruthie K22 102 Swirsky said to my father just after she moved to the estate. K22 103 "I've never heard of anything so absurd. Pull the other K22 104 one, Gordon."

K22 105 "Pull the other what?" my mother wanted to know K22 106 later.

K22 107 "How would I know, Monica?" said my father. K22 108 "Leg, I suppose."

K22 109 "Whatever she had in mind, it wasn't a leg," K22 110 said my mother.

K22 111 "Whatever she had in mind, it wasn't a leg!" K22 112 sang my friends Tony, Sally, and Eric, and I as we rolled down the K22 113 steep, grassy banks in Tony's garden that Eastertime in K22 114 Badminton.

K22 115 FOR the rest of the holiday, nothing much seemed likely to K22 116 happen. The days looming ahead were too hot somehow, even though we K22 117 were well into autumn. Our fathers worked in their gardens tending K22 118 to their petunias and phlox and chrysanthemums. They sprayed their K22 119 rosebushes against black spot, moving in the thick clouds of lime K22 120 sulfur like refugees from a gas attack in the trenches.

K22 121 Ernest Langbein had fallen in love with Maggie. Ernest was an K22 122 altar server at the church of the Resurrection in Cyrildene, and he K22 123 told Eric that if only Maggie would stop taking off her clothes, K22 124 their love might be possible. Maggie was not easy to get on with. K22 125 When she had no clothes on, she wasn't really there. And when she K22 126 was dressed she was inclined to make savage remarks. I met her in K22 127 Swirsky's Pharmacy on Maundy Thursday. She wore a blue dress with K22 128 thick black stockings. Her brown, pixie face was shaded by a big K22 129 white panama hat, tied beneath her chin with thick elastic. I was K22 130 wearing shorts. I'd never seen her look so covered up. She looked K22 131 at my bare feet and said, "You have hammertoes, K22 132 Martin." It seemed very unfair.

K22 133 We were standing behind the wall of blue magnesia bottles which K22 134 Swirsky built across his shop on festive occasions, like Christmas K22 135 and Easter. We heard Ruthie Swirsky say to Mrs. Raubenheimer of the K22 136 Jewish Old Age Home across the road, "I'm collecting Maundy K22 137 money. It's an Easter custom we have in England. The Royal Mint K22 138 makes its own money, and the Queen gives it to pensioners and K22 139 suchlike. The deserving poor. In a special purse."

K22 140 Mrs. Raubenheimer said that those who could afford it could K22 141 afford it. Swirsky came around the magnesia wall and grinned at us. K22 142 He crackled in his starched white coat. His mustache was full and K22 143 yet feathery beneath his nose. Black feathers, it was. K22 144 "Well, kiddies," he said. "Can I count on K22 145 you? Pocket money is welcome for Ruthie's Maundy box. What Ruthie K22 146 wants she usually gets." He rattled a black wooden K22 147 collection box.

K22 148 My mother said, "It's appalling. The Swirsky's aren't K22 149 even Easter people. The Queen of England does not live on an estate K22 150 infested with burglars. Have you seen the collection box Ruthie K22 151 Swirsky's using? I happen to know that it belongs to St. John's K22 152 Ambulance. She simply turned it around so you can't see the K22 153 badge."

K22 154 "If you're going to divide the world into those who are K22 155 and those who are not Easter people." said my father, K22 156 "you may as well go and join the government. They do it all K22 157 the time."

K22 158 "I have no intention," said my mother, K22 159 "of joining the government."

K22 160 All the kids gave to Ruthie Swirsky's Maundy-money box. We K22 161 collected empty soft-drink bottles and got back a penny deposit K22 162 down at the Greek Tea Room. Swirsky shook the box until our pennies K22 163 rattled. "Give till it hurts," he said. K22 164 "Baby needs new booties."

K22 165 A deputation arrived at the pharmacy. Gus Trupshaw had been K22 166 elected to speak for the estate. He wore his demob suit and brown K22 167 Army boots with well-polished toes. He said that everyone objected K22 168 to the idea of Ruthie's giving away money to the servants. What K22 169 would they expect next Easter? It might be difficult for an English K22 170 person to understand. But the cleaners, cooks, and gardenersof K22 171 Badminton got board and lodging and wages. "They might be K22 172 poor," Gus Trupshaw explained, "but they're not K22 173 deserving."

K22 174 "Are you telling me I may not give my Maundy money to K22 175 whomsoever I choose?" Ruthie asked, her face white beneath K22 176 her red hair, "This is outrageous."

K22 177 "This isn't Wimbledon." said Gus Trupshaw. K22 178 "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

K22 179 Swirsky leaned over to us and whispered. "When you're K22 180 next in Rome, I can recommend the Trevi fountain. But watch out for K22 181 pickpockets."

K22 182 Ruthie Swirsky tapped the black collection box with her finger K22 183 after Gus Trupshaw left. She told Swirsky she was so mad she could K22 184 spit. She asked him to find Errol the topsoil man. "Tell K22 185 him I have a job for his wheelbarrow."

K22 186 Later, it was my mother who spotted Errol wheeling his barrow K22 187 into the yard next door. "There appears to be some movement K22 188 at the neighbors'. I think I'll go and lie down," she K22 189 said.

K22 190 Errol stopped beside Salisbury with his wheelbarrow. He laid K22 191 the paper bag from Dominion Motors on the floor of the barrow and K22 192 lifted Salisbury out of his wagon. Then he set off up Henry Street, K22 193 wheeling Salisbury, with my friend Sally, her brother Tony, Eric, K22 194 and me tagging along behind them.

K22 195 We heard the iron wheels scattering gravel in Henry Street.

K22 196 "Where are we goings?" Salisbury asked Errol in K22 197 a deep, growling voice.

K22 198 "Boss Swirsky's place. Sit still and don't make any K22 199 trouble." Errol maneuvered the barrow right up to the front K22 200 door of Swirsky's Pharmacy. Papas, the owner of the Greek Tea Room, K22 201 and Mr. Benjamin, the Rug Doctor, came out of their shops to stare. K22 202 A couple of ladies from the Jewish Old Age Home also stopped to K22 203 watch. Ruthie Swirsky came out of the pharmacy. Nathan was next to K22 204 her. There was sun on his mustache, and it looked as if it had been K22 205 dipped in oil. Swirsky carried the collection box. He held it K22 206 carefully, as if it were a baby, and his face when he looked at K22 207 Ruthie was soft and loving. A crowd of cleaners, cooks, and K22 208 gardeners gathered across the road. They looked angry. K22 209 "I hear you're a poor man, Salisbury," said K22 210 Ruthie. "So I've decided to help you."

K22 211 "Yes, Madam," said Salisbury.

K22 212 "I hope you're not going to leave him there all day, K22 213 Mrs. Swirsky," said Mrs. Raubenheimer. K22 214 K22 215 K23 1 <#FROWN:K23\>"Trash like the other trash. Pissako or K23 2 some other bluffer."

K23 3 "Who is this Pissako?"

K23 4 Out of somewhere materialized Reuben Kazarsky, who said, K23 5 "That's what he calls Picasso."

K23 6 "What's the difference? They're all fakers," K23 7 Max Flederbush said. "My wife, may she rest in peace, was K23 8 the expert, not me."

K23 9 Kazarsky winked at me and smiled. He had been my friend even K23 10 back in Poland. He had written a half-dozen Yiddish comedies, but K23 11 they had all failed. He had published a collection of vignettes, K23 12 but the critics had torn it to shreds and he had stopped writing. K23 13 He had come to America in 1939 and later had married a widow 20 K23 14 years older than he. The widow died and Kazarsky inherited her K23 15 money. He hung around rich people. He dyed his hair and dressed in K23 16 corduroy jackets and hand-painted ties. He declared his love to K23 17 every woman from 15 to 75. Kazarsky was in his 60s, but he looked K23 18 no more than 50. He let his hair grow long and wore side whiskers. K23 19 His black eyes reflected the mockery and abnegation of one who has K23 20 broken with everything and everybody. In the cafeteria on the Lower K23 21 East Side, he excelled at mimicking writers, rabbis and party K23 22 leaders. He boasted of his talents as a sponger. Reuben Kazarsky K23 23 suffered from hypochondria and because he was by nature a sexual K23 24 philanthropist, he had convinced himself that he was impotent. We K23 25 were friends, but he had never introduced me to his benefactors. It K23 26 seemed that Max Flederbush had insisted that Reuben bring us K23 27 together. He now complained to me:

K23 28 "Where do you hide yourself? I've asked Reuben again K23 29 and again to get us together, but according to him, you were always K23 30 in Europe, in Israel or who knows where. All of a sudden, it comes K23 31 out that you're in Miami Beach. I'm in such a state that I can't be K23 32 alone for a minute. The moment I'm alone, I'm overcome by a gloom K23 33 that's worse than madness. This fine apartment you see here turns K23 34 suddenly into a funeral parlor. Sometimes I think that the real K23 35 heroes aren't those who get medals in wartime but the bachelors who K23 36 live out their years alone."

K23 37 "Do you have a bathroom in this palace?" I K23 38 asked.

K23 39 "More than one, more than two, more than K23 40 three," Max answered. He took my arm and led me to a K23 41 bathroom that bedazzled me by its size and elegance. The lid of the K23 42 toilet seat was transparent, set with semiprecious stones and a K23 43 two-dollar bill implanted within it. Facing the mirror hung a K23 44 picture of a little boy urinating in an arc while a little girl K23 45 looked on admiringly. When I lifted the toilet-seat lid, music K23 46 began to play. After a while, I stepped out onto the balcony that K23 47 looked directly out to sea. The rays of the setting sun scampered K23 48 over the waves. Gulls still hunted for fish. Far off in the K23 49 distance, on the edge of the horizon, a ship swayed. On the beach, K23 50 I spotted some animal that from my vantage point, 16 floors high, K23 51 appeared like a calf or a huge dog. But it couldn't be a dog and K23 52 what would a calf be doing in Miami Beach? Suddenly, the shape K23 53 straightened up and turned out to be a woman in a long bathrobe K23 54 digging for clams in the sand.

K23 55 After a while, Kazarsky joined me on the balcony. He said, K23 56 "That's Miami. It wasn't he but his wife who chased after K23 57 all these trinkets. She was the businesslady and the boss at home. K23 58 On the other hand, he isn't quite the idle dreamer he pretends to K23 59 be. He has an uncanny knack for making money. They dealt in K23 60 everything - buildings, lots stocks, diamonds, and eventually she K23 61 got involved in art, too. When he said buy, she bought; and when he K23 62 said sell, she sold. When she showed him a painting, he'd glance at K23 63 it, spit and say, "It's junk, they'll snatch it out of your K23 64 hands. Buy!" Whatever they touched turned to money. They K23 65 flew to Israel, established Yeshivas and donated prizes toward all K23 66 kinds of endeavors - cultural, religious. Naturally, they wrote it K23 67 all off in taxes. Their daughter, that pampered brat, was K23 68 half-crazy. Any complex you can find in Freud, Jung and Adler, she K23 69 had it. She was born in a DP camp in Germany. Her parents wanted K23 70 her to marry a chief rabbi or an Israeli prime minister. But she K23 71 fell in love with a gentile, an archaeology professor with a wife K23 72 and five children. His wife wouldn't divorce him and she had to be K23 73 bought off with a quarter-million-dollar settlement and a K23 74 fantastic alimony besides. Four weeks after the wedding, the K23 75 professor left to dig for a new Peking man. K23 76 <}_><-|>he<+|>He<}/>drank like a fish. It was he who was drunk, not K23 77 the truck driver. Come, you'll soon see something!"

K23 78 Kazarsky opened the door to the living room and it was filled K23 79 with people. In one day, Max Flederbush had managed to arrange a K23 80 party. Not all the guests could fit into the large living room. K23 81 Kazarsky and Max Flederbush led me from room to room and the party K23 82 was going on all over. Within minutes, maybe 200 people had K23 83 gathered, mostly women. It was a fashion show of jewelry, dresses, K23 84 pants, caftans, hairdos, shoes, bags, make-up, as well as men's K23 85 jackets, shirts and ties. Spotlights illuminated every painting. K23 86 Waiters served drinks. Black and white maids offered trays of hors K23 87 d'oeuvres.

K23 88 In all this commotion, I could scarcely hear what was being K23 89 said to me. The compliments started, the handshakes and the kisses. K23 90 A stout lady seized me around and pressed me to her enormous bosom. K23 91 She shouted into my ear, "I read you! I come from the towns K23 92 you describe. My grandfather came here from Ishishok. He was a K23 93 wagon driver there and here in America, he went into the freight K23 94 business. If my parents wanted to say something I wouldn't K23 95 understand, they spoke Yiddish, and that's how I learned a little K23 96 of the language."

K23 97 I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My face was smeared K23 98 with lipstick. Even as I stood there, trying to wipe it off, I K23 99 received all kinds of proposals. A cantor offered to set one of my K23 100 stories to music. A musician demanded I adapt an opera libretto K23 101 from one of my novels. A president of an adult-education program K23 102 invited me to speak a year hence at his synagogue. I would be given K23 103 a plaque. A young man with hair down to his shoulders asked that I K23 104 recommend a publisher, or at least an agent, to him. He declared, K23 105 "I must create. This is a physical need with K23 106 me."

K23 107 One minute all the rooms were full, the next - all the guests K23 108 were gone, leaving only Reuben Kazarsky and myself. Just as quickly K23 109 and efficiently, the help cleaned up the leftover food and K23 110 half-drunk cocktails, dumped all the ashtrays and replaced all the K23 111 chairs in their rightful places. I had never before witnessed such K23 112 perfection. Out of somewhere, Max Flederbush dug out a white tie K23 113 with gold polka dots and put it on.

K23 114 He said, "Time for dinner."

K23 115 "I ate so much I haven't the least appetite," I K23 116 said.

K23 117 "You must have dinner with us, I reserved a table at K23 118 the best restaurant in Miami."

K23 119 After a while, the three of us, Max Flederbush, Reuben Kazarsky K23 120 and I, got into the Cadillac and the same chauffeur drove us. Night K23 121 had fallen and I no longer saw nor tried to determine where I was K23 122 being taken. We drove for only a few minutes and pulled up in front K23 123 of a hotel resplendent with lights and uniformed attendants. One K23 124 opened the car door ceremoniously, a second fawningly opened the K23 125 glass front door. The lobby of this hotel wasn't merely K23 126 supercolossal but supersupercolossal - complete to light effects, K23 127 tropical plants in huge planters, vases, sculptures, a parrot in a K23 128 cage. We were escorted into a nearly dark hall and greeted by a K23 129 headwaiter who was expecting us and led us to our reserved table. K23 130 He bowed and scraped, seemingly overcome with joy that we had K23 131 arrived safely. Soon, another individual came up. Both men wore K23 132 tuxedos, patent-leather shoes, bow ties and ruffled shirts. They K23 133 looked to me like twins. They spoke with foreign accents that I K23 134 suspected weren't genuine. A lengthy discussion evolved concerning K23 135 our choice of foods and drinks. When the two heard I was a K23 136 vegetarian, they looked at each other in chagrin, but only for a K23 137 second. Soon they assured me they would serve me the best dish a K23 138 vegetarian had ever tasted. One took our orders and the other wrote K23 139 them down. Max Flederbush announced in his broken English that he K23 140 really wasn't hungry, but if something tempting could be dredged up K23 141 for him, he was prepared to give it a try. He interjected Yiddish K23 142 expressions, but the two waiters apparently understood him. He gave K23 143 precise instructions on how to roast his fish and prepare his K23 144 vegetables. He specified spices and seasonings. Reuben Kazarsky K23 145 ordered a steak and what I was to get, which in plain English was a K23 146 fruit salad with cottage cheese.

K23 147 When the two men finally left, Max Flederbush said, K23 148 "There were times if you would have told me I'd be sitting K23 149 in such a place eating such food, I would have considered it a K23 150 joke. I had one fantasy - one time before I died to get enough dry K23 151 bread to fill me. Suddenly, I'm a rich man, alas, and people dance K23 152 attendance on me. Well, but flesh and blood isn't fated to enjoy K23 153 any rest. The angels in heaven are jealous, Satan is the accuser K23 154 and the Almighty is easily convinced. He nurses a longtime K23 155 resentment against us Jews. He still can't forgive the fact that K23 156 our great-great-grandfathers worshiped the golden calf. Let's have K23 157 our picture taken."

K23 158 A man with a camera materialized. "Smile!" he K23 159 ordered us.

K23 160 Max Flederbush tried to smile. One eye laughed, the other K23 161 cried. Reuben Kazarsky began to twinkle. I didn't even make the K23 162 effort. The photographer said he was going to develop the film and K23 163 that he'd be back in three quarters of an hour.

K23 164 Max Flederbush asked, "What was I talking about, eh? K23 165 Yes. I live in apparent luxury, but a woe upon this luxury. As rich K23 166 and as elegant as the house is, it's also a Gehenna. I'll tell you K23 167 something; in a certain sense, it's worse here than in the camps. K23 168 There, at least, we all hoped. A hundred times a day we comforted K23 169 ourselves with the fact that the Hitler madness couldn't go on for K23 170 long. When we heard the sound of an airplane, we thought the K23 171 invasion had started. We were all young then and our whole lives K23 172 were before us. Rarely did anyone commit suicide. Here, hundreds of K23 173 people sit, waiting for death. A week doesn't go by that someone K23 174 doesn't give up the ghost. They're all rich. The men have K23 175 accumulated fortunes, turned worlds upside down, maybe swindled to K23 176 get there. Now they don't know what to do with their money. They're K23 177 all on diets. There is no one to dress for. Outside of the K23 178 financial page in the newspaper, they read nothing. As soon as they K23 179 finish their breakfasts, they start playing cards. Can you play K23 180 cards forever? They have to, or die from boredom. When they get K23 181 tired of playing, they start slandering one another. Bitter feuds K23 182 are waged. Today they elect a president, the next day they try to K23 183 impeach him. If he decides to move a chair in the lobby, a K23 184 revolution breaks out. There is one touch of consolation for them - K23 185 the mail. An hour before the postman is due, the lobby is crowded. K23 186 They stand with their keys in hand, waiting like for the Messiah. K23 187 If the postman is late, a hubbub erupts. If one opens his mailbox K23 188 and it's empty, he starts to grope and burrow inside, trying to K23 189 create something out of thin air. K23 190 K24 1 <#FROWN:K24\>He heard the rabbi strike a match and it flared K24 2 momentarily, casting shadows of candles and chairs amid the empty K24 3 chairs in the room.

K24 4 "Look now in the mirror."

K24 5 "I'm looking."

K24 6 "What do you see?"

K24 7 "Nothing."

K24 8 "Look with your eyes."

K24 9 A silver candelabrum, first with three, then five, then seven K24 10 burning bony candlesticks, appeared like ghostly hands with flaming K24 11 fingertips in the oval mirror. The heat of it hit Albert in the K24 12 face and for a moment he was stunned.

K24 13 But recalling the games of his childhood, he thought, who's K24 14 kidding who? It's one of those illusion things I remember from when K24 15 I was a kid. In that case I'm getting the hell out of here. I can K24 16 stand maybe mystery but not magic tricks or dealing with a K24 17 rabbinical magician.

K24 18 The candelabrum had vanished, although not its light, and he K24 19 now saw the rabbi's somber face in the glass, his gaze addressing K24 20 him. Albert glanced quickly around to see of anyone was standing at K24 21 his shoulder, but nobody was. Where the rabbi was hiding at the K24 22 moment the teacher did not know; but in the lit glass appeared his K24 23 old man's lined and shrunken face, his sad eyes, compelling, K24 24 inquisitive, weary, perhaps even frightened, as though they had K24 25 seen more than they had cared to but were still looking.

K24 26 What's this, slides or home movies? Albert sought some source K24 27 of projection but saw no ray of light from wall or ceiling, nor K24 28 object or image that might be reflected by the mirror.

K24 29 The rabbi's eyes glowed like sun-filled clouds. A moon rose in K24 30 the blue sky. The teacher dared not move, afraid to discover he was K24 31 unable to. He then beheld a shining crown on the rabbi's head.

K24 32 It had appeared at first like a braided mother-of-pearl turban, K24 33 then had luminously become - like an intricate star in the night K24 34 sky - a silver crown, constructed of bars, triangles, half-moons K24 35 and crescents, spires, turrets, trees, points of spears; as though K24 36 a wild storm had swept them up from the earth and flung them K24 37 together in its vortex, twisted into a single glowing interlocked K24 38 sculpture, a forest of disparate objects.

K24 39 The sight in the ghostly mirror, a crown of rare beauty - very K24 40 impressive, Albert thought - lasted no longer than five short K24 41 seconds, then the reflecting glass by degrees turned dark and K24 42 empty.

K24 43 The shades were up. The single bulb in a frosted lily fixture K24 44 on the ceiling shone harshly in the room. It was night.

K24 45 The old rabbi sat, exhausted, on the broken sofa.

K24 46 "So you saw it?"

K24 47 "I saw something."

K24 48 "You believe what you saw - the crown?"

K24 49 "I believe I saw. Anyway, I'll take it."

K24 50 The rabbi gazed at him blankly.

K24 51 "I mean I agree to have the crown made," Albert K24 52 said, having to clear his throat.

K24 53 "Which size?"

K24 54 "Which size was the one I saw?"

K24 55 "Both sizes. This is the same design for both sizes, K24 56 but there is more silver and also more blessings for the $986 K24 57 size."

K24 58 "But didn't you say that the design for my father's K24 59 crown, because of the special nature of his illness, would have a K24 60 different style, plus some special blessings?"

K24 61 The rabbi nodded. "This comes also in two sizes - the K24 62 $401 and $986."

K24 63 The teacher hesitated a split second. "Make it the big K24 64 one," he said decisively.

K24 65 He had his wallet in his hand and counted out fifteen new bills K24 66 - nine one hundreds, four twenties, a five, and a single - adding K24 67 to $986.

K24 68 Putting on his glasses, the rabbi hastily counted the money, K24 69 snapping with thumb and forefinger each crisp bill as though to be K24 70 sure none had stuck together. He folded the stiff paper and thrust K24 71 the wad into his pants pocket.

K24 72 "Could I have a receipt?"

K24 73 "I would like to give you a receipt," said K24 74 Rabbi Lifschitz earnestly, "but for the crowns there are no K24 75 receipts. Some things are not a business."

K24 76 "If money is exchanged, why not?"

K24 77 "God will not allow. My father did not give receipts K24 78 and also my grandfather."

K24 79 "How can I prove I paid you if something goes K24 80 wrong?"

K24 81 "You have my word, nothing will go wrong."

K24 82 "Yes, but suppose something unforeseen did," K24 83 Albert insisted, "would you return the cash?"

K24 84 "Here is your cash," said the rabbi, handing K24 85 the teacher the packet of folded bills.

K24 86 "Never mind," said Albert hastily. K24 87 "Could you tell me when the crown will be K24 88 ready?"

K24 89 "Tomorrow night before Shabbes, the latest."

K24 90 "So soon?"

K24 91 "Your father is dying."

K24 92 "That's right, but the crown looks like a pretty K24 93 intricate piece of work to put together out of all those odd K24 94 pieces."

K24 95 "We will hurry."

K24 96 "I wouldn't want you to rush the job in any way that K24 97 would - let's say - prejudice the potency of the crown, or for that K24 98 matter, in any way impair the quality of it as I saw it in the K24 99 mirror - or however I saw it."

K24 100 Down came the rabbi's eyelid, quickly raised without a sign of K24 101 self-consciousness. "Mr. Gans, all my crowns are K24 102 first-class jobs. About this you got nothing to worry K24 103 about."

K24 104 They then shook hands. Albert, still assailed by doubts, K24 105 stepped into the corridor. He felt he did not, in essence, trust K24 106 the rabbi; and suspected that Rabbi Lifschitz knew it and did not, K24 107 in essence, trust him.

K24 108 Rifkele, panting like a cow for a bull, let him out the front K24 109 door, perfectly.

K24 110 In the subway, Albert figured he would call it an investment in K24 111 experience and see what came of it. Education costs money, but how K24 112 else can you get it? He pictured the crown, as he had seen it, K24 113 established on the rabbi's head, and then seemed to remember that K24 114 as he had stared at the man's shifty face in the mirror the K24 115 thickened lid of his right eye had slowly dropped into a full wink. K24 116 Did he recall this in truth, or was he seeing in his mind's eye and K24 117 transposing into the past something that had happened just before K24 118 he left the house? What does he mean by his wink? - not only is he K24 119 a fake but he kids you? Uneasy once more, the teacher clearly K24 120 remembered, when he was staring into the rabbi's fish eyes in the K24 121 glass, after which they had lit in visionary light, that he had K24 122 fought a hunger to sleep; and the next thing there's the sight of K24 123 the old boy, as though on the television screen, wearing this K24 124 high-hat magic crown.

K24 125 Albert, rising, cried, "Hypnosis! The bastard magician K24 126 hypnotized me! He never did produce a silver crown, it's out of my K24 127 imagination - I've been suckered!"

K24 128 He was outraged by the knavery, hypocrisy, fat nerve of Rabbi K24 129 Jonas Lifschitz. The concept of a curative crown, if he had ever K24 130 for a moment believed in it, crumbled in his brain and all he could K24 131 think of were 986 blackbirds flying in the sky. As three curious K24 132 passengers watched, Albert bolted out of the car at the next stop, K24 133 rushed up the stairs, hurried across the street, then cooled his K24 134 impatient heels for twenty-two minutes till the next train K24 135 clattered into the station, and he rode back to the stop near the K24 136 rabbi's house. Though he banged with both fists on the door, kicked K24 137 at it, 'rang' the useless bell until his thumb was blistered, the K24 138 boxlike wooden house, including dilapidated synagogue store, was K24 139 dark, monumentally starkly still, like a gigantic, slightly tilted K24 140 tombstone in a vast graveyard; and in the end unable to arouse a K24 141 soul, the teacher, long past midnight, had to head home.

K24 142 He awoke next morning cursing the rabbi and his own stupidity K24 143 for having got involved with a faith healer. This is what happens K24 144 when a man - even for a minute - surrenders his true beliefs. There K24 145 are less punishing ways to help the dying. Albert considered K24 146 calling the cops but had no receipt and did not want to appear that K24 147 much a fool. He was tempted, for the first time in six years of K24 148 teaching, to phone in sick; then take a cab to the rabbi's house K24 149 and demand the return of his cash. The thought agitated him. On the K24 150 other hand, suppose Rabbi Lifschitz was seriously at work K24 151 assembling the crown with his helper; on which, let's say, after he K24 152 had bought the silver and paid the retired jeweler for his work, he K24 153 made, let's say, a hundred bucks clear profit - not so very much; K24 154 and there really was a silver crown, and the rabbi sincerely K24 155 and religiously believed it would reverse the course of his K24 156 father's illness? Although nervously disturbed by his suspicions, K24 157 Albert felt he had better not get the police into the act too soon, K24 158 because the crown wasn't promised - didn't the old gent say - until K24 159 before the Sabbath, which gave him till sunset tonight.

K24 160 If he produces the thing by then, I have no case against him K24 161 even if it's a piece of junk. So I better wait. But what a dope I K24 162 was to order the $986 job instead of the $401. On that decision K24 163 alone I lost $585.

K24 164 After a distracted day's work Albert taxied to the rabbi's K24 165 house and tried to rouse him, even hallooing at the blank windows K24 166 facing the street; but either nobody was home or they were both K24 167 hiding, the rabbi under the broken sofa, Rifkele trying to shove K24 168 her bulk under a bathtub. Albert decided to wait them out. Soon the K24 169 old boy would have to leave the house to step into the shul on K24 170 Friday night. He would speak to him, warn him to come clean. But K24 171 the sun set; dusk settled on the earth; and though the autumn stars K24 172 and a sliver of moon gleamed in the sky, the house was dark, shades K24 173 drawn; and no Rabbi Lifschitz emerged. Lights had gone on in the K24 174 little shul, candles were lit. It occurred to Albert, with chagrin, K24 175 that the rabbi might be already worshipping; he might all this time K24 176 have been in the synagogue.

K24 177 The teacher entered the long, brightly lit store. On yellow K24 178 folding chairs scattered around the room sat a dozen men holding K24 179 worn prayer books, praying. The Rabbi A. Marcus, a middle-aged man K24 180 with a high voice and a short reddish beard, was dovening at the K24 181 Ark, his back to the congregation.

K24 182 As Albert entered and embarrassedly searched from face to face, K24 183 the congregants stared at him. The old rabbi was not among them. K24 184 Disappointed, the teacher withdrew.

K24 185 A man sitting by the door touched his sleeve.

K24 186 "Stay awhile and read with us."

K24 187 "Excuse me, I'd like to but I'm looking for a K24 188 friend."

K24 189 "Look," said the man, "maybe you'll find K24 190 him."

K24 191 Albert waited across the street under a chestnut tree losing K24 192 its leaves. He waited patiently - till tomorrow if he had to.

K24 193 Shortly after nine the lights went out in the synagogue and the K24 194 last of the worshippers left for home. The red-bearded rabbi then K24 195 emerged with his key in his hand to lock the store door.

K24 196 "Excuse me, rabbi," said Albert, approaching. K24 197 "Are you acquainted with Rabbi Jonas Lifschitz, who lives K24 198 upstairs with his daughter Rifkele - if she is his K24 199 daughter?"

K24 200 "He used to come here," said the rabbi with a K24 201 small smile, "but since he retired he prefers a big K24 202 synagogue on Mosholu Parkway, a palace."

K24 203 "Will he be home soon, do you think?"

K24 204 "Maybe in an hour. It's Shabbat, he must K24 205 walk."

K24 206 "Do you - ah - happen to know anything about his work K24 207 on silver crowns?"

K24 208 "What kind of silver crowns?"

K24 209 "To assist the sick, the dying?"

K24 210 "No," said the rabbi, locking the shul door, pocketing K24 211 the key, and hurrying away.

K24 212 The teacher, eating his heart, waited under the chestnut tree K24 213 till past midnight, all the while urging himself to give up and go K24 214 home, but unable to unstick the glue of his frustration and rage. K24 215 Then shortly before 1 A.M. he saw some shadows moving and two K24 216 people drifting up the shadow-encrusted street. One was the old K24 217 rabbi, in a new caftan and snappy black Homburg, walking tiredly. K24 218 Rifkele, in sexy yellow mini, exposing to above the big-bone knees K24 219 her legs like poles, walked lightly behind him, stopping to strike K24 220 her ears with her hands. K24 221 K25 1 <#FROWN:K25\>JOHANNA KAPLAN

K25 2 Sickness

K25 3 In books, radiators hum and sing; in my house, the radiator K25 4 howls and yelps as if a baby were locked up in it, an angry baby K25 5 who, though he cries and cries, still does not bring his mother K25 6 running. Not that she isn't longing to. But there is an older K25 7 neighbor around or an aunt maybe, and her philosophy is: He's K25 8 crying? So he'll cry! And the baby in the radiator - how can he K25 9 know all this? So he sends up a last, raging yowl and I am woken K25 10 up.

K25 11 Here, in the brief, early whitish light, the march of neighbors K25 12 has already begun. For even though it is barely morning of my first K25 13 day home from school, the news of a sick child has shuttled through K25 14 the building like steam through the pipes, and my mother's voice K25 15 rises from the kitchen in bitterness.

K25 16 "What's a doctor? He sits and sits studying long enough K25 17 so that finally in one place his bathrobe wears out."

K25 18 It is not a question now of tissues and aspirins, of swollen K25 19 glands or a throat that won't swallow. This time it is serious: K25 20 Lichtblau, the limping Golem with MD on his license plate, has K25 21 made a housecall. Dragging one heavy foot behind the other, he has K25 22 announced measles and a high fever, and in a stingy mumble as dull K25 23 as the one that sends black years to the Irish kids on his new K25 24 Buick in the street, he has even mentioned the possibility of K25 25 hospital. But this doesn't worry me because what's a hospital? One, K25 26 nurses: quick-stepping, white-clad girls whose heads are all blond K25 27 and faces shiksa-silly. And two, doctors: bald, heavy K25 28 men, sad-eyed and Jewish, who walk slowly on dragging legs, their K25 29 bodies wrapped up in old maroon bathrobes, shamefully all worn away K25 30 in one spot.

K25 31 What would I do in a place like that? Where would I keep my K25 32 glass of sweet, lukewarm tea that sits, whenever I am sick, like K25 33 lightened liquid honey on a folding chair by my bed? Where would I K25 34 put all my books? Where would I get my neighbor stories? As I lie K25 35 back against the pillow, my room flies up before me like an airy, K25 36 pastel balloon. From the window, slats of sunlight sift in, K25 37 off-spinning ballerina twins to the clumsy elephant slats of the K25 38 fire escape: the sun is playing a game of potsy on the linoleum. K25 39 Hopping each time to a different cone of color, the sun has zoned K25 40 my floor so that it's a country counter of homemade, fruit-flavored K25 41 ice creams, or else great clean pails of paint from which I can K25 42 choose new, sweet, custardy colors and order the painter to paint K25 43 my room.

K25 44 Outside, other children's feet thump off to school. Some are K25 45 shouting: they just got to the corner, shoelaces dragging, and now, K25 46 for spite, the light is changing. And some are crying: people with K25 47 bad work habits, maybe they forgot their consent slips or their gym K25 48 suits, and because it's too late now to go back, the crying buttons K25 49 them into their stormcoats even tighter and their whole bodies K25 50 knead with what's coming. But I am inside, I am home, and sickness K25 51 is all pleasure.

K25 52 "Some tremendous achievement," my mother says, K25 53 and from the kitchen her voice in anger and sourness closes in on K25 54 itself till it's black, black as the telephone, a mother jungle - K25 55 steamy from her tears and sour from her breath. If she listened to K25 56 me, she'd be completely different, even wear nail polish, but if K25 57 that's what I'm looking for, she says, what I better do is go out K25 58 and get myself another mother. As it is, though, the one I have K25 59 plucks pinfeathers out of a chicken, and because her fingers get K25 60 clumsy and impatient instead of elegant and neat, the knife point K25 61 nips them so they bleed a thin, crooked trail that maps out spongy K25 62 yellow Chickenland: a bridge across the legs, a mountain pass to K25 63 the wings, and all the way back through to the interior where the K25 64 tiny stomach and liver lie hiding together, breathing like K25 65 brothers.

K25 66 "Some tremendous achievement," she tells K25 67 Birdie. "To sit and sit and study and study and nowhere in K25 68 the whole process is there a head that comes into it or a brain K25 69 that's involved. In medical school the big expense is in K25 70 bathrobes."

K25 71 Birdie is puffy-brown and stuffed, the awful splendor of a K25 72 Florida suntan. Her voice too is bleached - thin and hard from the K25 73 sun and sandy from cigarettes. With aqua earrings, an orange dress K25 74 and two orange-painted big toes that pop out from aqua open-toe K25 75 shoes, Birdie is herself a sunstroke.

K25 76 "Let's face it, Manya," she tells my mother. K25 77 "You'll never get satisfaction. A Jewish doctor is a Jewish K25 78 prince."

K25 79 A Jewish prince! Joseph Nasi, Joseph the prince ...

K25 80 The chamber was thick with incense and plush with silken K25 81 pillows. In the distance a droning voice was chanting the name of K25 82 Allah, summoning the faithful to prayer. But within the richly K25 83 adorned room not even a palm frond dared stir, for in the center, K25 84 seated upon the largest and most sumptuous silken pillow of them K25 85 all, was the Sultan himself, brocade pantaloons loose about his K25 86 legs and a gleaming scimitar at his waist. Behind him stood his K25 87 fierce, mustachioed guards, before him veiled and scented dancing K25 88 girls. All awaited his pleasure and command. Beneath the imperial K25 89 turban, however, the Sultan's heavy brow was clouded and his K25 90 darkened visage bespoke distress. Besides all this, he was very K25 91 ugly, had a fat, puffy face as if mosquitoes couldn't keep away K25 92 from him. With a soft rustle of silks, a graceful, veiled maiden K25 93 appeared before him, bearing a silver tray of sweetmeats. But K25 94 barely raising one languid hand, the Sultan sent her away. On hot K25 95 days, sweetmeats probably made him a little nauseous. A richly K25 96 garbed courtier bowed low before him.

K25 97 "Sire," he said, "an emissary just arrived from K25 98 the mighty King of Spain urgently begs that Your Majesty receive K25 99 him." But bidding him rise, the Sultan merely looked away, K25 100 saying, "I shall receive no one." A thin, hurrying K25 101 Vizier flung himself at the Sultan's feet crying, "If it K25 102 please Your Majesty, a messenger stands at the palace gates with a K25 103 plea of grave import from Your Majesty's heroic general now engaged K25 104 with the Infidel in battle far afield." The beetle-browed K25 105 Sultan sighed.

K25 106 Suddenly a great clatter was heard from without and finally K25 107 even the fat, sitting Sultan started getting a little curious.

K25 108 "What occasions this disturbance?" he demanded K25 109 of his court.

K25 110 "It is nothing, Your Majesty," replied a K25 111 saber-bristling guardsman. "Nothing His Highness need K25 112 concern himself over. It is merely a Jew."

K25 113 "A Jew?" cried the Sultan, hastily rising K25 114 from his cushions as color flooded his features. His eyes were K25 115 popping, too, and probably by this time there was even a vein K25 116 twitching somewhere. "A Jew? What Jew?"

K25 117 "Merely a Jewish doctor who calls himself K25 118 Joseph."

K25 119 "Joseph!" The Sultan cried out with great emotion. K25 120 "All praises to Allah Who has sent him to me this day. K25 121 Bring Joseph to my presence immediately."

K25 122 Hustled in between two armor-laden guardsmen was a slight, K25 123 bearded man of modest dress and bearing and proud, intelligent K25 124 eyes.

K25 125 "Sire," he said, stepping forward, carefully lowering K25 126 his eyes, but not bowing his head or bending his knee, for there K25 127 was only One to Whom Joseph bowed. A not every other minute either K25 128 because he certainly wasn't Catholic.

K25 129 "O Joseph," the Sultan called out in great K25 130 agitation. "What news do you bring me? What of my son, what K25 131 of my ships, and what of the terrible apparition of my nightly K25 132 slumbers?"

K25 133 "For your son, O great Sire, I have prepared a special K25 134 salve and now the lad's eye is as bright as ever it K25 135 was."

K25 136 "Selim," the Sultan breathed. That was his son's name K25 137 in Turkish.

K25 138 "Of your ships, Your Majesty. Though one was lost in a K25 139 storm at sea, the cargo of all the fleet has been rescued in a K25 140 foreign port by a friend and member of my faith, one Mannaseh ben K25 141 Levi. Further, he has sent a message to me with the news of a worm, K25 142 Your Majesty, who through his own cunning can spin silk. He offers K25 143 to send to your court as many of such creatures as Your Majesty K25 144 desires in the shipment with the lost cargo."

K25 145 "Allah be praised!"

K25 146 "Of the apparition. It was a warning to Your Majesty of K25 147 the storm at sea which distressed your ships. Now that the cargo is K25 148 safe, the dreaded apparition will trouble you no K25 149 longer."

K25 150 "O Joseph, physician to my body, my soul, and my K25 151 coffers. How shall I reward you? What is it that you K25 152 wish?"

K25 153 "For myself, Sire, there is nothing I desire. But for K25 154 my people, I ask that they may always live in peace within your K25 155 walls, free to pursue their daily lives and to worship, harming no K25 156 one, according to our age-old laws and beliefs."

K25 157 "Granted, Joseph. Most swiftly and easily granted. But K25 158 what of yourself? What do you ask for your own person?"

K25 159 "Only that which is granted for my people."

K25 160 "Then, Joseph, if you will not ask, I must bestow K25 161 unrequested. And I, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, name you, K25 162 Joseph, a Prince of my Domain. No longer are you merely Joseph the K25 163 Jewish doctor. Henceforward you are to be known as Joseph the K25 164 Prince! Let cymbals sound and gongs strike!" Right in my K25 165 ear: it is Birdie's Atlantic City charm bracelet sounding and K25 166 gonging on the Formica table.

K25 167 "Uh-tuh-tuh and look who's here!" she says, K25 168 smiling at me, her lipsticked lips wide and bright as a sideways K25 169 orange Popsicle.

K25 170 Uh-tuh-tuh and look who's here. Yellow kindergarten clowns hop K25 171 all over my pajamas and red spots climb through my flesh. That's K25 172 who's here.

K25 173 "Ketzeleh," says Birdie. "Are you hungry? K25 174 Do you want some bread and peanut butter?" But I'm not sure K25 175 what I want; my head is spinning off in a deadman's float all by K25 176 itself and is strange to the rest of me -luggy limbs and scratchy K25 177 skin.

K25 178 "Oh, Manya," Birdie calls to my mother. K25 179 "Watch how your daughter spreads the peanut butter. I love K25 180 the way she does it - so perfect and so exact you'd think the knife K25 181 is a paintbrush. Look how she sits there with that peanut butter K25 182 like an artist."

K25 183 "Some artist," my mother says. "She has K25 184 no hands, she's just like me. She couldn't even tie up a goose, my K25 185 father used to say about me, and that's what it is - no K25 186 hands."

K25 187 In the back of the siddur, in the Song of Songs, it says: K25 188 What shall we do for our little sister, for she has no breasts? But K25 189 there is nothing in it about no hands.

K25 190 "Look how she makes it smooth and how she goes over and K25 191 over it. By the time she's through, it's a shame to eat K25 192 it."

K25 193 But my mother doesn't even bother to turn around because in her K25 194 opinion peanut butter and nail polish are the exact same thing: K25 195 both of them made up inside the head of Howdy Doody.

K25 196 Birdie has nothing against peanut butter, though. Why should K25 197 she? She chews gum, plays Mah-Jongg, goes to bungalow colonies and K25 198 eats Chinese food. Altogether she would be a cow but for one thing K25 199 - cows get the best boys and end up with the best husbands. And K25 200 this is Birdie's story: she didn't. So far did she miss in this one K25 201 way that even though she has been divorced for years, she still K25 202 cries to my mother in the kitchen that when she wakes up in the K25 203 morning she feels that there is no taste in her, and sometimes when K25 204 she stands with her shopping cart in the aisle at Daitch's, K25 205 everything starts to get cold, sour, and far away. Her one son, K25 206 Salem, is eighteen and goes to pharmacy school in Philadelphia: by K25 207 a coincidence, an accident, the city where his father lives. K25 208 K26 1 <#FROWN:K26\>RADON

K26 2 BY EDWARD FALCO

K26 3 In the summer of '88, when my older sister turned 16 and K26 4 started dating a 34-year-old Amway salesman, my father discovered K26 5 we had unacceptable levels of radon trapped in our house. That was K26 6 ten years ago, though it doesn't feel like it. It was a K26 7 presidential election summer, and in addition to Howard, Julie's K26 8 new boyfriend, my mother was upset about George Bush's campaign K26 9 tactics, which she called Nazi-like and un-American. My father was K26 10 worried that Michael Dukakis might win the election and ruin the K26 11 economy, and he was also upset because his favorite TV preachers K26 12 were all in trouble - Oral Roberts said God was going to kill him K26 13 unless he raised four million dollars soon, Jim Bakker was being K26 14 revealed as a bisexual, and Jimmy Swaggart had been caught with a K26 15 prostitute - but most of all my father was going crazy about radon, K26 16 which he was convinced would give us all cancer, soon. And everyone K26 17 was worried about AIDS, which I heard one newscaster describe as a K26 18 plague that could eventually wipe out half the world's K26 19 population.

K26 20 Luckily, no one was worried much about me. I was 15, on the K26 21 baseball, football and basketball teams, an average student, and my K26 22 two best friends, whom I hung out with constantly, were Mary Dao K26 23 and Allan Freizman. Mary - a year younger than us and a grade ahead K26 24 of us - was the smartest girl in the district, and Allan was K26 25 another all-around athlete, like me. One night that summer my K26 26 parents were in the living room arguing. They had started out K26 27 discussing politics and eventually got around, as usual, to radon K26 28 and Julie's boyfriend. My father wanted to spend four thousand K26 29 dollars to seal up and ventilate the basement, and my mother wanted K26 30 him to do something about Howard. "Honey," my K26 31 father said. "Breathing the radon trapped in this house is K26 32 equivalent of smoking sixteen packs of cigarettes a day." K26 33 "Honey," my mother answered. "Your 16-year-old K26 34 daughter is sleeping with an Amway salesman." Upstairs, in K26 35 my room, I was searching my closet for a dark jacket. Mary, Allan, K26 36 and I were meeting at McDonald's. We were casing a house we planned K26 37 on robbing.

K26 38 I don't really know which one of us started the whole robbing K26 39 thing, but that summer was the beginning and end of it. No one in K26 40 the world would have ever suspected us. No one did. We must have K26 41 robbed a dozen houses, all told. In the beginning it was a game. K26 42 There's not a lot to do on Long Island, so we'd walk around, K26 43 through the developments. Pretty much, we'd wind up in people's K26 44 yards, where we'd sit and talk and drink beer and smoke grass when K26 45 we could get it, and we'd keep an eye on the people through their K26 46 windows. One night Allan brought binoculars, hoping to catch a peek K26 47 of someone getting undressed. We didn't. It turned out to be an old K26 48 lady's house where we wound up. We had a couple of joints with us K26 49 and Allan wanted to go hunting for a better yard, but Mary just K26 50 wanted to get stoned. So we compromised. We'd get stoned where we K26 51 were and then go looking for a better yard.

K26 52 Mary's skin looked like it was always deeply tanned, and she K26 53 had big eyes and black hair slicked straight back (she claimed K26 54 she'd rather die than wear bangs) and pulled into two little pony K26 55 tails that made her look pixieish, along with being so frail. But K26 56 God, was she smart. She spoke Vietnamese, French, and English, all K26 57 fluently; and she always had a book in her pocket. Half the time, K26 58 Allan and I didn't know what she was talking about, and she knew we K26 59 didn't know and went on anyway. It impressed us, and I think she K26 60 liked impressing us. Allan and I admired the hell out of Mary, and K26 61 we were both trying to get her to take off her clothes.

K26 62 That night in the old lady's yard, Mary was explaining our K26 63 philosophies to us. "Rick," she said, sitting cross-legged K26 64 under a tree, slightly above me. She toked on a joint, held the K26 65 grass in, and then spoke as she exhaled, her voice high and thin. K26 66 "You're a materialist," she said, pointing at me, K26 67 the joint between her fingers. "You don't care about what K26 68 you can't see or feel - or maybe use. But if you can't see it or K26 69 feel it, man - you don't give a shit about it."

K26 70 "You mean," I said, "that's like K26 71 because I'm always saying how I want a hot red Ferrari Testarossa K26 72 and a big house on the ocean."

K26 73 Allan took the joint from Mary. He said, "You been K26 74 watching too much Miami Vice, man."

K26 75 I must have been stoned, because I remember rolling on the K26 76 ground laughing at that.

K26 77 "What about me," he asked Mary. "What K26 78 am I?"

K26 79 "You, man - you're a grade A, number one, K26 80 no-holds-barred nihilist."

K26 81 "A what-ist?"

K26 82 "A nihilist. That means you don't believe in shit. K26 83 Nothing. Nada." Mary picked up the binoculars and looked at K26 84 the moon.

K26 85 Allan thought for a moment, then said: "How do you say K26 86 that again, what I am?"

K26 87 "A nihilist."

K26 88 "And what about you," I asked her. K26 89 "What are you?"

K26 90 "Me?" She handed Allan the binoculars and took K26 91 back the joint. "I'm an existentialist."

K26 92 We both stared at her.

K26 93 "That's like a nihilist who's into self-delusion. Sort K26 94 of."

K26 95 Allan checked out the house with the binoculars. "Hey," K26 96 he said. "Look at this."

K26 97 And that's when it started. Allan had seen the old woman take K26 98 some money out of a bowl and put it in her handbag. A few minutes K26 99 later, a car pulled up the driveway and a man took her away. I K26 100 don't remember who said what first, or if anybody even said K26 101 anything - but we must have all been thinking the same thing, K26 102 because a few minutes later we kicked in a basement window, climbed K26 103 up a flight of stairs, and ran out the back door with the money. K26 104 Later, Mary said it was the most exciting thing she had ever done. K26 105 The money came to a little over 80 dollars, which we split evenly. K26 106 That was a couple of months earlier.

K26 107 The place we were casing - Allan spotted it driving home with K26 108 his dad. Allan's father's an ex-cop who owns a topless bar on K26 109 Jericho Turnpike. Or he did then anyway. Now I hear he's retired in K26 110 Florida. Allan always said he didn't hate his old man because it K26 111 would take too much energy. He said his father was a stupid drunk K26 112 who didn't care about anything but screwing the dancers who worked K26 113 for him. His mother he didn't know. She had left when he was a K26 114 child. Allan told us that she had moved to Alaska and married a K26 115 Husky. He said he couldn't blame her for wanting to move up in K26 116 life.

K26 117 The house he spotted was only a few blocks from his own. An K26 118 ambulance had just driven away and a police car was parked at the K26 119 curb. Allan's dad stopped to talk to the cop, the way he always K26 120 did, and Allan overheard that the man who lived there was old and K26 121 three-quarters dead, and kept a loaded gun in every room. At the K26 122 mention of the guns, Allan said he slunk down in his seat and acted K26 123 bored while trying to hear every word. The old man used to be K26 124 important - something about something in World War Two, but Allan K26 125 didn't get the details. Now he refused to live in a home or with K26 126 his children. The whole thing was too good to pass up. Guns were K26 127 easy money in the city: We knew a pawn shop that bought them no K26 128 questions asked. All we had to do was sit in the old guy's yard and K26 129 wait for him to leave the house.

K26 130 I couldn't find the dark jacket I was looking for, so I settled K26 131 for denim. In the living room, Julie had joined the argument. From K26 132 the top of the stairs, I could see my father sitting back in his K26 133 Lazy Boy like a reluctant judge, while my mother stood on one side K26 134 of the chair and my sister on the other.

K26 135 "I won't have this!" my mother said, slapping K26 136 the arm of the chair. "I want you," she said to K26 137 Julie, "to bring him here tonight. And I want you," K26 138 she said to my father, "to tell him we'll have him put in K26 139 jail if this doesn't stop right now." She looked at Julie. K26 140 "I won't have this," she repeated.

K26 141 Julie talked to Dad as if they were the only two people in the K26 142 room. "This is nobody's business but mine," she K26 143 said calmly. "I'm grown up now. I'll make my own decisions K26 144 and I don't need any help from anyone."

K26 145 My father had lain back and crossed his arms over his eyes, as K26 146 if bracing himself for a crash.

K26 147 "Dad," Julie said. "Look at me."

K26 148 He lowered his arms. Julie's hair was bright red and shaved at K26 149 the temples, short over the top, and long in the back, where it was K26 150 dyed blond. She wore a gigantic crucifix dangling from her right K26 151 ear, and a "Jesus is My Friend" T-shirt that was too small on her: K26 152 it left a few inches of her stomach bare and her breasts struggling K26 153 for freedom. Her pants, she had slashed with a razor from top to K26 154 bottom, so from where I stood I could see she was wearing red K26 155 panties.

K26 156 My father said, "I realize you're grown up now, Julie K26 157 -"

K26 158 My mother sighed.

K26 159 "But," he continued, "Your mother has a K26 160 point -"

K26 161 Julie groaned.

K26 162 "Why don't we compromise," he said. K26 163 "Bring him over, just so that we can meet him."

K26 164 "I don't want to meet him!" my mother screamed. K26 165 "I want you to shoot the son-of-a-bitch!"

K26 166 "See!" Julie yelled.

K26 167 My father jumped up, excited. "You know!" he K26 168 shouted, quieting them both. "We didn't always used to K26 169 argue like this, did we?"

K26 170 I thought to myself: this was extreme, granted, but, actually, K26 171 yeah - they always argue like that.

K26 172 "Did we?" my father insisted.

K26 173 "What?" Julie said.

K26 174 "What? Radon - that's what!"

K26 175 My mother covered her face, and Julie turned her back to him. K26 176 They both sighed.

K26 177 "Go ahead!" he screamed. "Treat me like K26 178 I'm mad! I'm telling you, this poison we're breathing is half our K26 179 problem."

K26 180 For a moment, everyone was frozen: my mother with her face K26 181 covered; my sister looking at the wall; my father glaring at both K26 182 of them. Then his shoulders drooped forward, and he left the room K26 183 with tears brimming in his eyes. He went out into the yard.

K26 184 My sister went to her room. As she passed me, she said: K26 185 "What are your staring at, jerk-off?"

K26 186 My mother looked up. When she saw me, her face brightened. I've K26 187 always had that effect on her, even now. She says I'm the best K26 188 thing in her life. "Rick, honey," she said. K26 189 "Come here,"

K26 190 "I'm meeting Mary," I said, on my way down the K26 191 stairs. My mother loved Mary. When she came to visit, they'd often K26 192 sit and talk for hours while I wandered in and out, pretending to K26 193 be interested. My mother never questioned what I was doing, as long K26 194 as I was doing it with Mary.

K26 195 By the front door, she put her arm around my shoulder. K26 196 "Five minutes for your Mom," she said, "I K26 197 need to talk to somebody sane around here."

K26 198 We sat down on the front steps, under the dim yellow light. K26 199 Behind us, the bug-zapper was working overtime: I can still hear K26 200 the pop and sizzle of bugs getting fried. "Really, K26 201 Mom," I said. "I've got to go in a K26 202 minute."

K26 203 "Did you witness all that?" she asked. K26 204 "The whole pathetic scene?"

K26 205 With me, my mother was always dramatic like that - like I'm K26 206 this pure thing besmirched by a dirty world. "Maybe Dad's K26 207 got a point about the radon," I said. "Do you know K26 208 what it is - radon?"

K26 209 "Yes", she said. "It's wishful K26 210 thinking."

K26 211 K27 1 <#FROWN:K27\>The second thing happened that same week. I was in K27 2 town late in the afternoon waiting for Dud and Stack to finish some K27 3 business of theirs, when I looked up and saw my loony brother Bucky K27 4 across the street. He was standing on the courthouse lawn next to K27 5 where the steps came down to the sidewalk, holding his hand out, K27 6 palm up, to one of two men who weren't looking at him. What the men K27 7 were looking at was a good-sized wooden box on the ground. K27 8 I could see that Bucky, with his head jerking back and forth, was K27 9 saying something to the men, or trying to. After a minute I saw one K27 10 of the men and then the other one reach in their pockets and come K27 11 out with what had to be coins and put them in Bucky's outstretched K27 12 hand. After Bucky had the coins settled in his own pocket he leaned K27 13 down and, almost like he was a magician or something, yanked the K27 14 top off the box. Both men kind of jumped. They stood staring down K27 15 into the box, till pretty soon I could tell that one of them was K27 16 trying to ask Bucky questions. I knew what kind of answers he was K27 17 getting, the kind that made him give it up after a minute of two. K27 18 Then all of a sudden Bucky leaned and shut the top down quick. I K27 19 saw why. A man coming down the walk was just barely a step away K27 20 from a free look in the box.

K27 21 I know I stood there for a half hour watching Bucky take in the K27 22 customers, wondering what it was in the box and what kind of coins K27 23 he was getting for a look at it. As bad as I wanted to know, I was K27 24 too ashamed of Bucky to go and see. At least I was till the K27 25 customers quit coming and I saw the square had about cleared out K27 26 because it was after quitting time. I crossed the street and K27 27 climbed up to where Bucky stood by the box. His shirt was even more K27 28 ragged and dirtier than it was the last time I saw him. He rolled K27 29 his eyes at me and kind of smiled. "What's in K27 30 there?" I said.

K27 31 He held his hand out.

K27 32 "Your own brother?" I said. "I ain't K27 33 got any money anyhow."

K27 34 Bucky blinked and his head jerked. "O-okay." He leaned K27 35 down and opened the box. I jumped, myself. It was the biggest dang K27 36 cottonmouth I ever saw in my life. It was as big around as a man's K27 37 arm and something between black and mud-colored and had a head that K27 38 looked like it would do for a woodcutter's wedge. "How'd K27 39 you catch that thing?"

K27 40 "In m-m-my fish box."

K27 41 I looked at the ugly thing a minute more. "How much you K27 42 get for a look?"

K27 43 His mouth worked, then said, "Du-dime."

K27 44 "How much you made?"

K27 45 He patted a bulge on the hip of his overalls. Then he reached K27 46 in the pocket and took out a handful of coins, some of them K27 47 quarters, that didn't leave that bulge on his hip much smaller than K27 48 before. "Damn!" I said. "You going to get K27 49 rich."

K27 50 Just then Dud and Stack pulled up to the curb in Dud's old car K27 51 and sat staring up at Bucky's box. They had to come up for a look, K27 52 too, which they made Bucky give them for free, and they asked about K27 53 the same questions I had asked. The thing different was that Dud K27 54 wanted to know how much Bucky had made in all, and he wouldn't let K27 55 him alone till Bucky got down and laid all those coins out on the K27 56 walk to be counted. It came to six dollars and eighty cents, though K27 57 I reckoned he hadn't made it all in one day.

K27 58 "Goddamn," Dud said. "It's money in snakes K27 59 ain't it? You better go catch some more. Start you a snake K27 60 zoo."

K27 61 It was that word zoo that got things started. On the way K27 62 home Stack, after being quiet till we crossed the bridge, said, K27 63 "What if we started up a zoo? I don't mean just snakes, I K27 64 mean all kind of wild critters. Maybe we could catch that bear, K27 65 even. Else her cub. Maybe a bobcat too. And a deer. And sho'ly such K27 66 as coons and foxes."

K27 67 "That'd be something, wouldn't it?" I said from K27 68 the back seat. I was excited. Dud didn't say anything for a minute, K27 69 just staring at the road in front of him. I knew how Dud liked to K27 70 be the one to think of a thing and I was beginning to be afraid he K27 71 was going to say it was a dumb idea. Then I saw him nod. K27 72 "Ain't one zoo in this whole county," he said. K27 73 "People likes to look at wild animals. Like that K27 74 cottonmouth. We could sho catch a bunch of them."

K27 75 "Rattlers too," I said, leaning over the back K27 76 of the front seat now. "I killed one down in the hollow K27 77 Sunday. Could of caught him. And copperheads too."

K27 78 "We need more than just snakes," Stack said. K27 79 "That bear's what we really need. And a bobcat."

K27 80 "Snakes is a good starter, though," Dud said. K27 81 "Look at Bucky. With one dang snake."

K27 82 That was how it started off and kept right on after we got in K27 83 the house and settled down at the supper table. After I watched K27 84 Coop for a minute or two I was reassured. He didn't say anything at K27 85 first but I could see him listening, like he was getting interested K27 86 in spite of himself. Daddy didn't say anything at first either, K27 87 just went on shoveling the food in, and I was getting uneasy for K27 88 fear he was going to come in against us. But that was before he got K27 89 it clear that Bucky was making real money off that snake.

K27 90 "And he could of got a quarter easy as a dime," K27 91 Stack said. "He had a bunch of them; folks'd pay more than K27 92 that. Specially if snakes was just one part of it all."

K27 93 "We could put a sign up on the road," I said. K27 94 "Mosses Zoo."

K27 95 That was the right thing to say because, I could tell, Daddy K27 96 liked the idea of having his name up there on the road. I watched K27 97 his jaw slow down and for a space there he didn't take another K27 98 bite. When his jaw finally stopped all the way he said, K27 99 "I'm kind of leaning to the notion it just might work. I K27 100 even knowed a man made money charging to look at his nervous goats. K27 101 Folks is like that."

K27 102 Caress and Mabel both looked at him with their mouths open and K27 103 then at each other. It was easy to see they hated the whole idea, K27 104 but it didn't matter about them. What did matter was what I could K27 105 see in Mama's face, in the way her shut lips made a tight straight K27 106 line. Then they came open. "Where you mean to keep these K27 107 snakes? In the house?"

K27 108 "Make a cage for them, o'course," Stack said. K27 109 "A good tight one."

K27 110 "What about the bear? And the wildcat?"

K27 111 "Cages too," Stack said. "Make a log K27 112 pen for the bear, though."

K27 113 "I hate a snake," Mabel said, screwing up her K27 114 face. "What if they get out?"

K27 115 "They'll come right for you," Stack said.

K27 116 "When you going to build all these pens?" Mama K27 117 said to him. "And you with a good job, for a change. You K27 118 going to quit?"

K27 119 "I can find the time," Stack said, cutting his K27 120 eyes away. But I could tell that was what he was aiming to do.

K27 121 Mama shook her head and drew a long breath. Then she looked up, K27 122 like up to heaven. "I seen a lot of foolishness in my time, K27 123 but not nothing like this before. And tobacco to set and corn to K27 124 plant." She looked down again, looked at Daddy who didn't K27 125 look back. In fast he had the expression of a man doing some hard K27 126 thinking. Mama said, "I ain't having one wild animal K27 127 anywhere close to this house. Put them off in the woods. I ain't K27 128 going to get caught like poor Mrs. Noah on the ark."

K27 129 Considering all the work we knew we'd have to do, and Mama so K27 130 strong against it besides, it's a real wonder the whole business K27 131 didn't just blow on over. After a couple of days when nobody did K27 132 anything but talk about it and I saw Mama getting more K27 133 comfortable-looking all the time, I was afraid it was done for. K27 134 After all there wasn't a one of us who was much for hard work K27 135 except Coop, and he didn't get in on the talk like I wished he K27 136 would. How we did finally get started was another accident, kind K27 137 of, with Bucky the reason for it this time too. We had stopped by K27 138 and told him to catch some more snakes for us, but we had about K27 139 forgot it. Then, on Friday afternoon, he came puffing out of the K27 140 woods with a box bigger than the other one. It had five K27 141 <&|>sic!grandaddy cottonmouths in it, all knotted up together like K27 142 big old mud-colored ropes, the ugliest sight you ever saw. He said K27 143 he had found a whole nest of them where we could catch all we K27 144 wanted. So we had to do something with those snakes.

K27 145 Stack started right in that evening after supper. He found K27 146 enough wire on some banged-up chicken crates, and boards off the K27 147 old falling-down shed out back. He worked by a lantern on till K27 148 midnight, with Dud and Coop and I finally falling in to help him. K27 149 It turned out big enough for a man to walk around in and looked so K27 150 nice that when Daddy saw it in the morning, with the snakes K27 151 crawling around in there, he got caught up too.

K27 152 For the next couple of days, with all the banging and sawing K27 153 and cussing, that was the noisiest place in the county. We pretty K27 154 soon ran out of boards and wire and nails and stuff, and Daddy had K27 155 to go to town and buy everything except for some slab boards he K27 156 scrounged off Mr. Cutchins at the saw mill. It took more money than K27 157 Daddy had, but Stack was right there with his last week's K27 158 paycheck.

K27 159 By Sunday afternoon we had four big cages finished. With all K27 160 the odd-shaped slabs on them the last three didn't look as good as K27 161 the snake cage, but they looked strong. Daddy said they'd hold K27 162 anything up to the size of a bloodhound, so we could get started K27 163 catching coons and foxes and such. But what about the bear? I said. K27 164 Stack had several steel traps big enough for one and we were K27 165 planning on setting them out that evening down along the creek. K27 166 What if we caught the bear tonight? Daddy thought for a minute, K27 167 rolling his lips in and out. "Th'ow ropes around her. Tie K27 168 her all up and drag her up here. Put her in the mules' K27 169 stall."

K27 170 "Ain't got no ceiling," I said."A bear K27 171 can climb."

K27 172 "Make one. We got some more slabs. Anyhow we ain't K27 173 caught her yet."

K27 174 I had some more questions - Like how would you ever get her out K27 175 of there? - but I let them go for the time being.

K27 176 Daddy was always quick to get enthusiastic about a new project K27 177 to make money, but usually he got over it in a couple of days. Not K27 178 this time. Every once in a while, when he should have been out in K27 179 the field with his mules and plow, I'd see him standing there K27 180 admiring those cages and those cotton-mouth snakes that, K27 181 for all the moving they did, might just as well have been dead. By K27 182 the time he got through he'd be standing up straighter than was K27 183 natural for him, and he'd walk away with a kind of step that made K27 184 me think of that big old red rooster we had. Pretty soon I could K27 185 tell what was going on in his head. K27 186 K28 1 <#FROWN:K28\>Green Grow the Grasses O

K28 2 D. R. MacDonald

K28 3 A suspicion had come down that Kenneth Munro was using dope in K28 4 the house he rented above the road. "Harboring K28 5 drugs" was the way Millie Patterson put it.

K28 6 "I don't think he's that kind," Fiona Cameron K28 7 said, in whose parlor Mr. Munro was being discussed. She had seen K28 8 him coming and going, a thirtyish man with dark gray hair nearly to K28 9 his shoulders. It was the only extravagant thing about him, how the K28 10 wind would gust it across his eyes. He had left St. Aubin as a tot K28 11 and returned suddenly now for reasons unclear.

K28 12 "Drinking's one thing," Millie said. K28 13 "But this."

K28 14 "This what?" Fiona said. She was curious about K28 15 him too, but in a different way. And Kenneth Munro, after all, was K28 16 not just any outsider. His family was long gone but still K28 17 remembered.

K28 18 After some coaxing, Lloyd David, Millie's son, described how K28 19 Munro's kitchen had been full of the smell the day he'd dropped by K28 20 to cut the high wild grass out front. "There's no other K28 21 smell like it," he said.

K28 22 This expertise got him a hot glance from his mother. Millie K28 23 missed no opportunity to point up the evils of drugs.

K28 24 "But Millie," Fiona said, "a smell in K28 25 his kitchen is hardly criminal."

K28 26 "Fiona dear, you have no idea." Millie, a nurse K28 27 for twenty-six years, recalled with horror a young man the Mounties K28 28 brought into the emergency ward last winter: "In that K28 29 weather, crawling down the highway in his undershorts, barking like K28 30 a dog." Lloyd David chuckled, then caught himself. K28 31 "He was that cold," Millie went on, "he was K28 32 blue." She paused. "Marijuana." But the K28 33 word came out of her mouth erotically rounded somehow, lush and K28 34 foreign.

K28 35 "But we hardly know Kenneth Munro," Fiona said. K28 36 She knew he often stood shirtless on his little front porch late in K28 37 the morning, stretching his limbs. He'd just got up, it was plain K28 38 to see. He was brown from the sun, though he'd brought the brown K28 39 with him. Fiona could not imagine him crawling along a highway or K28 40 barking either. What she could imagine she was not likely to admit. K28 41 She was from the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides but had lived K28 42 in Cape Breton all her married life, nearly twenty years. Her eyes K28 43 were an unusual pale green, peppered with colors you couldn't pin K28 44 down, and they looked merry even when she was not. no, Millie would K28 45 not easily let go of this matter. Kenneth Munro. And drugs. They K28 46 had come to Cape Breton like everywhere else, and of course people K28 47 saw on TV what drugs out there in the world could do. Marijuana? K28 48 Just a hair's breadth from heroin, in Millie's eyes, whereas K28 49 alcohol was as familiar as the weather. hadn't there been a nasty K28 50 murder over in Sydney where two kids on drags stabbed an old man K28 51 for his money? That shook everyone, murder being rare among Cape K28 52 Bretoners, despite a reputation for lesser violence. Fiona glance K28 53 out the front window: she hadn't seen Munro all day. His bedroom K28 54 window was flung high and the curtains, green as June grass, K28 55 whipped in the wind.

K28 56 "He's got a telescope in the backyard," Lloyd K28 57 David said.

K28 58 "What's he up to?" Millie said.

K28 59 "Well, that's the point." Fiona took a sip of K28 60 tea. It was cool. "We can't say."

K28 61 "He seems like a nice fella." Harald, Fiona's K28 62 husband, had come in from haying and stood stout and perspiring in K28 63 his overalls. "Fiona's right," he said from the K28 64 doorway. "Yesterday he was asking me about the K28 65 bobolinks."

K28 66 "About the what?" Millie said.

K28 67 "Birds, Ma. Tweet tweet?"

K28 68 She glared at her son: she hated his Oakland Raiders T-shirt K28 69 with the insolent pirate face on the front.

K28 70 "Well," Fiona said. "He's just over the K28 71 road. We'll have to find out about him. Harald, won't K28 72 we?"

K28 73 "You be the detective, girl."

K28 74 At a table by the west window of the Sealladh Na Mara K28 75 Restaurant Kenneth Munro took in the postcard view. Whatever he saw K28 76 he measured against the descriptions his father had given him years K28 77 ago. He could see a good portion of goose Cove and the mountain K28 78 behind it whose profile darkened the water this time of the K28 79 afternoon, calming the bay. Terns squabbled on a sandy bar. The K28 80 waitress, whom he fancied and who, he felt, was ready for a move, K28 81 came up behind him, her slender figure reflected in the glass. In K28 82 her unflattering uniform- a bland aqua, the hem too long- she K28 83 seemed all the more pretty. She'd worn her find brown hair K28 84 unfashionably long down her back when he had seen her walking along K28 85 the road, but now it was clasped in a bun.

K28 86 "Ginny, suppose I was to take you to dinner some night K28 87 soon? In Sydney?"

K28 88 "Oh, I don't know. You're older than I am, by more than K28 89 a bit." Ginny had graduated from McGill this summer and was K28 90 back home, pondering her future. She loved the country she'd grown K28 91 up but knew she would work in a big city before long.

K28 92 "I can't deny it," Munro said. "I'm up K28 93 in years. I expect your parents wouldn't approve."

K28 94 "No. No, they wouldn't much. And they've always known K28 95 just about everything I've done around here." She looked K28 96 over at two elderly women picking daintily at their lobster salads. K28 97 "There's no need they should keep on knowing."

K28 98 "I'll get you home early," he said. K28 99 "Early as you like."

K28 100 "I suppose we could. I'm thinking we might." K28 101 She went off to another table and stood with her back to him. Munro K28 102 drank from his water glass, running the ice around his tongue, and K28 103 smiled comfortably at the immobile brilliance of the bay, its K28 104 surface inked in shadow.

K28 105 That was the kind of light he imagined in his special K28 106 afternoon, an ambience like that.

K28 107 They ate in a steakhouse too open and noisy, but after a bottle K28 108 of wine they talked freely in raised voices, discovering that they K28 109 might be distantly related through a great-grandmother, and that K28 110 brought them a few inches closer. Munro told her about his K28 111 carpentry work in San Francisco, cabinetmaking and remodeling, and K28 112 how he liked working for gays because they paid him well and were K28 113 particular. Ginny told him about Montreal and how she always tried K28 114 to speak French there because she got to know the people. She asked K28 115 him why he was living alone over there in St. Aubin with hay and K28 116 woods all around him.

K28 117 "Only for awhile," Munro said. He took a K28 118 photograph out of his coat and laid it on the white tablecloth, K28 119 moving his face closer to hers. "That man there is my K28 120 father, Ginny. The women I don't know."

K28 121 "I'd say they like him, eh?"

K28 122 "Something more than that going on. Look at his K28 123 face."

K28 124 "Is he your age there, your dad?"

K28 125 "About."

K28 126 "I like your gray hair. It's a bit long. His looks K28 127 black."

K28 128 "And very proud of it he was. Vain, even."

K28 129 "He's dead?"

K28 130 "He is." Munro tapped the photo. "But K28 131 not here. Here, he is very much alive." He touched her K28 132 hand. "Would you come with me to a field like that? Would K28 133 you be one of those women, for an afternoon?"

K28 134 Ginny laughed. He looked so serious in the smoldering light of K28 135 the candle jar. But the people in the photograph, the man and the K28 136 two women, seemed happy, and she felt quite good herself after K28 137 three glasses of wine.

K28 138 "You mean like a picnic?" she said.

K28 139 On the way back to Rooster Hill Munro pulled off the highway K28 140 near South Gut so they could take in the bay. Along the mountain K28 141 ridge the lost sun threw long red embers. In the evening water K28 142 below them, still as a pond, lay the blackened timbers of an old K28 143 wharf.

K28 144 "My father had a picture of that," Munro said. K28 145 "From back in the twenties when he was a kid. There was a K28 146 schooner tied up to it. Looked like another century. Here, you want K28 147 a hit of this?"

K28 148 He proferred what she thought was a cigarette. She stared at K28 149 it.

K28 150 "Am I shocking you?" Munro said.

K28 151 "I've run across it, and I don't shock easy as all K28 152 that."

K28 153 He was afraid he'd blown it with her, but he was in a hurry, K28 154 and for him puffs of grass were part of almost any pleasure.

K28 155 "You are a woman," he said.

K28 156 "At home here, I am still a girl."

K28 157 "Well, then." He made to stub out the joint but K28 158 she grabbed his wrist and took it from him, drawing a long hit.

K28 159 "God help us if the Mounties come by," she said K28 160 through the smoke. "And you with relatives K28 161 here."

K28 162 "Never met any. One afternoon of my own is all I want. K28 163 With the sun out, and a warm wind coming up the field. And women K28 164 like those in the photo, at their ease. That's what I came for- to K28 165 take that back with me."

K28 166 "Ah, Ginny, you'll be more than that."

K28 167 They kissed in the car as it idled by her mailbox, once quickly K28 168 like friends, then again with a long deep taste of something K28 169 further. After Ginny got out, she kissed the window on the K28 170 passenger side. The fierce twilight made her reckless. Through the K28 171 rosy smudge on the glass, Munro watched her walk up the hill to her K28 172 house, twirling her bag.

K28 173 Fiona parted the parlor curtains: Kenneth Munro's car was K28 174 turning slowly up his driveway, its broad taillights reminding her, K28 175 in the foggy dark, of a spaceship. Wee men would be coming out of K28 176 it, heading for the scattered houses of St. Aubin. K28 177 Feasgar math, she'd say, I've been waiting. K28 178 Fuirich beagan. Certain feelings had no shape K28 179 in English, and sometimes she whispered them to herself. Harald was K28 180 not a speaker above the odd phrase, but Gaelic came to her now and K28 181 then like old voices. Traighean. The sands of Harris, the K28 182 long shell-sand beaches that even on a dour day opened up white K28 183 like a stroke of sun, still warm to your bare feet after the wind K28 184 went cold and the clouds glowered over the gusting sea. Those K28 185 strange and lovely summers, so distant now- brief, with emotions K28 186 wild as the weather, days whose light stretched long into evening K28 187 and you went to bed in a blue dusk.

K28 188 "Harald," she said, "Is it time for a K28 189 call on Mr. Munro?" But Harald, pink from haying, had dozed K28 190 off in his chair. A rerun of Love Boat undulated across K28 191 the television, the signals bouncing badly off the mountain K28 192 tonight. Fiona loathed the program. When she turned off the set, K28 193 Harald woke. He kissed her on the cheek, then wandered upstairs K28 194 seeking his bed.

K28 195 So why not go up to Munro's? Yet when she thought of him K28 196 opening the door, her breath caught. Of course she could phone him K28 197 first, but that was not the same thing, was it?

K28 198 Fiona had shared a life with Harald for a long time, here in K28 199 the country. She'd left Harris for a small farm in Nova Scotia K28 200 because she loved the man who asked her away, the seaman she'd met K28 201 in Stornoway where she worked in a woolen shop. Love. An K28 202 gaol. Yes, she had no reservations about that word, and K28 203 all it carried, never had. She loved his company, even when he was K28 204 dull ( and wasn't she the dull one too sometimes, shut into K28 205 herself, beaten down by a mood?). The two of them together had K28 206 always seemed enough, and although they liked other people, they K28 207 never longed for them. Small delights could suffice, if you were K28 208 close in that way you couldn't explain to anyone else: it was the K28 209 robin who nested every summer in the lilac bush at the front door, K28 210 huddled in the delicate branches as they came and went, always K28 211 aware of her, pleased that she didn't flee, and the families of K28 212 deer they watched from the big window at the foot of their bed, K28 213 grazing elegantly one moment and exploding into motion the next, K28 214 and every day the Great Bras D'Eau, the different suns on its K28 215 surface, the water shaded and etched by tides, stilled by winter, K28 216 the crush of drift ice, and the long mountain in autumn, swept with K28 217 the brilliance of leaves. K28 218 K29 1 <#FROWN:K29\>Stephen Peters

K29 2 Babuji

K29 3 It began, he thought, auspiciously enough. In the plane as they K29 4 flew over the Indian subcontinent from Bangkok, Richard sat in a K29 5 window seat watching a pale thundercloud rise level with and a mile K29 6 off from the airplane. Far below through the mists of the cloud K29 7 were the starry lights of a city, and as the plane wheeled toward K29 8 the thunderhead, branches of lightning flashed and filled it from K29 9 top to bottom like arteries and veins shot through with blue K29 10 illuminate. The cloud twisted on its axis, larger still, flexed its K29 11 billows, heaved its hoary chest, wagged an old man's beard at K29 12 Richard, then its body filled again with the jagged lines of blue K29 13 light, jolted up straighter, more powerful even that before. He K29 14 watched for the ten minutes or so it took to approach and then pass K29 15 the cloud. "What a sight!" he told the Arab man K29 16 sitting next to him. "Sensational," he said over and over K29 17 again. The man leaned across Richard to stare out the window and K29 18 rested his thick paw on Richard's thigh for balance, an alarming, K29 19 embarrassing feeling that Richard wanted over with. "What a K29 20 way to start," he said matter of factly and turned away K29 21 from the window, hoping the man would get off him. "What a K29 22 sight that was." In half an hour they were on the K29 23 ground in Bombay. It was three in the morning and pitch black.

K29 24 The ride from the airport in the dark looked almost like any K29 25 ride in a taxi from any airport, except that many of the trucks and K29 26 cabs drove with their lights off, some even on the wrong side of K29 27 the road, and except that indistinct shapes like giraffes or camels K29 28 seemed always about to race out in front of the taxi from the K29 29 shadows. Time to sleep when the creature images start, he thought. K29 30 It was nothing more than the whimsy of fatigue. He let himself sink K29 31 back into the vinyl of the passenger's seat and half closed his K29 32 eyes. They came wide open again and he cringed and sat up straight K29 33 as his driver, a fat, bald man in his fifties, Richard's own age, K29 34 started to pass a darkened truck but then seemed happy to simply K29 35 run parallel to it. "From which country do you K29 36 come?" the cheerful driver asked.

K29 37 Richard glanced from the back of the driver's head to the truck K29 38 they had not completed passing. He felt an empty, cold space in his K29 39 gut. A pair of headlights approached in the windshield but the K29 40 driver seemed unconcerned. Richard would have complained at home in K29 41 Minneapolis or even in New York. Here, though, he would never quite K29 42 be sure what to do. "I'm from the United States," K29 43 he said. He noticed that written in English on the side of the K29 44 truck with no headlights were the words 'Caution! Highly K29 45 Inflammable Gases!'"That's a rolling Molotov K29 46 cocktail," he told the driver.

K29 47 "A very good country, the USA," said the man. K29 48 "I have many friends USA. Change money?"

K29 49 But at that instant the oncoming headlights reached them, the K29 50 talkative driver couldn't decide which way to turn, and the three K29 51 vehicles tangled themselves into a rolling, spinning collision of K29 52 screeching tires, breaking glass, shredded blades of slashing K29 53 aluminum, and fire. Richard was not burnt. His body shot over the K29 54 driver's seat and through the windshield, landing like a heap of K29 55 dirty laundry in the dust and rocks at the side of the road. His K29 56 neck and back were broken, and a long laceration starting at his K29 57 hairline and staggering across his face and neck, ending in his K29 58 lower torso, made him look as if someone had turned him K29 59 half-way inside out. His mouth filled with commingling dust K29 60 and blood, and for an instant, only for that instant, he felt the K29 61 sharp air move across the open wound of his face. He smiled as a K29 62 herd of giraffes, racing monkeys under foot, galloped away across K29 63 the black wasteland.

K29 64 After that he stood above his own body wondering what was meant K29 65 to happen next. "There are no giraffes in India," K29 66 he said aloud. The burning wreck blocked half the road, and K29 67 vehicles coming to and leaving the airport picked their ways K29 68 through this island of fire. Richard watched impassively as the K29 69 sleepy, morbidly curious passengers stared through smokey<&|>sic! K29 70 windows and continued on. He poked the body at his feet, his own K29 71 body, with the toe of his tasseled loafers. "No K29 72 response," he said aloud. "I'm here."

K29 73 Who would know what to do in that circumstance? His suitcase K29 74 and shoulder bag sat neatly next to the road, as if waiting for him K29 75 like a pair of shoes set next to the bed in the morning. He picked K29 76 them up, found his way past the burning wreck, and began walking K29 77 into his darkness. No cabs would stop while within sight of the K29 78 fire, so he had to walk three miles before he caught a ride to his K29 79 hotel.

K29 80 Strangely, though, nothing happened immediately after that. He K29 81 imagined while riding in the second taxi, that, since he was K29 82 conscious and apparently dead, he would be delivered to some K29 83 vaguely angelic keeper of souls, escorted through a heavenly K29 84 customs gate. Instead he arrived at the very hotel he had K29 85 previously made reservations in. The hotel was a famous one facing K29 86 the waterfront, all plush and brass and glass and the Sikh doorman K29 87 sported an elaborate white uniform and a huge red turban. Many of K29 88 Richard's 'clients' at home - ne'er do wells and welfare mothers, K29 89 people for whom he no longer felt real compassion - lived in a K29 90 trailer park that would have fit neatly into that lobby.

K29 91 The young man at the desk wore a neat blue suit and efficiently K29 92 checked Richard in and saw to it that Richard's bags were carried K29 93 to his room. He had a full mustache and a curl of his wavy black K29 94 hair fell onto his forehead.

K29 95 "So things just go on," Richard whispered. K29 96 "Nothing happens. How stupid."

K29 97 "I beg your pardon, sir?" the clerk asked. When K29 98 Richard only stared at him, he said. "We don't tip here, K29 99 sir. There will be a ten percent service charge added to your bill K29 100 when you leave."

K29 101 Richard tipped the bell hop when he got to the room anyway. K29 102 "There will be more when I leave if you take good care of K29 103 me," he said. The man understood, and Richard felt clever K29 104 and cocky. Because he kept his budget tight, he could afford only K29 105 two nights in this place, but he would have good service from the K29 106 little man while he stayed. How much would he have to tip after K29 107 just two nights in a place that allowed no tipping? he wondered. It K29 108 couldn't be much, and anyhow how much was too much in his new K29 109 state, such as it was?

K29 110 But something seemed odd, different in how he handled the K29 111 money. Was it in his elbows? His fingertips? He'd found it K29 112 difficult to judge where his pockets were when reaching to find the K29 113 tip for the man. His arms were numb.

K29 114 Watching his movements carefully, judging with his eye now K29 115 instead of by feel, he threw the curtains open wide and looked out K29 116 over not the harbor but a poor side street below. The sun, just K29 117 coming up, caught the angles and pastels of a building that was K29 118 either being torn down brick by brick or going up the same way. He K29 119 couldn't tell, but he thought of a cubist painting as he stood K29 120 watching the sharp blades of light stab across the surface of K29 121 yellow bricks. "Tangy," he said aloud and, struck K29 122 by the oddness of the sensation, tasted the sight on his tongue. K29 123 "Good grief." A woman in an orange sari squatted K29 124 next to a cooking fire inside the painting's walls. Did she live K29 125 there? What difference did it make? He wanted to deny the odd K29 126 sensations creeping over him.

K29 127 Apparently you live and you die and nothing changes, he told K29 128 himself. He had always figured he had done his part for the world, K29 129 "more than the world probably deserves," he had K29 130 liked to tell the drab young woman in the desk next to his at the K29 131 office. "After the final words are written and signed, we K29 132 are all only really responsible for who and what we are, not for K29 133 the who and what of other lives. We are, after all, alone." K29 134 He liked saying that and he said it rather cynically because it K29 135 shocked and offended her. She was passionate about the social K29 136 welfare work they did. "The poor will always be with K29 137 us," he likes adding for good measure. "So no K29 138 unemployment for us."

K29 139 After retreating into sleep for a few hours, he rose and K29 140 shaved. His face was numb. He might have nicked himself and felt K29 141 nothing. He took a long hot shower. He turned the shower on full K29 142 blast and stuck his face close up to the nozzle but felt no pain, K29 143 only a dull pressure, on his face. Then, after drying off, he K29 144 stopped to examine himself in the mirror for changes. He was a K29 145 slight man, neither tall nor short, with kinky gray hair K29 146 increasingly thin in a patch on the back of his head. His features K29 147 were good, not especially strong, but rather aquiline and, under K29 148 the weathered grayness of age, his skin still radiated the pink K29 149 associated with Sunday school and sunlight. He could be positively K29 150 boyish with a drink in his hand at office social gatherings, and K29 151 women often wanted to take him home and care for him. His drab K29 152 young colleague had done just that a time or two, but he felt she'd K29 153 become dependent and so cut her off. He saw no change in his K29 154 reflection, no sign of the previous night's trauma except maybe a K29 155 sourness at the back of the throat that might have still been K29 156 fatigue. "I see a sourness?"

K29 157 Still wondering about the jumble of vision and taste, he K29 158 ventured out onto the street, searching for the tangy building he K29 159 could see from his room. The same woman in the orange sari squatted K29 160 next to the same fire stirring the coals. A man, presumably her K29 161 husband, reclined on a nearby stack of bricks smoking a foul K29 162 smelling Indian cigarette that looked like a marijuana joint. A K29 163 second woman sifted dirt through a box with a screen bottom. For K29 164 one brief moment the air stank of urine and tobacco, sight and K29 165 smell united.

K29 166 Apparently there would be no sign today, good or bad, that K29 167 might explain his condition. He had expected for the world to K29 168 change the moment he looked again at reality, but that didn't seem K29 169 to be happening. True, there were these other, odd sensation, the K29 170 numbness, the sight/taste confusion, but nothing like that was K29 171 unexpected when you were jet lagged and people had told him India K29 172 would assault his senses in unexpected ways. He took each step K29 173 mindful of the sensation the pavement cause his heel, his shin, his K29 174 knee as he walked through the heat and the crowds of tourists and K29 175 vendors. He noted the time and date on his wristwatch. Things were K29 176 almost the same as always. People spoke to him. He was not K29 177 invisible. His elbows and fingertips had not returned to normal. In K29 178 fact, his arms from shoulder to fingertips hung loose and unfeeling K29 179 from his torso, but he could still use them. As if to prove this to K29 180 himself, he bought a handful of peanuts from a grizzled old-timer K29 181 stooping under a palm tree on the curb, and he held the peanuts in K29 182 his hand. They did not fall through his skin; he did not drop them. K29 183 He had not turned into Casper the Ghost, walking through walls. K29 184 What could he do but continue with his plans, even when he had no K29 185 real plans? The peanuts tasted? - rectangular.

K29 186 He had slept most of the day away, spent one of his 2,500 rupee K29 187 nights dreaming of giraffe herds cantering aimlessly over an K29 188 endless savanna. K29 189