

### The Narcissist

By David M. Antonelli

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

David Antonelli on Smashwords

The Narcissist

Copyright © 2010 by David M. Antonelli

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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There are a few people I'd like to acknowledge:

Paul Antonelli is thanked for designing the cover page. Marylu Walters is thanked for editing an early version of this manuscript. Joanne Kellock, is thanked for guidance while writing the early drafts of this book.

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# The Narcissist

By David M. Antonelli

Who goes there? Is it you, Nadja? Is it true

that the beyond, that everything beyond is here in this life?

I can't hear you. Who goes there? Is it only me?

Andre Breton, from Nadja.

# 1.

### The Vanishing

### I

I've always associated the smell of hot gunmetal with sex. Sex and disappearance. In the North African trenches it was no different. Two weeks after I was sent to Algeria on a UN peacekeeping mission a small war broke out. An army of Muslim extremists had taken a small village and my French battalion had surrounded it. By morning we had dug small trenches beside the main roads. By nightfall we were challenged. A Molotov cocktail blew thirty yards away from the front of our trench. Half of us reached for our grenades and the Lieutenant shouted out the order to attack.

More out of confusion than a desire to obey the Lieutenant's orders, I shot my first bullet. Then a second. I'd never fired a gun outside of a shooting range. Even the smoke was hot. I trembled at the thought of where the bullets had ended up, but in all the spray of metal and flesh it somehow seemed like an afterthought. The lieutenant signaled for me to shoot again. I ignored his command and turned my gaze upwards to the thundering white bomb light of the sky. I closed my eyes. My head filled with a rush of images. I could see Jillian at home in Lyon, her thick brown hair falling over her slender white shoulders as she flipped through a copy of Antonin Artaud's Theater and its Double on her lap. I wanted her naked. Naked right there in front of me.

I heard an explosion and opened my eyes. Then another. The blast of light was so intense it even killed its own shadows. I wanted to disappear into my memories of Jillian. Vanish into the essence of her being.

Another cocktail blew, but this time the explosion was closer. When the smoke cleared, I saw a soldier lying face down on the ground as if he was staring through a portal into another world, far more interesting than our own. I ran over to help him. I turned him over. It was René, a twenty-year old soldier from Dijon who had just got married a month ago. I felt sick to my stomach as I looked down at his cold white figure, still shaking in a pool of mud. The center of his stomach had been gouged out, leaving a wet red hole the size of a cannonball; few threads of blood had spread out across his forehead like frays in a fine fabric. The sight was almost beautiful. The horrible ecstasy of death. I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to get away.

I turned around and looked down the length of the trench.

"We're all fools!" a voice from down the trench shouted. "We're all fucking fools."

"Kerosene! Give me kerosene," shouted another voice. "I'll burn them all alive."

The second voice stopped and the first tapered off into a kind of pathetic whimpering. Soon it was inaudible, drowned out by the metallic screeching of the rockets overhead. A dark-haired soldier, whose face I couldn't place tossed his rifle, bled of all its bullets, to the ground and searched desperately for a grenade. I heard another explosion and a shower of earth and metal covered my face with a layer of hot dust. I stumbled as I pushed up against the muddied trench wall to clear my eyes. I wanted to disappear that very instant. The shatter of bombs, the maddening simulacrum of blood and color, the flood of images through my pounding head: I wanted to vanish into the whole mad carnival of light and sound. Only in my imagination could I still feel the warmth of Jillian's skin up against me. Only there could I be back in Lyon.

I dropped the gun and checked my pants for my mobile. Perhaps she had sent me a message.

"Jean! Pick up that gun and stop whacking off," shouted the Lieutenant. He shoved me in the shoulder. I pulled my hand out of my pants and knelt down to pick up the gun. Instead of standing up to resume fighting I crumpled down into the mud and pulled my knees up to the tip of my chin. The lieutenant kicked me but I didn't respond.

"Coward," he sneered. He lifted his rifle to eye level and started firing.

In the evening the fighting subsided. We slept under the clear breeze of an Algerian night. It was hard to believe that such calm could exist so soon after such carnage. Five young soldiers were nominated to rotate the night watch. This meant I was able to rest. I sat and stared at the night sky outside my tent. I imagined I could see Jillian's curly head of hair and delicate chin in the patterns made by the coils of gun smoke that still hung in the air. A breeze shook the bivouac and the smoke cleared away. The moon was now visible and a thousand constellations burned through the indigo quadrants of the sky.

The next morning the Lieutenant barged into my tent.

"They surrendered," he said.

"What?" I asked, still not quite awake.

"Not all of them. Just this batch."

"How many?"

"Forty."

"Where are they?"

"I've assigned some men to drive them to the jail to the west. We'll keep them there until further notice.

"So, it's over?"

"There's more of them."

"Where?"

"To the south."

"Are they advancing?" I asked.

"No. Not yet," he said. He pulled me closer as if to confide a secret. "Not yet. But if my intuition's right, they'll try to trick us into passivity while they circle to the north and take us by surprise on our way back to Algiers."

"When do we go?" I asked.

"Why?" he asked as if to question my devotion. "Are you in some kind of a hurry?"

"No," I said.

"Good. We have to keep watch. Exercise patience. Vigilance. We can't let them ambush us. We have to stay put."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely. You'd better not be in a hurry. For your sake, that is. Believe me, indefinitely can be a long time."

"If that's what it takes," I said with a false sense of dedication.

The next morning I received a letter from Jillian. I read it immediately.

Dear Jean,

I'm sorry I haven't contacted you earlier. I'm writing this letter from a hotel just outside of Barcelona. I'm sitting on a balcony tea table with a note pad in my lap. The courtyard below me is lined with marble gargoyles and manicured bushes. In the center is a swimming pool. Its still waters are almost like a mirror. I can see the forms of reflected birds on its glassy surface. How I wish you were here with me! Since you've left I've missed you so much. Although it's only been a few months, my heart is growing tired of all the hurt. The summer has robbed me of the joy our love once gave me. How can I keep my feelings from evaporating when you are gone? If I always talk about you to my friends, they get bored and change the conversation. If I freeze my feelings somewhere inside me and try to lead a normal life, I feel like you don't even exist at all. Don't get the wrong impression. I love you more than ever. When I say that our love no longer brings me pleasure, what I really mean is that I love you so much that all I feel is pain in your absence. I need to see you. I need to have you beside me.

Oh, Jean! I'm sick of the world. For my entire life I've been possessed by other people's desires. I've blindly let my life become little more than the sum total of every one's life around me. With my early loves. With you. With my work on Artaud. I need more. I need to feel life flowing out of me and into others and not the reverse. Yet I'm far too world-weary to simply say I want to be free. People always say they want freedom. But what is it that they really want? More money? More possessions? More lovers? More time alone? Ultimately they just want more. That's what their freedom is. Greed. But, I'm possessed with different lusts. That's why I love Artaud. He tore the veil away from things and peered beneath them. He saw through all the world's lies and wasn't afraid to shock people with his outrageous revelations:

" _In a world in which every day one eats vagina cooked in green sauce or penis of newborn child whipped and beaten to a pulp, just as it is when plucked from the sex of its mother."_

Yet I feel I've been a student for far too long. I've read Artaud's notes, letters and plays over and over again until I'm blue in the face. I can even rewrite whole paragraphs from memory. The time has come for me to drop the books and stop reading about how I should live, and simply live. Yet I'm afraid that this decision might affect our love. My new direction seems so abstract that I don't quite know how to start. All I know is that my life will change when my thesis is finally completed. That is why I need to be around you. I don't want this change to leave us apart. I want us to change together. I'm afraid if you're not back soon that something irreversible will happen and our love will never be the same. I'm going back to Lyon in just a few days.

Please come back soon.

Love, Jillian

I stuffed the letter in my pocket. My stomach tightened. It was far worse than I had expected. Since I was sent to Africa I lived in fear of her leaving me for another man. Now I knew my enemy was more fearsome than any potential suitor could ever be. Somewhere in the depths of her thoughts it lurked without shape or color, lacking all substance or even semblance of substance. The burning heat of the desert had become for me a metaphor for her growing disenchantment. Although her letter confessed the power of her love, it also revealed its precariousness. As the hours at the bivouac dragged on I imagined countless scenarios in which she grew resentful of my absence and lashed out at me by taking another lover.

Hoping to bury my anxieties, I went about my business as did all the other soldiers. I performed my obligatory watch duty. I cleaned the tents. I cooked and washed as ordered. But nothing I did could clear my head of my love for Jillian. I just wasn't cut out to be a soldier. Maybe I would make it as sailor, skimming over the silvery death wash of the sea. Or a pilot. Flying through the skies in a screaming metal boomerang. But not a soldier. Not in the dirt. To confront an enemy, in short, death, so close to the same black clay that I would one day be buried in somehow seemed wrong. If I died at sea I could imagine myself riding off to heaven on the backs of golden dolphins. If I died in the sky I'd be swept up by some great silver bird and flown off into the crisp blue heavens. But if I died in the dirt, that would be it. I would simply die in the dirt: my skull cracked, skin smeared with blood and sweat, lying flat on the same pile of mud and gravel I spent every day of my life.

The desert was quiet for the next three days. The soldiers began to loosen up. Where two days ago the Lieutenant would insist on sending at least two men to the well on the nearby hill for water, now he was only sending one. For at least the moment, the feeling of impending danger had subsided.

On the fourth day the Lieutenant sent me to get the evening water supply. Like the other soldiers had done, I suspended the two large metal water canisters on opposite sides of a long rod balanced on my shoulders. As I walked up the hill I watched the sun going down, massaging the horizon with its deep red rays as it sank slowly out of view. When I reached the well I found a man lying face down in the sand. He appeared to be dead. His skin was dark and he was clothed in the enemy uniform with its characteristic red sash over the shoulder. I knelt down and shook him. His head rolled over and his helmet came loose. He had a small thin nose and feminine cheekbones with glistening black hair cut straight across the upper forehead. His dark brown eyes suddenly opened and his thin lips grimaced in pain as if he knew he was done for. He curled into a fetal position and reached for his stomach. I checked for a wound but he pushed my hand away.

"Why don't you kill me?" he said with an Arabic accent.

"I can't kill a wounded man."

"Then I'll fight you to death. Nobody's going to take me."

"I don't want your secrets," I said.

"I have none to give. I'm a deserter. You've got nothing to gain from me. I have to get back to my mother in Biskra. She is sick and my brothers don't care. They forced me to come and fight. Even she forced me. She said her life was less important than the triumph of Islam. I can't let her die. She called me a coward when I suggested I stay behind and take care of her."

"Typhoid?" I asked. I'd heard there'd been an outbreak in Tunisia.

"The doctors aren't sure."

The sun had set and a cool wind blew through the sand and then his hair. The sky had taken on the deep azure of those in Spanish nativity scenes. I looked at him with sympathy. If I could do anything to justify my part in the desert war it was to help him. The thought crossed my mind that he would make the perfect travelling companion if I, too, chose to desert. I had to get away from the fighting. He'd know the roads to the coast. If we could escape together he could help me elude both the rebel and UN forces on my way back to Jillian. With any luck I could make it to Tunis and catch a boat to France.

He grabbed my hand and pulled it towards his wounded stomach. "You have to help me find a doctor."

"I'll help you but only if you make sure I get to Tunis."

He nodded his head in agreement. The way I saw it neither of us had the luxury doubting the other's intentions.

I filled the water containers and washed his wounds. He'd caught a piece of shrapnel in the stomach and one in the thigh. I wrapped both wounds in some bandages that I had in my first aid kit.

"My belly hurts so much I almost forgot about my leg," he said. In the throes of war everything has a chain of command. Even pain has its pecking order.

"They aren't deep," he said. "I just have to keep them clean."

"As long as they don't get infected."

I took the water back to the camp and told the Lieutenant that I'd left my hat behind at the well. He cautioned me to be more careful and I nodded compliantly. When I got back the soldier was standing there with a look of troubled dignity on his face. I felt I could almost trust him and experienced a new sense of security in knowing he would guide me through the desert and back to Jillian. Even if it turned out to be a set up, I knew I could always shake him later.

### II

I had been living in Lyon for almost one month when I first met Jillian. I had managed to save enough money in America to support myself for almost a year. After that I had plans to join a French peacekeeping mission as a part of my obligatory military duty to fulfill my EU citizenship requirements. Although I was born in France – an industrialized suburb of Paris, in fact - my family moved to Detroit when I was six years old and I never had the opportunity to move back and explore my French roots. I was always attracted to the idea of the American in Paris - the sherbet colored buildings, the outdoor cafés, the art galleries, and the promenades with the quiet hush of secret romantic encounters under the shrill dome of a leaden, glassy sky. In more reflective moments I even entertained the idea of one day writing the great American novel, but I felt I had nowhere near enough experience to even begin. I needed to read more books, listen to more music, meet more women - in short, I needed to live. After my first few weeks in Lyon I realized there was no way I could ever go back to Detroit: sprawled out in all its grim humidity with a skyline that looked like an alien installation rising from the dust of postwar Dresden.

I first met Jillian at a place called Façade, a small bar in downtown Lyon that was popular with art students because of its minimalistic black walls and collection of original Raymond Pettibon prints. It was in the middle of Rue Mercier, a few blocks from the opera house. She was wearing black pants with a black leather jacket and black suede buckle-up shoes. Her hair was tied back except for the bangs, which dropped in a schoolgirl fashion to just above her slim black ballerina eyebrows.

She stood up and walked over to me.

"Then, death," she said. She had a British accent.

"Sorry?" I asked, surprised that such an attractive woman would come over to talk to me out of the blue.

"The olive trees of Saint Rémy."

"Saint Rémy?"

"The solitary cypress."

"What?"

"The Café at Arles."

"The black ring," I added, guessing she was trying to play a word association game with me.

"No. No." She started to shake her head and laugh. "It's a poem, silly," she said. "Artaud."

"Sorry," I said.

"Aren't you going to ask me to sit down?"

"Please. I'm Jean." I extended my hand.

"Jillian."

Our conversation ended after a few minutes and I went home. All the way back I was enraptured by the reflections of the traffic lights off the puddles of rain in the street. The next day I woke up and took a cold shower. While standing in front of the mirror, I imagined black and white film clips in which Jillian and I were meeting in empty Prague cafés or on sunlit Brazilian terraces. So enthralled was I by my own fantasies that I bumped into the mailman on my way out to catch the bus to the library. I crossed my heart as I waited at the bus stop and swore that I would go back to Façade every night until I saw her again.

We met later that week and talked all night. She came by herself and, apart from the occasional man who stepped up to give her his regards, we were left alone. She told me more about her thesis project on Artaud.

"He was deathly afraid of sex. He used to say that every time someone masturbated that he lost a bit of his desire to live. People captivated his desires with their boring actions, crushed his dreams with what they passed off as love. He was a totally private person who could carry on relationships on a completely internal level." She darted her eyes back and forth in rhythm with "Mirror in the Bathroom", which had just come on the jukebox.

"Time and narrative," she continued, holding a glass of Sambucca to her lips, "are external things that don't belong in performance art. In the same way that people's rules and habits destroyed him, the literary model of drama was destroying theater."

It was clear she was more versed than I in literature but I managed to sway the conversation to film and music, areas I was more comfortable with. We both liked Bunuel. I was amazed that she could recount to me almost frame by frame the dream sequence in Los Olvidados where a wild bird ravages a young boy's room. By the end of the evening the conversation had shifted to John Coltrane and Miles Davis. I walked her home and when she offered her phone number I promised to call her as soon as I could.

A week later we went out to a small tavern by the river. After a few cups of coffee and a bottle of wine we ended up going back to my apartment. Ten minutes later we were in bed.

She apologized for her behavior the first night we met.

"I was so drunk. You must have thought I was barking."

"Barking?"

"Barking mad. Just barking," she repeated. "I get like that sometimes. I'm surprised you wanted to talk to me at all after that. I was being so pretentious."

"Not at all. Anything's better than the old do you know what time it is?"

"I don't know. If a guy comes on to me in a simple way I respect him more than if he tries to be too clever."

It had been hardly a week when I learned that she had another lover and I was just a part of her weekly itinerary. His name was Adrien. He was a moody sculptor with a long sleek nose and a mass of thick black hair that tumbled from his head, giving him the appearance of a Tatar warrior. He wanted to marry her before they had even met. He said he'd seen her in the cafés and was never so sure about anything in his life as when he walked up to her for the first time and proposed. She turned him down cold six times and finally compromised by agreeing to go out for dinner with him.

Meeting Jillian had set off something like a depth charge in my heart. I could feel the underpinnings of my very being shatter into a thousand pieces and reorder into something like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle whenever we made love. I had to get closer to her. Touch the being inside her. I was convinced that we were somehow spiritually destined for each other and that we shared every thought and attitude. She penetrated my skin like a ghost, entering my every corpuscle, thought, and feeling. There was something distinctly supernatural about her. Something almost of the Anima.

Before I met her, my most powerful sexual encounters were always alone. When I was still a virgin I used to lie in bed on Sunday mornings and dream of my perfect lover. She was modeled on figures from books I'd read or films I'd seen. She had red hair, chestnut hair, blond hair. She was at once Caucasian, Asian and black. We met in railroad stations, under trees, in the country or in alleyways. When I was in school I'd gaze off into space while the teachers were lecturing and think about my next meeting with this imaginary lover. At sixteen I lost my virginity as awkwardly as any one else. I was surprised at how plain it felt. Not near as uplifting as my imaginary encounters. Years - different partners even - changed little. Eventually I became disillusioned and surrendered to the thought that I was destined to go through life without ever finding a perfect match. Jillian changed everything.

A month after we met I was introduced to her parents and her sister Annette. They were visiting from Manchester for the weekend. Her father was a dour Baptist who seemed to disapprove of everything. Her mother was equally religious but expressed her faith in an almost opposite way to her husband, as a sort of blissful naïveté. You could imagine her in a spotless white apron directing a Sunday school sing-along. Annette was a cheery first-former who always looked like she had just stepped out of a Bentley. Her hair was blond and her skin pale. While some British women looked unhealthy in their pallor, she flourished in it, as if it were emblematic of the higher brand of existence in her possession. Although one could easily take her for a snob on first meeting, she was actually just the opposite. As I quickly found out, she owned a couple of rare Stooges bootlegs I'd been looking for and we hit it off instantly. With all her picnic baskets of social etiquette, it was hard to believe at first she was such a rebel in her musical tastes.

One day, Jillian, Annette and I spent an afternoon shopping together downtown. That evening the three of us went to a small restaurant for dinner and found Adrien frowning into an interior decorating magazine as he languished over his coffee. I spotted him out of the corner of my eye before Jillian noticed he was there. Immediately I suggested we go somewhere else. But before I could muster up a decent explanation, Adrien had already jumped out of his chair like a pop-up illustration from a children's book and was tapping on her shoulder from behind.

"Jillian, what a surprise," he said with an air of artificiality.

"Adrien!" she said uncomfortably. I pretended to ignore him and turned to Annette, who was playing with a shrink-wrapped toothpick that she'd just picked up from a porcelain bowl in front of the cash register. Annette passed a sardonic grin in my direction as if to voice her mild disapproval of Adrien.

"Perhaps you'd all like to join me?"

"Oh, no," she said. "We wouldn't want to disturb you."

"Are you sure?" he asked, turning his eyes to me in jealousy.

"No, really. We shouldn't. We were just toying with the idea of a coffee, but we changed our mind and were just about to leave."

"But you just walked in. You haven't even had the time to decide."

Annette took the plunge and walked outside. I followed her, leaving Jillian and Adrien inside. We waited in silence for what seemed like hours. We could see him pressing up against her and gesticulating wildly with his hands. The maitre d' was getting nervous and kept hovering around in their vicinity, his white linen towel tucked neatly under his arm. I tried to see Jillian's face to gauge her response to what I saw as an imbecilic onslaught, but her back was turned to the window. Finally she turned and came out onto the street - almost liquid with its yellow stream of headlights and bustling crowds of smartly dressed couples. I knew it was a bad sign when I noticed Adrien waiting for her inside.

"I know you'll hate me for this."

"You're not..."

"Adrien's upset and says he needs me more than ever."

"Jillian. Get a grip on yourself," said Annette. "You told me this morning you don't even love him."

"I have to help him."

My mouth dropped. I was speechless. That morning I was convinced we were closer than ever and it would only be a matter of time before the others would peel away from her life like old paint from the walls of a great historic palace. I was devastated.

"I'm sorry, Jean. I'll call you first thing tomorrow."

I turned away. I walked Annette back to Jillian's house and went back to my small apartment. I drank enough vodka to convince myself that she really loved me and only went off with Adrien as a sign that our love was strong enough to overcome any small crisis.

The next time I saw her was the first day of winter. We hadn't spoken for over three months. There were tiny epaulettes of snow forming on a marble statue of a nude boy outside my apartment. I hardly knew what to say.

### III

It was twilight. The constellations were just becoming visible in the sky as a faint imprint of the cosmos spread across the eastern half of the horizon. We crossed miles of sand flats before we found a main road. My companion and I walked in complete silence. At times I was afraid his story was some fabrication designed to lead me into a deadly trap. Under the frigid beauty of the desert stars almost anything seemed possible. Occasionally we'd stop and I'd pour water from the flask in his survival bag over his stomach to keep the wound clean. He'd shriek when the water touched his skin. When the first hints of dawn became visible I finally asked him his name.

"Munif," he said without expression.

"It seems so strange that we're deserting together and we don't even know each other's names."

"You could be a spy."

"I could have taken you prisoner earlier if I wanted to."

"And then tried to torture me?"

"If anything, it seems more likely that you'd be luring me away for torture and interrogation."

"You think I wounded myself on purpose?"

"No. But you could already have been wounded."

"Then why are you here if you don't trust me? I know the desert like the hairs on my chest. You put a lot at risk to come with me. If I were your commander and I found out I'd have you shot immediately."

"I have to see my girlfriend."

"Love is more important to you than war?"

"Isn't that why you're leaving?"

He pulled a jack knife from his pocket faster than I could react and brandished it in my face. The slim blade winked in the light of the dawn. I jumped back.

"Do you really think I'd kill you? Do you? Americans are so frivolous. You make friends too easily. Then you toss them away like old clothes when you're bored. Love, murder – it's all the same to you."

"I'm just trying to save you," I said.

"Save? Let me show you the meaning of true sacrifice."

He took the blade and cut a long gash across his forearm. I pulled back, but he grabbed my arm and slashed it in almost exactly the same place. I pushed him over and jumped on top of him. I cocked my arm back and held it there like a loaded gun.

"Now we can finally trust each other," he said.

I wanted to hit him, but I couldn't. He was my only conduit back to France. Without him I'd be left to die in the desert. I looked at him in silence until the blood dripping from my cut had formed a dark pool on his chest. The image was almost sexual. With the dark hair of his chest slightly visible under the thin muslin of the damp fabric, I couldn't help but think of Jillian. I traced the figure of her face into his shirt and collapsed into his chest. She seemed so far away. So utterly and completely far away.

"We need to move," was all he said.

By noon we reached a village. It was surrounded by a ring of lemon trees. In the distance I saw a Moorish style tower in what must have been the center. The sun had deepened in color from the pale yellow of morning to a variegated bronze. I squinted as we passed a small stable.

"The sun is very powerful," said Munif. "I once had a friend who made a telescope out of the bottoms of bottles and jars. He would stare at the sun for hours trying to see beneath its yellow surface to what was lying inside. Then he would draw sketches of what he thought he saw. Great cities of glass and metal with men flying on pulsing bulbs of light or carpets of pure energy. It's amazing what the mind can come up with when it is desperate for a solution."

He stopped and took the water canister out of his side bag.

"Let's get you to a hospital," I said. "The quicker you recover the sooner you can get back to your mother."

"You're not just going to leave me there?"

"I need to get back to Lyon."

"Yes," he said with hushed understanding. "But it would still be best if we went together. The time you save in leaving me here may not be worth the trouble. If you run into Muslim soldiers, you're dead. If you run into French soldiers, the result is no different. On top of that there's bandits and the heat. You'd never make it alone. Wait and we can go to Tunis together and then you can take a boat across the Mediterranean.

After some thought I agreed with him. Although I still had doubts about his intentions, it seemed like the safest plan.

"It's the sun. I can tell it's making you crazy. Like my friend with the jars. Don't let it infect your mind with strange ideas. You have to view it as something like a dealer in a casino. Something that is necessary for the smooth operation of things, yet something that can never be trusted and ultimately is your enemy."

We walked until we found the local medical station. It was located at the end of a dusty alleyway in a small shack with an imbricated clay tile roof. A few rats scurried through a nearby gutter.

"Just tell them we're travelers and were attacked and robbed," said Munif. "Then they'll take me with no identification papers. It's run by missionaries. If we told them we were deserters they probably wouldn't tell, but I wouldn't risk it."

We walked inside. The linoleum tiles were covered in a sticky brown film and the walls were cracked. It looked more like a place for the infliction rather than treatment of diseases. There was no air conditioning. Behind the desk, which was the only piece of furniture in the room, sat a slim oriental nurse. She smiled, but the Swiss cross on her white sleeve was far more reassuring.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Munif stepped up to the desk and pulled open his shirt.

"We were attacked by bandits. They took almost everything."

She tented her eyebrows and leaned forward, examining the wound from behind her desk.

"It looks awful."

Munif explained that the bandits had chained him up and whipped him with a long metal cable with rusted frays dangling from the end. Then he embellished the story even further. He explained how I was an actor dressed as a soldier for a part in a film and that I had saved him by pretending that I was a real soldier and threatening to open fire on them. He lied with such frankness his tale seemed almost believable. The nurse accepted his account without a flinch and took him to the back room to treat his wound.

An hour later he came out fully washed and smiling, his dark hair now curly where before the sweat and heat had ironed it flat. "Shall we go?" was all he said.

We cut through a valley of palm trees on our way out of the city. We passed an old man wearing nothing but a white cloth wrapped around his waist and a pair of sandals. He was trying to sell a goat. Munif smiled knowingly and stopped to appraise the animal's teeth for a moment before moving on.

That night we slept under a lemon tree. I awoke to find Munif rummaging through my shoulder bag. I watched his slim arms move with quick fluid motions under the cool light of the desert night. He pulled out a pile of my belongings, but it was too dark to see what exactly they were. Then he picked them up and walked away from the lemon tree. The desert sky was so bright that I could see him reading something from the pile. When he was finished he quietly opened my bag and stuffed my belongings back inside. I was shocked and angry at his actions, but since he was my only way back to Lyon I decided to wait until morning to see if he had actually taken anything before I confronted him.

The next day we set off for Tunis. After rummaging through my bag I saw that had taken nothing. Munif told me that we would be in the ancient city by nightfall. At noon we stopped for water and he broke out laughing.

"What?" I asked nervously.

"You have to answer me one question."

"Which might be?"

"Why didn't you try to stop me last night?"

"Stop you from what?" I asked, feigning astonishment.

"Don't pretend you didn't see me. I could see your eyes glimmering from fifty feet away. Moonlight isn't that dim."

"All right," I conceded. "I did see you. But since you seemed to return everything I thought it best not to mention anything. Maybe you were just testing me."

"I wanted to read the letter I saw in your bag to make sure you weren't a spy. I wasn't sure I could trust you."

"It was from my girl friend," I said. "But I guess you know that now. I hope you're satisfied."

"I'm sorry," he said. He looked slightly embarrassed.

The two of us walked in silence to Tunis. By the time we reached the outskirts it was sunset. We shared one last cup of water and went to sleep under a tree in a small park. When I woke in the morning he was gone.

### IV

Disappearance. As if the word and the woman had suddenly become one, I shrunk away from her in defeat. But wasn't that precisely why I loved her? Jillian was always vanishing from me when I needed her the most. Like Degas' ballerina, she was a creature dangling from a thin thread that reached down from some higher realm. I'd always taken her passion for Artaud's Theater and its Double as consubstantial with my own relentless craving to slip away from my outer life and into my most secret fantasies. Her thesis was written certification that she and I were woven from the same cloth: the world of dreams and the imagination. But to have her only as a dream would have been unbearable. My mother always said I preferred dreams to the truth, but Jillian was the one thing in life where dreams and reality hit a singularity and became indistinguishable.

The night after she left with Adrien, leaving me to walk her young sister home through the downtown alleys of Lyon, I felt I had suddenly fallen in the heart of a deep black abyss. But the next morning I awoke to new optimism and hoped that it was all just a glitch and she would call back in the next few days effusing regret over her actions. Although I desperately wanted to call her and find out what had happened, I realized that my pride was at stake and it was her duty to call me and apologize. I always found that to win a woman back the worst thing to do was scamper around on her coat tails. But I waited for weeks without hearing from her and my hopes rapidly faded. She had no doubt accepted Adrien's plea for her hand in marriage. I cursed his dirty tactics. I hated him for showing up all desperate and morbid claiming that somehow she was letting him down by not loving him the way he loved her. But was this the truth or was there something more? On the hope that I could find out what had actually happened I tried calling Annette in London. I felt I knew her well enough and that she would somehow be able to talk some sense into Jillian and help me win her back before it was too late. So strange I thought, reflecting on the absurdities of my actions as I walked over to the phone, how I'd convinced myself that some secondary agent like her sister could sway something as vast and unpredictable as Jillian's heart back into my hands with something so small as a few words of endorsement. In desperation I tried dialing Annette's number several times but always got some strange man's voice.

After months of suffering my heart grew tired and I was slowly able to turn my mind to other things. By late autumn, I had almost grown accustomed to her being out of my life. I looked back on our relationship as a fleeting romance and began to applaud myself for at least having a fling and not spending my entire life in military training or locked inside a book. After all, having loved her and lost her was better than not having loved her at all. I started to ask out other women. I even kissed a small French waitress over a barstool one night. We were trading coy glances all night while I sat at the bar reading a book as she trolleyed back and forth from the bar to the outdoor tables carrying a tray of beer and liquor. At just about closing time I mustered up the courage to touch her shoulder and kiss her as she passed. She responded with a huge smile, but her reaction seemed like enough of a reward and I decided not to take it any further.

It was exactly three weeks after that kiss when I saw Jillian again. It was the first day of winter. She was hiding behind a pair of dark sunglasses walking alone down the same street I ran into her the day after we'd first met. At first I didn't recognize her. She jogged up to me with a pile of papers clamped tightly under her arm. But it was not, as I found out later, entirely by accident that we crossed paths.

"Jean, what a surprise," she said as if nothing had ever come between us. She shook my arm.

"Oh, Jillian," I said numbly. I treated her as I would a stranger. It had been so long I felt I didn't know her anymore.

"Jean. That's no way to greet someone you haven't seen in months."

"I just don't know what to say."

"Why don't you ask me what I'm doing?"

"You married Adrien and you're trying to finish your thesis. Your personal life was too complicated and you were getting nowhere with your work. So, you decided to marry so you could graduate."

"Wrong. Dead wrong."

"What, then?"

She took me by the arm and escorted me back to Façade. At first I was reluctant to follow her in.

"Jean," she said, desperately trying to break my guard. "You have every right to be mad at me. I'm grateful you're even talking to me. It was awful what I did to you."

"Don't flatter yourself. What makes you think I even cared?"

"I know you better than that. You were always my favorite."

"Is that an honor or a curse?"

"Come on. At least let me explain. But there is so much that I don't even know where to begin."

"So full of clichés. I don't even know where to begin, she says. Do you think I do? Well, maybe I do. Maybe I do know after all. You walked out on me."

"I'm sorry," said Jillian.

"And then what?"

"I had to. My life was such a mess."

"Who were you seeing?"

"Nobody," she said sullenly. Her eyes were so deep with surrender I couldn't help but let go of my anger and touch the palm of her hand.

"Nobody?" I repeated.

"I had to isolate myself."

"So why did you run off with Adrien that night?"

"You don't know what really happened. He was so upset. He was on the brink of despair and seeing you with me was the last straw."

"And you fell for it."

"Jean. Please. You're more compassionate than that. He burned my name into his wrists with match sticks and said he would do it again if I didn't come home with him."

The desperation of his actions put me at ease. I now saw Adrien as less of a rival and more of a man to be pitied. I relaxed into my seat and listened quietly to her outpourings. My gaze moved back and forth from the fiery reflections of the candlelight on the tabletop to the deep wet flames of her eyes. My heart slowly opened up to her. I could see her as that frail fey creature again, dangling like a circus ballerina on that long gold thread from another world.

"I stopped seeing everyone. I isolated myself for months, but Adrien kept calling me. Sometimes he even threatened suicide."

"Suicide?" Although it could have been a ploy to get Jillian away from me, I still felt bad for all my petty jealousies against him. How could I be so low as to hate a man who would consider taking his own life on account of my own success?

"But eventually he stopped. He still loves me, but I think he realizes it's no use forcing me and we can only be friends."

The night slipped onward as smoothly as the Sambucca flowed into our glasses and then our mouths. It all came out. Our meeting was no accident. She realized she needed me. She said I was the only one who could understand her on a deeper level. I was the only one who shared her passion for literature and psychology. She adored my love of beauty in its most abstract sense. When she was with me she felt we could communicate without even having to speak. She just needed to get away to see how she felt. Isolate herself. Separate the essential from the inessential. Let her soul crystallize, as she put it. We walked home together. She invited me into her apartment. But I refused, telling her that I needed time to think about it.

I called her the next day and we slept together that same night. We snapped together like tiny magnets thrown in a jar. Click. It was over. We were sealed. Through her window I watched the snow settle on an awning across the street. The soft white mantle almost seemed to breathe as it grew outwards in all directions. I was finally alive.

But my happiness was to be short-lived. A week later I received notice that I had to leave for North Africa in six months to fulfill my military duty.

### V

I took the ferry from Tunis and arrived in Marseilles that evening. I booked a room in a cheap hotel by the docks. No matter how dirty the rooms were, it was still better than the trenches. I took the train to Lyon the following morning. Lyon always had a soothing effect on me. It's something about the slow quiet waters of the intersecting Rhone and Saone rivers. Across the Saone from downtown there is a Romanesque cathedral that casts a heavy elephant-shaped shadow as the sun is setting. The elephant had already cast its shadow by the time I reached Jillian's house.

She lived in a late nineteenth century brick town house west of downtown. I opened the white wooden gate, admiring its perfect row of pointed fence posts. I felt I was passing through a portal into an imaginary garden. All around me were statues, flowers and shrubbery. I walked by a tall granite monolith surrounded at the bottom by tiny blue flowers. Although I'd walked through that garden countless times before it seemed somehow different, somehow renewed. There was a distinct dreamlike quality that I'd never sensed before. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that everything, from the stone toe of a gargoyle at the foot of her front stairs to a bee that buzzed by my head, was an illusion without any concrete existence. I walked up the steps to the heavy oak door.

I knocked. There was no answer.

I knocked again, this time much harder.

Still no answer.

I tried the handle. The door opened freely. I walked in. There was a distinct smell of burnt coffee in the front hall. I passed into the living room. It was in perfect order except for a complete set of clothes lying neatly on the couch as if the person wearing them had vanished in mid-conversation. The smell of coffee gave way to that of a musky perfume. It wasn't anything I'd ever smelled on Jillian before.

I walked through the elongated living room and into the small, claustrophobic kitchen. The counter was covered in breadcrumbs. An empty bottle of wine lay crudely beside the remodeled porcelain sink. The browned cork was sitting beside it like a used condom at the foot of a bedpost. I picked up the bottle and checked the label. Nothing special.

I heard footsteps upstairs. I tiptoed through the living room and out the front door. Then I heard singing. A woman's voice. I stood in silence as the voice got louder and louder. Then I heard steps coming down the staircase. The words gained definition. The faintly echoed chords straightened out, assembling in perfect cohesion. It was Jillian's voice. She must have been in the shower. She sang in the raspy drawl of a southern negress.

I knocked and she came to the door in her bathrobe.

"Jean. You're safe," she said as if she'd just woken up.

"Jillian."

She sank into me like a stone into the depths of a loch. The harder she pushed up against me, the harder I pulled her into me. There was something almost frightening about the gravity of her response. If she had not hugged me at all it would have made me feel more secure. She let go her grip.

"I got your letter," I said.

"I was hoping you didn't." Her tone darkened.

"I deserted."

"For me?"

"I would've anyway. A war broke out."

"I heard. I read about it a week after I sent the letter. I was so worried." She pulled me towards her again. "I wasn't sure you'd make it."

"It's not over yet. They'll be after me if they don't find a disfigured corpse somewhere they can say was me."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I have to lay low. I'm afraid of getting a job under my own name. I need fake ID. Maybe we can go on a long holiday. In your letter..."

"Ignore the letter," she said, drawing away from me. "I wrote it in a state of despair. I was so sick of sitting around writing. It had nothing to do with you."

"I understand," I said. But I wasn't sure that I did.

"I'm almost done. It's taken every shred of life out of me. Whenever I have an idea - any idea at all - I find a way of funneling it into a chapter. I feel like everything I do is somehow attached to it like playground balls around a tether pole."

I slept in her bed for most of the afternoon. When I woke up I found a tray with lukewarm coffee and cookies sitting on the night table. I took a few sips before getting up to find Jillian. She was lounging quietly in the living room under the golden light of a reading lamp. When she pulled the book away from her face I saw that she was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with small oval lenses that I'd never seen on her before. She looked like a complete stranger. Like a librarian in a porno film. I stood watching her secretly from the door for almost five minutes without her noticing me at all. Finally I sniffled and she spotted me by the door.

"Hi," I said.

Her initial expression was cold - unsettling. Then she pulled off her glasses and her face colored up. For a brief moment I caught a glimpse of the Jillian I'd fallen in love with so many times before.

"You look like a little boy spying on his mother," she said.

"I was just savoring the moment. You looked so peaceful sitting there reading."

That night we made love and I felt I was staring into the eyes of a total stranger. Even her small chiseled nose, her softly angled cheekbones, and her heavy wet lips seemed unfamiliar. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me. She pushed my head into the pillow as she panted heavily and irregularly. She wrapped her lips around my penis and then rubbed it with her thin bony fingers. But I couldn't climax. Then she pulled at my hair and smiled a knowing, loving smile. She still looked strange. Even more so as she didn't seem to sense my detachment. I shut my eyes and thought of her walking alone through the streets of Lyon two years ago. Then my mind filled the scene with smoke and dead bodies. Fire hissed through smashed windows and soldiers hollered as they tossed their bulbous grenades. I ran to her side and she grabbed me. This was the Jillian I knew. I thrust my hand up her knee-length skirt and started finger-fucking her right there amidst all the smoke and clatter. She grabbed my hand and led me inside a burning building. I didn't care that the flames lapped at my face like the tongues of a thousand wild dogs. She pulled off her skirt but left on her bright orange athletic shirt. I liked the way the broad blue stripe across her breast accentuated the soft swell of her cleavage. I let her undress me on the splintered floor. I listened to her breathing as the sound of gunfire crowded my ears. Then she whispered in a slow and sullen voice:

yam camdou

yan daba

camdoura

The words aroused me. They tweaked an inner erogenous zone and my heart was suddenly alight. The roof of the building dissolved to leave a clear patch of deep indigo variegated by the random smearing of stars. I began to climax. I dug my nails into her clay-white skin. I closed my eyes and the whirling skyscape of my mind turned suddenly into a million gun barrels poking down into my face. I screamed.

"What's wrong?" asked Jillian.

I opened my eyes.

"Nothing," I said. I pulled away from her and spread out my arms. She looked familiar again.

"We have to go to Malta tomorrow."

"Why are you telling me now?"

"No, not Malta. A small island nearby."

"Why?"

"Poilblanc."

Poilblanc was her thesis advisor. I didn't even answer. Instead I just admired the smooth motion of her tongue across her lips. That night I dreamed I was in the hot sands of the desert again, the cold metal bellies of fighter jets screaming over my head. Bent-up corpses like dolls in ghetto-side garbage heaps. And Munif. His sharp black eyes scrutinizing my every step. I woke up in a sweat and turned to Jillian. She was asleep. I watched her breathing as my heart welled up with joy. It was so comforting to be with her once more.

### VI

The next morning Jillian woke me up and rushed me out the door as soon as I had dressed. She handed me a cup of coffee and locked the front door. It was raining. I took a sip of the coffee and she said something about meeting Poilblanc in half an hour. Then we were supposed to drive together to the coast and take a ferry out to the island.

"An old colleague of Poilblanc's is having a few people from the French Department out to his private island," she explained. "He has organized a dinner party by the beach."

"He owns an entire island?"

"I guess. I've never met him, but he must be rich. His name is Delacroix. He's best known for his work on de Maupassant and Flaubert."

I rolled my eyes in frustration. It was my first day back and she was already carting me off to spend the day with her university colleagues.

"You'll do fine. Just don't say anything about Africa. I'm not too sure what their political views might be."

I watched Jillian's eyes dart around nervously as she drove us through the outskirts of Lyon to Poilblanc's house. She seemed irritated. She kept looking down into her lap as though she were holding back some great revelation that would be utterly devastating to our love. Half way there she put on a pair of sunglasses. The smooth black molding covered nearly half her face.

"Virtual reality goggles?" I asked.

"Ha," she jibed. "I think they're sexy. I bought them just for you. I thought they'd turn you on."

With her face bottled up by the glasses and her shiny black nylon raincoat hiding all but a glimpse of her purple cashmere scarf, she looked like one of Serge Gainsbourg's muses.

"Duplicitous," I said.

"How so?"

"They hide your distinguishing facial features. When you wear them you could be anybody. But on the other hand, they make you stand out...make you unusual."

"That's the point. Mystery. That's what being sexy is. You have to stand out, reveal yourself. But most of what you reveal is that you're hiding something...some secret. That's the paradox."

"Are you hiding something?" I asked bluntly.

Just then a child in a yellow rain coat sprang out from nowhere and Jillian slammed on the breaks. The car stopped about ten feet in front of the child, who seemed unfazed and stopped only momentarily before continuing on his way as if nothing had happened. Jillian threw her glasses off and slammed her fist into the steering wheel.

"Fucking kid," she yelled. "Did you see him? He probably did that on purpose. He just lunged out to scare us. I nearly went through the wind shield."

"Relax," I said. I caressed her leg.

I clutched her hand and squeezed it to calm her down. She shook her head angrily and started the engine. A mile down the road the raindrops sped up and Jillian turned the wipers to maximum. I listened to their steady thumping until we reached Poilblanc's house. To get there we had to climb a jackknife road up a small mountainside. He lived in a lavish Spanish-style mansion on top of a hill in St. Didier Au Mont D'Or. His front yard was densely landscaped with bushes and flower hedges. The walkway to the door was lined on both sides by tall pines with silvery arrowhead needles.

Poilblanc greeted us at the door with a courteous handshake and an awkward bow. He was what you'd always expect a professor to look like: a scraggly mat of gray hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, and an elegant cherry pipe dangling from his fat blubbery lips. He was even wearing the obligatory tweed jacket with leather-reinforced elbows.

"Ah, yes. The sea is so inspiring. Shall we go?" he asked as he spread out his arms to meet the day. "Stillman always gets a bit angry when people are late." He stepped over to Jillian and kissed her in a long and seductive way as if to spontaneously eliminate me from the room.

"I am so sorry, " he said to me after he pulled away from Jillian. "She is such a beautiful and intelligent woman. You are so lucky to have her. "

I sensed a note of confrontation in his voice. He clearly viewed me as an uneducated lout whose presence on the trip could only interfere with his far-fetched seduction plans. Not wanting to hurt Jillian's professional life, I swallowed my pride and ignored him.

"I certainly am, " I said with hidden sarcasm.

As we drove to Marseilles, Poilblanc launched into a monologue about Malraux and the difference between art and revolution. Jillian seemed to hang on his every word as I just kept wishing he'd stop and be quiet. She and I were still warming up to each other and we needed to be alone. At times I wanted to shake her as she stared blankly ahead with her sunglasses masking whatever secret I suspected - fairly or not - she might be holding. Other moments, I wanted to slide my hands up and down her taut rounded thighs and make love to her right there in the car. If Poilblanc wasn't in the back seat staring at her, I may have even tried.

Jillian turned to me as we left the outskirts of Lyon and I turned back just enough to catch her face in quarter profile. Later, we stopped for a twenty minutes at a gas station café to rest. Jillian stared silently out the window at the passing traffic while Poilblanc stirred his coffee and continued talking to both of us, ignoring her sudden indifference to whatever he was saying.

When we got to Marseilles, Stillman met us at the harbor. He was a bald man with a clean-shaven face and thin, almost invisible lips. With his nervy eyes and thin silhouette, he looked more like a snooker champion than a part-time sailor and History Professor. He opened the car door on Jillian's side before she even had a chance to step out to greet him. She fixed her hair and stood up. Then she took the fountain pen she'd kept hidden in her shirt pocket and set it down on the dashboard before closing the door. Stillman took us to a small inlet where his large motorboat was waiting and then helped us board. Jillian slipped as she stepped from the dock to the back of the boat and fell on her knee. Both professors rushed to her side in an overblown display of old world chivalry.

Two hours later - at almost eight in the evening - we were on the island. I could see it swelling out of the horizon like a fresh bruise against the pinkish background of clouds stage lit by the setting sun. Jillian suddenly turned to me and kissed me with such passion that I almost had to pull away and risk leaning back on the boat's waist-high metal railing. It was the nicest she'd treated me all day and I wasn't sure what I did to bring it on.

"We're here at last!" she marveled.

We docked at a small wooden pier. Delacroix was waiting for us as he smoked a thick cigar and played with his white sun hat. His shirt, pants and shoes were also white. His skin was deep bronze, making him look like some kind of Caribbean plantation owner. He grinned portentously and helped Jillian out of the boat while ignoring the rest of us.

"Such a pleasure," he said. "I'm surprised that you actually made it on time. The sea must have been favorable."

"The Mediterranean has always treated me well," said Stillman.

Delacroix led us to his beach house. It was so dark when we finally got there that I could hardly make out what it looked like on the outside. All I could tell was that it was big. The inside was decorated with modern chrome Italian furniture. After Delacroix showed us around the house we sat up playing bridge and drinking gin and tonic for almost an hour, although Poilblanc insisted on drinking vodka with a cheap brand of blue margarita mix. I made the comment that it looked like liquid laundry detergent. He stared at his cards for more than a minute before finally breaking the silence with a dry cough. The island seemed to slow everything down. I imagined my synapses were covered with a deadening film of tar. As the evening progressed, I became increasingly aware of Poilblanc's crafty lascivious eyes and how they kept wandering over in Jillian's direction. She seemed completely unaware. I hid my disgust and said nothing.

At the end of the evening Stillman apologized smugly for beating us at bridge and we retired early. The next day Delacroix got up early to show us around the island. I took a quick shower, but Jillian was asleep before I had a chance to even touch her.

### VII

The next morning was cold. We put on our sweaters and stepped outside onto the grey frothy beach. Weaving through the dense scarves of fog that moved in slow motion across the island's surface like legions of giant eels, we made our way up the side of a hill towards the center of the island. With its barren gray edges and jagged peaks it was little more than a glorified rock. The fog gathered around us as we ascended upwards, making it almost impossible to see the shore. There was no evidence of life anywhere. Apart from a few small stones covered with lichen and moss or the occasional weed poking up through the ground, there was nothing but giant boulders, sand, and rubble. The fog thinned only slightly as we approached what appeared to be the peak.

"What is man's greatest curse?" asked Delacroix.

A bird squawked and disappeared into the fog. I turned to Jillian. She'd put on her sunglasses again.

"Technology," said Stillman.

The bird swung back into view, popping out of the fog like a rodent from a hole. Following its flight path made me dizzy. It made me think of all the freedom out there. All the apparent freedom that lay ahead of me. For the first time since my desertion I wondered what it would be like to be alone in the world without any relatives or friends.

"What sort of answer is that? Technology is a blessing," said Delacroix. "It is the provider. It gives us drugs to forget who we are."

"Sex," Jillian muttered sarcastically. The others didn't seem to hear as they moved away from her and gathered in a small huddle.

"Sex?" I queried.

Jillian didn't respond. She walked away from me and joined the three professors. I followed them along the crest of the peak, lagging behind, but still within earshot. I wasn't in the mood for their empty philosophical musings, but I listened anyway, trying to match each disembodied voice to its respective speaker. The four voices were different enough that I had no trouble.

"Memory," Delacroix barked bitterly. "Age has reduced me to a sack of useless reflections. A junk heap of emotional refuse. To think I once dreamed of being happy. Memories are nothing but toxic waste. It's memory that makes you die. It's the memory of what you used to feel that makes you grow old. One day I'll wake up and realize that I no longer feel anything. By then it'll be too late to cry myself to death, because I'll be incapable of tears."

"Sex," insisted Jillian. Her voice engulfed me like a musky perfume.

"Sex? How can that be a curse?" asked Poilblanc.

"It makes all life seem banal and worthless in comparison," she said.

"Technology," said Stillman. "Without technology life would be a primeval state of ecstasy. You would have no time to let memories smother you to death. Life would be better than sex. Sex would only be an afterthought. You would be in paradise. But then again, maybe such a life would be cursed from the outset because it's really just the preamble to the mythic Fall."

I felt a sudden urge to get closer to Jillian. I quickened my pace until I was directly behind them.

"To think I watched over you all those months as you worked so studiously on your thesis," said Poilblanc to Jillian. "All along I took you for a nun," he continued as if I didn't exist. His head turned so I could see his mottled face in profile. His nose was crooked and his beard gnarled.

"I thought you shunned sex, just like your idol Artaud. All those nights I dreamt of your tender thighs and milky cheeks, chiding myself for violating your innocence in my tormented thoughts."

Jillian laughed in a deliberately girlish way that was new to me, as though she were revealing the many ways that I had neglected to flatter her.

"You're all crazy," Delacroix interrupted. "Sex is only good in your dreams. When I last made love to a woman I could only think of the time I made love to a woman before that. And that time I could only think of the woman down the hall that I also wanted to sleep with, although the one I was with I always wanted more. Memory. Dreams. We're all trapped inside ourselves. Imagination is our captor."

"I just read a book proffering a similar theory," Poilblanc announced as though he were commenting on a formal lecture. "But it concerned the evolution of mankind as a whole, rather than just the individual, as your theory seems to focus on."

A clap of thunder filled the air. The three professors turned to each other. Jillian looked straight ahead. Then she sprang into motion and ran down the hill, vanishing behind a thick wall of fog. I tried not to look at the three men. Their arguments irked me. Although I felt a strong affinity for Delacroix's theories about imagination and memory dominating human existence, I found him tiresome in his pessimism. I believed imagination only enhanced life's pleasures.

"Come here, look what I found!" Jillian shouted. Her voice seemed to come from all directions at once. I ran down the hill. The professors followed. When I caught up to her, she was holding a long white cane.

"Where did you get that?"

"It was just sitting on a rock."

She handed it to me and I peered down its long shaft. The wood was flawless and straight, seemingly unaffected by the humidity on the island. A mass of fog cleared, suddenly revealing the three professors standing side by side.

"What's all the commotion?" asked Stillman.

"She found this blind man's cane," I said.

"Strange," said Delacroix. "I'm the only one on this island and I've never entertained a blind man in my life. Let's see." He took it from me and tapped it against a boulder to test its strength. "Almost brand new."

"It's not even slightly warped," I said.

"Where did you find it?" asked Poilblanc.

"Over here." Delacroix followed her into the fog. Poilblanc and Stillman looked inquisitively at each other and then at me. Then they walked in the direction of Jillian and Delacroix. I followed for only a few minutes before I once again started lagging behind. Eventually I lost them completely and found myself alone beside what looked like a fire pit. Ashes were still smoldering. Someone had been here, possibly that same day.

I ran to find the others. It was almost fifteen minutes before I found Stillman and Poilblanc. They were standing beside a large boulder discussing the significance of the cane and whether it was a portent or an imprecation as opposed to merely a random event.

"We're not alone," I said.

"Do you believe in magic?" asked Stillman, ignoring what I had just said. I paused as a way of protest. "Yes, you," he said turning to me. I shrugged my shoulders. "I was a skeptic until I went to Haiti."

"Haiti?" Poilblanc tugged on the tip of his beard.

"No," I said. "I don't believe in magic. Where are the others?"

"I sailed there once. I met a man who sold fish for a living. They weren't even his own. I mean, he wasn't a fisherman. He always had a good story to tell when I stopped at his kiosk. One day he invited me around back and showed me a voodoo doll he had locked up in a trunk."

"Voodoo?" Poilblanc scoffed. "Rubbish."

"Where are the others?" I interrupted.

The instant I spoke, Delacroix materialized from the fog. He was standing alone with his hands in his pockets.

"He said if he threw it into the fire his daughter would die. I asked him why he wanted his daughter to die and he told me he didn't. Then he went on to tell me how he used it to control her. She was apparently a wild woman and slept with half the town. It brought such shame upon him that he decided to threaten her with voodoo."

"What happened to Jillian?" Poilblanc asked.

"I thought Delacroix followed her."

"No. I went off alone," said Delacroix.

"Anyway," continued Stillman, raising his voice to regain the attention of the others, "to make a long story short, as none of you seem to care, his daughter straightened out and married a respectable store owner. The man was so happy, that he tossed the doll out. A few days later she died in a tragic fire. As it turned out the doll was incinerated in a waste disposal unit the same day."

"And you expect us to believe you?" asked Poilblanc.

"No. But it's true nonetheless."

Delacroix ushered me a few meters away from Stillman and Poilblanc. His voice hushed to a whisper.

"Where's the cane?" asked Delacroix.

"I think she left it back where she found it. I stumbled over a fire hearth a few hundred yards away."

"A fire hearth? This is getting rather uncomfortable. I pay the coast guard monthly to patrol the island. Unless they made it, I'd be very disappointed."

"Jillian!" I yelled. I heard her name echo and die in the fog. There was no answer. Stillman and Poilblanc both looked over at me.

"She'll turn up," said Delacroix. "I'm more worried about this hearth you found. Any sign of people around it?"

"No. But what if she's been kidnapped?"

"Kidnapped. By who?"

"The people who built the hearth."

"Don't you think that's a little premature?"

"Jillian!" I yelled out. Still no answer.

"It comes back to what I was saying earlier about memory. If you had no memory of her, you wouldn't be so worried. And even as we speak, your anxiety is slowly dissolving your spinal cord. Mind over matter."

"Look," I said more assertively. "I admire your vast medical knowledge, but we have a problem. Jillian appears to be lost. Anything could have happened. She could have tripped and broken a leg. She could have been kidnapped. It's no time for idle reflection."

"It would be such a shame to lose her just before she finished her work on Artaud," Poilblanc said. He picked a hair out of his nose and shook his head regretfully. "Such a pretty girl as well."

I was so angry I wanted to strangle him. Squeeze his throat until it burst. She could be in serious trouble and all he could do was drop some calculated remark about her looks. But that was what academia was all about. Letting your professors treat you like slaves and concubines so you could ride on their backs one rung closer to whatever magic prize lay waiting at the top of its golden ladder of bullshit.

After an hour of wandering through the fog and calling out her name, Stillman and Poilblanc finally admitted she might be in danger. I took Delacroix off to the hearth while Stillman and Poilblanc went in the opposite direction to find her. We agreed to meet up at the house in two hours regardless of what happened. The fog had thickened. Delacroix mumbled to himself the Latin names of the various strains of moss and lichen as we passed them on the trail. When we reached the fire pit, the smoldering had stopped. Nothing else had changed since I first stumbled on it. Delacroix was baffled. After a few minutes of inspection he shrugged his shoulders and we continued our search for Jillian. We crossed a ridge that separated two vast fields of clovers - the first real vegetation I'd seen on the island - from a long stretch of white sand. The ridge gradually descended to the beach at the point where the boat was docked.

"We've come full circle," said Delacroix. "Literally."

The boat was as we left it. There was no sign of any intruders. But why would intruders pick such an obvious place to land? On the other hand, if one of them was blind, as the cane suggested, how would he know the difference? There must have been more than one of them. A blind man could never navigate a boat by himself, let alone kidnap a woman. I also thought it might be a set up. Stillman and Poilblanc could have used the two hours to cart her away from the island. But, if the boat was still there as we found it, how could they leave the island unless they had a second boat? But, since the intruders had to have their own boat anyway, why was it necessary to involve the two professors at all?

"Jillian," I yelled out again. There was no response.

We combed the beach between the house and the dock searching for clues and calling out her name. When the two hours were up, the sun had already set. We waited inside the house for Poilblanc and Stillman. They arrived fifteen minutes later. They had crisscrossed the island in every conceivable direction and found nothing.

I was the first to suggest we call the police. Delacroix dialed, but I did the talking. The police said they'd send someone over by helicopter as soon as possible, and instructed us to wait at the house with the light turned on in case she might still be lost and needed a beacon. The three professors retired at midnight and I stayed up shouting her name along the beach until I almost lost my voice. I tried to sleep but couldn't. I couldn't even grieve, my head was so distraught with panic.

I woke up the next day face down on the porch. The police had already searched the island and there wasn't a trace of anyone. Not even the hypothetical intruders. They couldn't find the fire pit and the cane was gone. The three professors sat quietly together as if pondering the secrets of human evolution. I wanted to hit them: shake them out of their mummified state. I imagined her tied up in a dark cellar, her toes devoured by rats. As I stared out into the water my mind darted frantically about, grasping for possible solutions.

I heard a bird squawking in the distance and it suddenly occurred to me that I might be overreacting. Jillian had disappeared before. Not in such a mysterious and dramatic fashion, but she had nonetheless. It was her style. Maybe the fire pit was put there by friends of hers that had dropped by the island for a surprise visit. If that was true, she could have gone inland with them on a whim. She was often like that. Moody and spontaneous. Maybe Poilblanc was getting on her nerves and she had to leave. She could be waiting back in Lyon stretched out on her bed with a copy of The Theater and Its Double. Countless possibilities raced through my head like whippets chasing a metal rabbit around a track. But no matter how optimistic my thoughts, one thing kept coming back to me as if suspended in the center of a great dark cloud. She was gone.

Jillian had vanished.

I was in such a state of vexation I didn't even notice the three professors board the police boat and sit down beside me. As the boat left the peer its engine belched amorphous blue clouds of smoke into the air. The head officer gestured for me to fasten my seat belt. I followed his order in complete silence. I thought of the wedge of soft hair dipping down between Jillian's legs. I could see the slim arcs of dark hair flaring up and outwards from the inside corners of her eyes. I wanted to touch her. My mind wandered back to the trenches. I imagined I was crawling up the barrel of a giant steel machine gun. The smell of ozone sharpened the air, suggesting that the gun had just been fired. Then the gun turned into a long hallway. Jillian stood at the end smoking a German cigarette. She was crying out my name. I ran down the hall to save her, but she was gone. I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the island as it shrunk into the distance.

# 2.

### The Absence

### I

Jillian's disappearance was a great white emptiness. Imagine a man with no insides, a hollow man, crafted from nothing but skin and bone. Imagine no lungs, no heart, no stomach; not even a brain. Imagine him lying naked in the hot desert with a lance jutting out from his shrunken chest. Imagine this and you will have had but a small glimpse of how I felt as we cut through the calm Mediterranean waters towards the shore.

I turned my head and looked at Poilblanc. He was wiping his nose with his hand. His weatherworn face had the same smug grin that it always had, suggesting his possible complicity in her disappearance. Eventually I could see the skyline of Marseilles rising in the distance. No longer did it strike me as quaint with its soft pink houses and rich white beaches. The beachfront buildings were painted in garish colors, as if the whole city had been redecorated for a child's birthday party. We approached the shore and docked. When the boat had come to a standstill, the navigator instructed us to get out and wait on the promenade until the police had come to meet us. After five minutes, a group of three policemen arrived and escorted us to their car and took us down to the station for questioning. An older police inspector named St. Croix invited me into his office and offered me a chair. I sat down, still shivering as I shook my head in disbelief. He poured us both a glass of whiskey and lit a cigarette.

"There is no need to worry," he said. "She is probably safe. Most often in missing person cases the person in question reappears within the first week. Sometimes it's just a fleeting passion that takes them off on some spontaneous voyage." He drained the glass of whiskey and continued. "Did she show any signs of strange behavior on the island?"

"She was a little quiet," I said. "But that could mean anything."

"She was your lover. Were you planning to get married? Sometimes cold feet can drive a person..."

"No. It wasn't that. I'd just come back a day before."

"Come back from what?"

"Traveling."

"Where?"

"North Africa," I mumbled. I wanted to elaborate, but then I stopped, not wanting to tip him off about my desertion.

"Had you been getting along with her?"

"Yes. But the distance was too much. She often sent me letters saying she missed me. The last one said she was desperate to see me."

"So you think it unlikely that she'd just run away from you when she wanted to see you so badly?"

"Yes."

"I see. If she remains missing, we may want to investigate her personal belongings and possibly her writings for any clues." He looked down at his report. "It says here that she was a scholar."

"In letters, yes."

He asked me to tell him as much as I could about the events leading up to her disappearance. The whiskey started to settle me down and I began to find his presence comforting. I related the story as best as I could remember, including the white cane, the hearth, and the fact that she'd left the party alone, closely followed by Delacroix, just before she vanished. St. Croix probed for details. He asked me how she was dressed, whether we drove, flew, or took the train to Marseilles, and even what she had eaten the morning before her disappearance. I described her clothing down to every last thread and even recounted what she'd eaten. When I told him she had driven Poilblanc and myself from Lyon, he asked me where she had parked the car before we met Stillman.

"Near the shore," I said. "I don't know the exact street."

"Can you show me?"

"I think so."

He grabbed his coat and we left immediately.

As we rounded the corner and slowly approached the parking lot where we had left the car, I was hoping that it would be gone. Any sign that Jillian was still alive would be a welcome blessing. To my dismay, it was still there, seemingly just as we left it. St. Croix pulled out his radio and called a police locksmith to come and open the car door.

"It's so crucial that we carefully examine the interior before anything else is done with it," he explained. "Even the slightest disturbance could wipe away an important clue or distort the evidence."

The locksmith came and in minutes the door was open. The inspector went through the car's interior. As I watched his motions in the reflection off the car's front window, my eyes shifted to the dashboard. There was nothing there. At first I felt there was something wrong, but then my head cleared and I came to my senses. She never left anything on the dashboard. Only if something was bothering her would she have left anything there. The inspector thanked me and promised to be in touch over the next few days as things developed. He offered me a ride and I declined. I needed to be alone and didn't mind walking back to the station.

"She will show up," he said as he climbed in his car and tipped his hat, leaving me alone on the street corner.

The next day the papers reported that a female body had washed up on the shore just outside of Marseilles. Although its facial features had been smoothed out of existence by the salt water, the police declared that it was Jillian. I was devastated. She was a creature too subtle and beautiful to die in such a horrific way. To accept her death would be like accepting the end of light altogether. The police detained me for further questioning. That afternoon I was put up in a dismal hotel between a row of bookshops and a market place until further notice. The first night I lay awake examining the fissures in the yellow-stained ceiling above me. Every time I stood up to get a glass of water or look out the window, the world seemed more hideous and alien than before. People walked by like transmogrified statues - only barely human - electric dummies, grotesque creations built from the random tangling of lines and shadows. I imagined Jillian's soft round eyes staring down through the suffocating layers of black water as the last breath of life seeped out of her. I tried to imagine what she might have been imagining as she sunk into the arms of death. I imagined things too dark to even begin to describe.

The next morning common sense took over. There was no way the body could have been hers. I refused to accept what the papers had deduced. What motive was there for killing her? It just didn't make sense. There was no evidence of rape. She had very little money. As far as I knew she had no real enemies.

At noon, I called the police and demanded an update. St. Croix informed me that an autopsy of the mysterious body had revealed stab wounds and multiple hemorrhaging in the torso and head. More detailed laboratory work revealed that the murder had taken place at about the time the police were combing the island. This instantly cleared me and the three professors from direct involvement, although the possibility of a secret collusion involving any or all of Poilblanc, Stillman, and Delacroix still lingered in my thoughts. The authorities pieced together a scenario in which she was abducted on the island and then murdered while on a boat between the island and Marseilles.

Not convinced of this, I demanded to see the body. There was no way I was going to let them close the investigation on the basis of an apparently featureless corpse. Only I could tell if it was really Jillian. I knew her so well I could pencil out her entire anatomy with a cloth wrapped around my head. Her legs were shorter than mine by exactly one half the length of my forearm and her hips spanned exactly the width of my chest.

"It is a sight to dreadful for human eyes," said a police officer. "I know you must be..."

"How are you sure its her, then?"

"We've contacted her personal doctor in Lyon."

"What about DNA evidence?"

"It's known to be unreliable, but I'm sure our forensics team is working on it."

"What about her family?"

"We sent them photos of the corpse."

"And?"

"After much deliberation they decided it was pointless to try and identify it any further. To see what they saw in those photos up close would be too traumatic."

"You don't understand. Only I would know for sure."

"I'm sorry. Except for a personal doctor, it's not normal practice to allow access to anyone outside of the immediate family."

I turned and left without thanking him. I was furious. As far as I could see, the authorities just wanted to close the case as quickly as possible so they could take credit for solving it so quickly.

After a week in the hotel, I was finally released from police questioning. They assigned me a therapist, an expert in murder-related bereavements and allowed me to return to Lyon. I found my apartment sparse and dusty as I'd left it before going to North Africa several months before. I went out to check the mailbox in the back. There was a letter from the French Army demanding I report for duty or face court-martial. I crumpled it up and tossed it in the waste paper basket. If they wanted me, they could fucking well come and get me.

I took off my clothes and took a bath. I stared at the paint-cracked walls. It just didn't seem right. There was no way she'd succumb to a brutal attack. It wasn't like her. She was too clever for that. She was also a fast runner and had won several medals in high school before giving up athletics for literature. Perhaps a secret poisoning or random gunshot would take her, but she just didn't seem the type to fall at the clumsy hands of some knife-bearing lout. Everything pointed to the professors. Outraged that Poilblanc and Stillman had not been taken in for extensive interrogation, I hurled a bar of soap at the ceiling.

I stayed up all night struggling for a solution. At five in the morning, I went back to her last letter to me and searched for clues. After reading it for the third time, the image of her sitting in black lingerie at her desk writing with her favorite pen suddenly appeared in my head. The image of the pen jarred a memory, or better, an absence of memory, a hole in my thought. My intuition was right. The pen was missing from the dashboard. She had left it there when we parked, but when I went back with the inspector it was gone. I knew something was wrong that afternoon with the inspector. And indeed it must have been doubly wrong if she left it there to begin with, since she always left the dashboard clear. Something had been bothering her. I could see it all morning. The frustration oozing from behind her sunglasses as we sped towards Marseilles. Her cryptic comment about sex being a curse. The missing pen was the clue I was looking for. She had to be alive. She never went anywhere without her pen. She must have left it on the dashboard out of frustration, and once she left the island came back to get it. My head reeled with ideas about where she might be and why. I was now convinced she was alive and resolved to find her if I had to spend the rest of my life doing so.

### II

I contacted the Marseilles authorities the very next morning and told them about the missing pen. The officer was polite and offered his deepest condolences, but seemed doubtful that my findings had really changed anything.

"A missing pen is not normally enough to resurrect the dead. Is there any way that you can prove that the pen was there when you left? Do you have a picture?"

I had no pictures. From the tone of the officer's voice, I could tell he thought I was grasping at straws. So I asked if I could speak to St. Croix.

"St. Croix is out," the officer said. "I can have him call you if you like."

I left him my phone number and thanked him for his trouble. After an hour St. Croix hadn't called so I called again. The same officer answered and I begged him to search the interior of the car to verify my claim. Eventually he obliged. Two hours later he called back and said he couldn't find a pen in the car, but again he insisted that it didn't mean anything.

The next day St. Croix called.

"Jillian was the only missing person reported in the area. When a body washes up on the shore within a few days of a person's disappearance the identities almost always match up."

"But you've only got circumstantial evidence. You can't close the case. I won't let you."

"Sir, I understand that you're upset and we offer you our deepest condolences."

"She's alive." I wanted to probe further about the DNA evidence, but was too afraid to. What if the forensics team had already come up with a positive DNA match? Then all my hope would be gone. In my bereaved state I preferred the tenuous possibility of my missing pen theory to any concrete evidence of her death.

"If we assume you are right, then where did the body come from? Like I said, there's been no reports of any missing persons in this part of the country for at least a month. I can get the exact date of the last one if you really want me to."

"That won't be necessary."

"The body matched up almost exactly in age and physical dimensions with Jillian's medical report. All the evidence points to a murder. Now all we have to do is find the killers."

"You have to look for her. She may be in danger."

"Sir..."

"Listen to me."

"All right. I admit that you may be right. The chances are so small I don't even care to calculate them, but nonetheless, you may be right. Unfortunately, and I say this with my deepest regrets, the police force operates on a certain protocol. We have a lot of cases to solve and we have to pursue those possibilities that seem the most solid. We have to make a safe bet. If we went around following just any shred of evidence that didn't add up with the whole, we'd never solve anything. Do you know how many cases are solved with one hundred percent certainty? Almost none. There's always something that doesn't fit. Perhaps in this case it's your pen."

"How could you say that? We're talking about someone's life here. She could be hurt and you don't even care."

"Please," he said. "Let the police handle this."

At this point I gave up in frustration and slammed the phone down. I had heard countless horror stories about the French police and their stubbornly bureaucratic ways, but this was really too much. How could they so readily accept her death in such a strange set of circumstances?

Next, I called Jillian's parents in Birmingham.

"If only it were true," her mother said in the kind of voice that conjured up images of Sunday school television programs.

"I can still see it. She took the pen out of her pocket and put it on the dashboard. When I came back with the officer it was gone."

"If the good Lord were only so kind," she said in doubtful hope.

"She was either kidnapped or is on the run for something."

"What did the police say?"

"They won't listen. They were even a bit rude."

"Oh. Jillian's father never liked the French. He always told her something bad would happen to her down there. And now it has..."

She burst into tears. Then Jillian's father came on the line.

"What's going on here?"

"Don't Richard," I heard in the background. "He means well."

"She's my little girl and I don't want this to be any messier than it already is. Can't you see you've made her cry? It's tough enough on us as it is."

"I don't mean to interfere," I said. "I loved your daughter like no one else. I'm just not convinced she's dead. The DNA evidence isn't even in yet. That's all I wanted to say."

"Don't go giving us all false hopes, now. You'll just end up dragging it out longer than it has to be dragged out. She's in heaven now. I can feel it."

"Yes. Our little girl's in heaven now," came her mother's voice in the background. Her crying had stopped and her voice suddenly seemed more assured.

"She's in heaven where she belongs, " her father continued. "Why can't you just let her be? I'd rather she be up there where she belongs than down on this pitiful earth."

"I'm sorry," I said solemnly.

"Yes. She was a sweet girl and we want to see the killer hung from a meat hook, but I'd like to think she's better off where she is."

I apologized for inconveniences and offered my sympathies. Then I asked for Annette. After mutual condolences we agreed to meet before the afternoon's memorial service.

Next I swallowed my pride and tried calling Poilblanc. He was surprised to hear from me and coughed as he spoke.

"Jean. All my condolences are with you."

"Thank you."

"It must be difficult."

"I need to talk to you. Can we meet?" I wanted to see him in person so I could gauge his degree of involvement by his body language. Perhaps he'd flush when I told him about the pen, letting on that he was secretly involved in her disappearance.

"Most certainly."

"How about Place Bellecour. On the northwest corner."

He agreed and we arranged to meet at eight that same evening.

On the way to our rendezvous, I stepped into an English bookstore and picked up an anthology of Artaud's life's works. It was the same volume Jillian always kept on her bookshelf. As I walked down the cobblestone streets, I imagined that a clue to her disappearance might lie within its pages. I leafed through the introduction and read a few of the earlier poems. One in particular struck me.

The poets lift up hands

where living acids tremble,

on tables the idol sky

is braced, and the subtle sex

dips an icy tongue

into each hole, each space

which the sky leaves in its wake.

The ground is fouled with souls

and women with pretty cunts

whose miniature corpses

uncurl their mummies.

The words cut through me, vanquishing all of my theories that Jillian was still alive. I imagined her dead and faceless corpse lying in a coffin. The overall shape and form described by her clothes was still beautiful, but the rest of her had long since decayed into nothingness. I wondered if they'd let us see her at the memorial service, whether her body and face had been redone to resemble the living woman in her most beautiful state. There was a cold gust of wind and I realized that I was mad and that her parents and the police were probably right. I began to doubt that there was even a pen at all. A dark pall fell over me and I felt the living acid burning through my insides. I read further into the book, hoping to find something more uplifting. Perhaps Artaud had written a play about a professor who abducts a woman on an island. I dashed my brains looking for any line that might reveal hidden parallels to her disappearance. I skimmed through the book but found nothing of the sort, only a few comfortingly dark lines that gave me renewed hope that I wasn't mad after all. When Poilblanc finally arrived I was muttering them under my breath:

Dark poet, the breast of a virgin

haunts you.

bitter poet, life boils

and the city burns,

and the sky sucks up its rain,

your pen scratches at the heart of life.

"I must apologize for my tardiness," he said. He was wearing a gray wool sports jacket and held a white umbrella under his arm with a copy of the day's paper folded around it. I made an instant connection between the white umbrella and the white cane on the island.

"Your pen scratches at the heart of life," I said.

"Pardon me," he said as he sat down with wide confused eyes.

"Artaud. A pen. That's all I have going for me now."

"I don't have much time, so I'd prefer that you spare me the cat and mouse games and get to the point."

"That was the point. Now, I'm going to ask you something."

"Go ahead. I have nothing to hide."

"Perhaps you do. Where is Jillian?"

"Since you were on more intimate terms with her than I, I would prefer the decorum of not repeating what we both know to be true."

"That she is alive."

"No, Monsieur."

"People just don't vanish on an isolated island and end up getting murdered. How often does Delacroix get visitors? Once a month? It seems unlikely that a group of violent pleasure seekers would just show up on some island and kill someone unless it was planned in advance."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Nothing. I can't see why anyone would want to kill her and thus the theory that it was some premeditated scheme doesn't ring true. I could, however, imagine that someone might abduct her. After all, she was a very attractive woman."

"Yes, she most certainly was."

"Do you remember what Jillian did when we parked at the pier?"

"My memory is not what it once was."

"Come on. You couldn't keep your eyes off her all day. She took something out of her pocket and set it on the dashboard."

"I remember no such a thing."

"Her pen. It was her pen. When the inspector took me to the car afterwards, it was gone. Not a trace. Only she had the keys. She must have gone back to the car. Either the abductors took her back to the car for some reason and she took the pen as a sign to us that she was alive, or she planned the escape herself and was sloppy enough not to cover her tracks as well as she could have."

"If that was true, it would not take much of an imaginative leap to sketch her as the murderess, planting the corpse in the water so that we'd think she was dead."

"True, but just as possible would be a scenario in which the abductors wanted us to think she was dead so they could use her for their own purposes."

"I suppose you think I'm behind it all."

"You may well be. It seems more likely to me that you and your friends would be behind it than some mysterious terrorist organization."

"This is ridiculous. I don't know why I have to take this abuse."

"Unfortunately, the police don't buy my pen theory. But if I made a nuisance of myself they might. If you're so innocent, then you shouldn't have any problems about taking me back to the island."

"Monsieur Delacroix is a very private man and I see no reason that I should disturb him on the basis of a petty threat. However, since I see myself as Jillian's academic mentor and feel that she was unrivaled as a student, I would like to see her alive. Your observation concerning the pen has me intrigued, however I must admit that it seems rather remote that she is still alive. The police do their job well. I don't think..."

"When are we going?"

"There is no need to interrupt. I will call Delacroix as soon as possible. For the sake of completeness, I will even invite Stillman so we can reenact the entire chain of events leading up to her disappearance." He stood up and nodded his head. "I guess I will see you at what we both hope is not really Jillian's memorial service."

I nodded back and watched him as he walked off in the distance. It seemed odd that he always wore such a heavy coat, especially in hot weather. I also continued to wonder about the white umbrella under his arm. But I decided to let him off the hook for the time being. Even if he was responsible for Jillian's disappearance, for now he was my only ally. My investigation might lead me closer to him, or further, it didn't matter. At that moment in time, he was my only connection to her.

### III

I woke up the morning of Jillian's memorial service with a fresh sense of optimism. I walked over to the window and looked outside. The sky was streaked with black and gray clouds and an almost imperceptible mist hung over the horizon. Her supposed death was the beginning of something new and uncontrollable in my life. A great feeling of exhilaration rushed through me. Even if it weren't a death in the concrete sense, it was the death of everything that had existed between us, and therefore the beginning of something new. Whatever was going to happen, our love could no longer be the same. Those summer evenings when the whole world seemed to fly through space and time. The air, naked with silence. Jillian, naked in bed with a cup of tea and a book on her breasts. Sex and death. Death and disappearance. I laughed out loud when those words entered my head. All those years I'd thought they defined her very essence, her quidity, and it never dawned on me that she would one day actually vanish. How naive I was. In retrospect it all seemed so obvious. Anyone who really knew Jillian would have guessed that she would one day disappear without a trace. It was written on her flesh, penciled on her lips, and radiated from her eyes. It wouldn't have been Jillian had she not vanished from my life. Yet wasn't it also in her essence to always return?

I met Annette before the service in a small pastry shop that was equipped with an automatic cappuccino machine behind the counter. She had just driven in the night before with her parents and was staying with them in a hotel in central Lyon. She was dressed in a slim black dress and a wide rimmed hat - also black – slanted down over her eyes. I kissed her black-gloved hand and offered her a piece of my croissant. She declined. I took her hand and escorted her out of the shop and down a beautifully sculpted garden path.

"I'm sorry my parents were so unreasonable on the phone."

"I'm sorry I disturbed them."

"Don't worry as it may have worked."

"What?"

"Mother wants to pay for an investigation."

"I thought they didn't buy it."

"She changed her mind. She said she could never live with herself if she found out that Jillian was alive and was being held captive by some lunatic.

"Finally some sense. "

"But there's more to it."

"Like?"

"Father's a bit of a fatalist. He believes that the will of God guides the hands of destiny and that even murderers are divine messengers of a kind. Ordering an investigation would sort of be impeaching the will of God."

"With all due respect..."

"You don't have to apologize. I think it's crazy. They don't usually argue over religious matters. They have their differences and know it and that's as far as they'll go. Usually Mother sways under his opinions, but this time she couldn't."

"I wish I could pay for something, but I can't afford a thing."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find Jillian. I'm going to leave Lyon and take odd jobs until I find her."

"Mother's already called a few detectives and arranged for posters to be hung all across France and Britain."

"What do you think?"

"She's alive. I can feel it. We were always so close as girls, attached as if by an invisible umbilical cord. I'd always get a premonition when something bad happened to her. But I felt nothing when that corpse washed up, nothing but the usual shock and disgust with a murder of someone you don't know."

"What about her house? Do you think you can get a hold of her private writings? I don't want to be a voyeur, but they may have important information."

"We're supposed to go tomorrow and claim her possessions. She didn't have a will, so the state is going to divide things up accordingly. I'll get whatever I can find."

"It would be even better if you could get the keys and let me in later. There could be clues anywhere. Her clothes. Her furniture."

"I'll do what I can."

I took her back to the pastry shop and called a cab. I guessed it would take us about half an hour to get to the chapel, giving me fifteen minutes to freshen up and prepare to meet her parents and the rest of her family.

The service was scheduled for four in the afternoon in a small church located at the top of a hill inside a circular wall of chestnut trees. The cab followed the narrow dirt road, which led to a small parking lot to the left of the main door. There were five or six cars already parked and a few islands of people standing outside. Annette and I stepped out and she paid the driver. Annette joined her parents and, after greeting them with a hushed hello, I peeled away and immediately spotted Poilblanc, who was standing alone staring off into space. I walked past him and gave him a perfunctory nod. He didn't seem to notice me.

The inside of the chapel was dimly lit with rows of tall slender candles. At either side of the main alter, that was placed above a closed white oak coffin, there were lush bouquets of tiny purple and red flowers with bell-shaped trumpets and wide green collars. The flowers stood amidst the flicker of candles like spears of light spreading outwards from a central point defined by the base of their thick green stems. I sat down at one of the back pews and watched as the room slowly filled. At four sharp a young boy wearing a black suit came out from behind the altar and shut the main doors. Then a white-robed priest emerged from a cuff of darkness in front of the candlelit apse and moved as if on a set of invisible rails to just behind the altar. He cleared his throat and gestured for us to stand up.

At first the priest's words filled me with awe. The coffin wavered in the rippling candlelight as he read a passage from Leviticus. I wondered who it really was inside the coffin. I imagined myself buried alive in a casket scratching at the walls and screaming into the seemingly infinite shell of wood and earth surrounding me. When he finished the passage the audience sat down in unison and he began to read something in Latin. The tone of his voice was almost incantational. The passages seduced me into a dreamy state in which I became acutely aware of the smell of the candle wax, the sound of the individual words flowing from his lips, and the etching of light across the columns of darkness pillared throughout the room. The combination of sensations was so astonishingly sensual that I couldn't help but stare at Annette who was three rows in front of me beside her parents. She turned and looked at me for a second and I smiled furtively, not wanting her to feel I had been staring at her. When her head turned back I thought of her inner thighs and wondered what they looked like. Were they like Jillian's? Did her hair form a tight matted V-shape between her legs, or was it more spread out like a patch of moss? There she stood before me, slim and perfect, ungirdled and white, the red of her nipples matching the red of her lips and cheeks. A man in front of me coughed and suddenly I became disgusted with myself for thinking such thoughts about the sister of the woman I loved at what was very possibly her memorial service. But as I looked at the statue of Christ I realized it was not Annette I craved for, but rather everything in Annette that was an extension of Jillian. Thus my lascivious thoughts were just a reaffirmation of my devotion to Jillian. In Annette I craved exactly what it was I had lost in her older sister.

The priest cleared his throat and beckoned us to stand, snapping me out of my reverie. Then he launched into a glib monologue about Jillian and what her life was really like as though he and only he had ever known her in her purest essence. He brought half the small audience to tears, continuing with a short rhapsody about how Jillian was an ardent dreamer and lover of poetry who often placed the quilted tapestry of her own thoughts before God's great universe. It seemed like a grandiose violation of justice that someone that had never met Jillian could claim such intimate knowledge of a woman I had shared so much with.

"Such a life would normally be considered blasphemous," the priest said. "But her creative gifts were an expression of God and the divine and the desire to live in a world of fantasy, although morally wrong, was just an example of one of God's gifts growing out of proportion to another of his gifts." By this I suspected he meant rationality and the desire to build the City of God on the bountiful earth and raise a family under the light of Jesus Christ the Lord.

He bowed his head to signal a break in the service, a moment for solemn prayer. It was then I realized that my forbidden thoughts about Annette were part of everything Jillian stood for. Artaud and the violent revolt against the rational. His attack on all norms, the destruction of literature, and the reinvention of life itself through the fragmentation and restructuring of experience. Yes, if Jillian were to read my thoughts as I imagined the naked hips of her sister standing in front of me, she would be proud of me. She would love me. She would adore me. I remember when she told me how Artaud wished he could circumvent writing and literature all together and project images directly into peoples minds, changing them...controlling them. Perhaps I was a victim of this very desire. Perhaps in reading his poems the day before, an evil seed was planted in my unconscious that led to the flowering of my irrational lust for Annette. If this was true, then maybe her disappearance was the result of years of reading Artaud. Perhaps his madness seeped through Jillian's tender white skin and through her delicate veins into the deepest corners of her mind, gradually eroding her sense of reality and urging her to attack the rational fabric of her very existence with the same fervor that Artaud attacked the unity of literature and the mind. In her last letter didn't she express a desire to escape from the world of books and live the very life she had been studying?

I feel I've been a student far too long. I've read Artaud's notes, letters and plays over and over again until I'm blue in the face. The time has come for me to drop the books and stop reading about how I should live, and simply live.

The service ended with a section of Psalm 129. A small boy dressed in a long black robe walked out and handed the priest an elaborate incense burner that looked like an alchemist's scale. The priest lit the incense and held the contraption in front of him, waving it around as he recited from memory what the rest of us merely read. Jillian's mother and father turned and looked back in my direction. The vitreous whites of their misted eyes looked through me and beyond into a realm of pure spirit. The expressions on their faces were so joyous that you'd think they had just seen a chorus of angels singing from the sides of the chapel.

When the priest finished his reading he looked towards the ceiling and shouted out for God's forgiveness. I waited for Annette as the aisles cleared. Jillian's father walked by and ignored me while her mother smiled and kissed me on the cheek.

"God bless her. Wherever she might be, in Heaven or on Earth, God bless us all," she said. I kissed her wrinkled cheek. As I pulled back my lips touched a loop of her blue rinsed hair that fell down from just above her ear.

"God bless you, too," I said in a half whisper.

Annette and I waited for the chapel to clear as we stood on the inside of the main door. I kissed her on the cheek and escorted her out to the parking lot. She possessed the same expression of calm that her mother had. Her parents gestured for her to come over and she snapped out of her trance.

"If I don't get a chance to talk to you after the burial, I'll meet you tomorrow night. I'm supposed to go to Jillian's with my parents in the morning. I'll try to get the key. They usually go to bed at nine, so I can meet you after that."

We agreed to meet at Façade. She asked me to come along with her parents and I declined, preferring to take a cab and not intrude on their solitude.

As I stood alone watching Annette and her parents drive off to the burial site, Poilblanc came up from behind.

"An inspiring display," he said.

I turned and looked at him.

"The House of God," he said.

"I don't understand."

He broke out laughing and offered his hand. I shook it cordially and thought how absurd it was that this man, who might very well be responsible for Jillian's loss, was suddenly my accomplice.

"Would you like a ride?"

I agreed without hesitation.

### IV

I waited for Annette at a small café beside the Opéra de Lyon. I scratched something on a notepad, dreading what I might find later that evening. To my left, hanging beside the front window of the cafe, was a poster of Jillian. The grainy black and white photograph was from the early days of our relationship - perhaps taken two years ago - and showed her smiling. Her hair was blown back by the wind, giving the impression that her hair was much shorter than it actually was. In her eyes was the look of someone only superficially happy. The silvery glitter of her damp eyes was not quite strong enough to hide the fathomless darkness beneath them. It was a person I'd never known. A Jillian I'd never met. Someone once told me that you could only truly know someone after you've ceased to know them. By this, I had always thought they were referring to a falling out between friends revealing negative sides of their respective personalities that had always been concealed from one another while they were friends. As I studied the deep carbonaceous shadows in her eyes I realized that the truth of this maxim was far more dangerous than I'd ever thought.

The poster read: MISSING PERSON. TWENTY THOUSAND FRANC REWARD FOR ANY INFORMATION LEADING TO HER WHEREABOUTS. And in smaller print on the bottom of the poster there was a brief description of the events leading up to her disappearance.

When Annette showed up she was wearing a white blouse and matching skirt. She looked more like an up-and-coming Sloan Street lawyer than the morbidly beautiful figure she'd projected at the funeral. All my sexual thoughts of her dissipated as she pulled up a chair and sat across from me.

"You're mother did a quick job on the posters," I said.

"She's quite a fanatic. As soon as she gets her mind on something, nobody can stop her. An hour after she decided to fund a search, she had already contacted a silk screener's and selected a photograph. She paid double to have them printed up that very night."

"Doesn't look like the woman I loved."

"Do pictures ever?"

"I guess not."

"Anyway, you're probably eager to hear what we found today."

"Which was?"

"There's a box of old letters and some notes on her thesis in the basement. Oddly, her diary is missing. I know she always kept it in a locked drawer beside her bed."

"She never let me see it."

"It looks like she still isn't going to. The drawer was hanging open and completely empty when we came in. I showed Father and it seemed to take a few chips out of his skepticism."

"Why would she be so obvious?"

"Maybe she meant to take it the day you drove down to Marseilles and she forgot. Then she came back to get it after she left the island."

"Possibly. She could have come back in the middle of the night without a trace. But why would she leave it so obviously open?"

"Perhaps she was in a hurry because she was afraid of being spotted. Jillian was always afraid of that when we were little. You could convince her that there was nobody around for miles and she'd still think someone might be watching."

After a tall glass of Paulaner, she looked at her watch and stood up. "I have to go now. We're leaving tomorrow morning."

"So soon? I thought you'd be staying longer. I never thought to ask. I just assumed..."

"Keep in touch," she said as she gave me the key to Jillian's house. "I had it copied. This is yours to keep. The old woman said she might have the locks changed if she rents it out again."

I gave her a restrained hug. For an instant her perfume transported me back to the day in the chapel. She ceased to be the crisp businesslike woman who had showed up half an hour earlier. For a moment I felt I was holding Jillian in my arms. I wanted to kiss her, but felt awkward doing so in such a situation. But if anything, the scent of Annette's perfume made my love for Jillian stronger than ever. Jillian had vanished into the silvery clouds and all that tied me to her was that imaginary golden thread hanging down from the skies. Annette grabbed my hand and I was suddenly confused. The instant our skin made contact, she became that thread connecting me to the invisible form of Jillian. I tried to kiss her gently on the cheek, but she quickly pulled away. I was immediately embarrassed and stepped back. I looked at her. I was surprised to see a diffident smile.

"Call me," she said.

"I will," I said, and extended my hand to hers. She refused it and turned quickly towards the door.

She turned her head one last time. A more serious expression fell over her face. "You'll find her letters in a box in the basement," she said numbly. "Right by the old television."

I watched her walk down the street and without any further hesitation took a cab directly to Jillian's house. The letters were in a box beside an old television set just as she described. I took the entire box upstairs and sat in an armchair beside a lamp. The interior of the house felt so familiar that it never once dawned on me that I was breaking the law. I turned the lamp up to its highest level and sorted through the box. The letters were neatly arranged in small stacks held together by one or several rubber bands. The top letter in each pile had a name and date on it. Three of the stacks had my name on them. There was also a stack for Adrien, a stack for Annette, and a stack for her mother and father. I wondered why Adrien was not at the service and for a moment thought he might be behind her disappearance, but then decided that he was too pathetic and self-deprecating to ever harm a fly. At the bottom of the box were two unlabelled bunches. I read the first few lines of the top letter on the first of them.

SETS. There will be no sets. This function will be adequately served by hieroglyphic characters, ritual costumes, puppets thirty feet high representing the beard of King Lear in the storm, musical instruments as tall as men, objects of strange shape and unknown purpose.

CRUELTY. Without an element of cruelty at the foundation of every spectacle, the theater is not possible. In the state of degeneracy in which we live, it is through the skin that metaphysics will be made to re-enter our minds.

LIGHT-LIGHTING. The lighting equipment currently in use in theaters is no longer adequate. In view of the peculiar action of light on the mind, the effects of luminous vibrations must be investigated, along with new ways of diffusing light in waves, or sheets, or in fusillades of fiery arrows. The color range of the equipment currently in use must be completely revised. In order to produce particular tone qualities, one must reintroduce into light an element of thinness, density, opacity, with a view to producing heat, cold, anger, fear, etc.

I guessed they were notes for her thesis. I read no further, but set them back in the box for more detailed inspection at a later date. Somewhere amidst all these letters had to lye the clue I was looking for. The second stack consisted entirely of letters addressed to me but never sent. I flipped through them, searching for dates on the assumption that the most recent would be the most helpful. But none of them were dated. I opened her liquor cabinet and found half a bottle of Sambucca remaining. I poured myself a glass and started at the top of the pile.

Dear Jean,

Today I woke up and went to the bakery around the corner to pick up a bag of croissants. On my way I ran into Poilblanc who happened to be wandering through the neighborhood at the time. I can't see why he'd come here, when he lives in one of the nicest parts of Lyon already. Not that this neighborhood is so bad, but it seems sort of out of the way for someone as busy as him. We talked for almost an hour. He started by complimenting my skirt and then we launched into a discussion about René Char and the second wave of surrealist poets. He considers these poets truer in spirit. They were writing in a time when surrealism - as delineated by Breton - had become highly unpopular. In its early days, it was so trendy to be a surrealist that everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. And with the advent of film and atonal music, the whole artistic world was exploding in every direction. In such a climate it is hard to distinguish the true artists from the dilettantes. Anyway, he invited me to his house for cocktails that evening and I politely declined. Sometimes I get the feeling he - well, I hope you don't think me presumptuous - sort of likes me more than he should. I try my best to keep conversation away from personal matters but he always seems to connect some statement I've just made about a work to something regarding his ex-wife or love of women in general. Maybe I shouldn't even be telling you this. It might give you the wrong impression. I know how jealous you can be. Not that I'm criticizing you, as jealousy is little more than possessiveness, but I have just learned what to say and what not to say. I miss you and long for your return. I hope you are safe.

Love, Jillian

I set the letter down and immediately picked up a second one and continued reading. A tingle moved down my spine as though I was about to discover something that for better or for worse might change the way I thought about Jillian.

Dearest Jean,

The sky in Lyon is always so clear. No wonder the Romans settled here before anywhere else in France. It encompasses the earth below it with the abstract force of a mathematical proof or cosmic law. When I think of you in North Africa I imagine you under such a sky. Brimming over with life, rushing through sweeping vortexes of sand and light with rifle in hand confronting what I have always feared to confront. Life. Experience.

I have always been envious of you. You have never been afraid to take a job as, say, a dishwasher or cook to get you by. You are calm and steady with yourself. You need no justification outside of the person you are. You know you are smart. You know you are handsome. You are intellect and flesh in its purest form. I am so very different. I am corroded at the interior. Or worse, I have no interior. I am little more than superficial intellect. Men call me beautiful but see nothing underneath. I am not angry, because there is nothing underneath. Nothing at all. Yet all men, even you, prefer to live the ugliness of the lie that there is something noble inside me. Poilblanc thinks I am a genius. He compares even my worst critical writings to those of such greats as Sylvia Plath and Susan Sontag. Even worse is the fact that I need his support, and so much more your support, to go on living. Yet I know that this support is based on a lie of my own generation. The lie that I am somebody.

There is no solution. None but the obvious. Make the fiction of my life reality. Take the pages of my thesis - for they are all I truly have created in this world - and live them. To date they are only signposts guiding the way for a possible voyage that has not yet taken place. I burn to take this voyage into the white sands of experience. I burn to do what you are doing, but do it without you and on my own terms. Forge my life from what I have forged. True, my thesis is on the life and works of another, but does this invalidate my unique view of what this other was? Is not my view of Artaud more me than Artaud himself?

It's two hours later. I can't believe I wrote this. I can't even send it to you, it's so fulsome, so rife with lies and convolutions.

I turned the page over and there was another, longer letter, the bulk of which had been scribbled out with red ink. With some difficulty I could make out what she had written.

Dear Jean,

I've wanted to tell you something for so long. I've been afraid of the consequences, but now I realize that I must, come what may. Last month I was so frightened. One night I was walking home alone on the way back from my office and a strange man confronted me. At first I thought he was blind because of a white cane he held in his left hand.

The white cane! I couldn't believe it. The very piece of evidence I was looking for. Why didn't she send me the letter? Did this man threaten her again? Did he take her by force or did she go with him voluntarily?

His skin was dark and he had a deep voice with a strange accent. He came up to me and asked me if I knew the way to St. Didier au Mont d'Or. I told him he needed a car at that time of night and walked on. After a few blocks I noticed he was following me from a distance of about half a block. I quickened my pace and he responded by chasing after me. I tried to outrun him and even screamed. He caught up to me and begged me to be quiet. He swore he meant well. I wanted to run, but realized I was defeated. I asked him what he wanted and he said he had always admired me. He said he'd read articles that I'd published and seen me talk at conferences. He confessed to share a certain malady that he insisted I had. The sickness of existence. I said he was crazy and swore if I ever saw him again I'd call the police. His voice softened and he put a hand on my shoulder. He begged my forgiveness and knelt on the pavement. He claimed he knew what I always wanted. He said he could tell from my eyes and my work. He told me I wasn't happy. I was terrified, but couldn't help but be seduced by his words. It was like succumbing to intense cold and falling asleep. Arctic explorers said they always feared the drowsiness that comes with hypothermia because they knew that they'd never rise from the bliss of sleep if they ever let it grab them. This is what his words were like. I knew they were evil. I knew they were wrong. But there was something so powerful and compelling about them that I felt drawn into their warm undertow. He got me to admit I'd never been happy. He got me to admit that I needed a new existence. He told me he could give me it. He told me he could transform me. He knew my passion for Artaud was based on a deeper need to escape from the banalities of life and the self.

A police car rushed by and swept me out of his trance. I hollered and the car screeched to a stop and pulled back in reverse. By the time they reached me, the stranger was gone. I told them he tried to rape me. I filed a report against him. I told them he brandished a knife in my face and demanded instant sex. I was taken down to the station for an examination and didn't get home until the following morning.

I haven't seen him for several weeks now, but I have recurring nightmares in which he offers me riches and wealth I can hardly refuse. Yet I'm sure his offerings are tainted. Often, I wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes screaming. He's out there somewhere. I feel guilty that I lied to the police and I fear that he might return to seek revenge. Oh, Jean, please come back. Please. I need you.

Love, Jillian

I set the letter down and my monumental bliss turned to discouragement. What did this letter really prove? If I brought it to the police they'd probably say it was a coincidence and even if it wasn't, it didn't say she was still alive. The man with the white cane could have murdered her on the island as punishment for lying about the rape. But such a premise was nothing that would bring Jillian back to me. And since we had no white cane in hand as hard evidence to show the police, the letter meant even less. But even if it proved nothing objectively, it proved everything subjectively. Like Artaud's Theater of Cruelty, the case of the vanishing of Jillian Everet was a drama of impressions and psychological events rather than real physical occurrences that could be measured or quantified.

I stayed up the entire night and read the entire box of letters. Apart from a few interesting tidbits concerning her relationship with Adrien and more notes on Artaud, there was nothing exceptional that I didn't already know. Filled with a strange sense of optimism over the evening's unexpected revelations I left her house and went home. There, I immediately prepared to leave Lyon for good. The military authorities would be after me any day investigating my desertion. I had to move. My first stop was Delacroix's island. I'd already arranged to meet Poilblanc the very next morning at sunrise.

### V

Poilblanc took a pinch of tobacco from the small pouch on his lap and stuffed it in the pipe hanging from his mouth. His other hand was twitching precariously on the steering wheel of his pale gray Citröen. I'd just told him about the white cane and the dark-skinned stranger that Jillian had mentioned in the letter. Poilblanc claimed ignorance.

"Do you know how many blind men there are in France? Too many. That cane was more likely some artifact dumped on the island from a plane or Mediterranean storm." His stubborn unwillingness to accept such an obvious lead was no different than the reaction of the police when I told them about the pen. Somehow I expected more. He asked me for a light as we passed an eighteen-wheeled gasoline truck on our way to Marseilles. "Marseilles," he said with deep satisfaction as if it were the name of a fine Bordeaux. "Artaud was born there."

"Really?"

"Yes. That's what makes her vanishing all the more interesting."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"In a manner of speaking her vanishing represents a new birth in her existence. Whether it's a birth into the realm of death or a birth into a new life of captivity at the hands of a psychopath is a moot point. The fact remains: she was obsessed with Artaud in an unhealthy way and Artaud was born in Marseilles, a mere five or ten kilometers from the place of her disappearance."

"You say unhealthy way."

"To fully understand, you have to know more about Artaud, and more about what she wrote on Artaud. There were things about her that only I, her intellectual mentor, could understand."

"I'll spare you a punch in the jaw if you share these so called things with me." I found his condescension no less annoying as his aloof intellectual curiosity over her disappearance.

"There is no need for threats. I am a man of the world and understand your jealousy on a very deep level. It was no further back than last year, in fact, that I delivered a lecture on the role of jealousy in the work of Mallarmé. So, my young Jean, I am no stranger to the world of irrational emotions."

I should have hit him, but I didn't. He had something I wanted. Even more than that, his pomposity and constant reminders that he was involved in a part of Jillian's life that would never be mine were just glaring reminders of his jealousy of me. After all, he was the crooked old warhorse, the aging jackal on the mound, barking wildly in defense of his ever weakening position. To despise this man was like loathing the disabled or stoning the poor in punishment for their poverty. I had one thing he'd never had: Jillian's love in its full resplendent beauty.

"I respect your honesty," I said.

"Honesty is the electricity of life. It is only honesty that drives men to lie, cheat, and kill. The narcissistic actor's vanity increases all the more when he realizes that he's not as great as he thinks. He puffs out his chest to make himself look greater in the eyes of others. Honesty begets lies."

"Yes," I said, laughing inside as I realized he had just described himself.

"The truth of the matter lies in Jillian's work," he continued. "What I'm about to tell you, I've told no one else out of fear that it might affect her academic career. She was my best student. La Belle de Poilblanc. I wanted her to be the greatest French scholar of the century and I wanted everyone to recognize that I was her teacher, her intellectual father. She was brighter than you could ever imagine. How could an uneducated man appreciate the genius of her work?

"Artaud, as you may already know, struggled for most of his life with a certain malady of the brain. Whether it was caused by the meningitis he contracted as a child or was genetically inherent, is a question for the doctors to answer. He fought day in and day out to retain a lucidity of the mind. He complained all through his life that he would go through periods during which he was unable to grasp ideas. They would appear before his mind's eye like gold fish in a murky pool and vanish whenever he tried to reach out and touch them. It was hard for people to take his sickness seriously because when he was lucid, he wrote with such urbane charm and deft precision that he sounded not only like a perfectly sane man, but almost a statesman of the unconscious. He was always very polite and sensitive in his correspondences to others and was one of the very few writers of his generation to befriend the older, increasingly bitter, and outmoded André Gide. In both his personal collaborations and work, Artaud was nothing less than a genius."

"An evil genius," I added.

"Not necessarily so. It's a common misconception. People hear about The Theater of Cruelty and imagine actors dressed in black tights armed with chain saws and jackhammers as they attack each other and the audience. In fact, The Theater of Cruelty was a thing of great beauty. No doubt because of his obsession with his deteriorating mind which manifested itself throughout his writings, his artistic theories are often dominated by the idea that all poetry and theater should be internalized, or rather, that theater should have its own language of form and gesture and be the true vehicle of expression of the Mind. The Theater of Cruelty was a conception of theater based entirely on the expression of the inner world of sensation, sound, color, gesture, and shape. There should be no plots. The sets should correspond to inner thought forms rather than actual objects. The theater should develop its own language and liberate itself from the visual realm of painting and sculpture as well as the verbal realm of literature. He was deeply moved by Balinese theater, which he saw as the voice of the inner God on stage.

"But because of the fragmentation of his mind, his beautiful ideas were often tainted with a desire to destroy and atomize all art and culture. Why not? His mind was a hornet's nest, so why not the world around him?"

"So, are you implying that Jillian was infected with this same desire?"

"Not at all. If you let me finish, it will all be clear. Because of his sickness, Artaud gradually came to despise all literature because it was a manicured world with no relation to the mind, or more accurately, his mind. In early letters he told Jacques Rivier that he wanted his poems to be more or less documents of his mental landscape. The Theater of Cruelty was an expression of this motility of the inner to the outer, the molding of art after the forms of the Mind.

"Can you imagine how much it would bother such an individualistic woman as Jillian to spend years studying and writing about an artist whose works can ultimately be reduced to a psychological state that she could never possibly experience? All those years reading letters, poems, plays, essays, and biographical notes, wishing she could fully understand an oeuvre, which was really no more than a distention of a disrupted mental state. She came in one day absolutely livid and threw a book of his poems on my desk. I was impressed by her frisky attitude and asked what she was so angry about. She replied that she wanted to possess Artaud in every possible way. She threw her arms up in frustration and hollered that she felt with his poems that she was getting a mere snap shot of a world she longed to travel to."

"This is ridiculous. You're basically implying that she wanted to go mad."

"You were her lover. Didn't she ever express to you her boredom with the world?"

"All the time. She said she wished objects could be sounds or that time could be accelerated or decelerated at will. She even said she wished she could project her thoughts on my naked body when we were having sex. But, she never said anything about madness."

"It's up to interpretation, really. I suppressed the publication of one of her essays on Artaud because she suggested that only people in elevated states of madness could ever truly understand his writings. Can you imagine the effect it would have had on her career if it ever got out? In today's academic climate, stability and political astuteness take the place of brilliance and invention. It would have ended her career."

"So, what are you saying?"

"All I'm really saying is that she had a burning desire to see Artaud's works through new, and possibly dangerously deranged eyes. This, I believe is the key. I propose that you read the entire oeuvre of Artaud and try to see his world through Jillian's eyes. There you will find the truth. This is only my feeling, but as the bringer of academic providence to her lovely life, I feel it deserves some consideration."

I was stunned at his insinuations. Jillian and I had experimented with drugs, but only lightly. She was always impressed with Burroughs and Kerouac and read extensively about the peyote rituals of the Mexican Indians. As I sat beside Poilblanc in his smoke filled Citröen, I could still visualize her in her brilliant orange cardigan, lips wrapped around the top of a bong. Perhaps her new life was somehow related to these secret desires to spiritually deepen her perceptions of the world and literature, but even so Poilblanc's theory was bordering on the ridiculous. Only an eccentric fool could propose such a ludicrous theory while at the same time denying the obvious significance of the white cane. It was just another way of undermining my love for Jillian. However, in our little sword fight over Jillian's honor, Poilblanc may have wielded the pen, but I brandished something far more powerful. While he was only teaching her, it was I and only I that had made love to her. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but it's a mere popgun next to the almighty penis.

The rest of the day passed slowly. In the afternoon we met Stillman at the waterfront as before. This time he was dressed like a cartoon French sailor. He was wearing a flat blue rimless hat with a cute little red pompom on top. He forced a smile and escorted us down to the pier.

"For once it's not the police," he said. "They've been hounding Delacroix for weeks. They still can't find the murderer. Right now they think it might be a serial killer. A second featureless body washed up on the shores of Morocco last week. Although it is quite far away the police believe there might be a connection. They've combed his island dozens of times for clues and found nothing. I'm sure our result will be the same. However, it's a pleasure to go out nonetheless. You'll make much finer company than those officious fools."

I found his news about the second body disconcerting, but tried as best I could to block it out of my mind and remind myself that it probably had nothing to do with Jillian. We boarded the boat and jetted off into the lavish azure mirror of the sea. My hands trembled when I recalled the last boat ride I took with them. It was the day Jillian had vanished.

### VI

Stillman turned to me, squinting in the brassy light of the sun, and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. Poilblanc closed his eyes and turned his head upwards as if receiving a vision from Heaven and then produced a bag of organic powder that resembled some kind of crushed bark. A cloud passed overhead, filtering out the sun's glaring light. Delacroix adjusted his white Panama hat and took the bag from Poilblanc's hands. He carefully divided it into four portions and wrapped them loosely in some scraps of ripped newspaper that he pulled from his pocket. He gave one of the packets to each of us and Poilblanc opened a flask of whiskey that he produced from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. He emptied the contents of the package in his mouth and washed them down with a generous gulp of whiskey.

"To Jillian," he said as he passed the bottle to me. I examined the small package. It looked like a bag of potpourri. I gagged as I emptied the parched brown powder into my mouth.

"Whiskey," shouted Poilblanc. I took a mouthful and swallowed, passing the bottle on to Stillman as my insides started to burn and heave. When Stillman and Delacroix had each swallowed their doses we all looked at each other in nervous expectation. If peyote wouldn't reveal Jillian's thought patterns on the island the day of her disappearance, then nothing would. It was Delacroix's idea that all events leave a trace that can be unearthed and examined like a fossil record. I thought the idea mad, but felt that the combination of being back on the island and being under the influence of peyote might open me up to new truths about Jillian and her potential whereabouts.

"Twentieth century man is so deluded," Stillman snapped bitterly. "He assigns himself the central position in the universe, greedily sucking up all around him and giving nothing in return. Peyote, for example, is but another example of the deification of man. In the hands of the Ancient Indians it was a form of supplication to the heavens. In the hands of modern man it is merely a form of supplication to the self."

"The self has no validity in the modern world," said Poilblanc. "Its ellipsis defies predication and therefore truth. The world is fragmented. Poetry has become electricity and electricity poetry. And Nature is merely a footnote with no role but to be denied by technology."

"Technology is his gift to nature," replied Delacroix, framing his words with the fastidious precision of a snooker champion setting up a winning shot.

"Technology is the true Antichrist," protested Stillman. "In the ancient scriptures the Antichrist appears in the form of a great white Titan sweeping across the landscape like some sort of metallic pantocrator. Look!" He lifted up his arm and pointed to the sky. "Look around you I say. Are not those hideous factories you see every day the refuse of such a Titan?"

"I see no factories," interrupted Poilblanc. "The problem with you, my good man, is that you have alienated yourself from the modern ego."

"Ego? That's precisely it. I just read Sartre today and I was thoroughly disgusted. Man enslaves man. We are the prisoners of others. Man inflicts suffering on himself and creates Gods to justify his own wicked inventions. True enough in part. The treacherous falsity inherent in this attitude is that Man creates suffering and is the arbiter of pain. Did I ask to be born? Did I ask to be inflicted day and night with horrible thoughts that blight me like a poison fungus? The point is that Man cannot stop his suffering. It's innate. It's not his creation at all. Man is thrown hopelessly into not only a venomous universe that conspires to devour him, but also a venomous mind that conspires to destroy him. Not only do we confront Heidegger's horizon of the world and time, but we confront our own emotional horizon that is neither our doing or creation. And what's worse, the way we confront it, the very we itself, isn't even our own choosing. Hence Artaud. Hence sex. Isn't sex just another form of oblivion? Are not all pleasures carefully planted in your life to taunt you and make you think that something better exists?"

"Pleasure is the very essence of life," I said flatly. "Even pain is pleasure. It makes you live."

"One day your soul will shrink up and blow away. And then you will see what I see," Stillman said like an warlock casting a curse.

I let the professors continue with their empty dialogue and after an hour the peyote began to take effect. At first I became light headed. The world suddenly took on a humorous aura. Even inanimate objects like stones and dried leaves seemed for some reason hilarious. Everything around me assumed a greater sense of definition as if all the objects in the world had suddenly stood up and shouted for recognition. I spotted a plant with thin spangled leaves and a clump of roots at its base. Its green was so intense that I felt assaulted on all sides by greenness. A tiny red ant walked by carrying a twig almost ten times its size and I broke out laughing.

"I feel nothing," grumbled Stillman. "I say we get on with it. Wasn't the purpose of this exercise to retrace the events leading up to Jillian's abduction?"

"Abduction?" my ears perked up. Perhaps there was something they knew that Stillman had just accidentally spilled out. The other professors' faces were drooping in stolid calm, indicating that if Stillman had indeed made a slip up, they either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Disappearance. I apologize."

"A great error indeed," added Delacroix. "Disappearance is at the heart of all voodoo rituals. Disappearance is as real and necessary as appearance. It is only circumstantially related to abduction. Abduction isn't metaphysical at all, in contrast to disappearance. Abduction is a result of technology and progress. It is only through man's attempt to overcome Nature that abduction per se is even possible. A man abducts another man only to improve his position of power over Nature. Is this not technology?"

"No," Poilblanc declared. "It is bullshit." He cleared his throat as though in preparation for yet another long speech. "You are a great thinker Delacroix, but in this case you are plainly wrong. I suggest we follow Stillman's advice and retrace the path we set on our last visit. After all, Jean is our guest and we should treat him as such. His loss of Jillian has been very traumatizing to him. Can't you see the dark cleft under his chin? Can't you see the wry twitching of his mouth as he aches deep inside, or perhaps now not so deep, if it was actually we three scholars who were ultimately behind his anguish? It is our solemn duty to prove otherwise. However much he detests us for possessing a certain aspect of his Jillian that he was never privy to, we are still his allies. I functioned as Jillian's guide across the vast and convoluted landscape of Antonin Artaud's thought. And now through the use of peyote, whom Artaud himself used on his sojourn to Mexico, we shall now be Jean's guides."

"This peyote of yours isn't bringing me visions, it's only making me sick," said Stillman.

"Let the spirits whisper to us all," said Poilblanc holding up his arms evangelically. "Let them reveal the angels in all the barren rocks and the devils in every vine and flower."

Delacroix and Stillman were silent. Poilblanc gestured for us to follow him as we walked to the point at which our hike had first begun several weeks ago. We passed a knotted tree stump, a solitary bush, and a large boulder. Each was isolated in time, captivated in its own story and history, unable to reach out and touch us. I pitied them in their myopic solitude. The stone spoke to me of hard flat sheets of ice, great storms and fields of rock and clover. It told me of a great melting where all was washed into the oblivious bosom of Nature, never to re-emerge. I heard at first a trickling like water from a pipe and then something louder like the sound of water rushing under a bridge. Soon it was a waterfall and then a tsunami. The sound became so powerful that I felt lifted out and above Nature and into a different realm of mechanical precision and mathematical truth. This was the realm of the stone where all was abstract symmetry and form as opposed to randomness and corporeality. I knew it because the stone told me so. Again I felt pity as I now saw the stone as a stranger in the world of Nature. A wandering star, like Jillian, cast against its will into an alien realm in which it had no part.

"Stones aren't a part of all this," said Stillman. His words were muffled and almost incoherent as if his mind had only half emerged from an impenetrable fog of ideas.

"What?" I said, astonished that he was on the same track of thought that I was.

"Stones are not a part!" he said irritably like a three-year-old demanding a new bowl of ice cream because the shape of the scoops somehow weren't suitable.

I ignored him and we moved on in silence. We passed a flat valley, almost bald for want of weeds or grass. The valley funneled into a pass between two cliffs and then opened again into a deeper valley filled so evenly and densely with fog that it looked like a white milky fluid had been poured in by a giant hand. I heard a foghorn in the distance and my mind flickered forth an image of a Viking trestle slashing through the water.

"Jillian said she'd never tried peyote, but always wanted to," I said to the professors.

"Perhaps she didn't need it," said Poilblanc.

"I feel no fragmentation, all I feel is wholeness," I said to Poilblanc. I was amazed at the clarity of my words. Although my mind was flowing outwards and beyond, I felt a certain sense of rational calm.

"Unity begets fragmentation and fragmentation begets unity. There is none without the other. Fragmentation is only relative to a higher state of order, and please don't misquote me."

The four of us walked in silence. The peyote had taken hold of my limbs and I was gradually descending into a state of overwhelming passivity. By the time we started climbing the great ridge all I wanted to do was lie down and reflect on everything around me. By the time we reached the top I could feel Jillian everywhere. Her hands were in the wind and they were caressing my face. Her breasts were on my chest and I pressed my cheek up against them to bask in their warmth.

"Not far to go until we reach The Place of The Hearth," said Delacroix. The way he said place of the hearth I imagined it to be some sacred arena of the Gods imbued with the secrets of ancient tribes hitherto unknown to modern man. "Once we're there I suggest we retrace everything we did. Only then will this exercise gain significance."

"I'm glad someone here understands the meaning of this," whispered Poilblanc as if from the bottom of a well. I looked him in the eye and he no longer appeared to see me. His pupils were great canyons and I could see him wandering, lost, inside them.

More fog descended as before. Scarves, leaves, cigars, and even zeppelins of cloudy white moisture surrounded us. I tried several times to touch one, but they always seemed to shrink away from the warmth of my hands.

"The fog has its strengths," said Stillman. "Like the rocks and like us, it is somehow lost in a random stage of a universe not of its choosing. Yet it yields not to our rude intrusions. Thus, I respect it. Not any stranger can hold his own in an enemy's mansion."

Stillman and Poilblanc knelt down on the rocky earth at the very summit of the crest and flattened their figures out like ancient forms constructed from chalk boulders on the sides of mountains. I looked at Delacroix and he smiled in acknowledgement of my noticing the two men in all their idiot's bliss.

"Shall we continue?" he prompted me.

We walked onwards, leaving Poilblanc and Stillman behind. By the time we were half way by my judgment to The Place of The Hearth, Delacroix surrendered to the drug and lay down on the ground. I continued walking. I was alone. Although the drug was pulling me downwards into catatonia, I was determined to retrace the paths we had walked and discover whatever could be discovered about Jillian's disappearance from this great barren rock of an island.

Five minutes later I came upon a dead tree. Its dried trunk had the smooth appearance of driftwood. It forked into two branches about three feet from the ground. The two forks bent and grew back into each other a further three feet up, giving the appearance of a vagina standing on end. I walked up to it and passed my hand through the space between the two branches. The air on the other side of the tree had a distinctly pink glow as if the wooden genitalia constituted some kind of portal into another world. I stood there for what seemed like hours reaching into the pink effulgence and drawing my arm back to see if it had somehow received a mysterious message or decipherable imprint from the other side of the glowing meniscus. I left my hand inside its warmth for a count of ten and pulled it out. Then I rolled up my sleeve and looked for marks. Runes, numbers, drawings, anything would do. There was nothing.

I heard a sudden screech and the surface of the portal shattered. The pink color vanished and I looked overhead. A thundercloud had descended upon the crest of the hill and the air was charged with miniature lightening bolts, each traveling on its own preordained course, each fulfilling its existential purpose.

I walked on. The screech made me think of the white cane. Something inside me told me that I might find it, or at least find its trace. The air was rife with magic. Voodoo leaked from everywhere. I could feel it seeping in all around me. No doubt the work of Stillman. I exploded into uncontrollable laughter at the thought that such an innocuous-looking old man could wield such strange powers.

After what seemed like an eternity of smaller, yet nonetheless significant eternities, I came across The Place of The Hearth. Although the hearth was now gone I could feel its presence rippling before me like a cloying mirage. I knew it hadn't been lost. I saw a crowd of boorish louts drinking coffee from a portable aluminum percolator. Perhaps this vision had some significance. Maybe this was the trace I was looking for. Then the men changed into a group of women discussing what I thought was a dog race. A rod of black lightening ripped through me. Something was wrong. No doubt the vision was a trick. Something concocted by Stillman. I had no proof, but in this realm it seemed that feeling was enough to prove the existence of anything. In this world there were traces, but there were also false paths and treacherous crags as on the surface of a glacier.

An opening appeared in the fog and I saw an empty field. This was The Zone. I knew because an inner voice told me. As each event had its trace, each location had a name. Everything had a name. I looked around me. As my eyes scanned the bleak landscape, names poured through me like cities on a destination/arrivals board in a train station. Not only did each object have a name, but each distinct grouping of objects and each location also had a name. I looked at three rocks below me. Naglichi, Fana, Radwa. Those were their names. Yet when Naglichi and Fana were grouped, they became Lassque. When Naglichi was grouped with Radwa, the name that appeared was Glond. Yet when they were moved an inch over in space - or even a millionth of that distance, they assumed a new and unpronounceable name. A universe of names swirled all around me. Nagg, zidi, lorcu, sanna, nik, oppti, coldu...Bassgti, kahyya, norrazi, wroojji...

Then it occurred to me. I looked up at The Zone and laughed uproariously. I had the solution. I knew I would triumph. The best way to combat The Zone was to group it with another place and hence it would no longer be The Zone. I quickly bracketed my field of vision so as to include The Zone and an adjacent rock-covered hill. When I felt the void disgorge the name of this new entity I lurched back in horror. Out of the internal blackness came the new name. The Zone. Something was wrong. The Zone couldn't be defeated. It was a singularity. When combined with any other entity The Zone became simply The Zone. It was immutable.

I broke into a run. I had to escape. Yet the further I ran, the larger The Zone became, for with every new object in my field of vision, The Zone merely expanded its horizons. I felt like a particle of cosmic dust surfing on the edges of the cosmos on the wave of universal expansion. I was beleaguered and collapsed on the ground in defeat. My legs had become as heavy as lead and my body was a thick blue liquid. I closed my eyes for long enough to be horrified at what I saw. My insides swirled in a maddening vortex of images. Words and sounds flew through like disembodied entities. I was powerless against this diluvian onslaught. My only recourse was to stay in The Zone. It was my ship on the great dark sea. Although The Zone was evil and had no doubt reached across the world like a dark hand, its evil was merely passive in nature. It was dependent on me. For when I moved forward, it grew. When I thought of a city on the other side of the world, it became subsumed in its bleak dominion. I had to do something. My mouth dropped as I thought of Marseilles, for I knew at that moment that The Zone had just taken the famous port city. So my only strategy was to prevent its insidious expansion by sitting down in one place and thinking of nothing. Yet then I thought of something else. What if I thought about Jillian? Would not The Zone instantly consume her and in so doing reveal her location? At the very instant I entertained the possibility of thinking of Jillian, she appeared on a grassy slope with her Nico glasses and a strange pair of black boots I'd never seen her wear. In the background was a church and what looked like a hospital. I struggled to find some building that would tie the vision to something I could identify but as quickly as it came, all was suddenly darkness.

The image was etched on the walls of my memory like some kind of cave painting. I could always go back to it. I sat down and a new calm came over me. I looked only backwards to areas I knew The Zone had conquered. I spotted a patch of flowers. The first ones I'd ever seen on the island. They were purple with flecks of red and had wide saucer-shaped collars around their narrow trumpets. I wanted to go and pick one. I thought it would be safe as they were already within The Zone's circumscription. I stood up and walked over. When I reached the patch the sky lightened and the fog dissipated. I looked around. The Zone had vanished. Its existence depended on its own expansion. It fed off its own growth and when it reached a point of stasis, it could no longer exist.

The landscape was now flooded with light. I looked to the flowers at my feet. I almost jumped at what I saw. There beneath me in the ring of flowers was the white cane! I grabbed it and hollered out Poilblanc's name. No answer came. I examined it. It was clearly the same one. Perhaps it was a trick. It could have been planted there as some sort of sick joke. I thrashed the flowers in violent disapproval of anyone who would dare to play a trick on me. I ran back to The Place of The Hearth with the cane in my hand. When I got there, I sat down and closed my eyes. The images were more pleasant. I saw castles, waterfalls, and vast plains filled with moving shapes and beings of light, sound, and color. I reposed into their beauty. An odyssey of color opened up before me.

Suddenly I felt a shudder in the air. A dark presence descended upon me. The images changed from ones of beauty to ones of hideous violence. Skinned animals hurtled through my head, plants screamed and burned before me. I saw images of torture, pain, emptiness, things more awful than death itself. My mind was a formaldehyde jar swimming with the rubbery forms of darkness.

I felt a cold jab on my shoulder. Although I couldn't see it, I was sure it was a hand. I was too terrified to move and just stared straight ahead. Then a voice. Smooth and cold like metal in winter, but strangely calming, hypnotic and eloquent. There was also an accent. Scandinavian, I thought. I felt transposed into a world of nightmare. At first it sounded like someone I thought I remembered, but couldn't place. But then I realized it was just my mind playing tricks with me. The tone was haughty and self-indulgent - almost portentous.

Although you are terrified, you mustn't look behind you. There is no time to waste. The air is cold. There is so very little time. There may be none left at all. You must believe that the situation is very grave. It has not been so grave since the beginning of the world and the moment of the original fall into Sin.

And Evil is only waiting for us to strangle us all, for a moment of weakness or merely of lack of vigilance on the part of the Pure who have defended me in this terrible business of magic and spells, which are the magic and the spells of Satan.

Evil is everywhere, but most of all it echoes through the very depths of your being. You claim to want Jillian back, but do you really? Are you ready for what she may bring you, dead or alive? Can your frail mind withstand the truth?

Even as I look at you from behind I see a being so wrapped up in his own perceptions and trite fantasies that he is unable to love anything but an image of that what he thinks he loves. Had it ever occurred to you that it may have been you that killed her? All along you've assumed that it was some sort of madness or crazed maniac that have taken her from you. Has it ever crossed your feeble mind that you might be that same crazed maniac? Has it ever occurred to you that you might also be the madness within her, the sickening blight of her soul?

No. You are not responsible for the nature you were born with. You want fidelity in love, and you have an ideal of love which you know satisfies the best of what you dream; unfortunately, instinct is also there to destroy your resolutions. But these resolutions represent a being toward whom you aspire within yourself and whom you have a whole lifetime to reach. This will not happen in a day, a month, or a year. Only you can help.

The voice stopped for a moment. Too frightened to look behind me for fear of what I might see, I looked straight ahead of me into the place once occupied by The Zone.

"Who are you?" I shouted. "Poilblanc? Or maybe the man who tried to abduct her? This has to be a trick. The cane was planted here to play with my mind. You've all dragged me here to drive me crazy. That's why you brought The Zone. That's why you appear as something too dreadful to behold."

I cannot help you unless you always tell the truth. And unless you do not try to conceal from me the bad sides of your nature. It is in your nature to lie and distort. To fantasize and twist everything beyond recognition into grotesque transmogrifications of the truth. While few people create things of great beauty, there are those even rarer souls whose beautiful creations are in actuality the most dreadfully ugly things in existence. Your love of Jillian is such a thing. Its beautiful gardens contain not flowers and chirping birds but hideous sculptures of freaks and gargoyles carved from slate and obsidian.

Even as I speak I pass through your thoughts like a breeze over a tumultuous lake. You think of Jillian when you first met her. Her clean white hands. In every way she was a painting or work of art to you. You craved her for her flesh. You craved her for her mind. You wanted so much to possess that which you created in the world of your fantasies. You created her as an image of your own perfection. And that is why you will never find her again. The Jillian you loved was little more than an idea in your mind. You thought you knew her so well. In fact nobody knew her. Nobody could. You and all her admirers were like clowns at the feet of a great diadem. Nothing more.

Now you are her killer. I touch your shoulder and I feel fear. I see your head from behind and I see Evil. You must purge yourself of Sin. You must prepare to behold that which you can't otherwise behold. Look all around! The abyss is everywhere. Inside you and around you. You look so desperately amongst all this emptiness for a sign of where Jillian might be if she is indeed alive. Yet, although you think the path is hidden, only you know how to find her.

Only you know how to find Jillian.

I turned around and swept at where I thought there should be someone. There was no one. I grabbed for the cane. It was gone. I looked all around. There was nothing. Silence filled the air. The sky was clear except for the polished glow of the moon and a few clusters of stars that spread across the horizon like snow drifts across a road. I walked for almost an hour, looking for a sign of life. The cane just couldn't have disappeared and it was too real to be a hallucination. Eventually my legs softened with exhaustion and I came upon a grouping of trees. I sat down and my mind swirled with endless possibilities. Perhaps Jillian was somewhere on the island. I closed my eyes and tried to let the visions guide me. Nothing. Only fluttering pictures of dancing couples in Paris carnivals as I'd seen them in movies. I could see the Arc de Triomphe. I could see the Eiffel Tower. I could see the glittering streets of the Left Bank and Montparnasse. And hovering like a cloud of light over the city I could see Jillian's face. I struggled to focus on it, yet the harder I tried, the more blurred her features became. I wanted to touch her, but couldn't. I blinked and let my face sink into my hands. The image persisted. Maybe the drug was telling me something. Artaud died in Paris. If Jillian disappeared at the place of his birth, wouldn't it seem reasonable that she'd reappear at the place of his death?

My legs became heavy and I was overcome with a second, stronger, wave of exhaustion. Although I didn't want to sleep, there was nothing I could do. I shut my eyes and didn't wake till morning when I found Poilblanc, Delacroix and Stillman sitting quietly beside me. They were dressed as they were the day before and seemed to be lost in thought.

"I saw it again," I said.

"Saw what?" asked Poilblanc.

"The cane."

"Many things were seen last night that shouldn't have been seen," Poilblanc replied. "It's in some things' natures not to be seen, or at least not to be seen often. That's why there's peyote. It reveals that which is not normally disposed to revelation."

"It wasn't a hallucination if that's what you mean. I think you're all trying to drive me crazy. A voice came behind me and scolded me for driving Jillian to her disappearance."

"Voices are not to be trusted," mumbled Stillman. "My mind shattered into a million pieces, each equally conscious of itself and its relation to other fragments of its kind. Whenever I tried to see the totality of these mental fragments from the perspective of only one of the fragments, I would quickly realize that it was all a game and I had without knowing it become one or all of the other fragments. I was a hall of mirrors with no center or substance."

"Sir," added Delacroix, "You are always without substance." Poilblanc laughed uproariously and Stillman spit on the ground in front of Delacroix's feet.

"You're all avoiding the issue," I said as I leapt up. I lost control. "You're all responsible for this." I grabbed Poilblanc by the collar and pushed him against the tree. "It was you last night. The voice. It could only have been you. Everything it was saying were the sorts of jealous ramblings of someone who'd always wanted Jillian but could never have her."

Poilblanc pushed me away with such strength I fell backwards and hit the ground.

"If you saw the white cane wouldn't it be more obvious that it was the man from Jillian's letter?"

"What motive would he have to come back here and toy with me?"

"A sick mind has no limits. But we've done what we can to help you but you can't seem to free yourself from your petty jealousies. From your behavior it's clear to me that it's time that our brief friendship come to a close, for it is now evident that it had no substance outside of our mutual involvements with Jillian. It was my hope that while with us on this island you would learn something about yourself and your relationship with Jillian that might be of use in finding her, if she is still alive as you still seem so sure. I leave you to conclude what you will. I can assure you that we have nothing to do with your experiences last night. I find your behavior deplorable and offer you the courtesy of Stillman's boat to return you to the shore, after which I hope to never to speak with you. If I hear news of Jillian in the future I shall contact her parents."

Stillman spat on the ground and Delacroix picked his teeth with a piece of straw that he had just picked up from the ground.

The professors returned me to the shore that morning. Without so much as an apology I left them at the harbor and walked away.

"You are such a fool," Poilblanc shouted in disgust. "I'll give you one piece of advice. The secret to her loss lies in the works of Artaud."

I walked away without acknowledgement. But I felt ashamed of myself as I knew that moment that he was in the right. There was no way he could have been the strange presence the night before. The voices were just too different. And it was hard to believe that the man from Jillian's letter was Swedish from her description of him as dark-skinned.

That evening I went home to find a letter from the army. I didn't even open it. Instead, I changed my clothes and took the first bus to Paris. With nowhere else to go and the law on my heels, I had no other choice. I'd keep in touch with Annette. Work under the table. Search for clues of Jillian's whereabouts. My future had now been settled.

# 3.

### The Journey

### I

I arrived at Gare St. Lazare well after midnight. The speed train floated into the station like a giant metal vibrator: smooth, mechanical, and quietly purring. I'd never been to Paris before, so I was eager to find a cheap hotel and hit the streets. The station was cleaner than I'd expected. In the main concourse hung a great chandelier - a glittering reminder of an antique universe that had long since vanished into the homogeneous blur of the modern world. I passed a cheap tobacco and magazine stand by the main door. A few old men picked their noses while reading pornography. I bought a copy of Le Monde and folded it under my arm as I walked out onto the sidewalk.

It was wet and muddy outside. I walked through the narrow, crooked streets in search of the nearest hotel. The smell of garbage filled the air. Water dripped from every crag and orifice. Under the dim yellow glow of a streetlight I could see the outlines of what I thought were groupings of dead leaves floating through a series of rust-brown puddles. In the darkness, the city seemed like little more than an urban dump, ripe with infestations from every level of existence. I kicked a can into a rat that was scurrying with apparent embarrassment across the street as if it somehow knew it held no rank in the world of men. The rat stopped, looked around to make sure it wasn't a trap, and poked its snout inside the can. I felt sympathy when I realized the rat was just scraping by like me. Perhaps it too was looking for a Jillian to save it from its desperate existence.

Depressed, I strolled aimlessly through the rain until I found a small hotel. I stepped inside and shook the water from my hair. An old woman with a narrow forehead wearing a maid's dress came rushing up to me holding a towel. She had a look of shock and compassion on her face as though I was mortally wounded and needed immediate medical assistance.

"No, no," she said.

"I'm sorry?"

She took another towel from a nearby shelf and wiped off the droplets from my hair.

"I need a room," I said.

"Yes," she replied.

"Just for a night to start."

She held out her hand and looked expectantly at me. I pulled out a fold of bills and shrugged my shoulders.

"Seventy five," she said.

I paid her without argument and she took me up to show me the room. The lighting was dim, so I couldn't tell how clean it was. There were two doors. One opened up to a small closet and the second led to a bathroom. Apart from a musty carpet and a few obvious stains on the wall, it was acceptable.

The woman left me with a key and I reclined on the bed in exhaustion. I undressed and fell asleep almost immediately.

I woke up the next morning to a rude knocking at the door. Somehow, during the course of the night, I'd ended up naked on the floor so I wasn't about to answer it. A second flurry of knocks came and then a jingling of keys. I leapt up, grabbed my pants and ran into the bathroom. I heard the door opening and then the clinking together of glasses. It must be breakfast, I thought. I turned the tap on full blast so the concierge would know the room was occupied. I waited for the door to close before walking back into the main room. There, on my bed, was a tray with a baguette and a cup of hot chocolate.

I examined the room as I ate my breakfast. The walls were covered in faded wallpaper depicting quaint bucolic scenes with women in bell-shaped dresses and men in long riding boots. From the center of the ceiling hung a chandelier with icicle-shaped bulbs and polished brass arms. Directly across from my bed stood a chest of drawers with an ornate oval mirror rising from the back, gilded rococo carvings decorating its wooden frame. I opened the broad shuttered windows and looked out into the streets. A breeze rustled through the curtains. Two flights below on the narrow cobblestone street a man ambled by playing a harmonica. I fumbled with the curtain rod and he turned up to salute to me. I smiled back and pulled my head inside the window. I reclined on my bed and the smell of chocolate intermingled with something like orange rind wafted through the air.

After finishing my breakfast I checked in at the desk downstairs. Instead of the woman with the narrow forehead there was a younger woman. She had short black hair cropped in a deliberately uneven way such that some tufts reached out as much as two inches while other areas were so thin you could see the white of her scalp. Her eyebrows were trimmed, waxed and arched like those of a ballerina, and her luxurious lips were covered sloppily with black lipstick. It was a daring look that straddled the borders of wild sex and ugliness.

"Monsieur?" She raised her left eyebrow.

"I'd like to check in for a second night. I also need to use the phone."

"Down the hall and to your left," she said in a cool disaffected way.

I rummaged through my wallet and found enough change to call England. After a few rings Annette answered.

"Any leads?" I asked eagerly.

"Not yet. Well...actually a man from Luxembourg called and said he'd seen someone that looked like Jillian. Then he called back half an hour later and admitted it was a prank and that he wanted to know if she had any bereaved sisters that looked anything like her. I was so pissed I gave him the F-word and slammed the phone down."

"Christ."

"Tell me about it." She paused for a moment. "How are you doing?"

"Last night was pretty grim, but it seems nicer now. I'm going out to look for a job today."

"Great. Are you OK for money?"

"Not really. But I'll manage."

"I'll send you some as soon as I can. The way I see it, we're working together on this. How much do you need?"

"Are you sure?"

"No problem. As long as you pay me interest." She laughed.

"Two hundred pounds, if you have it, would be good. But I don't want to take advantage."

"No worries. Just tell me if you run out. As far as jobs, I spoke to a friend the other day who just moved back from there and she said you should have no trouble finding something at a hotel or restaurant. Don't expect much pay, though. Just go to the nearest hostel and there should be a billboard with notices of temporary employment, or at the very worst someone who knows of some."

I gave her the address of the hotel I was staying in. When I finished I heard the detached voice of an operator telling me to insert more change.

"Listen, I'm running out of coins here."

"Keep in touch," Annette said urgently.

"I will. Wait, I think I have..." I pulled out a few more coins, but not before the line snapped into a loud drone. I slammed the receiver down and walked back to the desk.

"I should have told you," the woman said. "You can use the one in your room to make long distance calls. All you have to do is give us your passport."

Since I was still hiding from the authorities I told her I didn't have one and thanked her for her kind advice.

The rest of the day I walked through the streets of Paris. My initial goal was to find a job, but the more I walked the further away the idea slipped. All I could think of was Jillian. I wandered around for a few hours searching for possible leads. Every person I passed could be a key to finding her. Any one of the five million people in Paris could know where she was. I watched their faces as they walked by, imagining their eyes had met Jillian's earlier that day. Perhaps on the street, perhaps in a café, perhaps even over breakfast.

I ate dinner at a Burger King and went back to the hotel at eight. The woman with the strange haircut was slurping a bowl of soup behind the desk. She picked a sardine out of the steaming liquid with her fingers. I watched as she opened her tiny mouth and let the whole thing slide down her throat. Her shoulders lurched as she swallowed.

"Do you always watch people eating?" she asked.

"My apologies. I need to ask you something, if you have a second."

"If it's about your reservation, I'm off duty so you can forget it."

"I'm sorry, but it's very urgent."

"What would you do?" she asked, adjusting her bra strap and standing up to face me with the harsh, determined look of a nurse about to give an unruly boy an injection. "I'm off duty. My replacement is late." She shook her head. "I can't stand it when she's late. I've got friends to meet. The thing is she's got seniority so I'd get axed if I just left."

"I'm sorry, but I just want to make sure I can stay for the week. There's a letter I'm expecting in a few days."

"You're an American. Interesting." Her eyes swelled with mischief. "When that woman comes...actually, I shouldn't be so mean...when Dore comes, I'll have to tell her. She's a bit paranoid of criminals. She walks around this place with the same degree of vigilance she'd exercise walking through an Algerian slum...But you don't look all that dangerous. I bet you're a criminal though. Criminals are always sexier than do-gooders...wait!" Her face froze and she lifted her finger up to her lips. "Shhh. There's a suspicious Austrian man staying in the room directly upstairs. I'm convinced he listens to everything I say through a cup on the floor. I know it. One day I even found him watching me with binoculars from across the street. The filthy little cad." She pulled my ear over to her mouth as if it was a detachable microphone. "Which part of America are you from?" she whispered.

"Detroit," I said.

"How boring. I'm from Rodez...But I guess that's not so exciting either."

"Rodez..." I knew the name because Jillian had mentioned it a few times in reference to Artaud's writing, but I couldn't quite remember the connection. But the coincidence was enough to encourage me. For a moment I entertained the fanciful notion that my peyote vision of Jillian's face hovering over Paris was an expression of my unconscious mind ultimately guiding me to this very hotel because this hotel concierge would somehow be instrumental in my unraveling the secrets of her disappearance.

"You look startled," she continued. "Rodez is really nothing special. A lot of sheep farms." When she said farms she almost coughed up the fish she started laughing so hard. I wasn't sure what was so funny. "I'm sorry," she said like a sly Marlene Dietrich. "I'm being so un-sophisticated."

"Not at all," I said.

"I bet you need work."

"I'll take anything."

"Hmmmm. I've got friends...no, wait. I haven't even told you my name. Gigi. That's it. I like it. Some people don't like their names. Not me...anyway, I've got some friends who work in a hotel across the Seine. There might be some kitchen work. And you? Your name, I mean."

"Jean."

Just then the door crashed open and the woman from the night before walked in with a frumpish frown on her face.

"I'm off," Gigi whispered to me. She walked over to Dore and handed her a set of keys. Then she sashayed out the door. As I watched Dore take off her coat I heard the rumble of a motor scooter starting up outside the door. Dore pulled out the guest book and signed me in. I put down enough money for two days and asked her to keep a lookout for the letter I was expecting. She promised she'd keep an eye open and I went up to my room.

I took out some of Jillian's old letters and read them late into the night. I searched for some mention of a neighborhood or landmark in Paris where I might be able to extract a clue to her whereabouts. Anything would do. A shop where she may have wanted to buy a dress, a club or bar that might have roused her curiosity from an ad in a magazine, or even a person that she may once have known before she met me.

After an hour I'd come up with a few places at which I could start my investigation. I reasoned that Jillian's disappearance was an act of the unconscious mind and that the key to finding her must exist in a secret verbal or pictorial association. I struggled to remember every aspect of the word game we'd played the first time we met in Lyon. The secret of the end must lie in the beginning, I reasoned. As surreal a credo as any. Perhaps she was lying beneath the olive tree at St. Rémy that very instant. Perhaps she was in the Arles Café reading a poem while sipping her coffee. Yet maybe the solution was more complex and she could only be found by piecing together an elaborate web of associations running through the complete life's work of Artaud. If this were true, the possibilities were infinite and any one solution had an equal chance of being the correct one. My mind reeled in frustration as the night ticked on.

Eventually, I turned off the light and fell asleep. That night I dreamed I was in the trenches again. René lay dead beside me on the ground. I stood staring in horror as blood rushed from his mouth and ears. The lieutenant yelled my name and jabbed me in the back with the butt of his rifle. I turned around to see that it was actually Munif. He stared at me stone cold like a gargoyle. I hollered at him for trying to trick me into thinking he was the lieutenant. The louder I yelled, the colder and more indifferent was his expression. I woke up to the sound of a water pipe rumbling somewhere above me. I walked over to the window and looked out. The street was empty except for a small man on a bicycle. He looked up in my direction. His gaze went right through me. For the first time it truly dawned on me. I was alone. Utterly and completely alone.

### II

In my first week I searched out at least a dozen leads. I went to St. Rémy in search of an olive tree. Not only were there no olive trees, there was nothing about the place that would suggest that Jillian would ever want to set foot there. I looked for the Arles Café only to find it no longer existed. I perused her notes for random street addresses and phone numbers she might have jotted down. Not one of them corresponded to anything in Paris. I searched through Artaud's poems and letters for place names in the area she might have cause to visit. Every time I left the hotel I'd bring photocopies of the missing person posters so I could hang them up in cafés and convenience stores. The closest I came to finding anyone who recognized her was one afternoon in The Café République. It was a small café in the Latin Quarter made famous because Artaud used to frequent it during the last years of his life.

"She looks familiar," said the owner. "But I can't remember when I might have seen her. So many people come through here."

"It's very important. Can you remember what she was wearing or who she was with?"

"Hmmm. I really can't say."

I pressed him for details but to no avail.

"To be honest," he finally said. "I think it was probably someone else. I remember that she had a much thinner face and large nose than the woman you have in that picture."

I thanked the man and left. Needless to say, I was frustrated and disillusioned. Every night after supper I would read her letters in search of a lead and every night I ended up drunk and depressed instead. But one morning I stumbled across a set of older letters that had somehow eluded me earlier. They were written during the time she was still torn between me and Adrien. In one letter she quoted Artaud in describing how she felt the world was conspiring to destroy her:

" _Thus strange forces are aroused and brought up into the astral vault, into that kind of dark dome which constitutes, over all human respiration, the venomous hostility of the evil spirit of the majority of people."_

This was a paranoid side of Jillian that I had never known. I suddenly felt guilty for ignoring her for so long, for only perceiving a side of her that I had in part invented myself. I had always seen her as strong and dominant in what seemed to be her endlessly flowering sexuality. I dreamed of her hair and body and called that love. Instead of supporting her I used her to bolster my self-confidence and soothe my petty insecurities. When she needed me I always let her down. Not out of malice or denial but more from a desire to maintain a vision of our relationship as a perfect garden from which all negatives were banned. If she was upset it meant I could not possibly be the perfect lover she needed. I took her fluctuating moods as a sign of my inadequacy. When she needed me the most I would always turn the discussion towards what I perceived were my own shortcomings rather than listen to her problems. All I cared about was whether I was to blame for her bad moods and if that in turn meant I was losing her. Was love always alone? Were people so caught up in their own image of their lovers that they become incapable of loving anyone?

For the rest of the day I perused her notes in search of further clues but all I found were indecipherable scribblings. As evening started to fall I stumbled on a cryptically surrealist passage from something called The Umbilicus of Limbo:

It goes without saying that Brunelleschi is in love with the wife of Paul the Birds. He reproaches him, among other things, for letting her starve to death. Does one starve to death in the Mind?

For we are solely in the Mind.

The way the word Mind was capitalized gave it a haunting presence. Perhaps this whole thing was little more than a momentary tide in the great mental ocean that binds us all together and I was really just lying in bed back in Algeria imagining everything. The entire sequence of events starting with the attack by the Muslim guerrillas was imbued with an eerie sense of dreaminess: my acquaintance with Munif and my subsequent desertion... the expression on Jillian's face the first night we made love after I came back... the peyote visions on the island...

I went to get a glass of water and when I came back I found a letter that I must have somehow overlooked. The date was strangely missing and the handwriting was jittery. In it, she described with great detail a time we went out after knowing each other for only a few months. I had met her in a downtown flower garden in Lyon and we walked arm in arm through the intricately sculpted columns of bushes studded with thousands of tiny roses. I was talking about why I had come to France and why I felt I had to escape North America. I got more adamant than usual and went off on a tangent about how I thought my parents had screwed me up by making me expect too little of myself. Whenever I'd tell my father some dream about becoming someone important he'd give me a lecture about the humble inheriting the earth and how it was vain of me to expect anything out of life, especially since I wasn't overly talented in any area. At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was trying to shape me into a person who appreciated equally every nuance of life. He didn't want me to become the sort of elitist that never stopped to think about the role of the commonplace in life. "Your too much of a dreamer," he'd say. "You're dreams are worth shit next to an honest day's work on a road crew." But if anything his humbling lectures had a damaging effect. They placed a chip on my shoulder and made me detest the commonplace even more. I ended up desperately wanting all those things in life he convinced me I lacked - a talent to do something different and leave an individual mark on the world. As I walked with Jillian, I started recounting my life's failures. It started raining in sheets. We ran inside a cafe to take shelter. I continued talking and got so lost in my own monologue that she couldn't get a word in edgewise. I went to the bathroom and when I came back she tried to take advantage of the natural break in conversation by sharing with me something from her childhood, which had an equally traumatizing effect on her as my father's actions had had on me. By the look on her face I could tell it was something very important and perhaps even formative. I waited in silence for over a minute as huge swaths of rain chopped away like giant propellers at the Stella Artois umbrellas canopied over the tables outside. The combination of the hissing rain and her sudden emotional constipation made me nervous. I wanted to fill the gap of silence and in my impatience launched into yet another commentary about my own problems. She took a deep breath as if to draw in all those feelings she desperately wanted to spill out on the table but couldn't. Then she listened to me for another hour before the rain slowed and we went back to her place. That night we were about to make love when she suddenly and unexpectedly became angry and pushed me violently away. I fell off her bed and slashed my shoulder on her night table. The wound bled profusely.

"Not another scar," she said with irony, no doubt referring to my ramblings that afternoon. I was so angry with her that I charged out of the room and left her apartment. After that, we never discussed the incident again.

In her version from the letter she described everything almost exactly as I remembered it. In the last paragraph she brought up how my behavior that day broke something precious between us and how she had always dreamed of a man she could love enough to share this most private feeling with and she had hoped it might have been me. My reaction, however, proved beyond all doubt I wasn't this man. As the letter closed she bemoaned what she thought was her curse of being so terribly idealistic that she would never find that one special man with whom she could share her deepest fears and pains.

I coughed and looked out the window. A man wearing a long green overcoat was walking a small terrier across the street below. Reading the letter and coming to terms with how our relationship had really been filled me with a feeling of regret. I was convinced that I was an ogre who had driven her away with my selfishness and insecurity. The mysterious voice I heard while on peyote on Delacroix's island confirmed this. But I was so wrapped up in my own odyssey of self-discovery that I was more concerned that the voice might be a joke played by Poilblanc than I was interested in what it might have been saying and how it could possibly be true. Yet how could it have been any different? Was it so wrong of me to interrupt the great gap of silence between us that dismal rainy afternoon at the café? It wasn't that I didn't care. It was my impatience that took hold of me and made me do it. My feeling at that time was that if it was so important she would have told me already. But unfortunately the damage had already been done. In the same way that my father's words had irrevocably damaged me, my behavior that day, no matter how inadvertent, had changed the course of my relationship with Jillian.

I set the letter down on the table and thought about the many times that we would seem to drift apart into our own separate worlds for weeks on end. During these interludes I was always convinced that the relationship wouldn't last for much longer. I would start to take notice of other women and no doubt she would start to look twice at other men. But suddenly one day the tether would stretch to its limit and snap back like a rubber band. She'd hear that I had gone for lunch with another woman or she'd directly ask me if I thought we shouldn't see each other for a while. Then we'd plunge ferociously back into one another's arms and everything would be good again for the next few months. Looking back on it now, it seemed so shallow that we always needed a threat of loss to bring our love back to its zenith.

I put on my coat and took a walk as the sun was setting. Without any conscious navigation I ended up in a cemetery standing alone beside a gravestone. I started thinking about how we all leave indelible traces on each other's internal fossil record. The marks can be hidden and buried, but they're always somehow still there. The day's sadness was uplifting in its own strange way and by the end of my miniature meditation at the foot of the gravestone I felt a warm sensation that I was a part of every one's lives and they a part of mine. I took a fragment of one of Jillian's letters and read it over and over to myself:

" _The naked man who was being tortured, I saw him nailed to a rock and worked on by forms which the sun made volatile; but I know not by what optical miracle the man up there remained whole, although he was in the same light as them."_

I was that man. An elderly woman wearing a dull brown dress passed my bench and our eyes met momentarily. She looked at me in a way that made me feel she knew what I was thinking. Her gaze was so powerful I turned my head away. The next time I looked up she was gone.

### III

I don't know how many times during this painful early period I wandered out alone at night in search of some lead and later ended up disillusioned in a bar for a few drinks. The combination of the lingering golden hues from the lights behind a bar and the festive sounds of laughter and clinking glasses was my only connection to a happy stable world that was rapidly retreating from me. Invariably I'd try the door, opening it only slightly to see how many people were inside, what they looked like, and how they were dressed - in short, the general atmosphere provided by the establishment. If I found it agreeable, I'd walk in. Even if I didn't find it agreeable, sometimes I'd still walk in. The comfort of human voices was sometimes too much too resist. After a few quick drinks images of Jillian would begin to drift from my mind and I was left to feel a new life might be starting up for me all over again.

I gradually found a few bars I liked. Two places in particular charmed me. One was called Le Coq Noir. I liked it because of its ultra-dim lighting cast by a row of nineteenth century burgundy-clothed lamps hanging from the ceiling. The other was called Le Phare Enragé, and also seemed to be a favorite of Gigi. The sign outside was like one from a traditional pub and showed a lighthouse with a streak of black lightning coming out where the beacon light should have been. The lightning fragmented into a dozen tiny bolts, each hitting a tiny boat, whose horrific destruction was portrayed in great detail by the artist: flaming bodies and shattered planks flew asunder amidst the smoke of burning oil.

It was my third time at Le Phare Enragé that I met Gigi's friend Alan. He was a short but handsome man who worked in hotel management and had a way of sniffing out conspiracies in everything. He was rolling pieces of old gum in strips of raw bacon and tossing them furtively into people's martinis when Gigi pulled him by the arm and dragged him over to our table.

"You're such a rude, rude little man," she hissed. "I ought to take you home to your mother and have her spank you all night, but you'd probably like it."

"Gigi! Ah, my love." He kissed her, sucking up her lips like a schoolboy would a bowl of hot oatmeal.

"You disgust me," she said, stabbing a fork into the table. "Have a seat." She pulled out a chair and he took it without hesitation.

Although Alan was often rude to the point of exasperation, he had such magnetic charm he could have gotten an entire gymnasium of frowning Latin teachers to take off their shoes and hop around barefoot for an hour, imbecilic smiles gleaming from their faces.

"I make my own toothpaste," he whispered into my ear. "Chalk, Ajax, and lard is all you need. All the big toothpaste companies have us all fooled. I started noticing a few years ago that whenever I brushed my teeth I had bad breath a few hours later. I then discovered that they not only put breath freshener into toothpaste, but also breath...breath...Damn." He pounded his fist on the table. "Gigi, what would you call it? Ah, no. I've got it. Breath pollutant. You see, they carefully plan it so that the breath freshener wears off while the breath pollutant only gets stronger in time. Sinister, no? They get you to brush your teeth dozens of times a day and bog up the airwaves with commercials about how people hate you if you have bad breath. They get you using ten times more of the stuff than you actually need!"

A week after I met him Gigi convinced him to offer me a job as a porter in the hotel he managed. The money from Annette eventually arrived and it gave me enough slack to wait for my first paycheck. At the end of the month I moved out of the hotel and into a small room.

"I have nothing," Alan told me the night after my first grueling shift in the hotel's dish room. "I need nothing. It is by becoming somebody that you truly become nobody. Look at all those people in high positions of responsibility. They're slaves to their public image. They're not even alive. The dead walk so strongly amongst us! I'd just be a paperboy if there was enough money in it. The secret is to take the job that gives you the least amount of responsibility with the right amount of money. Be careful! Too much money and you again become nothing. It rules your very existence. People think money is freedom. I know better. If anyone says it's good to be rich, just tell them you know Alan and that'll shut them up.

We ended up drinking until late in the evening at Le Phare Enragé. I told him about Jillian and he was sympathetic, but urged me to press on and entertain the possibility of seeing other women. "Life is long, but twice as wide," he said. "You don't want to end up an old man at thirty." He took a long sip of wine and continued. "Women are like books. Each must be read and studied with great care and interest, but to limit oneself to one is like rereading the same novel for a lifetime. Just imagine having to read Stendhal for eighty years straight!"

By two he was urging me to talk to a group of teenage women dressed in schoolgirl cardigans and paper-thin stockings. By three I was talking to one of them and by four I could almost have been tempted to kiss her as I bade her goodnight and walked out with Alan, his arm around two African women he had just met. The only thing keeping me from pushing it further was one lingering thought: Jillian was somewhere amongst us. Perhaps the same gust of air that brushed up against my face as I walked home alone that night had only hours earlier washed in and out of her lungs in another part of Paris, its swirling mass of endless streets leading ultimately to nowhere.

### IV

The next day it started raining and it didn't stop for almost a week. To make matters worse I came down with my worst flu in recent memory. It was one of those wet, incapacitating flus where I could almost feel the viral particles nesting in my ears and throat. My body became a receptacle of infirmity. I was bedridden for three days, but managed to use the time alone to regain my lost focus on the true purpose of my current existence: to find Jillian. It wasn't as though I hadn't been thinking about her during those few wild nights with Alan and Gigi at Le Phare Enragé. Not at all. If anything, I'd locked up my feelings in a little vault in order to maintain my sanity. After all, I was now in the passive role waiting for her to show up. That was all I could do. No matter how hard I looked for her, if she didn't reappear, there was no way I wouldn't find her. I was stuck with the unenviable task of waiting. Even when I was looking, I was still waiting. I was like a man searching in vain for a lost key chain who eventually reaches a point where his optimism begins to fade. He still goes on looking for the chain, but his attitude changes from the determined I'm going to find those keys to the more passive I wish those damn keys would show up as if their reappearance was contingent on something utterly beyond his control.

One morning, when I was just starting to feel well enough to get out of bed and start doing things again, I took a bus to the outskirts of the city. Although I still had a slight fever, the boredom of sitting alone in bed was starting to get to me. After walking through the rain for a few minutes I stumbled upon a quaint old bookstore that captured my interest because the name seemed to ring a bell: Livres Hermes. Was it possible that it had been mentioned in one of Jillian's letters and I had just failed to make conscious recognician? I stepped through the large wood doors and started rummaging through a box of old books by the front counter. To my surprise, I came across a volume of Artaud's poetry. On the first page was scribbled a little J in red ink on the top right corner. I looked more closely. Could it have once belonged to Jillian? The J was written almost perfectly so it was hard to tell if it was her handwriting or not. Anyone could write a perfect J. I leafed through the fifty odd pages for further clues. There was nothing to go on except for a poem on the second page of the book in which the sixth and seventh lines were underlined in the same red ink. On the facing page was the translation:

Sickly girl, white with the blood of even whiter angels, sleeping

by the river where the gray razors gut the stomachs of your death

It was all there. Jillian had indeed disappeared on June 2, the second day of the sixth month. Hence the second page and sixth line. The imagery was also perfectly consistent. White with death like a corpse immersed in water for days. The river. I rushed over to the man behind the counter and asked him how long he'd had the book on his shelf.

"A week," he replied.

"Do you remember who brought it in?"

"A woman."

"Was this her?" I pulled out one of the posters.

"Could be, but I can't say for sure. The hair was different. This one had short red hair. But the face looks kind of the same."

"Has she been back?"

"No."

"Did she bring in anything else?"

"No. But she bought a few books. Two to be exact. Just detective novels."

"Which ones?" I asked. Jillian never read detective novels but perhaps these were special, more literary ones.

"Can't remember. Real cheapos, though."

"Was she alone?"

The man stopped to think. "No...now that you mention it, she was with a man."

"A man?"

"What did he look like?"

"I can't say for sure, because he stayed outside and waited while she came in. He was wearing a hat and had his collar around his face. It was quite rainy that day."

I paid for the book and rushed outside. It was almost as if my sickness had suddenly turned into a great euphoric force, propelling me through the rain. When I got home I put the book in my kitchen drawer and called Gigi.

"Are there any slaughterhouses by the river?" I asked, linking the image of the stomach and the razors with an abattoir. Jillian's captor had taken her to the bookstore, perhaps out of some sudden sympathetic whim, and she was clever enough to leave a clue for me in the form of a marked book. She knew I would come because it was mentioned in one of her letters. I had read that kidnappers often did favors for their victims, either to assuage their conscience or merely to toy with them before finally disposing of them

"Yes. I think. Reimann's. Why do you want to go there anyway? There's a million better places to go in this town."

"I'll tell you later," I said.

She gave me some general directions and I took a cab there immediately. Night was setting in. The cab driver let me off in a deserted alleyway just behind the front entrance. The gates were closed.

"This place just closed for good a month ago," the driver said as I paid. "How about I swing by in fifteen minutes to see if you need a ride back."

"No. That's OK," I said.

I spent the next two hours wandering around the perimeter of the property under the light of a row of industrial spotlights that stood like sentries by the nearby docks. The wire mesh fence surrounding the premises was too tall to climb: almost twelve feet with barbed wire on top. Fifty yards or so inside the fence the cold brick walls of the slaughterhouse rose into the night sky. It was entirely deserted - a perfect place for a maniac to keep his victim. I was horrified at the thought that Jillian could be locked up inside.

The rain slowed down and I started to search the ground for clues. Anything would do. An item of clothing. A matchbox with an address or phone number on it. A pen or pencil. I scraped the ground with my fingers until they were bleeding, searching for something tangible. After twenty minutes I found a white bottle cap, an old toothbrush, and a plastic dinosaur. Imagining in my feverish state that they each were possible links to Jillian's disappearance, I treated them like sacred objects to be handled only by the holiest priests and shaman. Ignoring the pain in my fingertips, I continued scraping through the mud until the dock lights went out. By this time I'd collected about a dozen items. Certainly enough to go on. I composed a careful mental note of the area I'd covered in case I'd have to continue my search another time and made my way home along the river.

Two hours later, I opened my front door and set the items down on the kitchen table. My fingers were red with blood. I looked in the mirror. My face was wet and swollen. I went back into the kitchen to get the poetry book, hoping that some of the objects would correspond to other lines of poetry hidden within its crumbling yellow pages. I opened the drawer that I put it in earlier. It was empty except for a corkscrew. I looked all around the house. The book was nowhere to be found. By this time it was four in the morning. I decided that I must have accidentally misplaced it and that it was best for me to get some much needed sleep so I could look for it with a fresh mind in the morning.

I woke up at dawn and looked for the book again. It was still missing. Convinced that Jillian's captor had sensed I was on to something and broke into the apartment while I was out in the rain digging through the mud, I called the Paris Police Department. Although the army was after me and may have even contacted the local authorities, finding Jillian was more important. This new evidence would certainly be enough to get someone working on the case. A man with a deep voice answered. I told him what had happened and at first he seemed genuinely concerned.

"You have to do a full search of Reimann's," I said. "She has to be in there." I explained the case from the beginning starting from Jillian's disappearance and following the way through to the volume of poetry and the objects I'd found.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Anything else?" He laughed. His concern had clearly turned to ridicule. I could tell he took me for a madman.

I slammed down the phone in disgust and went out into the kitchen. I examined the objects I had left on the table the night before. In the morning light they were nothing more than meaningless junk. Too weak to struggle with the reemerging sickness I went back to my bedroom and stared at the ceiling until I finally fell asleep.

When I woke up I wasn't sure what time it was. By the looks of it, it was probably dusk. I called Annette.

"Hello," she said. Her voice hissed through miles of cables and satellite reflector panels. Her nose sounded plugged.

"It's me."

"Oh, brilliant. Did you get the money I sent?"

"Yes. Thanks. I've even got a job at a hotel now. It isn't great, but it'll do for now,"

"That was quick."

"A woman I met in the first hotel referred me."

"Any luck in other spheres?" she asked, obviously referring to Jillian.

"No. Not a trace." I didn't want to tell her about the Reimann's incident. It would either upset her or she'd think I was losing it.

"We haven't heard a thing either. But Mother's upped the reward for any news on her location. She's as hopeful as ever, but Father's already being a bit hard. Says she's wasting emotions that could be put into more productive things. I'm disgusted. You'd think he'd be more supportive. He's made it obvious where he thinks she's best off. Not that he doesn't love her or want her back. He just...well, you know."

"Maybe he just thinks we're dragging out something that should be left to rest," I said, trying to add a diplomatic perspective. But I really thought her father was lost. I was an agnostic and had no set opinion of God or the afterlife. It seemed so ludicrous to assume there was one and lead your life by it, even jeopardizing its most important relationships in the process.

"I might be coming down for a visit soon. An old friend from school invited me down. She's studying business and has a great apartment with a view of the Seine."

"That would be great. I've been putting a concerted effort into reading Jillian's letters and the notes for her thesis. I'm trying to acquaint myself with a part of her I never really knew. When Poilblanc took me out to his island I had a few experiences pertaining to Jillian I'd like to share with you. You might even help me with some details on her childhood." I paused for a moment when I realized the irony of my position. If I had loved her as much as I claimed to - and I truly did - then why was I only now asking these important questions? "It's funny. You'd think I would have known her after all this time. But no. There's so much about her I could never possess. Maybe it was really my fault." My voice sank with regret.

"I wasn't your fault. Jillian was always somewhat closed off with me as well. That's the kind of big sister she was. I always adored her and she returned my adoration with equal affection. But she would never let me climb up to the same level as her. We could never talk as equals. I was always her lovely little sister and nothing more."

"There were times where she'd talk about her childhood, but I guess I was guilty of not always listening as much as I should have. It was like someone telling you about a place that they've been that you haven't and never will. You can only take abstract interest because you know you will never go there."

"It's always easier to talk about things you both have in common."

"That's why we never talked so much about literature. I read about as much as the average guy, but I want to live my own life."

"Don't we all. But I'm convinced it isn't possible. People guide us around by force or through our own attraction we're guided involuntarily by others. Look at you! You're in Paris hiding from the army and waiting for Jillian. What sort of independence is that?"

"I guess you're right," I replied. She had a point. But since I didn't want to dwell on my own situation too long, I veered the conversation back to Jillian's enslavement to Artaud. "The thing was, she'd talk about bloody Artaud every night. Artaud this, Artaud that. It was fun at first, but only to a point. Eventually I started to block it out and just nod my head. Just like when she talked about her childhood. I started to view it as an obstacle between us. I felt she was lost in this world of his and I wasn't and couldn't be a part. I guess that's why I hated Poilblanc so much. Now, I wish I would've been more attentive."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. It wasn't your fault what happened to her and you can't turn back the clock."

"But maybe it was. What if I had stood up to the damn army and stayed behind like a true pacifist. It was cowardly for me to go when I stood so strongly against it. If only I had loved her better. Listened more."

The conversation ended in warm sentiments over our mutual sense of loss. I'd never felt so close to someone before. Not even Jillian. Somewhere in the depths of love, the lover becomes the enemy in so far as he or she becomes the keeper of the other's key to happiness. Perhaps this is why lovers can never be close friends. All the intertwining needs and petty jealousies become the very substance of that love and eventually outweigh any honesty that can be shared between them. I heard a police siren in the distance that seemed to form a perfect coda to our conversation. After we said goodbye I hung up the phone and went to sleep.

### V

A few days later I received a small package the size of a shoebox in the mail. It was wrapped in brown paper and had no return address. From the postmark I could tell it had been delivered from northeast Paris. I opened it up to find a pink plastic doll's leg about the size of a small banana. I picked it up. It was heavier than it should have been - much heavier. I shook it. There was something inside, something dense and hard. I put it back in the box and went to the kitchen to find a knife to cut through the plastic and see what was inside. As I was searching the drawers a loud bang filled my ears. For a moment I thought I was in the trenches again. I dove under the kitchen table and wrapped my arms behind my head as I was taught to protect the head from shrapnel. The room filled with smoke. When I gained enough nerve I slowly slid from under the table and went back into the living room, crouching low to the ground with every step. There were little pieces of the doll's leg all over the floor. Perhaps it was the army coming to arrest me and they had my house surrounded. I ducked as low as I could and darted across the floor to the window. I pulled open a corner of the curtain and carefully looked outside. Nothing. The street was empty. I crawled over to the front door to see if it had been forced. It hadn't.

I stood up slowly and looked around me. It could only have been a bomb. The heavy object inside the leg. If someone had tossed a grenade from outside, the window would have been broken. I scanned the floor. The box had been blown into tiny pieces of ash, destroying all evidence of the postmark. All that was left were thousands of little pink pieces all burnt around the edges. I ran to the phone and called the police. But before I'd even finished dialing I'd already hung up. They'd showed their indifference once too many times. This was for me to solve. Besides, they'd only think I was crazy if I told them what had just happened, especially after the slaughterhouse incident. The way I looked at it, I was on to something big and telling the police would only slow down my investigation.

I stayed home the next two nights reading and rereading her notes and letters with renewed fervor in search of some mention of Livres Hermes or a clue to what the box could mean. Maybe it was a warning sign from Jillian's captor that I was getting too close for comfort, or maybe it was a cry for help, a secret message from her which could only be deciphered by linking it up with the right Artaud poem. I searched in vain for several days, but found nothing. Just as I was about to give up I came across the clue I was looking for. It was a poem copied out in Jillian's handwriting on a page of blue paper that was just sitting there on the floor next to my bed. I'd never seen it before. There was no commentary, only an address scribbled in light pencil at the bottom. 45 Rue St. Pierre. The address was in northeast Paris, possibly linking it to the mysterious package. The poem read:

A dead girl said : I'm the one who puffs horror into the legs of the live girl.

Get me out of here fast.

It suddenly seemed so obvious. Wasn't the explosion a puffing of horror into the disembodied doll's leg? Wasn't Jillian the dead girl that was really the live girl? The puffing image was also connected with the water-bloated body washed up in Marseilles after her disappearance. And Get me out of here fast, was an obvious plea from a person in captivity. The explosion motif could have symbolized anything. A sudden change or annihilation. Jillian's disappearance. Or perhaps it was a sexual innuendo and merely suggested that I was lusting after a woman who was already dead. Whatever it meant, the connection was too tempting to ignore. But why the package? Perhaps it was sent by a secret ally or informant in order to help me find Jillian. But that didn't explain the explosion. Although it was not intense enough to have mortally wounded me, it was still an attempt to injure. So it was more plausible that it had been sent by a psychopathic killer. Didn't they always enjoy sending strange indecipherable messages to their victims just prior to the kill? It was their own sick way of prolonging the pleasure.

The next morning I took the Metro to the northeast end of Paris in search of the address written on the bottom of the sheet. Whoever it was that sent the package must have known that the address was penciled on that piece of paper and wanted to lead me there. Perhaps they even planted it there the night they broke in to steal the book of poetry. When I got to where the address should have been according to the map all I found was a construction crew complete with wrecking balls and tractors surrounding a house that had just been reduced to rubble. I walked up to the nearest worker and asked him who owned the house.

"Sodergren," was all he said. The name sounded familiar, but I didn't know why.

"Sodergren?"

"Jacob Sodergren." I immediately thought of the mysterious Scandinavian voice the night on the island.

"Why is it being torn down?"

"Don't know. He apparently just bought it a few weeks ago."

"Do you have his number?"

"You'll have to go to the urban planning council for that. You can't just hire a wrecking crew, you know. Just think what would happen. You'd have half the town wrecking the other half. That's why it's all done through the city."

I thanked the man and rummaged around on the perimeter of the lot, trying to keep out of the workers' way as much as possible as I searched for further clues. Finding nothing of interest I decided that my best bet was to hunt down this mysterious Jacob Sodergren. No doubt it was he that had sent me the package. He was possibly the same man seen with Jillian at the bookstore. Yet why would he lead me to the house only to have it torn down before I got there? It must have been the place where Jillian had been held captive and perhaps Sodergren was a part of a gang hat had abducted her and the other members found out he'd sent me the clue and demanded that the house be torn down to destroy the evidence.

As I walked home I tried to piece things together. I imagined Sodergren to be a tall and gaunt man dressed in a pressed white shirt and black pants. Something of the old school variety with a sinister twist. But he was repenting. He'd gotten wrapped up with the wrong crowd and was doing his best to undo the damage he'd done to Jillian whilst also protecting himself from the retaliations of the mob. But maybe he was her sole captor and was just trying to throw me off. He spotted me down by Reimann's and got scared. So he bought a new house to hide Jillian. He sent the leg to try to kill me, and when he found out I was still alive he had to tear this new house down to destroy all the evidence. This seemed like the most likely scenario, but I still needed more proof. It also didn't explain the blue piece of paper. My next task was to meet this enigma, this secret new friend or enemy.

The next morning I called the city and they confirmed that the house was indeed owned by someone called Jacob Sodergren and that a few days earlier he'd made arrangements to have it demolished. All arrangements regarding the house were conducted over the phone. The previous owner was an elderly woman who had passed away several years before. Since she had no apparent heir the house fell into the hands of the state. The fact that Sodergren would have the house destroyed so soon after he had bought it seemed consistent with the theory that he was my enemy and was now on the run. As for the blue piece of paper, I reasoned that it must have been planted there by a third party, yet to be revealed, who was secretly trying to lead me to Jillian.

I asked the authorities if they knew where I could find Sodergren, but they had no idea where he was. I looked through the phone book and searched the internet but found nothing. Perhaps I was losing heart too soon, but it seemed that as quickly as Sodergren had entered my life he'd already vanished. Wasn't this what Jillian would always do? On this premise I constructed a new theory the Sodergren was actually Jillian and that she had to use a false name to elude her captors. Afraid of being tracked down after escaping from a horrible cell in some maniac's basement she assumed the identity of a fictitious man in order to voice her outcry. Yet where would she have gotten the money for the house? Something wasn't right, but whatever the truth, I had to find out soon as my life was slowly spiraling away into a deadly mixture of languor and chaos.

### VI

Paris. Three a.m. Alone in the street, alone in the universe. Save me from evil. Save me from life, I repeated to myself like a mantra as I waited alone outside a bus station for Annette to arrive. I had a hangover from drinking too much cheap champagne the night before with Alan and Gigi at Le Phare Enragé and Paris was starting to look like it had the first night I'd arrived. The jaundiced light of the street lamps...the pavement striped with rain and mud...floating faces scarred with malevolent, dwarfish grins...the lunging shapes of their gray-black shadows. Annette had taken a special London-Paris coach service just to see what traveling in a bus was like. I admired her for her courage but cursed her for her bad choice of scheduling.

Eventually the bus emerged from a depth of fog and squealed to a halt. Annette was the last of twelve people to step out. In her long white overcoat clasped around her body with a wide buckled belt and shoulder loops she looked like Emma Peel from The Avengers.

"Look what I have!" she said as she pulled a scroll of paper out from the folds of her coat. She unrolled it and held it up against her chest. It was an old promo poster for the rock band Television. It showed the four of them with ragged hair and denim jackets. Tom Verlaine was standing in the middle cradling a smashed-up 14-inch television in his arms. "I bought it in a rock curio store in Covent Garden. They said it was an original from a show at the Marquee."

I walked her to a vending machine and bought her a coke while she rolled the poster up and tucked it back into her pocket. The conversation turned from rock nostalgia to the air in London.

"I'm convinced people should go into training before they take the Northern Line," she said as I turned the keys and opened the door of my apartment.

"Like mountaineers?"

"No. Like riot police. It's a bloody gas chamber."

I'd been in London before and knew exactly what she was talking about. Every time I took the Northern Line I came out feeling like someone had piped carbon monoxide directly into my lungs. As the stops rolled by from Kentish Town all the way down to Balham I could always feel the life slowly trickling out of my limbs. A queasy high would set in and by the end of the journey the subway walls would almost seem to collapse around me in a wild show of vertigo.

I poured her a vodka and told her about the mysterious Jacob Sodergren.

"The government must have some office of records somewhere," she said. "Citizenship. Immigration. Birth certificates." We looked at each other like we knew we were on to something.

"But, why? That's what I don't understand."

"Take it as a good sign. He wouldn't go through all this trouble unless Jillian was alive somewhere, would he?"

Later, she pulled a stack of photos out of her purse and handed them to me.

"I bet you've never seen these," she said furtively under her breath as if she were embarrassed at what she was about to show me. They were pictures of Jillian during her teen years. Indeed, I was shocked at what I saw. The first showed her all naked except for a Double InDAMNity tee-shirt with lip stick scribbles all over her legs. "She developed them herself during a summer photography course."

I flipped through the pile. Each had its own bend of perversion. In some she was almost naked, while in others she was dressed strangely or locked in an unusual pose. Although they were all stylish - how could they have been anything else? - and looked like something that might be hanging in some punk art gallery in Los Angeles, they were also uniquely disturbing. If the photos were of a complete stranger I would have found them strangely erotic, but there's something inside every man that never wants to see his lover displayed in such an openly sexual way so as to potentially become the object of other men's desires. I wondered what compelled her to do them, what strange sort of whim or psychological malady would have possessed her to allow someone to snap her in such a dramatically weird and revealing light.

"They're almost sick."

"Yes," she said with seriousness. "I wasn't sure that I should show you. I knew you'd demand to see them if you knew I had them, but...you know."

"Who took them?"

"I did. She made me. I was so embarrassed. I came in one night and found her laughing on my bed with a stack of crayons and lipstick. She had gone into the basement and hauled out all our old clothes and was trying them on. Then she threatened me with a pen knife. She told me that I had to take pictures of her in all her different outfits. She said each one revealed a different person inside and that each had to be preserved or else it would die."

"How old were you?" I could hardly imagine the scenario. I knew Jillian was introspective and often needed to be alone, but in all the years I dated her I'd never seen the slightest indication of such abnormal behavior.

"I was just twelve at the time. It was during her bad spell."

"Bad spell? I never heard about this."

"I promised her I'd never tell," she said. Tears surged into her eyes. "Jean. I feel like I'm betraying her just by being here."

"No. It's essential. You have to tell me. It's important."

"I'm sorry. I always looked up to her. It's not just that I feel that I'm breaking a promise. It's more. If I told you all that happened I'd be revealing some very personal things about myself as well. Can't you imagine what it was like to see your idolized big sister acting so strange? I was shattered. For months, no years, afterwards I felt defiled."

"Did she hurt you?"

"No. Only emotionally. She was always the leader. She led me around, told me what we would do every day, and indirectly told me which friends I could see or not see. She was never cruel or bossy. She led by kindness. If there were friends she didn't like, she would gently shepherd me away from them by telling me how they might keep me from fulfilling my true potential. She would never say they were a bad influence. It was much more subtle. But looking back on it now I can see how manipulative she really was. But at the time I never minded. No. Not at all."

She looked upwards and smiled. I could sense a kind of drunkenness descending on her. Her composure slipped, her words slurred, her sentences, normally so neatly phrased, broke down into drifting fragments.

"I loved her so much. And father. The way we used to hide his shoes in the morning. I can't remember exactly when it started. She had just left her first boyfriend. I used to hear them upstairs in her room. Usually laughter. Then crying. Over the year they were together there was more and more crying. I was too young and didn't understand. I just thought that's what people did when they were in love. Towards the end her sobs got more intense. They cut through me. Gave me nightmares. I started to wonder if she was okay. It was like the first time I saw a minister strike someone. I sensed the evil in his actions but didn't understand because I was always led to believe he was an infallible representative of God. Her crying rang through the floor for weeks. Her boyfriend stopped coming over and she locked herself in her room for almost a day until Father finally called a locksmith to open it. I can't even tell you what they found."

In listening to her story I could feel Jillian's presence like never before. Not only could I see her flesh in that of Annette, but I could almost feel her mind reaching out to me through her sister as if she was an oracle at a seance. Her body heaved with tears as she tried to go on. I moved closer so she could whisper in my ear. I held her hand on my lap.

"She was all naked. With lipstick smeared all over her body, trying to eat her pillow." Her face tightened up to hold back the insurgence of pain and she started shaking her head as if to say she couldn't go on. I pulled her head into my shoulder and held her in silence for almost ten minutes before she gained the courage to continue. I reassured her that she could tell me later or not at all if she preferred but she insisted that since she had started to tell me she had to finish.

"Remembering it all. It's so awful. I don't know how we kept it all inside for so long. We never told anyone. It was a family secret."

"I'm shocked," I said. "I never knew..."

"It got worse. They said she was potentially schizophrenic. They said she was depressed. Each expert had their own theory. I was too young to understand. I wanted her to go on being my big sister as if nothing had changed. I used to follow her around and play with my dolls beside her. She rarely said a thing. The drugs they gave her built a great wall around her."

"How long did it last?"

"About six months. The duration of the winter. She recovered slowly. For almost two months after she made me take the photos she said nothing to anyone. She'd come to dinner and sit with us. She'd eat. But she'd never speak. She'd just sit there with this empty look on her face. But everything changed in the spring. I caught her smiling by herself a few times. Once she caught me catching her smile and quickly suppressed it as if she knew she'd been revealed. It made me feel that she'd always been in control and the whole thing was an act."

"What was the first thing she said?"

"Something so clear. She came up from behind me a week after I first caught her smiling. She put her hands over my eyes and asked me if I could still see anything. It all seemed so natural that it didn't really occur to me until after I'd answered no and she went into her room"

"Why did you hold all this back for so long? This changes everything. Now the whole idea of her slipping into some sort of temporary madness and running away from me seems that much more feasible than it was before."

"I'm sorry. We had to. It was a promise within the family. I tried to bring it up after you called the day the body was found. Father forbade me to tell anyone - even the police. He always attributed what I just told you to the action of demonic forces."

"So, he doesn't know you're telling me?"

"No. He'd disown me. He says it would reflect badly on the family if anyone knew."

The evening wound on. She told me the whole story. Jillian's attempted suicide after her boyfriend left. Her two-month silence. The drawings on her skin. I tried in vain to piece everything together. Tried to tie her bout with madness to Artaud and the man she met with the white cane. I could see how the first two fit together, but not the third. The only possibility I could see was that the strange man's presence had struck something deep inside her, something intimately related to her illness and her study of Artaud. I should have been more observant. Didn't she say in the letter that the man said he was an admirer of her scholarship?

After my fourth vodka I opened up and told Annette everything about my peyote experience and the vision of the white cane and how Poilblanc had blown it all off as coincidence.

"If the strange voice was Sodergren that would certainly fit, " she said. "But it still doesn't explain his motive or roll in the whole thing."

As the night turned to morning I started to get sentimental. I went on once again about all the ways I'd failed to loved Jillian. All the tiny antipathies that had rolled up like dust balls in the corner of my heart.

"There was a time when she took me out to your parents' house and the pants she was wearing looked almost the same as the pants your mother was wearing. When I watched her and your mother cooking in the kitchen - I think it was some sort of garden pie - I began to notice so many similarities between the two. It bothered me. No offense, but I always thought your mother was the sort of woman that I'd never want to end up with."

"I should hope so!"

"There is something just too sweet and gentle about her."

"No!" she said sarcastically.

"I always wanted someone more dynamic, more intelligent. Perhaps to make up for my failures in life. That was Jillian. But it was while I was staring at her that she started to slip away from my heart. I tried to still love her that instant as she stood there chopping carrots in almost exactly the same rhythm as your mother. They looked like twins. A new person emerged out of her skin. A person just like your mother. That night I couldn't make love to her. She ceased to be the Jillian I loved and had become someone else. The feeling would come and go. But after that day, our love was never perfect. There were thousands of times it was, but there started to be these moments of isolation and doubt. Turning away after sex. Avoiding her in a bar to flirt with a woman I'd just met."

"I think you ask too much of life."

"Our love was so uncommon. She once read me a line of Rimbaud once that seemed perfect. What was it? Oh, I know. It went: I am not of this world. It filled me with electricity when she first whispered it in my ears. I am not of this world. Love is not of this world. Up until that day I watched Jillian with your mother we were two souls locked in an earthly existence."

"The mind. The inner world. That was Jillian to me."

"No. That was Jillian, period. Or at least until that day. After that her beauty seemed to sink at times - only at times, though - into the same spacio-temporal mire she was always able to lift me out of. Looking back, I wish I had loved her more...more evenly, more completely, after that day."

"Men like you bother me. You idealized her too much. So what if she let you down a few times. She's only human."

"You're misunderstanding me. I'm not blaming or criticizing anyone. I was just trying to chronicle my feelings."

"Love goes beyond personal ecstasy."

"No, love is ecstasy. There's no love in the dirt and rocks. It's only inside us. It's not of this world. That's why it's so hard to love the commonplace, the material. Love and the world are like oil and water."

"Christ said you have to learn to love everything. Even a dog's teeth. The mustard seed and the tree of heaven."

"But is it really possible to love someone that completely?" I asked. I had never doubted that I loved Jillian completely, but seeing the photos suddenly made me wonder if I had misunderstood her all along. My question went beyond the room and out to the world. "Love someone in all their darkest moods and most mundane aspects?"

"Do you think that true love can ever be that conditional? I was in love with a man for three years and he never reciprocated it. But it never faded. He eventually went away and I still think about him. There was never a point where I became frustrated and gave in to my impatience. Whenever he ignored me I was always able to forgive it as an uncontrollable force of nature. I felt that the reason he didn't love me was because it hadn't happened yet with him. I think there has to be some great internal imprint of a perfect lover in your soul. Something so deep and mystical that when you meet someone that somehow links you up with that image, you feel like you're barging into the presence of God. The thing is, the person you feel is your star-crossed lover may not be in touch with himself and may never realize that you are the one for him."

"Or, life is being cruel and making you in an image that doesn't match with the man whose image is burned inside you."

"Precisely. Then it comes to fate. I decided that it was my fate to love a man who could never love me. I guess it's good that he's gone now."

"Do you think there are others?"

"What do you mean?"

"Other men who could match up with that same image inside you."

"I'm not sure, because when I find myself very attracted to men, I always find that they look like him in some way."

I once again started to see Annette as a kind of metaphysical extension of Jillian. It was hard not to after four vodkas, sitting only inches from her. In some ways they were so alike. Annette had the same love of pure ideas I'd always cherished in Jillian. The excitement over the abstract that could be lifted to an almost sensual level. Talking to Annette about the purity of transcendental love was just like talking to Jillian about art and literature as an expression of the human spirit. Annette was playing with a strand of fabric on her shirt, staring into its loose spirals as if into the eye of God. My eyes followed her thin porcelain white fingers up to her slim wrist and all the way up to her light, slightly concave shoulders. I imagined I was looking at Jillian. Although Annette's neck was wider and slightly more flared than her sister's, the rest of her form was so much like her sister's. I looked admiringly at her face. Her rounded cheekbones had the pale color of dogwood blossoms with a light blush of pink. Her skin, the flowing locks of her hair, and the wide, but slightly slanted eyes beneath the plucked arch of her eyebrows all bloomed outwards in a great funnel of light and beauty.

"Jillian," I said. I felt like she was beside me and all was back to normal and Hell had receded.

Annette was silent.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Annette turned to me with sad heavy eyes.

"The day of the service you were looking at me," she said.

"You look so much like your sister. I couldn't help it."

She picked up the tightly packed stack of photos on the table and flipped through them with slow deliberation as if each was a slice of gold leaf meant to be handled only by the most skillful of artisans. "Yes. That's what I've been told. It always used to make me so happy to be compared to her. Being told I looked like her was for me like telling a teenaged girl that she looks like Madonna. It made me tingle with excitement inside."

"What about the service?" I asked.

"I felt something."

"I'm sorry if I..."

"No. Not at all. I'm flattered in a way. If it were ten years ago I would have been ecstatic. I always fantasized about Jillian's boyfriends. I secretly wanted to share them with her. In a way I'd always hoped..."

"I was feeling so low. There was a great gulf inside me and I thought you were the only one who could fill it. With all those candles around I lost my senses."

Her head dropped into my lap and I began caressing her hair as if it was Jillian's. I didn't know where the evening was heading. Anything could have happened and I would have just sat there and let it pass with no regard to its moral implications.

"I've always been attracted to you," I said.

"I'd always hoped that one day she'd let me share you. I know you'll think me strange. It was all a part of our relationship. When she slipped into madness I wanted to as well, but I knew I couldn't. Jillian was always more fragile than I. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't step into her world over those months. I couldn't be a part of her pain. She was always the erratic artistic one and I was the boring little sister."

"Don't be ridiculous," I reassured her.

"I know it could never happen. Especially not now. I don't even want it to happen. With you I mean. It can't. It would break the pattern. I'm destined to always fall short of being what she is. I could never match her in school. I could never have her boyfriends. I stopped so long ago trying to be like her. Oh," she burst into tears. "I'm so sorry about all this. I must be making you uncomfortable."

"Annette," I said. I'd never imagined that she was so deeply affected by Jillian. I'd always seen her as similar but in no way a copy or even someone who once wanted to be a copy. She looked so sad and desolate. I felt like a priest or psychiatrist listening to some one's forbidden confessions. "Annette. You have nothing to apologize for. It's only natural that we should feel something for each other. We were both so close to her, it was unavoidable that something should grow between us. Looking at you just makes me so nostalgic for Jillian."

"Jillian!" she yelled. "It's always Jillian. Why can't a man love me for what I am and not simply because I remind him of Jillian. I'm sick of it. Why can't you love me for what I am?"

"Annette. Annette. You don't know what you're saying. We have to snap out of this. You're beautiful and interesting in your own right. Look at what you're doing in London. Jillian could never do that."

"Yes. It's so boring though. Jillian's life was always so romantically disturbed. Mine so calm and ordered."

"Count your blessings. Wherever Jillian is now, do you think she's happy? Be thankful for who you are."

I shook her lightly and her head reeled around like some one on acid. Her eyes grew suddenly heavy and she dropped in my arms. She was drunker than I'd ever seen her. I set her out on my bed and slept on the couch. I could feel the thickness of the midnight air weighing on my face with the tenacity of a gel or wax. A few taxi cabs roared by. The somnambulant blue glow of a police car filled my living room for a brief instant before I lost consciousness.

In the morning we hugged tenderly and apologized for the previous night's drunken madness. A new sense of reason prevailed between us. As I smelled her perfume I for the first time felt the presence of a unique being in her that was not simply the product of Jillian. How callous was I to reduce her in my imagination to little more than a copy of her older sister. I couldn't tell if her eyes were closed or open. That night she stayed at her friend's. The next day she took the bus back to London.

### VII

Over the next few weeks I tried virtually everything to track down the elusive Jacob Sodergren. I went through birth records, social security records, citizenship records, and immigration records, but found nothing. I called the only Sodergren in the Paris phonebook, a certain Johan Sodergren who worked as a furniture repairman in central Paris, but he had never heard of anyone in his family named Jacob. As far as he knew there was no such person living in Paris. Perhaps Jacob Sodergren was a pseudonym, or maybe it was some secret code that, when unraveled, might reveal the whereabouts of Jillian.

After several weeks of searching without any further sign of Sodergren I became discouraged. I started wondering how my search for Jillian had inadvertently become a search for someone who might not even exist. So in an effort to refocus my thoughts on the true purpose of my life in Paris I decorated my room with old photographs of her from the various stages of our relationship. Every night I'd burn a candle before I went to bed and sip on vodka thinking about all the different Jillian's I'd known and all those I had never known and was just beginning to understand. Sometimes I'd end up feeling guilty and remorseful over the times I knew I could have been a better companion. Other nights I'd end up babbling imaginary conversations between us to console myself. These nights, as desolate as they often were, still managed to fill my soul with an almost religious zeal. The way the light flickered from the wick of the candle and spread out across the floor like a thin glassy pool imparted on my room the solemn atmosphere of a Buddhist wat.

I read and reread her letters. They took on a new significance. Passages I had read with only passing interest when I first received them seemed to possess new depths of meaning I'd never before noticed. Each was a symphony of spirituality, love and insights on the nature of consciousness. In one she described in great detail every item of clothing she had washed that day. When I had first read it several months before I wondered what could have possessed her to write about such banalities. But during those long evening hours spent in the glittering confines of my room the same letter would light up in flares of new meaning. By making such exhaustive efforts to describe each item in such detail wasn't she also bringing to light all the tiny epiphanies that lay hidden in our day-to-day life that serve as beacons to a higher spiritual existence? The splashes of color on one of her blouses brought out the secret poetry hidden in its very fabric and design and this secret poetry would in turn make reference to a higher spiritual trace that lay dormant in every physical object in the world. Isn't all poetry not of this world?

In becoming a devoted student of her letters I learned to see the world upside down and inside out. Even death seemed but another side of life. I realized how naive I had been before her disappearance. One night I stayed up deep into the night speaking to my pillow as if it were Jillian. I told her how much I'd changed, how renewed I was. How sorry I was for the way I'd treated her before. How little I had understood her while being foolishly convinced that I was the only one in the world who could see things as she did. I swore to her that if she was actually alive and I one day found her we could start a new era in our love in which we could be finally together in body and mind as two souls joined into one.

When I felt I'd extracted everything I could from her letters I'd read whatever I could get my hands on by Artaud. I embraced his work with new enthusiasm as if it were pages of a long lost bible containing the secrets of life that people never dared whisper. In my former life I always found his writing hopelessly fragmented and contradictory. Now I found these same qualities resonant of higher truths I never before had the faculties to grasp. I immersed myself in a world of mind and spirit, internalizing every perception and every word spoken inside me and around me. I became aware of a whole internal universe lying beneath the thin veil of my day-to-day existence. I began to see the world as I imagined Jillian had done for all those years we were together. I saw myself as little more than a fragmented collection of mental phenomena. The thoughts inside my head were beings in themselves inhabiting the quadrant of mental space known as my mind in the same way that invisible microbes lived inside every person's body, contributing to the whole.

One night I came across a series of notes in which she was analyzing Artaud's theories on death. There was one quote in particular that stuck in my mind:

There are only dead men

asleep in me;

some are free, they are on the outside;

the others are in this dungheap-hell where my shinbone keeps

going out grazing, in order to excavate hell.

All those years she was secretly dead inside, yearning to vanish from existence and start all over. I imagined a scenario in which she staged her death in search of spiritual renewal. In her notes she established that these lines revealed that death was an inner state just as much as an outer phenomenon. She supported her views with arguments explaining how death was merely a liberation of the same spirit that slumbers within us through life. And likewise, as with the lines on the little girl, death was merely a state that occupies the body of the living.

But as I put down the letter I could hardly believe my eyes as I stared down at the piece of faded white paper sitting in front of me. The name Jacob Sodergren was written in small jittery letters on the top corner! The handwriting was clearly Jillian's. I wondered why I hadn't noticed it before. Although there was nothing else that suggested it was anything other than a person's name, it confirmed my conviction that Sodergren was indeed a central part of the vast and incomprehensible landscape of Jillian's disappearance. While it didn't tell me who he was and what his motives could possibly be, it did prove that he was somehow involved. It also explained why I recognized the name when I first heard it. I must have seen the letter before and the name registered unconsciously.

Later that night I stayed up reading with only a candle beside my bed for light. I heard some shuffling outside my living room window. At first I thought it was only pigeons banging around like clumsy moths, but then I heard what sounded like voices outside in the street. Not wanting to attract attention, I tiptoed across the room until I reached the window. I poked my face through the curtain and pressed my ear to the window hoping to hear the voices more clearly. As far as I could tell there were two people outside but I couldn't tell if they were male or female or both. I tried to open the window a few inches to hear better, but it was jammed. I pushed a little harder and there was a sudden lurch accompanied by a loud banging noise. The window was half open. The voices hushed. They'd noticed. I ducked down to make sure they couldn't see me, but it was too late. By the time I'd pulled away from view I could hear footsteps running off into the night. I grabbed my bathrobe and ran downstairs. I opened my front door and was greeted only by a cool night breeze. Whoever had been there now was gone. I looked down on the ground, and lying there was the poetry book I'd lost over a month earlier. I picked it up and ran inside.

I flipped through the pages. They were exactly as I remembered them, except for a Rodez address scribbled in red ink on the first page. 702 Rue des Fleures. In all my recent reading I had come to learn that Artaud was institutionalized in Rodez for a number of years during the thirties. And of course Gigi was also born there. Perhaps this was the clue I was looking for. But the sudden reappearance of the book still mystified me. Was it possible I'd accidentally left it outside the night I'd gone to the slaughterhouse and just failed to notice the address written there before? More likely the furtive Sodergren had broken into my apartment and stolen the book either because it had the clues I needed in it and he wanted to keep them away from me or because it didn't have the right clues and he wanted to scribble them in and secretly drop off the book to put me back on the right track.

I stayed up all night reading Artaud's writings from the Rodez period. The last few weeks I had only glossed over them, because they seemed like the indecipherable writings of a man on the brink of suicide. While his earlier letters were the expression of a troubled but lucid mind, his Rodez work was the product of a severely depressed man in a state of obvious mental deterioration. Just before dawn I came across a passage called Blood Winches in which he described his meditations on eastern thought while sitting in the cold confines of a cell in Rodez.

Making an effort to tear myself away from all these nails, I managed finally to get away from the dream and enter reality; but, awake, in the true light of the three windows of the ward of the Rodez asylum where I found myself, I didn't know at first and immediately where I was, and I continued to feel lost, wrapped up like an enormous fetus of being in the absolute of that pure sensation, in the envelopment of that placenta of my real self, which one calls eternity: conscious of the subconscious and subconscious of the unconscious.

Outside of space, but inside time...

After closing the curtains to cut out the light of morning so I could finally go to sleep, the thought occurred to me that the Rodez asylum was an obvious place to look for Jillian. I felt stupid for not considering it before. It had played such a key role in Artaud's life that Jillian must have gone there at some point, either before or after her disappearance. Since there were no notes in her diaries that suggested that she had gone there before, it seemed likely that if she were indeed alive she may well have gone after her disappearance.

The next day I called Gigi.

"Hello," she answered. She seemed to be eating something.

Since I hadn't seen her since the day before Annette's visit to Paris, I explained what had happened over the last month and my new theories on Jillian's disappearance. If Jillian had gone mad, as now I thought very possible, perhaps she had gone to that same place where Artaud had spent many of his years recovering from insanity.

"I still think you're grasping at straws," she said in a blunt way that bothered me. "Maybe someone's just playing a joke on you."

"Come on," I said. I didn't want to believe her. "You've got to be more supportive than that."

"OK. I can see that you have to settle your own conscience."

She eventually agreed to accompany me to Rodez and we took the train two days later.

"Do you want to know something?" she asked as the train rolled out of Gare St. Lazare. "I really hate my parents!"

"Why?"

"I just do. Can't you just hate someone for no reason?"

"Maybe if you can love someone for no reason..."

"Ha! I won't read anything into that comment."

"Don't worry. I'm not losing my faith. I wasn't really talking about Jillian. It was just a general remark."

"OK. Case dismissed," she said. "One thing you have to promise me, though." She paused for a moment and looked out the window. "We can't let my parents know I'm there. We have to stay somewhere else."

"No arguments here."

The train arrived in Rodez four hours later. We found an inexpensive room with two double beds in a hotel outside of town. After dinner she went to a local bar and called an old girlfriend while I stayed at the hotel. The word Rodez lingered in my mind as I drifted off to sleep. I imagined great white rooms with smooth linoleum floors in exactly the same shade of sanitarium-white spreading out in an infinity of directions. The next morning I woke up and found Gigi on the floor lying in a heap of blankets. I kicked her gently to wake her up.

"What? How dare you." She narrowed her eyes in anger. "You should know better. No one kicks Gigi awake in the morning."

She sprang up in her underwear and play-kicked me in the stomach. "I suppose it was you that shoved me off the bed last night. You disgust me. Why would anyone want to kick a sleeping person off a bed. This is the last time I'm going anywhere with you."

"I'm sorry. I was just..."

"Ha," she broke out laughing. "Men are such suckers. They always jump when Gigi get mad. I'm just kidding, you big goof."

I shook my head and tossed my blanket over her half-naked body. She looked like a troll with her messy chunks of black hair popping out in every direction. After she dressed she took me by the hand and escorted me out the door.

"Lets see that address," she said. I handed her the book. I had been carrying it with me since the night it mysteriously reappeared.

"702 Rue des Fleurs," she read the address out loud.

"Do you know where it is?"

"Can fish swim, you idiot?"

She led the way as we walked for over half an hour through the narrow cobblestone streets.

"This is sheep country," she said. "The Wales of France. You'd better be careful. You know what they say about Wales and sheep."

"Can't you ever be serious?"

"Gigi is always serious. Never forget it."

702 Rue des Fleurs was a row house at the end of a cul-de-sac. On the left side of the front door was a A Vendre sign with Vendu painted over it.

"Wait here," I said to her as I left her by the sidewalk to knock on the door. After two quick knocks the door opened as if someone had been standing by the door expecting me. A tall man with a beard walked out.

"Yes," he said, raising his eyebrows in curiosity.

"I'm looking for someone named Jillian," I said.

"I'm afraid you've come to the wrong address."

I pulled out the poster and showed him. He looked confused.

"No. I've never seen her."

"What about Sodergren?"

"Who?"

"Do you know a Jacob Sodergren?"

"No...well..." He looked lost in thought for a few moments. "Yes, maybe." He ducked inside. "Didn't we just buy this house from a guy named Sodergren?" I heard him yell. Then he came back out. "Yes. We just bought this house through an agent. My wife says that it used to belong to someone named Sodergren."

"Jacob?"

"Jacob?" he turned and yelled inside. I heard a woman's voice yell in agreement.

"Did you ever meet him?"

"No."

"What about your wife?"

"No."

The man started to look impatient so I thanked him for his help and ran out to Gigi, who was kicking a bottle cap around on the street.

"Sodergren," I said with a triumphant nod.

We went to the property office immediately. It was in a small brick building a half-mile away on the second floor. If it was sold only a few days earlier someone there must have met him. To my disappointment, however, no one had ever seen him face to face. He apparently did all his business over the phone and left no forwarding address. I asked for a bank account reference, but they refused on grounds that it breached confidence.

"This is important," I said to the tall, white-haired agent as I slammed my fist on the table. "It could lead to the arrest of a murderer."

"Do you have a license?"

"A what?"

"You're a private eye, aren't you?"

"No."

"I'm sorry. Normally such information can only be given to the police. If you had a detective license, maybe..."

I ran out the door in frustration.

"Lets go to the asylum," I said to Gigi who was pacing outside. "Someone there might have seen Jillian."

"Now we're talking. This sounds like a lot more fun."

On our way we stepped into at least twenty stores to see if anyone could help, but no one seemed to recognize Jillian from her picture. I tried not to be too discouraged. If Jillian had been to Rodez at all, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that she would stop at the asylum.

The grounds of the asylum seemed so clean you could probably have stored food there for weeks without any trace of rotting. The orderlies were equally clean. I asked a bullish nurse to take us to the director, explaining that we were looking for a missing person who may have gone mad. She led us down a wide corridor to a plush office waiting room all done up in white leather and brass with oak paneled walls and oil paintings.

After ten minutes a tall heavy man walked in. His deeply furrowed brow and thoughtful gaze gave him an air of intelligence that might have been offset by his gargantuan frame had his expression seemed any less dignified. He wore an open lab coat over a tweed suit in the pocket of which I could see the bulge of a small pipe. He invited Gigi and me into his office, but she declined politely and stayed out in the waiting room.

"Please, sit down," he said as he extended his crane-like arm out to shake my hand. "I'm the director. I hear that you're looking for somebody."

"Yes," I shook his hand and sat down. Then I took out the picture I had in my pocket and a copy of the missing person ad that I'd folded up that morning. I laid them both on the table so he could have a chance to examine them more closely.

"Hmmm." He searched through his lab coat pocket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. He put them on and read the poster. "This is the one in the papers who was washed up in the Mediterranean."

"It's not that simple. There's no evidence that the body was hers and I've some clues that say she's alive. I'll spare you the details, but I think she's either been abducted or she went mad and tried to escape her life."

"What exactly was her life, if you don't mind me asking? The papers were rather vague. Wasn't she a student?"

"Yes. She was working on Artaud. She was very passionate about his life and work and often expressed an unhealthy desire to follow in his footsteps. She also had a brief history of depression in her teens."

"Depression isn't uncommon," he said while still looking at the photo. He put it down and leaned back on his reclining swivel chair. "Especially in teens. I can't say I recognize her. It seems like you're doing the right thing. With Artaud, I mean. As you may already know, he spent a good portion of his adult life here. I was too young to overlap with him, but there are countless stories still circulating. He used to spend hours right under that tree out there." He pointed out the window to a tree standing alone in the middle of a field across the street from the asylum. "In fact an old janitor just told me this morning that today is the fifty-ninth anniversary of his first visit here. He was definitely a schizophrenic. At least at that point of his life."

"There's also some suggestion that a guy named Sodergren and a man with a white cane might be involved."

"A white cane? Now that's interesting."

"Interesting?" My heart leapt.

"Yes. Now that you mention it, I saw a blind man about a month ago strolling with a woman on the grounds. It was late in the afternoon and they were walking around suspiciously and arguing."

"What did the woman look like?"

"I never saw her. I just I asked the lawn keeper to get rid of them. The last thing we need here is strangers irritating the patients."

"Yes," I said with empathy, although I'd heard that they gave the patients so much Thorazine in places like this that they'd sleep through a carpet bombing. The director pressed a button on his intercom and paged the lawn keeper. In less than a minute there was a knock on the door and a large blond man trundled in. His pants were soiled and he smelled strongly of sweat.

"Hans, this is...I'm sorry, you never told me your name."

"Jean," I said and shook Hans's hand, which he held out reluctantly because it was caked in mud.

"Hans, do you remember that couple that was hanging around the yards a few weeks or a month ago?"

"A lot of people hang around."

"The strange ones that were arguing. The blind guy."

"Oh, yes," he said. "Now that you mention it."

"Do you remember what the woman looked like?" I asked.

"Let's see. She had a wool shawl on."

"Gray?"

"Yes. With white trim."

"The trim was ornate, right?"

"Yes. I didn't get a look at her face, but I remember the shawl."

"What about the man? Did he have dark skin?"

"No, he was pale with blond hair."

I immediately thought of Sodergren. The Scandinavian voice and reappearance of the white can on the island now made sense. But somehow it seemed like more than just a strange coincidence that both the man in Jillian's letters and Sodergren would carry a white cane.

"This is exactly what I was looking for," I went on. "Exactly. I knew she wasn't dead. I knew it. What did they say? What happened?"

"I'm sorry I can't say much. I asked them what they were doing and the blind man answered that they were looking for a button the woman had lost on the lawn. I told them I hadn't seen any buttons and pointed to a sign on the lawn that clearly stated that trespassing was forbidden. They asked about visiting hours and I told them to come back the next day and ask the head nurse. Then they turned and walked away."

"Did she look hurt or unhealthy?"

"I didn't get a clear enough look at her to say for sure, but she didn't strike me as ailing or needing help, if that's what you mean."

"Could this be her?" Although he said he hadn't seen her face I thought I'd still show Hans the picture. He ruminated over it for a few seconds.

"Possibly. Like I said..."

"Did they come back?"

"Not that I know."

"It doesn't matter. I've got all I need."

I thanked the man and walked towards the door. The director shrugged his shoulders and smiled as if to say: "I've made this man happy without doing a thing. I can't complain about that." I left them my number along with the poster, asking them to call me if she was ever sighted on the premises again.

My intuition was with me. That night I convinced Gigi to wait with me by the same tree the director had pointed out. Since it was the night of the anniversary of Artaud's first visit, perhaps there was a chance that Jillian would come to pay her homage.

"As long as you keep the wine flowing," she said. "I can be happy anywhere with good wine."

I bought two bottles of cheap Chablis at a nearby store.

"Not the best, but it'll do," she said. "Especially considering the occasion."

We paid for an extra day at the hotel and returned to the field by sundown. Blue-gray clouds obscured the horizon as the sun's light faded. We waited by the tree in utter darkness for several hours - drinking the wine to keep ourselves busy - without so much as a hint of anything unusual. The wine was gone by midnight. A light rain started to fall at two. By this time Gigi was asleep beside the trunk. The rain stopped by three and the air seemed to sharpened under the cool light of the moon. I shook her. She didn't even stir. By this time I was getting discouraged and thought that perhaps we should go back to the hotel. The idea that she should necessarily show up beside Artaud's tree on the anniversary of his first visit was looking more absurd by the moment. I decided to stick it out for another hour and then pack it in if nothing happened.

At four thirty I saw the first sign of pink on the far horizon. The sky was still dark. It would probably be another hour before dawn, I thought. I shook Gigi again. She was still fast asleep. Just then I heard a sound coming from somewhere around the tree. It sounded like an animal's breathing. I stood up and turned around. As soon as I moved I saw a white blur dart across my field of vision and stop. It seemed to glow in the slowly fading darkness. I walked towards it, but it moved backwards, flowing like mercury through the tall grass of the field. I squinted my eyes. As far as I could tell it was a wild dog or coyote somehow emitting some sort of uncanny grayish-white light. I looked around to see if there was a hidden spotlight trained on its thin wiry form. I saw nothing. I inched closer and closer. When I was about twenty yards away it bolted into motion, slipping off into the darkness like a phantom eel. I broke into a run and chased it through the field. I ran over top of a hill and down into a deep gully, following it until it darted into a dense thicket. I struggled to keep up with it, but couldn't. It moved like water on glass as it slid through the tangled meshing of the forest. When I was sure I could run no more I stopped beneath a tall evergreen tree and looked around. All I could see was the shadows cast by the silver light of the moon. The thing was gone. It had vanished. I walked through the tightly woven bushes for almost half an hour hoping to catch another glimpse of it, but it never returned.

I decided to make my way back to the tree. As I re-emerged from the thicket I saw in the distance two white-clad figures leaning against each other where I thought the tree should have been. I quickened my pace. When I was about two hundred feet away I ducked behind a small bush and watched them. One was a woman wearing a long white coat. The other also appeared to be a woman and was wearing a slender white robe. She was holding something in her hand. Was it the white cane? I had to get closer. I crawled slowly towards them. About fifty yards away I stopped behind a tall patch of weeds. I could see the object in the woman's hand no better, but I could see in the soft predawn light that she had black hair. Just as I was about to step out and confront them I felt a tap on my shoulder. I leapt up in fright and turned around. It was Gigi.

"Don't you ever leave me alone like that again," she said harshly.

"Look," I whispered as I gestured for her to duck down and be quiet. Without turning my head I pointed behind me to where the figures were standing.

"You left me all alone. I could have been attacked."

"Behind me." I moved out of the way to give her a clear view.

"I'm looking," she said sarcastically.

I turned my head. The figures had vanished. They must have heard Gigi. I ran over to where they had been standing. The air smelt strongly of exotic tobacco. I looked all around. They were nowhere to be seen.

I ran back to get Gigi.

"They were here," I said.

"Who?"

"Jillian. I'm sure it was her. Jillian and some woman. I couldn't tell for sure but I think she had a white cane."

"Come on. It's pretty late. Are you sure you weren't just hallucinating?"

"No. I got up to follow some sort of white dog into the thicket and when I came back there were two figures. Didn't you see them?"

"Not a thing."

"That's because you weren't looking."

"How could two people disappear so quickly?"

"They could have ducked down and crawled away."

In frustration I combed the perimeter of the asylum until dawn. There was still no trace. I went back to the tree and checked for other clues. Maybe they had left a cigarette butt or dropped some small object accidentally. There was nothing of the sort. Tired and confused, we returned to the hotel to try to sleep through the glaring morning light that was burning through the thin white curtains. I finally fell asleep and when I awoke my frustration had lifted. I convinced myself that Jillian had to have been one of the two figures from the night before. Who else would have been wandering around so late at night with a white-clad figure by Artaud's tree? Now all I had to do was track her down.

We checked out of the hotel and caught a train by mid afternoon.

"Does this mean you'll start coming out with us again?" she asked with hopeful glee. "You've been so reclusive lately. Alan has been even ruder than normal. Last week he ended up trying to stuff a stick of bread up his nose and dipping it in wine to see how long it took the alcohol to rise up into his nostrils."

I spent the rest of the trip back in a state of peaceful contentment. However foolish I'd felt pouring over Jillian's notes day and night on the basis of something as seemingly insignificant as a missing pen, I was sure it had finally paid off.

### VIII

I left Gigi at the train station back in Paris and went straight home to make some phone calls. First, I contacted the police in Marseilles. This time I had more than just a missing pen and some used book of poetry to go on. St. Croix listened to my report and promised to open the case again, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was only humoring me. I should have filed a complaint, but decided not to waste my time. Instead I called the local authorities, which were far more receptive. They took a more sincere interest in my story, although they admitted they'd have to contact the police department in Marseilles, where the original missing persons report was filed, before any further investigation could transpire. Since it would have to go through the same Marseilles bottleneck I wasn't too optimistic that anything would be done in the near future. I hung up and gazed out the window at the seemingly infinite maze of traffic extending out in all directions like a mechanical octopus. In just a short trip to Rodez I'd accomplished more than the entire French police force on the case. If I had made it this far there was no reason that I couldn't go all the way and claim her back from whatever dark oblivion had claimed her in the first place.

Next I called Annette.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello?" She seemed confused.

"It's me."

"Oh," she said. I could feel her apprehension. I wondered if it was just my imagination or if it had anything to do with what had happened during our last meeting.

"I've seen her."

"Who?"

"Jillian. I'm sure of it."

"My God," she said slowly. "You were right all along."

"It was from a distance in the dark and only for a few seconds, but it had to be her."

I told her the entire story starting from the poetry book and my discovery of Sodergren's name scrawled on one of Jillian's letters all the way through to the mysterious white form and my sighting of Jillian and - possibly - the white cane. The way it looked now, I explained to her, Poilblanc and the professors had nothing to do with her disappearance and Sodergren was the real perpetrator. But I still had no idea why he would lead me to Jillian, especially if he had abducted her, or who the second woman was. I toyed with the idea that it wasn't Jillian at all, but just a woman hired by Sodergren to pose as Jillian in an effort to derail my investigation. But that didn't explain what Hans had seen before my visit. When I finished speaking there was a long delay. I imagined I could hear the distant rumblings of the English Channel echoing through the wire.

"I'm embarrassed," she finally said.

"Embarrassed?"

"About that night."

"It's all right..."

"No. I feel a need to explain."

"It's OK," I said apologetically. "I feel bad too. I just want to say that I understand. There's nothing for either of us to be ashamed of."

"It was one of those nights where an old wound opens up and you just can't stop the bleeding. The phantoms of the unconscious just came flowing out. I think every possible thought, good or bad - even shamefully sinful, exists in everyone's mind. " She sighed and then continued. "Being moral is simply the ability to judge which thoughts are virtuous and which ones are heinous. In my drunkenness I let everything come to the surface. I've never behaved like that before and hope I never do again."

"It was important," I said. "There was an undercurrent. The monsters inside of me were the monsters inside of you. We had to let them out."

"I'm glad you can see things the way I do."

"I wouldn't have before."

"Before?"

"Jillian's disappearance. Everything I've experienced with Artaud, peyote and now Paris has opened up a new side of me that I never knew existed. Now I'm a completely different person. I'm beginning to understand."

"I'm glad someone does, because I don't think I do. There's still Jillian."

"But she's alive!" I exclaimed, suddenly remembering the purpose of my phone call. "I was right."

"But there is more to it than that."

"What do you mean?"

"We still don't know where she is being held."

"Rome wasn't conquered in a day," I said. "She's turned up once - that's the important thing - and she'll turn up again. I can feel it."

There was a long uncomfortable silence on the other end of the receiver. It wasn't just any silence. It was the sort of silence that can drive a person crazy because you know there's something bigger behind it. I heard her swallow over the hiss of the weak connection.

"Listen," she said. "I should go and tell Mom and Dad. I'll call Poilblanc right away."

"Maybe we should hang posters in Rodez."

"I'll get onto it."

I met Gigi at Le Phare Enragé at eight. She was wearing silver-flecked black tights and a big polar sweater that stretched down past her hips.

"Skol," she said as she held up a glass of amber wheat beer. "Alan's coming in a few minutes. I left him behind at his house to do some ironing. There was no way I was going out with him the way his shirt was wrinkled. Gigi can tolerate a little bread stick up the nose, but a shirt that looks like it's been wadded up and shellacked to a wall for a month is a big no in my book."

A waiter approached me. "The same," I said to him as I pointed down to Gigi's beer. Then I turned to her. "This is so great. I've been ecstatic all day. I feel like a new man. All the dark days are over. I know she'll be back soon."

"Let's hope so. It would be rather rude of her not to come back. Now that you your sure she's alive."

She smiled and went to the bathroom. Her comment bothered me. It was like the silence on the phone with Annette. There was something in her tone that seemed to imply that she believed it wasn't actually Jillian I had seen that night or if it was that she had left me on her own free will. I wasn't about to accept such a view, especially when the smoke from my victory at Rodez was still clearing.

The waiter brought my beer in the traditional flared trumpet glass and set it down in front of me. As I drained half the contents in one go I listened to the warm vibrato of a Brazilian singer's voice on the jukebox. I looked around the room. The velvety brown textures of the wooden paneling behind the bar cast a golden glow across the room the same color and intensity as that of my beer. When I saw Gigi coming out of the bathroom, I held up my glass and asked her to come over to where I was sitting.

"The wall and the beer and the singer's voice are all the same shade of amber," I said.

"You mad little man. Voices aren't amber. Gigi may not be the smartest woman around but she's not that dim."

"No. You have to see from where I'm sitting."

Just then Alan popped his head up as if from nowhere and peered directly into the contents of the glass.

"I see Alaska," he said. "A woman sewing a seal skin. A small child by the window staring out into the great cold."

"You two have no imagination," I said, sensing he was making fun of me. I put the glass down.

"Jean. Come now. I just haven't had enough wine. Let's see your hand." I stuck out my hand and he shook it. "I can feel your love coming back. Your hand was cold the last time I shook it. It's a good sign. A card reader told me that an exceptionally warm hand means love is around the corner."

Although he was obviously making this up I took his confidence over Jillian's impending return as a good sign, canceling out the subliminal waves of doubt I'd felt only moments before.

"To Jillian," I shouted so loud all the people in the bar turned and lifted their glasses in unison as if they thought I was toasting some sort of abstract victory of the proletariat over the aristocracy. The maitre d' watched from behind the bar and whispered something to the bartender. A few seconds later somebody turned up the music and the bar tender offered free tequila on the house. The party had started. Gigi sprinted up to the bar and collected her free drink and then stopped to sit in my lap on the way back.

"I'm so happy for you," she said. "I didn't mean to imply anything negative a few minutes ago. I could tell by your eyes you were upset. I just didn't express myself properly. I really, really am so happy for you. The first day I met you in that hotel I thought..." She paused and stretched out her face for comic effect. "This guy looks pretty interesting but you know, you can tell from a mile away that he's got a big, big pain swelling up inside him. It's the sort of thing that makes people turn away in bars. No one wants a sad sack. You're lucky you met Gigi and Alan. We're lovely people. We accept everyone." She kissed me and walked back to her seat. My head floated in a half circle as my eyes followed her figure. What would we all do without Gigi, I thought.

With that kiss the night took off. I took all the money I had in my pocket - 135 Euros in total - and laid it on the table. I gestured for the waiter to bring over the special wine list by pointing to the normal wine list and rubbing my thumb and index finger together as if I was counting bills. He brought over a large red leather bound menu with all the wines hand written with a calligraphy pen. Alan grabbed the menu away from me and inspected it as he would his monthly Visa bill.

"Working in a hotel has its advantages," he said

"Ha," Gigi gawked. "I suppose you're going to give him your wine connoisseur act now."

"Gigi, don't be such a skeptic. You know that I know..."

"How to get drunk on five Euros!"

"No. What would you know anyway? How to pick a fine wine, was the correct answer." He turned to me and pushed the money I'd laid in a pile on the table towards me. "We'll pay. This is your moment. What do you want to hear?"

"Coltrane. It has to be Coltrane." The decision was easy. All those wild nights with Jillian where the floor would open up and sweep us away into a secret dimension of love and sensuality.

"Coltrane?" Alan lifted his eyebrow in mockery.

"What's wrong with Coltrane you cultureless slob," Gigi snapped.

"I was thinking of something less introspective, more festive."

"Jillian was a very introspective woman," I said emphatically.

"Coltrane it is, then," said Alan.

Alan got up and grabbed one of the waiters. He pointed to the wine menu and whispered something in his ear. The waiter looked over at me and curled his lower lip with curious surprise. Alan went to the bathroom and the waiter walked over to my chair and knelt down.

"Your friend just told me what happened. I want you to know many of us had heard of your case in the papers. There wasn't much, but I'd like to extend the management's congratulations. You must have suffered through a great deal and to find the woman of your passions. This is an occasion."

"Thank you," I said. In my great anguish I'd never once stopped to think about how the public felt about my quest. I felt like a minor celebrity.

"The house would like to offer a bottle of Dom Perignon for the occasion. You've been such a loyal customer. It's really so amazing. I wouldn't say that you were a household name, but to meet the man who stood up against all common sense and fought for what he believed in...I'm honored."

He stood up and rushed to the kitchen. Alan came back from the bathroom just as the waiter came back with the champagne. The waiter popped the cork and in the background I could hear the opening bars of A Love Supreme curling into the room like coils of fragrant smoke from a fine cigar.

"Whoooohaaaa!" Gigi shouted as she shook her fist in the air. The smell of champagne to her was like blood to a shark.

"Be quiet," shouted Alan. "You're embarrassing the guest of honor."

"He's unflappable, aren't you Jean. You pretend to be quiet and sensitive, but we all know what you're really like."

"Which is?" I asked.

"Whoooohhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa!"

The waiter burst into loud uproarious laughter and waived his hand for the bartender to turn up the music. After we finished the first bottle of champagne a group of Argentinean cellists came in and sat down next to our table. Three women and two men. After another bottle of champagne, this time paid for by Alan, the Argentineans invited us to try their flamed crab in port sauce. The eldest of them - a tall, crafty-looking man with dark features and a thin pointed jaw, hit it off with Gigi immediately. He guided her over to the bar and gestured to the waitress to change the music. Ten minutes later Astor Piazolo was blaring through the room and the two were doing eights all over the room. Alan was attracted to the youngest of the women and was showing her how he could catch pieces of crab meat with his tongue while drinking champagne at the same time, a feat which seemed to get more champagne onto her lap than in his mouth. I bought a round of tequila for everyone, including the cellists, and tried to strike up a conversation with the oldest of the three woman, who claimed she'd been playing a beat-up old viola since she was a little girl begging on the streets of Buenos Aries. I told her about what had happened to Jillian and how she'd recently been sighted. She seemed only mildly interested and was determined to better my story with far more painful events from her childhood.

As we got drunker and drunker the place filled up until it was packed wall-to-wall. Gigi was still tangoing with the Argentinean, weaving through clusters of people, spilling their drinks as they got half-amused/half-irritated looks from whoever they passed. By this time Alan had given up chatting to the youngest cellist and had set his sites on a group of American women standing at the bar.

"American women," he said. "Ha! They fall for the French every time. If only they knew the truth!"

By this time I was in bliss. The cellist had given up trying to impress me with her dark stories and moved over to the other side of the table, leaving me alone. I spotted a woman standing alone a few yards away from me and raised a toast to her. She came over and sat down. Her eyes were almost black and her hair was wavy and parted in the middle. She stood in a slightly slouched posture and had a thin face and hips, qualities which radiated a striking I-don't-give-a-fuckness, a sort of anti-style based on her unwholesome yet still attractive attributes.

"My," she said in a low and skeptical tone. "What are you so happy about?"

"Everything," I replied.

"Happiness is boring."

I invited her to sit down. She obliged and I and told her an abbreviated version of my story. Her name was Heather. She was originally from the US but had lived in Paris for almost a year. She was an artist living in her studio in an Algerian ghetto. She made a meager living taking odd jobs at restaurants. I saw what I thought were track marks on her arm when she rolled up the black silk of her sleeve to show me her thin wiry muscles.

"They make me lift boxes at this one job. The Greek man that runs the restaurant says men and woman should be equal in every aspect, even labor capacity. I don't care. It helps me keep fit. I'd otherwise not find the time."

She stood up and went to the bathroom. When she came back we exchanged phone numbers and she left.

I ordered a shot of Sambucca and sucked it up in a single gulp. When I put the glass down I noticed that I was surrounded by a group of dapper businessmen. I got up and walked over to where Alan was standing and almost fell over on the way, I was so drunk. A man with a big bushy beard and a Pierre Cardin sweatshirt frowned down on me like I was some sort of reprobate. I apologized and walked up behind Alan, who was now talking to Gigi, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. They didn't seem to notice and went on talking. Over the din of the music I could only hear fragments of their conversation.

"I don't know why he doesn't just move on, Gigi."

"Don't be so mean. He's been tied up with her for so long."

"Still. The bottom line is that it probably wasn't her at all or if it was she's probably screwing this white cane character. If she wanted to get in touch with him, she would have."

"Don't be so insensitive. Maybe she's being held against her will."

"Come on. Why would he roam freely around Rodez with her if that was the case."

"Well, maybe you're right. It does seem a bit weird."

"We have to get him laid. That's the solution. He's got to forget about her. Everything I've heard makes her sound like a neurotic witch."

"You're so crude."

"It's my specialty."

At first I didn't know who they were talking about. The alcohol had put me into such a numbed state that someone could have told me that I had ten minutes to live and I would have still started laughing. Then it finally dawned on me. Everything converged on me at once. I felt my stomach churn. The room, so full of elation and energy a minute before seemed dark and claustrophobic - filled with cretinous morons smoking and drooling all over their sleeves. I felt like I was trapped in some Renaissance artist's depiction of hell. I looked around. Beside me a fat Belgian man stood picking something out of his teeth. I looked more closely and found that he was actually undressing olive pits from their smooth black flesh with his fingers and tongue. I watched his lips suck in and out like the mouth of a fish as he devoured one after another - only spitting out the pits once every five or ten olives. The sight was so vulgar I wanted to slap his hands out of his mouth.

I finally turned away and looked back at Alan.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk about Jillian that way," I said. I turned him around on his chair by the shoulder.

He looked shocked at first. Then a strange courage grew in his eyes. He slapped my hand off his shoulder and stood up. Gigi cowered in embarrassment.

"That's my girlfriend you're talking about," I said.

"How stupid are you? We're only speaking the truth here. You don't have to get so hostile. I mean, if she really loved you so much, wouldn't she be back?"

"You don't understand. It's far deeper. She - we're both changing so much."

"Do you really believe that?"

His look was so harsh I could hardly believe it was Alan. The radiant clownish veneer had been peeled away and all I saw was ridicule. I pushed him back against the bar. He bolted back and Gigi screamed. Before I could lunge at him for a second blow, I felt my arms being held back behind me. A dull thud against the back of my neck. Then darkness. I saw Alan and Gigi slip away into the vapors of the room. Everything shrunk. I felt my limbs tingling and then I felt the cold hard floor. I thought I heard Gigi saying something about an ambulance before I blacked out completely.

### IX

The next morning I woke up on the floor with a head-splitting hangover and no recollection of what had happened the night before. After a light breakfast I got dressed and took a walk through the rain and fog down to the banks of the Seine. I watched a few wooden fishing boats rock back and forth as they slowly wove through a convoy of barges. I passed a rickety old boathouse and then stopped to buy a coffee and a pastry from a vendor on the street. I broke off a small triangular section from the pastry and tossed it in the direction of a bunch of pigeons that were aimlessly strutting about on the sidewalk in search of food. They devoured my offering almost immediately, like hysterical old women picking up imaginary crumbs and morsels from the surfaces of pristine tablecloths.

A sharp pain stabbed through me as I suddenly remembered what had happened the night before at Phare Enragé. The haze of my hangover had momentarily lifted to provide me with a glimpse of myself as I really was. Alan was right. If Jillian really loved me so much then why hadn't she contacted me? For the first time since her disappearance I felt a great bitterness towards her. If that was really Jillian at Rodez, it looked like her life wasn't in the slightest bit of danger. Would a raving psychopathic abductor let her out in the open when there were posters pasted across the entire country offering a reward for any information leading to her whereabouts? No. But at least she wasn't dead. I had that much to be happy for. Yet in the cold gray light of the Paris morning the possibility that Jillian had left me voluntarily was too hard to swallow. Alan was only waking me up to a truth that I had been too naive and cowardly to face. While at first her sighting had seemed like a moment of victory, it was really only proof that she had left me and cut me completely out of her new life. Assuming I was not hallucinating – as the appearance of the mysterious glowing figure may have suggested - there were still so many unanswered questions. Who was Sodergren and what was his connection to Jillian and the man with the white cane? Was she in love with Sodergren? Where was she staying? Was she living under a false identity with a completely new life? Why did she beg me to come back from Algeria and invite me all the way out to Delacroix's island just so she could vanish and possibly stage her own death? I burned inside for the truth. I needed to know. However angry I was with her, I still wanted to know the truth. Something was missing inside me.

I walked past a bookstore with a poster for a new mystery novel hanging in the window. I stopped and looked at all the books arranged in perfect order as part of the display. In the past I'd always been able to leave Jillian and forget about her. It took time to get over the pain, but it was possible. So why was this time any different? As I stepped back from the window, something inside me suddenly changed. No matter how much I loved her, I now hated her more than anything for treating me the way she did - for always leaving me and assuming that I would either wait for her or come to find her. I used this hatred as a lever and vaulted myself into a new reality. For the first time since I left North Africa my direction was suddenly so clear. Since there was nothing I could do but camp out in Rodez (which my newfound pride now forbade me to do) or just wait in Paris until she turned up, I realized that it was time to move on and start looking after myself. My obsession with finding her had derailed my life to such a degree that it left me in a pointless holding pattern unwilling to make any major decisions until she turned up.

I took a deep breath and exhaled in the direction of the Seine. I imagined my breath blowing over the waters like a great trade wind. I felt stronger. It was time for me to stand up for myself and start over. I watched a tugboat pass by and broke out laughing. The small wooden vessel reminded me of Stillman and his silly little sailor's suit. I crossed my heart and conducted a make-believe ritual whereby Jillian and all of my obsessive feelings for her were cast away into the dark grey waters of the Seine.

Ten minutes later I found a phone booth and called Alan at work. He was cheerful and made no mention of the fight.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I understand. She meant a lot to you. It was rude of me."

"I can't believe it didn't occur to me before."

"Love."

"Yes. I was such a fool. I want to start over."

"I hope you're not just doing this for me. I mean...Jillian could well be held against her will."

"No. I don't accept that view anymore. It all seems so clear. All her notes. The man with the white cane. The desire to escape. She needed to get away and I wasn't in her plans."

As soon as I hung up I called Gigi. After ten rings I left a message on her machine and made my way back to my apartment. Later that evening I called Annette and explained to her my change of heart. I told her that I loved Jillian like never before, but that a new feeling had sprouted up inside me that was totally out of my control. Jillian was forcing me to forget about her. I had no choice. I wished I could go on clinging to the hope that we could be together, but I had my own life to lead. It was that simple. I thought Annette would be disappointed in my sudden turnaround, but it was just the opposite. She said that she felt the same way herself when I had told her about the sighting at Rodez, but was afraid of telling me and possibly hurting my feelings.

"However much I love you and my sister, " she said just before we bade each other goodbye, "I think you're making the only decision you can."

The next day I went into work as if I was starting a new job – or even more accurately - a new life.

# 4.

### The Fall

### I

Lightning. White and silver forks shattered the purple dome of the sky into a hundred tiny fragments, disturbing the quiet bed of spires that made up the Parisian skyline. It was almost winter, a full three months after the incident in Rodez. I'd spent the last few weeks fortifying my apartment in preparation for the coming cold. I'd gotten rid of the dusty furniture that came with the place by donating it to a seemingly impoverished old Flemish women downstairs and replaced it with things that were more to my liking, lending a certain permanence to my life in Paris that had been lacking before.

Things were rather quiet. There had been no packages from Sodergren and no further news about Jillian. I didn't even go back to Rodez for a second look. My feelings oscillated from complete abnegation of my love for her to an extreme sense of nostalgia during which I'd drink bourbon at Le Coq Noir and stare at the glittering bottles lined up against the back-wall mirror as I thought of all our best times together. If she was indeed still alive, what had I done to drive her away? Sometimes I ran into Heather, the American girl I had met the night of the party at Le Phare Enragé. Although I found her attractive and she seemed somewhat interested in me, I wasn't quite ready to move on and try to start up a new relationship. Losing Jillian was hard, but trying to forget about her was even harder. There was so much inside me that grew out of our love. So much of me - my gestures, my expressions, my attitudes, and my habits - were shaped from the times we had spent together. In my oceans of drunkenness I'd sometimes forget about her and fall in love a billion times with the woman beside me or across the room only to wake up in the middle of the night with visions of Jillian in bed beside me.

I watched the lightning wrinkle through the dark and seamless sky for almost half an hour. It was so rare to see an electrical storm at this time of year. When the lightning subsided I closed the curtains and went back to my living room. As I sat there staring at the ceiling with all its cracks and water stains I felt deeply alone. I wondered if I would go on for the rest of my life living by myself in small, furnished rooms with only random locals at some bar to console me. Perhaps it was the seeming catharsis of the electrical storm that had brought it on, but it was the first time since Jillian's disappearance I felt the need to be with another woman. As I saw it that late November night, Heather was the only candidate for a potential lover in my life. Although I could not conceive of ever loving another woman the way I had loved Jillian, my instinct for self-preservation told me it was time to at least try.

Later that night, I went to Le Coq Noir to find her. It was after last call, but I was in luck. I saw her gazing at me as I gazed in turn at her reflection in the back mirror of the bar. I invited her to sit with me but she declined.

"I'm just on my way out, actually," she said.

I said it was nice to see her anyway and then went back to my seat. A few minutes later the bartender flicked on the lights. Heather picked up her coat and headed towards the door. As she walked passed me she turned quickly and kissed me on the cheek. She paused, but only for an instant before she pulled away and continued towards the door. I stood up and followed her. She walked outside and held up her hand for a cab that was just driving by. It stopped almost immediately. While the driver waited she asked me if I'd like to go out the following evening to see a movie with her. I agreed. She promised to call me the next day at six. I hadn't been invited out on a date for so long I'd almost forgotten what to say.

The following evening I waited by the phone. By quarter past six she still hadn't called. I paced the room for the next twenty minutes trying to convince myself that she must have come in late because of traffic. She worked at a flower shop in the Latin Quarter and lived about three miles away. The way the trains were linked up it was almost as fast for her to walk as it was to go by public transit. By six-forty five I started to worry. Maybe she'd gotten the time wrong and would call at seven. I accepted this explanation and took another shower. Imagining I heard the phone ring, several times I turned the water off and ran back into the living room only to find that it was just the squealing of brakes from outside or the sound of a passing train. By the time I'd finished my shower and dried myself it was almost seven fifteen. I waited by the phone until eight pouring myself endless cups of coffee wondering what had happened. I opened the window and watched streams of cloven gray thunderclouds glide slowly across the Parisian skies. This time there was no lightning. Only rain. Cold black rain.

At ten I finally gave up in frustration and went out to find Alan at Le Phare Enragé. The place was strangely empty and I ended up talking to a new bartender who'd just come from Nice.

"Nice is all about waves and sand," he said, filling his mouth with a pinch of chewing tobacco. "Love crashes in from the sea and washes up on the shore. In Paris it's different. You have to look for it. It's hiding in alleys or under garbage can lids."

"I know what you mean," I said. "Paris is really starting to get me down."

"Don't let me start. You don't know down until you've met my ex-girlfriend."

He'd come to Paris like I had - cast away from a bitter relationship, looking for something new to liven up his directionless life, escaping from something he was either too weak or too terrified to confront: a dominant parent, an ex-lover, a boring job, or maybe just boredom itself. There's nothing worse than boredom attached to nothing. It streams out from inside you rather than in from around you. I could see it in his deep brown eyes, filled with a sort of disaffected nonchalance that seemed to poison the very light reflecting from his glassy cornea out into the darkness of the room.

Just as I was about to leave, Heather came in and took a seat alone at the far end of the bar. She was wearing a silver and black tee-shirt with black corduroy pants which flared out widely above her ankles to almost fully cover her sandalled feet. I walked up to her slowly, wondering what to say. As I approached she looked more and more beautiful. Her hair was parted in the middle and hung half way down her face, making a perfect arch like those in the great cathedrals scattered throughout the city. And like those cathedrals, I sensed that behind the arch laid something so mystical and ecstatic that it could drive a man to destroy himself. In the light raspberry hues of her cheeks - it was obviously colder than I thought outside - I saw something like the blood of saints and in the ivory white of her forehead I saw only light - pure white light. Her eyes were wet with darkness. She stared out into space as if she didn't even see me. I felt a pleasant tingling in my veins and a far less pleasant tingling in my stomach as she finally noticed me.

"Sorry," she said. She looked like a child caught stealing.

"No, that's all right. I was home late anyway."

"Work?"

"No. I went out with a friend," I lied. "She was upset and needed some company."

"You don't have to just stand there."

I sat down and she looked away again. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. She had the appearance of someone just awaking from a coma.

"Isn't it strange the way the picture frame over there is the same sickly shade of pink as the wallpaper in Le Coq Noir?" She drew my attention to the far corner of the room with a quick turn of her head.

"I never noticed," I said. I started playing with a gum wrapper I found on the table. I was waiting for her excuse.

"I checked earlier today. I thought it was the same color, so I ran home and got my camera. Then I came back and took a picture. I went immediately over to Le Phare Enragé and took a picture of the wallpaper to double check. Then I went to my friend's house. He has a darkroom. We developed them right away and sure enough, they were the same color."

"I was lying," I said. She was taking me for granted. I thought by admitting I'd just lied, she might take me more seriously.

"Lying? About what?"

"About this evening."

She looked at me for a second as if surprised and then her affected sense of composure returned.

"I know," she said.

"How?"

"I can tell when a man is lying. I just hope you weren't waiting for my call all night."

"So, you just developed pictures instead?"

"I didn't think it was so formal."

"You suggested it!"

"Did I?"

"This is getting ridiculous. You know you did." I stood up and motioned to zip up my jacket.

"Let's not fight. Sit down. You don't understand." She gestured towards a chair.

"I'm a free spirit. I know that it's bad karma to stand someone up, but it really wasn't like that. I just got caught up on this idea of pink. The time slipped away and by the time I realized it, it was way too late to call."

Karma. The word ate away at me. Was she sincerely spiritual or just plain superficial? I sat down beside her. My eyes followed up her arms as they did the first night we met. They stopped at the track marks as they did before.

"Yes, I like to shoot up," she said. "Do you want to know anything else?"

As I looked into her dark bead-like eyes I could see all her complexities. The combination of classical beauty with modern disaffection. Her face suddenly lit up with humor as she turned to me. For a moment I felt she was too intelligent to be insincere. Yet the things she was saying were still falling short of the intelligent image I'd built up of her before. Everything and nothing was standing right in front of me.

I walked her to the bus stop. She told me about a few of her girlfriends. One - Paule - was going through a post-abortion depression and worked as a schoolteacher in a Lycee on the north end. She'd apparently been sleeping with so many men that she was unsure as to who the father was and didn't feel she had the means to raise a child as a single parent.

When we got to the bus stop, she insisted on going home alone. I kissed her lightly on the cheek, but she just turned and walked away. I took it as a bad sign and reasoned it was best not to call her back. She didn't seem as interested as I had initially thought and I didn't feel like pushing things. My fortitude held out for only a week before I gave into my loneliness and decided to give her another chance. I called her late on a Thursday night. She answered after seven rings. Her voice was quiet but she seemed happy to hear from me. After some chitchat she invited me over to her house to watch a video. It was late and I had an early shift at work the next day, but I couldn't resist. I was growing more isolated by the day and needed some companionship.

When I got there she took my coat and invited me into her living room.

"Can I get you a drink?" she asked. "I have some cheap red wine or beer."

"Wine will do." She went into the kitchen and brought me back a glass of wine in a large tumbler.

"I was just watching the French version of MTV, " she said. "Do you know the guy from Les Negress Vertes died of an overdose?"

"No, " I said. I wasn't sure who they were. She dropped the topic and we went to sit down.

We watched the rock video show and then The Conversation. The evening went slowly. Instead of warming up to me, she sat on other side of the couch with her fluffy cat in her lap. Yet the more standoffish she became, the more I was drawn to her. The closing image of Gene Hackman, paranoid and drunk, playing his saxophone alone in the middle of the empty room he'd just torn to shreds, burned through me. Eventually there was only a shopping channel left to watch. By the time the clock struck three, I was convinced that I really was in love with Heather and that it was only arrogance, pride, and fear of getting hurt that had kept me from admitting it to myself. She turned to me and yawned.

"So..." she said.

"So?"

"It's late."

"I have to go to work tomorrow."

"Work..." She licked her lips while continuing to stare directly into my eyes without so much as a blink.

"I should go."

"I thought you might want to stay."

"Stay?" I was nervous. It had been so long since I'd been so close to another woman that I felt uneasy and clumsy.

"You do want to sleep with me, don't you?"

Without any further hesitation I leaned across the couch and set my head in her lap. The cat stood up and glared at me as if I'd violated its sacred mound. It arched its back and walked away.

"You've upset Jetta. I hope you're not allergic to cats. She'll try to sleep on your face if you are. She's very clever."

I looked up at Heather's face from her lap. She arched over slightly, making her head hang over me like a lantern. I studied her face. Her cheeks were carved closely around her jaw and in the light her lips became two thin lines separating her chin from the cleft beneath her nose. She seemed suddenly nervous as I slid my hand along her hips and up her back while at the same time burying my face in her lap. I could feel all those artist's affectations evaporating under my touch. A minute ago I was the tense inexperienced one as she coaxed me with cool confidence into her lap. Looking back on the aloof manner in which she framed her invitation to make love to her, I could see that it was all just a part of playing the cool, sexually aware American artist in Paris. She'd read all the right magazines, culled the right influences, listened to the cutting edge of the cutting edge \- in short, she'd been inculcated with the American concept of sex as intimidation. Americans thought of everything in terms of intimidation - even sex and love. It was a power struggle. So, too, was the whole underground scene out of which she'd crawled. A struggle to be on top with the most daring body piercing, the hardest drugs, the coolest shoes, the weirdest sex. Yet at the very end of the list lied a gross contradiction. It was that contradiction that was staring me right in the face with a frightened twitch in her eye as I kissed a patch of her corduroy pants just covering the base of her belly. Deep inside she was a scared little schoolgirl with all the same fears and aspirations as anyone else. And it was this more genuine person inside that I wanted to reach.

Her leg shook and her body stiffened as I tried to undo her pants with my mouth and tongue. I quickly gave up in frustration and used my hands instead. But she stopped me and rolled down on the couch until we were lying side by side.

"Not so fast. Men always want to jump the gun."

Her voice trembled. I detected an accent I'd never noticed but I couldn't place it.

"Where are you really from?" I asked.

"Why do you want to know?"

"You're from the south."

"So what if I am?"

"Your voice sounds different."

"So." Her voice changed. The accent chimed out so clearly I thought I was speaking to a different person. This one was weak, frail, unsure of herself, embarrassed about her background.

"Where?"

"Littlerock, Arkansas," she said, pushing back from me. "There. Do you feel better?" She moved into a seated position and straightened her hair. "Two hundred people live there. My mom and dad run a gas station. I have a little brother on the high school football team in the town down the road. We have a dog. My dad is a member of the NRA. The only thing that saved me was when he came home one day all up in arms about some New York artist who wanted to take photos of people's gun collections in the town down the road. My dad isn't the brightest light but he knew the guy wasn't trying to flatter what he stood for. A few days later he showed me a right-wing newspaper article attacking the photographer and swore that if he ever crossed paths with him he'd shoot him dead. A few months later I saw some of his work in a magazine. I thought his portraits of guns were so inspiring. I'd never seen anything like it before. It really changed my life. Six months later I ran away to New York and got a job at a bakery until I got my act together to go to art school...Have you had enough?"

"Wait, wait," I reassured her with my hand and kissed her on the lips. She savored it for only a second before pushing me away. "I had no intention of making fun of you. What makes you think I have something against the south?"

"Come on. I do. So why shouldn't you? Mr. Detroit."

"Look, let's drop it."

"I never wanted it brought up to begin with."

She stared at the floor for five minutes, breathing loudly like a bull in a ring. I turned my head away and occasionally looked over at her to see if she'd calmed down. On the fifth or sixth look, she turned her head and cracked a smile. She dropped into my lap and I began to pet her head. She'd let me in on her secret. I felt close to her and the closer I felt to her, the more passionate my caresses became. We moved to her room and we made love, using a condom she picked up from the floor behind her. With Jillian I'd never had to use one. I had forgotten how dulling a sensation it could be. Like watching a movie with sunglasses on. But it didn't matter. I still felt close to her. That was all that mattered. My memories of the way she stood me up and her apparent indifference earlier that evening faded. We stayed up until almost six as she told me more about her family and childhood. About how depressed she was at home as a teenager. About her involvement with heroin.

The next morning I left her in a crumpled heap hugging a wadded up blanket on the corner of the bed. I had an early morning shift and I was already late. I kissed her on the forehead and left as quietly as I could. The streets were filled with a pale brownish fog as I waited for a bus. With the excesses of the previous night scouring through me the only thing that kept me going was the thought of calling her again. I could feel Jillian drifting away from me, and for the first time since her disappearance I let go, I really let go.

### II

I called Heather later that week. Her voice was thin with apathy. I chipped away at her with questions – all failed attempts at reaching her to start a meaningful conversation. "I hate people who don't like asparagus," was the most emotional thing she said to me. I could almost see her on the other end of the line, face frozen like a gargoyle as she stared into the phone.

But eventually she warmed up. "The weekend...I don't know. I think I'm all booked up. It's a bit cold and I thought I could spend some time in my studio. I've been going out too much lately."

"Well, how about Sunday? We could go for a walk."

"Call me Sunday morning."

I called her Sunday morning as planned, but no one was there. I called her later that night, and still no one was there. That evening a blizzard hit. I stood inside watching as miniature white cyclones ripped through the streets like fingers from a newborn God of destruction. I felt I was witnessing the seeds of some great new evil reveling in the infancy of its power. Something horrible simmered inside me. Each cyclone was an expression of something greater than itself, and not in a merely abstract or symbolic way. These were the tiny fingertips of a great tornado of destruction - a natural form existing somewhere in an invisible mental or spiritual realm - poking into the physical world to test the waters before some dreadful final onslaught. With every passing gust of snow I felt a great upheaval inside me. The world would tear in half and flow forth in a burning sea of fire and light. I imagined I could hear the screaming of slaughtered pigs in my every pulse. I imagined that every time a man and woman had sex, they somehow partook in this heinous force while at the same time believing they were soaring through a realm of pure light. The divine and the carnal, the peaceful and nurturing versus the primitive desire to thrust and kill.

I walked towards the phone and tried once again to call Heather. It was almost two in the morning, but I didn't realize this until the phone was picked up on the other end. I heard her voice say hello and then I heard laughter in the background. Male laughter. I hung up and started looking out the window at the snowstorm again. The cyclones were inside me. They were me.

For a moment I was overcome by the inclination that it was this same force that had grabbed hold of Jillian and forced her to leave me. I poured myself a glass of vodka to settle my nerves. I drank three shots before I got the idea to turn on the radio to break my depression. The announcer's voice sounded like a transmission from another galaxy. It wasn't the bad reception, it was just the way he sounded. Or perhaps it was me that was in another galaxy.

I woke up the next morning lying on the floor with the telephone in my hand. The cold drone of the signal echoed through my head for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually I got up and crossed the room to put the receiver back. It was eleven in the morning by my clock, which was always fast or slow - I couldn't remember which. I looked outside. The storm had passed and the street was covered with a thick layer of snow. The sky was clear, filling the city with clean white light. I heard the honking of a horn and felt secure again. I was back from wherever I'd been the night before. I was just glad that the world was once again friendly and organic. My hotel shift was at three and I went out into the streets that afternoon with the energy and vigor of a man who's just witnessed a great and portentous birth. The odd and unsettling experience from the night before - which I attributed to a peyote flashback - had cleared my mind and somehow energized me.

After what had happened when I called her the night before, I decided not to contact Heather unless I heard from her again. Sure enough she called me later that week and apologized for Sunday. We spoke for over an hour. She seemed genuinely kind and interested in what I had to say. I took this as confirmation of her depth and sincerity. She must have just gone cold on me because she was afraid of a relationship. My apprehensions subsided and we went out on that Friday evening.

We met at a Los Angeles-style bar called Sunset Boulevard I'd never seen before. The theme was modernity. Chrome-plated chandeliers like those in a Fritz Lang movie hung from the ceiling, which was ribbed with acoustic tiles to cut down the clatter from the kitchen. The walls were coated with sheets of hammered brass and had graffiti etched all over them. I couldn't decide if it was cool or just plain tacky. She was already twenty minutes late when I ordered a glass of Curaçao. As I waited I once again felt the darkness from the night of the blizzard surging all around me. I was suddenly in a fish bowl staring out at world I couldn't touch or reach. The waiters looked like they were made of plastic and their motions seemed sped up for comic effect. I had to conceal my anxiety when one of them came by to ask me if I wanted to order any food. At one point the experience became so intense that I was sure that at any moment the mysterious voice from the island would appear behind me. I was suddenly angry with myself for thinking Jillian had deliberately left me. She was probably being held captive somewhere, crying out my name that very instant. As I finished my Curaçao it suddenly dawned upon me that Heather might be the very portent I was waiting for – that same voice, yet in a different form. My first flashback since leaving the island coincided almost exactly when Heather came into my life. Perhaps my unconscious mind was telling me that through my association with Heather I would somehow be led to further clues as to Jillian's disappearance.

Heather showed up three Curaçaos later. She looked like she'd just woken up from a twelve-year sleep and hadn't quite figured out where she was. I wanted to be mad at her, but she looked almost pathetic with her concave chest and thin wiry arms. She took off her jacket and sat down awkwardly.

"I've been feeling a bit strange lately," I said and proceeded to tell her about my unusual experience spurred on by the blizzard, and how I'd been wavering between depression and exaggerated happiness for the last several days. As I related my story I could see boredom spreading across her face. Occasionally she'd lock gazes with me when I was talking, but her eyes would then drift away and start darting all over the room as if she was thinking of something else - anything - to amuse her. I wanted to stop because I could see it wasn't helping me any, but I continued just to spite her. Like someone in love will often test their lover to see how far they can go, perhaps by annoying them on purpose just to get a reaction out of them.

"That's so lame," she said.

"What?"

"Lame. I mean, it sounds like some cheap psychic thing you'd hear about on late night TV. Or no...the X-Files! Peyote is so boring. I suppose you listen to The Grateful Dead as well."

"I thought you were into karma. And besides, I wasn't implying it was necessarily psychic. It was more \- artistic - an impression that the world is little more than a thin glittering film on the surface of a great ocean of evil and darkness."

"What makes it so artistic?"

"I didn't mean artistic..."

"So, why did you say it?"

"Listen, I'm not trying to start a fight."

"Neither am I."

"Well..."

"Well what?"

"What's wrong with saying it was artistic."

"Look, Jean. You're a sweet guy and I think you're really handsome, but you don't know anything about art. Do you see all the people struggling in the streets? Do you see the track marks on my arm?"

"I've seen them," I said.

"But you're too self absorbed to ask me about them. That's the point. You talk about poetry and art as if you're a part of the whole scene, but you're not. I mean, have you met my friends? Do you know what sort of sacrifice it takes to be a true artist? And I'm not talking about selling paintings to banks or any of that shit. I'm talking about the life. If I wanted to I could do these massive canvasses and sell them to some rich fuck, but in the end I'd be selling out. I wouldn't be an artist if I did that."

"Wait. This is ridiculous. I'm not trying to be an artist. Just because I make one little comment about how my experiences were more of an impression than an actual psychic experience you go on about..."

"You're not getting the point. Look how you dress. You look like anyone else. Look how my friends dress. Do they look like anyone else? No. Clothes and attitude are the true expression of art. You can churn out a thousand lousy paintings over a lifetime and not be an artist. A true artist may never paint one painting in his entire life. It's how he approaches his life. What he says. Who he tells to fuck off and who he sleeps with. Whether he does heroin or merely pot – or burnout hippie drugs like Peyote and acid. It's all a part of living on the edge. Self-degradation for self-elevation!"

"You don't actually believe that, do you?"

"And you wonder why I show up late. With comments like that. Look, I just think I'm going to go now."

"Go, then. If that's your attitude, then fuck it."

"That's not the point. You still don't understand. Nothing reaches you."

She grabbed her coat and walked towards the door. I could feel the anger in the brisk strokes of her stride and her hard cool eyes as she stared up at the ceiling. I finished my drink and caught a cab to Le Coq Noir where I had a quick beer before going home.

At four in the morning the phone rang. It was Heather. Her voice was dopey, her words slurred, almost ductile.

"I need you. I'm sorry about tonight. I really am. I don't know what got into me."

I hung up.

The phone rang again. After ten rings I picked it up.

"Jean. I know you have every right to be cruel towards me, but I really need you. I'm in trouble. I think I'm going to be sick."

"What's wrong?" I softened.

"I think I took too much."

"Really? I'll call emergency. That's the best thing to do. Just stay put."

"No. You can't."

"Heather."

"No. I'm not covered. They'll deport me. I'm here illegally."

"Then I'll be over immediately."

I rushed out into the street without even grabbing my coat and hailed the first cab I could find, which took almost twenty minutes the streets were so deserted. I watched the brilliant red street lights blur through the half-closed shutters of my eyes. They ran like streaks of blood across the cold black mantle of the night.

### III

The taxi driver spoke in incoherent bursts, occasionally turning around to smile as if he'd just said something funny. I could see his crooked stained teeth, the discolorations almost matching the cocoa brown of his skin. From his accent I guessed he was Haitian. We rounded a corner, the tires almost losing their grip on the thin film of water covering the street. The driver let me off in front of Heather's apartment. As I rummaged through my pockets I realized that I was down to my last twenty Euros. I hesitated for a moment, wondering why I was spending it on her. Hadn't she just snubbed me in an almost unforgivable way? Something inside me laughed a dark cynical laugh, a laugh so deplorably petty and vindictive that I didn't even want to admit I was hearing it. I paid the driver and tipped as much as I could afford. He smiled in a way that said: no matter how much more money you have than I do, at least I'm not white trash. I shrugged my shoulders and directed his gaze with my hand to my ripped jeans. I didn't know why I felt I should justify my position in front of a man I had just tipped and would never see again, but I did anyway. He slammed the car door in my face and drove off into the night.

I walked into the front lobby of Heather's building and rang her buzzer. There was no answer. I rang a second time. Then a third. I could hear the sound echoing through the building. I watched an old man pacing back and forth across the street. I wondered what could have brought him out so late. He would have looked more at home surrounded by a flock of hungry pigeons in broad daylight. Perhaps he hated birds and loved pacing back and forth on the street and found this was the only time he could do it in peace.

I rang again and finally heard Heather's voice - a weak crepitation - struggling to be heard through the background noise on the front lobby intercom.

"Heather. Heather. Let me in."

"Jean?" Her voice gained strength.

"Heather. Let me in!"

"Jean. Come quickly."

"Heather."

"I'm afraid."

The doorbell buzzed loudly and I pulled it open. I ran upstairs and banged on her door. Again, the sound of my calling echoed loudly down the halls. An old woman peeked out of her door and studied my every motion with detached interest as if I were a little more than a crossword puzzle. Then a short Hasidic man rounded the stairs and walked past me. I knocked once more - this time with more composure and less desperation. I didn't want the man to suspect something and call the police. Finally the door opened, but only slightly. I pushed it slowly, fearful of what I might find inside. The lights were off except for one in the living room. I could hear the faint melodies of some kind of ambient music from a late-night FM station. I walked into the living room.

"Jean," she said as if she were speaking to me from the bottom of a lake. She was leaning heavily on the refrigerator as if she would fall any second.

"Heather!"

I ran over to her side. Her nightgown was ripped and soaked in vomit. Her nostrils were bleeding and twice as wide as I'd remembered. On her face was the look of a drunken teenager, so completely out of control that she'd stopped fighting and given in to the onslaught of vertigo. Her knees, ankles, and forearms were bruised and covered with blood. I turned on the light and saw fragments of a broken vase all over the floor.

"Who did this to you."

"Nobody."

"You have to tell me."

"I did," she said. The deadness on her face ruptured into agony and she burst into tears. I cradled her head in my arms, trying to ignore the smell of her vomit.

"What happened?"

"It's bleeding through me. It's killing me. Every morning my veins are burning for more and every time I get more I know I'm only dying...I don't know. It's taken over. I had to use it in order to kill it. Like a weed killing itself when it has no other plants to steal the water from."

"How much did you take?"

She didn't respond. I got up and looked around the room. I saw the phone and thought of calling the hospital. If they came they'd certainly question me and maybe even call the police. I picked up the phone and dialed anyway. No matter how badly she'd treated me it wasn't her fault. Something darker and more powerful than either of us had taken over her soul like a deadly parasite. Before I could finish, I felt her hand grab mine and force the receiver down to the phone.

"Don't call. Do you know what they'd do?"

"I have to."

"No. Wait. I think I'll be OK," she said. Her words were slurred. She tripped on a pillow before regaining her balance and crossing the room to settle on the couch. She stretched out for a second and then stood up and left the room. I followed her into the bathroom where she was already naked, her bloody clothes gathered around her feet on the floor.

"Are you sure you're OK?" I asked.

She paused for a moment and took a deep controlled breath. "The worst is over. I think I'll be OK. I almost did this before." But all I saw was dizziness in her eyes as she collapsed in my arms and kissed me. Blood and vomit from her lips smeared onto my face.

"Fuck me. I want you to. I need you to."

I tried to push her away. I wanted to hold her and protect her, but I couldn't make love to her. Not like this.

"You're face is dirty," she said. She guided the sleeve of my arm up to my cheek to wipe it clean before I could react. "Now you have to take a shower with me." She started laughing and pulling me towards her.

I resisted at first, shrugging away from her clawing hands. She tore open the shower curtain and turned on the water. It blasted out of the showerhead in a slender cone, filling the room with bellows of steam.

"Steam, heat, and opium," she said, still laughing wildly.

She turned to me and smiled with such childish purity that I couldn't resist her. Her body was now fully clean. The hard red saucers of her nipples, her breasts, white without a hint of a tan, her hair - much darker from the water and gleaming in the artificial light of the bathroom like brush hairs dipped in varnish - hanging in ropy black strands over her face. I stepped into the shower and pulled her up against me.

"Make love to me Jean, " she pleaded. "I'm fine now. Really. It was just a false alarm. I need you to love me."

I felt a mad desire to protect her and love her, to make up for all those terrible years in Littlerock. "You don't need me to make love to you. You need me to hold you. " I touched her cheek with my hand.

"Please, not this. Are you one of those guys who thinks he always knows best what a woman wants, even better than her?"

"No, " I said. I caressed her head gently.

"Come on then. Make love to me. I'm not your mother. No wonder I never call you back. And you want to love me. Ha!"

She said Ha with such reckless mockery that something fierce and uncontrollable welled up inside me. I grabbed her head and stuffed my tongue in her mouth. I could hear her struggling for breath, gasping even, against the din of the hot shower water. I pulled her hair out on each side of her head and wrapped it back behind her ears. I moved my hands up and down her thigh so brutally that I was sure she'd make me stop. But she only wanted more. With her standing back against the hot beam of water I knelt down and buried my face in her pubic hair. I grabbed her by the hilts of her thighs and pulled her into my face. I thought I heard that half mad giggle again, but I wasn't sure, the barrage of the water from the shower head was so intense. There was water everywhere. On my hands, on her back, trickling down her legs, swirling in wide cyclonic arcs down the drain. I pushed my tongue into her. Everything was salty, like the ocean, but cleaner. Purified seawater.

A minute later she pulled me up and kissed me gently on the head. Her eyes narrowed. From smooth circles into epitaxial black slits. I sensed the presence of a certain darkness I couldn't quite define. It spread outwards from the auric beauty of her sex and pulled me towards her, into her. It was inside me and all over me. My skin, my blood, my inner organs: all mere extensions of this darkness. I felt Jillian's presence all over again. I was under the heat lamp of her gaze. Somewhere in the world Jillian was standing - or sitting, it didn't matter – and watching. The same air that flowed around my body and connected me to Heather also connected me to Jillian. It was irrefutable. I lifted Heather from the bathtub floor and pressed her up against the wall. Supporting her with my pelvis and one arm around her leg while supporting myself with the other arm against the tiled back wall of the shower I thrust blindly into her without stopping until I lost grip of her thigh and had to reposition her against the wall. We swooned through a massive vortex. It sucked us down, down and down further. Words became meaningless. Faces became mere masks. Reduced to a primordial thread wrapped around another primordial thread my whole day-to-day life suddenly seemed meaningless.

I grabbed the soap dish and drew my head away from her so I could watch the subtle expressions on her face blossom like tiny flowers as I began to climax. For that one blissful moment I felt so far away from myself, so far...air in-between the strands of her hair, an angel ascendant from hell, a ball of energy cascading downwards on the wings of the fatal blackness around me. My body shrunk away from her. The darkness retreated. I felt it swirling back into her eyes as the water swirled in turn down the drain. I slipped for a second and then regained my balance as I let her drop out of my hands and against the shower wall.

I looked down at her, all crumpled up beneath the hot cone of water and now laughing. She had the sullen beauty of an autumn leaf floating through a pond. I turned off the water and she heaved a pleasant sigh of relief. We dried each other quietly. I felt like a Swedish masseur as I patted her body with the clean buff of a clean dry towel. She wiped the semen from between her legs with a square of toilet tissue. We remained silent, communicating with each other in a language of little pets and half smiles. I felt closer to her than I had to anyone since Jillian. It made me think that my love of Jillian was not the once in a lifetime event I thought it was, but an experience that could be shared with other women as my life continued and matured. Perhaps Jillian had done the right thing in leaving me in such a dramatic fashion and making a clean break so we could each start over as if from scratch with new romances.

I could then see that Heather and I stood alone, rejects from North America, cast away from our respective pasts, creatures of light and darkness roaming the concrete streets of midwinter Paris with all its gusts of wind and freezing rain weaving in-between the cold stone monuments and crippled buildings.

"I think..." I wanted to say I loved her but couldn't. It wasn't quite right. I pulled her up against me and felt her shiver against the heat of my body.

We relocated to her living room. I put my shirt back on and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I came back she had disappeared from the room. I heard a sound in the bathroom like the clinking of a spoon on plastic. Then silence. A minute or so later she came out again in a clean blue nightgown. She walked halfway across the living room floor and then fell to her knees. Her eyes remained focused on me without a blink. Over the next few seconds the movements of her body became muddled and confused like so many mannequins tangled into each other and shaking wildly. She bolted up onto her feet and then collapsed again before gagging and screaming at me - still without blinking.

I leapt forward and knelt down beside her. I shook her three times before she turned her head to face me.

"Help me you fucking moron!"

"Heather! What did you do?"

"You fucking...you get out of my house you jerk."

"Heather." I pulled her up to me and touched her head in trembling desperate caresses. "What's wrong? I thought you were better."

"All you do is come over here to fuck me. You don't care at all about me. You and your lies. You and your ex-girlfriend. And you wonder why I don't want anything to do with you."

Her head almost seemed to float as it moved around her neck in smooth gyroscopic motions. Her eyes went whitish and her expression almost seemed to evaporate from her face. Reduced to little more than a flesh doll, she began swinging her arms about and pounding the floor.

"I fucking hate you. Look at you. All weakness. All lies. You think you're handsome and all women love you. You think I should give myself to you. I know what you carry around in your jacket. I've seen all those letters. I can't stand this anymore. Get out of my apartment. I don't need you. I don't need anyone. I don't need your guns and your pickup trucks. All men are just guns and pickup trucks."

"Don't say that. It's not true. I used to love her. I love you now. Come on. Stay with me."

"I'll never love you. You make me sick. I don't care if you're the last man I see before I die. I still don't love you. I never will. Never. Never."

Never Never Never Never \- the words penetrated through me as they hung like a poison cloud of gas in the room, no longer seeming attached in any way to their vocal origin. A pool of white fluid emerged from her mouth and blood dripped from her nose. She'd taken more when she was in the other room. I had to call the hospital. I ran to the phone and dialed the emergency number. I watched her seizures simmer down into a dead calm while I waited for the voice on the other line. Eventually, Heather now silent on the floor, a deep voice materialized on the other end of the line.

"Hello? Hello?"

"Come immediately. There's someone dying. Rue...Rue...Fuck. I can't remember."

"Sir?" I rummaged frantically through piles of notes and papers until I came up with the idea to look up her number in the phone book beside the couch.

"I'll get it in a second. You have to come quick. She's dying."

"Who am I speaking to?"

"Wait."

"You must answer this question or we cannot help you."

"Who? Wait, here it is. 25 Rue St. Jacques, apartment three."

"Three?"

"Yes."

"Who am I speaking to? It is necessary for our records."

"Jean. No James. James Hillcock."

"James Hillcock?"

"Get someone over here immediately."

"Someone is on the way. 25 Rue St. Jacques, apartment three."

I slammed the receiver down and rushed to Heather's side. I put my ear to her chest and reached for her pulse. It was still there. I moved her body from the floor to the couch, setting it upside down so her head was touching the floor and her feet were hanging over the backside. I'd heard of people suffocating from their own vomit before. You had to make sure they weren't standing up or lying supine. Gravity would kill them that way.

I ran to the kitchen and got a glass of cold water. I could already hear the ambulance in the distance. I threw the water on her face and shook her. Suddenly her eyes opened. She shouted incomprehensible curses at me under her breath. I could feel her struggling to be heard. The blue light of the ambulance pulsed through the room from the street below. I heard chattering detached voices and banging on the door down at street level. I had to go. I had to go or they'd catch me and send me back to the army. They'd find her regardless of whether or not I stayed.

I knelt down beside her and kissed her on the face. I didn't want it to stop. Her eyes went from open to closed with the slow rhythm of moth wings beating on a screen.

"Jean?" her words were so faint I could barely hear them.

"Heather. You'll be OK."

"No."

"Why did you have to..."

"I'm sorry."

"An ambulance is here."

"I want to go and sit by a river."

"Yes, we can sit by a river."

"You don't hate me, do you?"

"I can't hate you."

"I'm sorry. I tried. I really did."

The hallways echoed with the sound of footsteps. I was sure I heard a police car pulling up downstairs. Then a bang at the door. Then more banging. More than I ever wanted to hear.

"I need to be with you beside a river. Jean. Take me. Take me to a river. No. I can feel it. We're at a river. I can see boats and bridges. There's even a bird. Jean. Come closer. I've changed. I am a river. I am that river. I can feel my waters flowing all around us."

"Open up! Ambulance!" came a shouting from the hallway.

I unlocked the door without opening it and ran as quickly as I could to the kitchen. Just as the door opened I crawled through the window out onto the fire escape. I could feel my weight trying its strength as the sound of footsteps and shouting reached my ears. I looked behind me, making sure that I was alone above the alleyway passage. Voices filled the air from inside the apartment. Comforting, safe voices. All I can remember was hearing something about adrenaline shots to the heart and what sort of crazy bitch and shame it could happen to such an attractive woman.

I slipped down the fire escape and ran off into the night, certain that she would be fine and I would see her the next day. Certain as one could ever be in this world that I could visit her under a pseudonym and she would be fine and I would be fine. Certain, oh so certain.

I tried to call the following evening but there was no answer. Two days later she was pronounced dead from a drug overdose. The papers had a short blurb about her background and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death. An indication was made that she might have been raped and in her shame and humiliation had overdosed. They even mentioned a phone call from a man named James Hillcock. The police swore to continue searching for the man until they found him.

As I read the article I felt her pain converge with mine. I looked out the window and imagined for a moment that inside her was a great river and that somewhere on the banks of that river was a small and happy girl. I wanted to go to that river and be with her forever.

### IV

A week after Heather's death I received another package from Sodergren. This time he put his name and return address on the front. I recognized it immediately as the demolished house in northeast Paris. The package was the size of a shoebox, just as before. I shook it gently and held it to my ear. Something rattled around inside but it seemed too light to be a bomb. I carefully opened it. Inside, to my horror, was a dismembered finger, still red with blood. I threw the box on the floor. Whoever he was, he'd gone too far. But I was ready this time and wasn't about to be fooled by his juvenile pranks. To start with, the symbolism was a dead giveaway. I'd studied enough Artaud since coming to Paris that it only took me five minutes to find the quote the package was obviously referring to:

And on the level of representation it is not a question of that cruelty which we can practice on each other by cutting up each other's bodies, by sawing away at our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, by sending each other packages of human ears, noses, or neatly severed nostrils through the mail, but of that much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things practice on us.

It wasn't an ear, nose, or nostril, but it was close enough. But at this point I no longer cared. What had happened with Heather was changed me in ways I could never describe and I'd been through so much grief since Jillian's disappearance I found it hard to feel anything but mild revulsion at the package. Sodergren and Jillian only had power over me as long as I allowed them to. I took the package and the finger and threw them out into the garbage dumpster behind my house. It didn't even occur to me to take it to the police.

"Fuck you Sodergren, whoever you are. " I yelled into the alley. I half expected to hear an explosion as I shut the door behind me, but nothing came.

Later that same morning I opened the pages of Le Monde. A man was found dead in a pond near Marseilles. Although his corpse had been marred beyond recognition he was believed to be someone named Munif Dresda! I slammed my fist on the table. A photograph showed his face from five years earlier. There was no doubt it was the same man I had met in the deserts of North Africa. My head exploded with paranoid delusions. The dark-skinned man from Jillian's letters. A body found near Marseilles marred beyond recognition. A great jigsaw puzzle took shape before me. Perhaps the finger just sent by Sodergren was that of Munif. Nothing seemed impossible. I ran to the back alley and checked the dumpster. To my dismay it had already been emptied.

I called the police station and pressed St. Croix for any information I could get. He offered few details the paper hadn't already published. I probed him with questions. Was there a white cane found on the premises? What was his real name? What did they know about his past? To each he answered that he didn't know. He finished the conversation by saying that the details would be released as the investigation proceeded and that was the best he could do at that point. After I hung up I decided to go to the scene of the murder and check myself. I called Annette to convey the news.

"I read about it, " she said. "This is getting weirder all the time. "

"I'm so angry at myself for not linking Munif to Jillian before. He came into my life almost to the day that Jillian sent me her last letter. He even went through my bags to read it!"

"Should I tell Poilblanc?"

"I can't see it hurting. Who knows, maybe he even knew Munif. "

After I hung up, I poured myself some tea and made the shapes of random letters in the air in front of me with my fingers. It was something I used to do in grade school to help me concentrate. If Munif was indeed connected to Jillian everything that happened since I deserted was just part of some grand scheme with who knows what purpose. I was little more than a puppet and I didn't even know who was behind it all. There were so many questions. What relationship did Munif have to Sodergren and who was the second woman at Rodez? A thousand possibilities scrambled through my head, but none of them made any sense.

That afternoon I checked in with Alan and arranged to get the next few days off. I took the first bus to Marseilles and arrived the following morning. By midday I was at the pond where Munif's corpse had been found. The area was roped off and a few police cars were parked nearby. I walked towards a group of officers. As I approached I saw St. Croix step out of one of the cars. He looked the same as I remembered him except that his hair was longer. I came up and introduced myself. He recognized me immediately.

"You should really leave these matters to the police."

"I would, but there's so much you're missing."

"Like?"

I told him about my experiences in Africa, being careful not to mention that I'd deserted. I told him about Sodergren and the mysterious packages and the blond man that was seen with Jillian. I told him of my sighting in Rodez and the second woman that was with her. Yet nothing seemed to convince him.

"I traveled with him through the desert. Doesn't it seem like too much of a coincidence that two people I know die - apparently - under the same circumstances."

"Coincidences are common but normally little more than what they are. Coincidences." His shoulders sloped into an arrogant and indifferent shrug.

"Not when I'm also getting exploding packages from someone who apparently doesn't exist?"

"The packages could be a prank."

"From who?" I asked. "And what about the sighting?"

"You said it was late at night and you saw a glowing white form. Perhaps you were just seeing things. And besides, if it was dark and you were fifty yards away how could you say for sure that it was her?"

"When you date someone for years you just know when you see them. Did the corpse have a missing finger?"

"That's not for me to say. That's for the coroner."

"Was there a white cane?"

"You'll find out when we release an official report."

In frustration I turned around and left. I came back after sundown to search the scene myself. I stepped over the ropes into the twenty-five yard square area and began my investigation. The reflection of the moonlight off the surface of the water was strong enough to weakly light the ground. I kicked my feet through the grass and even got down on my knees hoping to find something like a key chain, lighter or matchbox that could help me solve the mystery. It was like my night at Reimann's but this time I had so much more to go on. Two days earlier I wouldn't have cared if I ever heard Jillian's name again. Munif's death, however, opened new wounds. I knew I'd been tricked into deserting and I had to find out why. I had to find Jillian. Outsmart her like she'd outsmarted me.

After an hour of searching through the grass I found nothing. By this time it was obvious the best strategy was to find a hotel and pay the coroner a personal visit the next morning. Perhaps St. Croix was hiding something and the body was missing a finger. I was convinced Sodergren had murdered Munif, perhaps out of jealousy, and had sent me the finger as a warning to stay away.

The next morning I woke up and made my way to the coroner's.

"Yes," he asked suspiciously as I entered his office.

"I have some questions."

"Do you have authorization?"

"No. But I'm a friend. That body just found. I need to know a few things."

"I can answer your questions but I can't show you the corpse. It's against policy."

"That's fine. I need to know if there was a finger missing."

"No. Yet what was left could hardly be called fingers."

Not to be discouraged, I left immediately for Paris. There, I could possibly find more. Something tangible that proved that Munif was in collusion with Jillian against me. My life was once again a void of uncertainty.

### V

Over the next few weeks there was no further news on the murder. I went to the office of public records to look up information on Munif Dresda, but there was nothing, not even a birth certificate or evidence of landing. I tried calling St. Croix several times but he was either too busy to answer or not in. In frustration I started drinking more. The thought that I had been so cruelly manipulated was almost too much to bear. My performance at work dropped and I started coming in late for my shifts - sometimes by over an hour. More often than not I was drunk. I kept a Starbucks coffee cup filled with whiskey and brought it in, sipping from it as if it were a café latté. It was a good thing that Alan was so tolerant, as anyone else would have fired me if they found out.

About three weeks after the murder, I was writing an e-mail to Annette while watching the rain dripping off the chin of a gargoyle outside my window. I had done well to keep in touch with her as she provided the closest thing I had to a sense of family. While I was finishing the last paragraph, a knock came at my door. I went to answer it, but before I even got as far as the foyer the door creaked open and a woman walked in. She was dressed in a suede coat that extended down to her knees, white stockings and buckle-up schoolgirl shoes. She was holding a white umbrella. She had long straight black hair and smelled of perfume - an almond-based scent I couldn't recognize. Her skin was darker than the average Parisian and I wondered if she might be Turkish. Certainly her voluptuous lips and wide dark eyes suggested this.

"Yes?" I said, somewhat confused.

"I'm sorry," she said, nervously unfolding a piece of paper. I moved to her side and looked down at the paper. She pulled it away before I could get a chance to read it.

"Do you normally just walk into people's houses?" I asked.

"Do you normally desert from the army?"

I tried to hide my sudden sense of panic and stepped back.

"What are you talking about? You have the wrong man."

"Is your name Jean?"

"Yes."

"Did you desert from a UN peace-keeping corps twelve months ago?"

"No. I was never in the army."

She pulled out her wallet and flipped it open. There was a large silver badge clipped to the inside.

"OK. What do you want? Who are you?"

She slowly closed the door and took off her jacket, revealing a tight black cotton skirt and white muslin shirt underneath. She held her jacket out for me to hang it up. I did so with quiet compliance.

"Come in," I said.

"Thank you. My name is Lilli Braun."

I showed her into my living room. It was a complete disaster from a bash with Alan and Gigi the night before.

"You have nothing to fear," she said, sitting down on my couch and crossing her legs. "I am a private detective. I was hired six months ago by your girlfriend's family."

My nerves eased and I suddenly felt more comfortable in her presence.

"You didn't have to scare me."

"I've told no one. It's simply my job. You can trust that I'll never reveal your whereabouts, although by law I am required to divulge any information that may lead to capture of a criminal. In your case, it is not yet clear to me that you are a such a criminal."

The way she sat in the chair with her legs crossed beneath the tight tube of her black skirt reminded me of a picture I'd once seen in a perfume ad. It showed a woman wearing a transparent plastic raincoat and similar black skirt and no bra sitting on a stone bench in an almost identical posture in what looked like the inside of an art museum. The outlines of her breasts were visible underneath her thin forearms, which were elegantly crossed over her chest. Behind her stood a tall man in a three-piece suit with a monocle staring off to the right in a direction almost exactly perpendicular to her gaze. Judging by the discriminating twist in his eyebrow he was examining a painting or sculpture outside of the frame of the picture. His figure was in slightly sharper focus than the woman's so as to turn our attention to him and make it more his portrait than hers, although her partial nudity was clearly upstaging his refined critic's pose. This subtle shift of focus also cast the woman in the role of the intruder on the man's intellectual exercise, whereas if the focus was turned the other way around the man might be seen as an unsuccessful suitor hiding his feelings of rejection by looking away in complete disregard of her presence. In spite of this, the most stunning features of the photograph weren't the thin halos of flesh sneaking out from beneath her arms on the rims of her breast or even the calm disregard of the man behind her. There were two things in particular that struck me more. The first was the way her legs were crossed in such an awkward and uncomfortable-looking way as compared to the simple and relaxed folding of her arms over her breasts. The other feature was the expression on her face. This was not one of embarrassment, defiance, or surprise as one might expect from the setting and the presence of the man behind her, but one of complete disinterest in the corporeal world. Her smile hung only loosely over her chin as if it could collapse any second into a frown and her large glassy eyes, almost like those of a sick and overslept child, staring off into space as if she were peering into another world whose laws and customs she found only slightly less boring than those of the world around her.

Lilli cast words out to me in a slow and deliberate fashion as if she was preoccupied in a struggle to keep her mind off of something else she didn't want me to know about. I wondered if it might be obvious that I was caught up in a reverie and wasn't listening to her story. I caught odd fragments of speech and gathered from these fragments that she wanted to ask me about my interactions with Munif and my experiences with Sodergren. In the back of my head I kept asking myself: Why had they taken so long to investigate? Isn't this a little late? Finally it came out accidentally. I felt like a man who is walking alone lost in thought suddenly realizing that he is in the midst of a crowd talking to himself.

"Why are you here?" I blurted out.

"What?"

"Why? Wait. Why did I even ask that?"

"You weren't even listening to me."

"Yes I was."

"Why haven't you answered any of my questions, then?"

"You haven't asked any," I gambled.

"You really weren't listening."

"You want to know about the Algerian."

"There's far more to it than that."

She smiled uncomfortably and I sat down beside her. I looked directly into her eyes. Our faces were only three inches apart. She stared back without a word or blink. I felt she wanted me to kiss her. Before Jillian's disappearance I would never have imagined seducing a woman I had just met on my couch. It seemed callous and vulgar, a profane mockery of true love. But hadn't my feelings of love been twice destroyed, once with Jillian and then with Heather? What use was it being a romantic when women only took advantage of you and mocked your attempts to love them? I thought of the pathetic man I used to be, the man who hung on Jillian's coattails like a child. I tried to think of this man but I couldn't even stand the image of his face in my mind.

In one swoop I pressed my lips against Lilli's, observing myself like a man watching his absurd and dangerous actions in a dream. But instead of the slap in the face or scream that I expected, all I felt was an equal pressure from her lips pushing back on mine. Her body gave in and I guided her back into a reclined position on the couch.

"What are you doing?" she asked in such a way as to confirm her pleasure.

I didn't answer. Instead I moved my hand up her leg. Her face retained the same formal veneer that it had since she walked into my apartment, except that her eyes assumed a lazy look of pleasure. This look was at first off-putting since I was expecting her to tremble and then burst into a fit of rapture. As we continued to kiss on the couch her passion seemed to stay at even keel while mine increased almost exponentially every time I looked into her eyes and then closed them. With each cycle of this little game I became more and more consumed by Lilli's low-key formality. I felt like a schoolboy seducing a Latin teacher who is afraid of showing her pleasure because it might be taken as a sign of her diminishing authority. As I slid my hand up her stomach and slipped each button individually through the slits in her muslin shirt I could only think of what Jillian would do if she saw me that very instant on a television screen. I fantasized about her burning with jealousy, desperately wondering what she could do to win back my love. Even in her disappearance it suddenly dawned on me that she was still dependent upon me. Whatever she was doing was merely a reaction to me and her old life. And every night she went to sleep she was probably thinking of how awful it was to leave me and how much I must be pining away for her love. Every time she passed one of those posters of her on the street she must have felt a mixture of guilt and pride over the fact that there were people in the world who missed her enough to start a campaign to find her. Yet she was wrong, or at least in my case. I'd grown beyond her. Even if she'd found a new existence based on the bizarre tenets of Artaud's philosophy, I had still outgrown her.

Lilli and I were naked on the couch. I stood up and escorted her to my room. There, I laid her out on my bed in a cradle of wadded up sheets and a comforter. I bowed down, face first into her thighs and kissed the insides of her leg from her knees up to her thighs while at the same time inhaling her perfume and gyrating my left palm on her right breast. Soon, all thoughts of Jillian vanished. Lilli ceased to be that Latin teacher and I ceased to be the disobedient schoolboy. All disguises we carried through our daily lives became meaningless and we became as two bodies, nothing more. Never had I ever felt so naked. Never before had I let go of myself so much. Never had I thrown myself so completely out of my own imagination and into the sexual experience. My being diverged into two poles, the animal and the spiritual. There was no in-between that was the realm of the day-to-day, the realm of social roles, personality, and clothing. Sometimes it felt like nothing and I struggled for any sensation that might push me further towards orgasm. Sometimes I could feel the rough twines of her pubic hair rubbing against my skin. Other times - mostly when I was taking her from behind - it felt like a tight round tube wrapped around my penis. With every thrust it felt new and different. I wanted to mirror the same sensations with my tongue in her mouth, but came up short. Sucked down in an opium spiral I felt the room become dark. My imagination took over. Or was it my imagination? I felt communion with her body as she flowed through me like a new Nirvana. I imagined cold dirty streets, dilapidated buildings, dead trees. The world opened up around me in all its dark brilliance. What did man really have but this recourse from pain? I saw men as feeble and pathetic, drinking and making love, throwing themselves down those spirals of ecstasy to escape the bleak reality of existence.

I grabbed her shoulders and bit into the sheet beside her head as I climaxed. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her face, still exhibiting the same expression. I wondered what she was thinking as I buried my head in the pillow beside her.

"We have a lot to talk about," she said.

"Jillian, you mean?"

"That's why I came," she said as if nothing had happened between us.

She put her clothes back on and assumed an even more formal veneer than she had when she first came. It was as if we never had made love at all. I sat with her on the couch and we sipped the coffee I'd made as she asked questions and probed for details about my relationship with Jillian, Poilblanc, and Munif. I told her all I knew. How Munif was wounded and how I saw it as an ideal opportunity to leave the desert. How his behavior seemed to oscillate between the suspicious and the pitiable on the way to the ocean. How Jillian treated me when I came back and how Poilblanc had been in love with her for so many years.

"You said you saw her?"

"I saw some figures at night, but I didn't get close enough to be sure. There was another woman with her and there was another sighting..."

"Oh...right. It was the man..."

"The maintenance man at Rodez. At the asylum."

"Who was with her?"

"A blond man. Possibly Sodergren." I filled her in on everything I knew about him.

"Yes. You see, it may seem odd that I haven't yet. I'm new on the case. The investigator before me was making no progress at all and eventually she was moved."

"That clarifies things. I was starting to wonder what was going on here and why it had taken you so long to get your act together. Now I know." I observed myself speaking with Lilli with the dispassionate interest of a sleuth investigating a crime in the same manner he would play chess.

"Annette's told me about Jillian's fascination with Artaud. Can you elaborate?"

"Are you familiar with Antonin Artaud?"

"No. Not at all."

"Well, you'll have to know something if you're going to make it on this case. It's been so long, I've stopped caring. When I heard she was alive and hanging around with that man with the white cane I was..."

"White cane? A white cane was found on the shore right where they found Munif. I've even spoken with the police on this matter."

I was surprised, but not shocked. In fact, I was surprised that I wasn't shocked, especially since this was the first evidence linking Munif to the dark-skinned man in Jillian's letter.

"The white cane was first found before her disappearance. It reappeared in a letter she wrote to me but never sent. It was about a man who accosted her and tried to lure her away into some sort of new life. Then I saw it again on Delacroix's island after doing peyote." She raised her eyebrow, as if to invite further explanation. "Poilblanc had a theory that since Artaud did peyote and she was into Artaud that somehow by being at the scene of the crime under the influence of the drug I might gain new insights into her whereabouts."

"And?"

"I had insights. A lot of them. Nothing revealing her location. When I was about to give up the cane reappeared and I heard a voice telling me that she left me because I didn't know how to love her. But when I turned around to where the voice was coming from, there was nothing there. I took it as an auditory hallucination. I slipped into a state of catatonia and when I emerged the cane was gone. I took it as some kind of joke played by Poilblanc and started a fight with him. I haven't spoken to him since."

"I'll talk to him. If it was a joke, it was a pretty bad one."

"I never trusted him."

"So, the next time you heard anything was from the director at Rodez."

"Yes."

"Hmmm." She looked perplexed.

"I'm totally baffled by the whole thing," I said. "I've adjusted to the fact that it's over between us and she's away from me voluntarily. I wouldn't say that I don't care. I have an itch inside me that wants to know what really happened. All the stuff about Artaud, Sodergren, and now Munif. Something new comes up every few months. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that Poilblanc was in on it too, the way things are going."

We were silent for a few minutes as she concentrated on writing something in her notepad. When she finished she expelled a deep sigh and turned to me.

"Like I said, I've contacted the police about Munif. They weren't very cooperative, so I'll have to do my own investigation. He apparently held Tunisian citizenship. It shouldn't be too hard to look him up."

She gathered her things and walked to the door. She seemed content to leave with no acknowledgement of our sexual encounter. I leaned to kiss her on the lips and she turned away so I only met her cheek.

"Send me photocopies of her letters," she said.

"It's too expensive. Do you know how many there are?"

"Hmmm."

I offered to let her borrow them so she could copy them herself and return them later. She complied and left almost as soon as I handed her the boxes I had been keeping in my closet. On the way out she gave me her business card.

Three days later she called long distance from Tunis. There was no record anywhere of Munif's existence prior to two years ago. Lilli had pressured the officials for further information, but there was none, no record of a former name or nationality, no contacts, no relatives, no employment information...nothing. It was as if he had materialized out of nowhere without personality or past, a mirage cast by the hot wings of the desert sun. I invited Lilli back to visit me, and she said she would stop by as soon as she was back from Africa.

The next day I contacted Annette. When I told her what had happened she claimed her mother had never hired such a person.

"They stopped paying a private eye a long time ago, " she said. "They're just paying out enough to keep the posters hanging up all over Europe."

"So I've been duped, " I said.

"I guess if you want to put it that way. I'm really sorry. I don't know what to say."

I checked up on Lilli's records. The number she left me belonged to an old Parisian woman who shouted at me every time I called. And the business address on the card didn't even exist. There was no one by her name licensed as a private detective in all of France. I had to get those letters back but didn't even know where to begin. Like the white cane and Jillian, Lilli had vanished from my life almost as soon as she had entered it.

My mind struggled for an explanation. Perhaps Lilli was an agent of Sodergren and had just come to probe me to see how much I knew. Maybe she was the second woman I saw that night in Rodez and was working for Jillian. There was also the distant possibility that she was Sodergren. But whoever she was, why did she want Jillian's letters? Why did she call me after our meeting and continue the private detective charade? Perhaps it was out of a sadistic desire to continue playing with my mind. But didn't taking the letters away only deprive whoever it was the pleasure of laughing at my feeble attempts to link Sodergren's clues to them? This suggested that there must have been some secret information in the letters that she didn't want me to see.

The next morning I had Annette call Poilblanc to see if he had anything to do with it. He flatly denied. I ruled out the possibility that Lilli was sent by Jillian, because there was no way she would have told me about the white cane or called me back if she was some sort of spy sent to see how much I knew or to check up on me. In order to verify her findings, I called St. Croix. After much hassle St. Croix finally let the cat out of the bag and told me there was in fact no white cane found near Munif's corpse.

"Anything to get rid of you," he said sarcastically. "Our new theory links the third corpse found in Africa close to the time Jillian's death with the murder of Jillian and Munif in a series of serial killings." I had forgotten about the third corpse, but it seemed more likely to me that, if Jillian was indeed dead, Munif had killed her and then killed himself in exactly the same way out of guilt.

I pressed the Tunisian embassy for news on Munif. He was indeed a Tunisian citizen and had a perfectly legitimate record on file. In fact, everything he had told me in the desert matched up completely with the official record. It seemed somewhat suspicious that it was in such perfect accord.

By this time I was confused to the point of insanity. Who was lying? Or, more aptly, who wasn't lying? Was there any truth at all behind this madness? With no concrete evidence that Jillian was either dead or alive I saw myself as little more than a tiny microbe floating through a vast ocean of uncertainty. Maybe even Annette was lying. Paranoia engulfed me.

As the weeks passed I sank deeper and deeper into loneliness and despair. Alan and Gigi started spending more time alone. They'd grown more into a traditional couple and I was left out of the equation. My life was spiraling further and further downwards as if into a bottomless well.

### VI

In soulless anger I watched my life crumble. With every passing day I became more and more surly and irritable. It seemed I was the center of a great cosmic joke. Jillian was either dead or deliberately manipulating me, I didn't know which was worse. The scars left by Heather's death mixed with the shadows cast by her mocking laughter as I tried to make love to her that last night became almost too much to bear. My empty seduction of Lilli was only the beginning of my reaction. I went out drinking every night. I reveled in sloth and cynicism, wearing these attributes like a jeweled crown in my obsidian palace of lust and loathing. My hatred grew to greater and greater extremes. It blossomed inside me like a demon flower. I wandered through the desolate slums of Paris sometimes for hours admiring their ugliness as if it were some higher form of art. I examined pieces of junk I found in dumpsters, sometimes constructing outlandish sculptures from them in alleyways and under bridges, taking the finest of them back to my apartment for show. I stared in meditative silence at rusted car parts and broken glass in automotive wreckage heaps, imagining I was extracting from their remains the very essence of destruction and decay. How many words do we have in our language for all the pleasant and beautiful things in life compared to those that are completely vile, or at the very least unsavory? There is just one word for anguish, but a million for all the different pleasures we experience. I took trips out to industrial villages to watch the caterpillars of smoke crawl from their tall gray wombs, floating upwards from the smokestacks into the bleak winter sky. Such a beautiful sight! I invented new words daily for the myriad forms that came bellowing out from those squalid chimneys. I laughed at how naive I was to ever worship beauty.

Without the slightest hint of remorse I threw myself with reckless abandon into a world of lust and sensuality. I frequented local nightclubs that catered to a modern crowd of disaffected youth, specializing in a certain aggressive brand of Detroit techno. Going back to my hometown routes, I would laugh to myself every night as I stumbled home drunk with a new girl beside me. I threw out all of my old Coltrane albums and took fervid interest in the bleak electronic landscapes of recording artists like Jeff Mills and Derek May. One night in the back alley behind a club I remember specifically thinking of Jillian and how I wished she were watching me as I made love to a Belgian prostitute over a garbage can. Every thrust was one of hatred towards Jillian as opposed to love towards this random woman, whoever she might have been. I had so many lovers I lost count. Yet it wasn't that I used women or treated them poorly. It was quite the contrary. If anything, I was more of a gentleman than ever. I complimented self-centered and shallow women who deserved to be reviled. I sent beautiful poems to women who had no appreciation for them and sought out as much as possible the company of women I deemed much brighter and more interesting than myself. Yet, with every passing sexual encounter I was left feeling increasingly empty. At first I ignored these feelings. With a Russian woman named Tasha I faked orgasm and told myself it was because I was too drunk. With another \- a blue-haired negress - I was too tired to get an erection and hence was unable to please her at all. Over the passing months, women ceased to interest me in any way as sexual beings. Their bodies took on the ambience of mere physical entities, like plants or trees, rather than chariots to a higher realm. The bitter chords of nothingness chimed through me. Imagine the one pleasure we've always held so high above all others suddenly becoming a passionless routine. I was sure I'd never enjoy anything again.

Summer had come and passed. By the end of August I felt dirty and worthless. I had just about had it with my life of reckless abandon. Something inside me had changed. I missed the times I spent with Jillian when she was to me as a sacred chalice was to a mystic - the essence of existence. I realized that in trying to love all women I was really loving nothing. I had relegated myself, as it were, to a lower state of being in which women were merely replaceable props in my increasingly disenchanted existence. I'd turned into little more than a vulgar flesh balloon, blind in one eye - the one that looks inward - and completely hollow inside.

In the first week of September Alan and Gigi announced they were going to get married and move to Rodez. Alan had saved enough money over the years to open his own restaurant. "There is so much more to life that I have yet to experience," Alan told me one night at Le Phare Enragé. "I want my children to go to a small country school. I want them to eat well. I want to be able to work in my own garden learn to be a good carpenter." My mouth almost dropped into my drink I was so shocked. While he and Gigi had been spending more time alone, I hadn't seen any indication that he was tired of the Parisian nightlife and wondered what had brought about this sudden change.

"Sick of it all," he said. "Sick of drinking. Sick of all those tarts. Even sick of myself."

"And Gigi?"

"Same. We decided almost simultaneously that this whole scene was getting boring and we wanted to do more things together. I can't think of a better person to escape with. We've been friends for so long. I don't know if you'd call it love, but I don't think I know anyone who'd tolerate me the way she does and I can't see any other man putting up with her zaniness. In fact, I adore it."

A week later Alan handed in his notice at the hotel. Shortly thereafter the hotel was sold I was laid off and left with only a month's worth of resources. Instead of saving this money and looking for a new job, I squandered it on a five-day drinking binge.

Alan and Gigi left almost immediately. We had one last night at Le Phare Enragé over a few bottles of wine and scattered tears. It is only in moments like this that the beauty and strength of a friendship comes out. All the while I was in Paris I never stopped to think about how much Alan and Gigi meant to me. I'd always viewed my time in Paris as a transition period and not a part of my real life.

When they left we promised to keep in touch and I wished them luck with their new restaurant. I kissed them both at Gare St. Lazare while flocks of pigeons moved like cloud formations through the steel rafters overhead. Inside I felt a profound emptiness. I was hurt for being left out of their plans. As the train pulled away I could hardly believe it. They were gone.

Because of money problems, I was forced to move out of my apartment on a two-week notice and move into a privately run hostel filled with Australian and Israeli tourists. I didn't have the guts to ask Annette for help, although she probably would have come through for me if I had pressed hard enough. With no other option, I took odd jobs over the next month to support my worsening drinking habit. One week I helped an old man landscape his back yard. It was a total disaster, since I'd had no previous experience with gardening of any sort. He fired me after I damaged my fifth spruce by accidentally chopping its trunk in half with a spade. I hadn't been paying attention and was staring at a blackbird in a bush while blindly thrusting the shovel into the earth in front of me.

I then took a job on a construction site. I was immediately detested by the other workers for mentioning that I'd read that Saturn would be visible in the night sky that weekend.

"Saturn?" grumbled the foreman as if I was asking him to put on leotards and do the Dance of the Sugar Plumb Fairy with me.

A Dutch African worker with the inflated muscles of a circus strong man pushed the foreman aside and walked up so close to me that his nose was almost touching mine.

"You like magic?" he asked in a pointed Dutch grunt.

"What?"

"Magic," he repeated, pointing his finger to the sky while glaring menacingly into my face.

The five other workers on the site all gathered around to watch, as if expecting a major altercation to liven up their day. One of them asked the foreman what was going on. All I heard was something about me being an intellectual queer who was trying to start something.

"Oh, magic," I said. "Now I understand. You mean astrology."

"Astrology?"

"Yes. You know. Saturn. Fortune telling. Isn't that what you mean?"

"Fortune telling?" He didn't seem to understand.

"Clairvoyants. Mind readers," I continued.

"Hey," the black man turned and shouted to the others. "He says he can read my mind."

"No I didn't," I protested. By this time the whole crew had gathered around me and were staring at me as if I were a transvestite out in drag. I moved back from the Dutchman and went to pick up my shovel. The foreman immediately grabbed my hand, thinking I was going to use it as a weapon against the worker, and pushed me against a chain-link fence.

"Wait," I pleaded. I could see I was outnumbered and while they were clearly the aggressors peaceful negotiation would be my only way out. "Let's be decent about this."

"Decent?" The man pushed me.

The rest of the workers took this as an excuse to throw their leftovers from lunch at me while shouting insults. I eventually calmed them down by showing them a package of matches I'd picked up on the street that morning with a picture of a nude brunette on the inside. They all went silent and gathered around in a big circle. You'd think they had just seen fire for the first time, they were so absorbed in the picture as they passed it around.

For the next week I showed up each day and spoke to no one unless I had to. At the end of my first week I was fired without explanation. I just came in to work to find that my name had been removed from my cubbyhole. The others walked past me as if I didn't even exist.

By this time I'd had really had enough. That night, as if following an invisible cue, I got another letter from the Army. I wasn't even sure how they'd found me. Perhaps Lilli had me followed and squealed. I had to report to the authorities immediately or I was officially under arrest. I had to leave Paris. My life was going nowhere. I took a job under the table as courier and worked eighteen hours a day until I saved enough for a bus ticket. Anywhere would do. In six weeks I was ready to leave.

Just as I was ready to buy a one-way ticket out of Paris I got a call from Alan. He had just bought a restaurant and offered me a job in the kitchen. I accepted immediately. The thought of moving to a smaller, more rural area was more than just attractive. It was perfect. I was finished with Paris. Finished with all the anger and pain that Jillian's loss and Heather's death had driven me through. Finished with Sodergren and Lilli. St. Croix and Munif. The whole works. So, penniless and filled with self-loathing, I left Paris in search of renewal.

# 5.

### The Killers

### I

With each passing day I felt stronger. I quit drinking with only minor withdrawal symptoms and began eating a diet rich in bread, fish, and cheese. I wore shorts and tee shirts during the day so the sun could tan my pale skin. I exercised regularly. My first day in Rodez I took the old jacket I had worn during the Parisian winter and burned it behind a shed near a deserted farm outside the city limits. Then I took a long walk through the parks and city streets, wondering what my new life would bring me. On the way back I passed the asylum. Where only months ago it was a building enshrouded in the mysteries of Jillian's disappearance, it now seemed as ordinary as an old school from my past, oddly lacking the magic and power it once had over me. I was surprised to find I had already walked past it before it even registered that it was once associated with Jillian. It wasn't that I hadn't noticed the building when I walked by, but rather that I had seen it only for what it was in the present, namely a mental institution.

A week later I started working in the kitchen of Alan and Gigi's new restaurant, Le Clocher Doré. There, I worked as an assistant to a master chef named Ulaf. He had just moved from Finland where he had worked in a French restaurant for seventeen years. He was a giant, portly man who walked with a slight limp. He had a wide, almost flat face that framed an enormous smile beneath a pair of sapphire blue eyes.

"In Finland...we know food," he liked to say. "The French, you make it and consume it, but the Finnish, we know it."

"Of course you know it," joked Alan. "Because there is so little of it to know. Cook up a little reindeer and pinecone soup and you're already a master Chef!"

Later that week I found a modest room in a house with a widowed German woman named Uta and her seven-year-old daughter Lotte. Uta was a quiet woman who had ash blonde hair that she always tied back in a braided ponytail. Her face radiated a child-like innocence, but sometimes when she spoke, her dark eyes became hard and serious, making it difficult to maintain eye contact without occasionally looking away. She often spent her evenings playing violin in her bedroom after she put Lotte to bed. My room was in the attic and for the first two weeks I had little contact with them except for perfunctory greetings and the occasional conversation about the weather. The house was small with two stories and a basement. The bedrooms were located at the top of a set of winding stairs and the main floor consisted of a living room with a small fire hearth, which always seemed to be black and glowing orange with embers. Over time I learned more and more about Uta. Her husband Jan went missing while on duty guarding a military base outside of Mannheim. A year later his body was found in a forest almost a hundred miles away. Since there were no obvious motives, the police called it suicide. Uta was studying to be a concert violinist and had been preparing for her audition with the Berlin Philharmonic when Jan went missing. I listened with great sympathy one night as she told me how after her bereavement she burst into tears while playing Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. It was an important audition and she was forced to withdraw. At the time, Lotte was only two. Since then the two had lived with relatives in various parts of Germany until a year ago had finally decided to move to Rodez to start a new life. Uta easily picked up work as a music teacher. Lotte had just entered her second year of school. She had difficulties with French and English, but had a great aptitude for art and singing.

Three weeks after I moved in Lotte finally overcame her shyness and approached me. She showed me a series of crayon drawings she had made. In broken French, she told me they depicted the world as seen from the eyes of a hummingbird, a dolphin, and a snail. The first was drawn in light scribbles and pastel colors and showed a rim of bushes, each with a nest in it. The second was more solid in its shadings, yet at the same time more fluid in its overall dynamics. It showed a school of tiny blue fishes swimming behind a shark that she said was too full to be interested in eating them. The last was the funniest of the three. When she first handed it to me all I saw was a green sheet of paper.

"Snails," she said, "always look down with their eyes."

"Where are their eyes," I asked.

"Their antennas. Everyone knows that."

She went on to explain to me that since they always looked down and lived almost exclusively on leaves, their world consisted of nothing but the color green with only minor aberrations.

"Snails get bored of green. When they see red or blue, it's like Christmas for them. Last Christmas Mommy gave me a big box of candy."

I took it as a hint and walked her to the store down the street to buy her some jellybeans.

Every night I fell asleep to the sound of Uta praying. She stayed up playing her violin until the early hours of morning and mumbled what sounded like passages of the bible in German. Sometimes she would come into the living room and sit in front of the dying hearth. Once, while passing by the room to get a late-night glass of water, I caught her kissing the silver cross she wore around her neck. Then she dangled it over the orange bed of the fire. She didn't see me and I crept back to my bedroom without getting the water, lest she catch me watching her. I fell asleep listening to the sound of her prayers. Although I didn't understand the words, her voice resonated with such beauty I imagined I knew what she was saying.

The next day was a Sunday and I woke up to the sound of Uta singing to Lotte. This time I understood the words. In her broken English I could make out the lyrics to Blake's Jerusalem. Strings of light passed through the lacy curtains of my window and twined around my naked body. I stood up and looked out the window. Lotte and Uta were sitting directly below on the stone patio just outside the kitchen. Although the window wasn't open, a smell of something like raspberries wafted through my room. I put on my clothes and walked quietly down the stairs to join them. When I got to the kitchen I stood inside and watched the beautiful scene. Uta was wearing a long off-white dress with sandals on her feet while Lotte was still in her nightclothes. An airplane passed overhead as I watched a bumblebee hovering in front of the window. As I watched them I could almost see them walking with reddened cheeks and smooth, white skin down one of Renoir's winding garden paths. The blissful air churning with summer warmth and light. Lotte turned and caught me smiling at them. For that brief instant I wished Uta were my wife and Lotte my daughter.

"Mommy, look," she said.

Uta turned and smiled while pulling Lotte's head into her lap. The tenderness of the sight overwhelmed me.

I walked out onto the patio and Uta moved over on the bench to allow me room to sit.

"Would you like to sing with us?" asked Uta.

"I'd be delighted," I said.

She taught me the words to two German hymns that morning. One was the story of a man who had lost his children in war and was crossing a great battlefield in search of his wife. The last lines compared the rhythmic sounds of soldiers' footsteps to his wife's heart beating almost silently beneath her white-laced breast in some distant land. The second was a celebration of the presence of God as expressed in the colors of a flower garden. Although I was not at all religious, the words made me yearn for something beyond what my eyes could perceive, something rich with warmth and wisdom, radiating a light so strong it could eclipse my darkness completely.

A few weeks later I started reading Lotte bedtime passages from Joyce's Dubliners. I felt they were simple and straightforward while still charged with charm and depth. Lotte liked Araby, the story of the little boy who wants to go to the fair, but only gets there in time to see its closing. Uta returned the favor by reading to me passages from Rilke, Holderlin and Goethe after Lotte was put to bed. I learned to love these moments and looked forward to them each day while I worked under the enthusiastic wing of Ulaf in Alan and Gigi's new kitchen.

One night Lotte came up to me just after brushing her teeth. She sat beside me on the couch and watched me reading a volume of Rilke with English translation on the facing page.

"Why is there light?" she asked me.

"Light," I struggled for a good explanation. "It's a propagation of waves..."

"Like the water?"

"No. Well, only sort of."

"Why isn't it wet, then?"

"Wait. I've got a better idea."

I accounted for the existence of light by telling her a mock-Arthurian legend about a mystical white stag that used to appear as a ghostly apparition beside a marsh in a world that existed before the creation of the cosmos. The stag, I told her, was the only visible object in the world at the time, yet was really only a ghost, radiating light. The only way the stag could be liberated and become flesh was if a certain handsome prince recognized the inner beauty of the hideous creatures of the marsh. One day the prince was hunting one day and came upon the marsh. He chased a fox into the rushes and caught his foot on a knotted branch, falling face first into the muddied black water. Close to losing consciousness and on the verge of drowning, he felt a kind presence behind him grab his foot and release it from the grasp of the branch. The prince, in a hazy state as if emerging from a dream, was so grateful that he turned around to where he thought the presence was standing and embraced the darkness. He felt a warm form, that he immediately kissed, imagining it was a beautiful woman. Its body was covered in weeds, yet he felt no repulsion. As he came to, he realized that he was embracing a revolting swamp creature. He wanted to shriek, but it was too late. The stag appeared before him in a great effulgence of white light that was so blinding that he could hardly look. The light got stronger and stronger, spilling out as it blasted forth like lava from a volcano. Soon the whole landscape was alive with midnight colors and the sky was awash with milky stars and the silvery disc of the moon. The stag nestled up to the prince, but only briefly. It was now flesh! Off into the lively night it trotted. The prince then turned his head to see that the swamp creature had become a holy man! They stayed up walking all night and in the morning for the first time in his life he saw the sun rise.

Lotte turned to me with a look of cunning surprise.

"How could he see the fox if light wasn't invented yet?"

"He felt it."

"You can't feel things unless they're in your hands already."

"Not in this world. They felt with their minds."

Uta then came in and put her to bed. After reading Lotte a story, she came out and asked me how my reading was going.

"Slow. I'm trying to learn the language, but it's hard."

"It's the ideas that count," she said, dimming the light from the kerosene reading lamp beside the couch. "Rilke always believed that ideas rose above everything. The flesh and the soul. Beyond the world of the body and the world of feelings. That's why it's so beautiful. The poetry, I mean."

I felt in Uta the enveloping presence of a spiritual force whose wings were broad enough to embrace all those who stood in her presence. This force was something I had never sensed before in anyone. Was she really so unique, or had my eyes merely been opened to that which they were blind to for so many years? Here was a woman anchored to both the earth and the stars, nature and heaven. From the anguish of her husband's loss she rose like a flower, continuing to blossom forth in such natural resplendence that standing in the room with her was akin to listening to a fine aria. To her, collecting milk from the nearby store to put on the breakfast table was as pure and solemn an act as reciting a prayer in front of the fire. After my experiences in Paris it was hard not to be moved by such a woman.

### II

It was already Autumn. Over the past few weeks the trees had changed color from a deep rich green to a pale greenish yellow and finally to amber, gold and orange. Soon they would be red and, after that, completely bare. I was walking alone down a set of narrow switchbacks along a grassy hill covered with clusters of strangely unseasonal electric blue flowers. The sky suddenly darkened. On the horizon a row of thunderclouds had assembled, hovering in the sky like leaden mallets waiting to pulverize the earth below. A deep sadness welled up inside me as I reached the bottom of the hill. I knew that from now on nothing would ever be the same. Alan and Gigi were getting married that afternoon. The wedding was to take place in a small white chapel with an unorthodox helical spire and tall, narrow wooden door. Ulaf and I were the only guests. Alan wanted to keep it a secret from all his old bar friends and other undesirable acquaintances in Paris.

"Who knows?" said Alan. "One of those freakish women from Le Phare Enragé I slept with might show up and claim I got her pregnant. Shhh, Jean, shhhhh." He spread out the last hush for almost a minute while he swirled his head around in a ridiculous effort to push the last traces of air out of his lungs and through his lips.

To Gigi, the whole affair was her one last act of rebellion against her parents who lived only a few kilometers from the site of the wedding. She told them nothing about it and wanted them to read about it in the paper the next day. Her justification was that they never liked Alan anyway but would still insist on turning the wedding into a grandiose spectacle. I was the best man and Ulaf reluctantly played the awkward part of the bridesmaid.

"Funny," said Alan over a glass of champagne after the service was over. "To think that a year ago we were both dragging our cocks through the beds of Paris! How life changes! If you'd asked me a year ago if I would ever marry Gigi, I would have laughed in your face."

"Ha, you miserable little man," Gigi butted in. "And you think I was just waiting for you to say the word? You have no idea what sorts of mischief I was up to all those years."

"Have some champagne, you old witch!"

"I love you when you're drunk," she said.

They broke out laughing and embraced so tenderly that for that moment I wished I could have been standing between them.

"Yes," Alan continued as he let Gigi slip from his embrace. "Look around you. It's so beautiful." He ran over to a bench beside a row of beautifully sculpted bushes that had started to show signs of red on their leaves. "Yes." He stood up on the bench as if delivering a soliloquy and threw his arms in the air. "You. Gigi. Ah. Let me live another life again and again! We are all part of a tiny little family with the biggest heart in the world. The World! What a marvelous word. And our beloved restaurant, our little love nest! We serve quail over orange and chocolate, wild rice with wine-dipped asparagus and lobster stuffed with Gruyère! I look about me...here, in the cradle of the earth. Joy. Let's be happy together on this day of days. I remember those sterling moments when as a child..."

"What a buffoon," Gigi whispered in my ear as Alan continued. Ulaf looked on with a placid drunken face as red as his cranberry and pine needle sauce.

It was the end of an era. The clouds moved across the landscape like imaginary flying machines from the notebooks of a medieval inventor, casting a gray monochrome shadow over everything. Even the strange blue flowers that covered the grass had taken on a distinctly gray appearance.

I hugged Alan and Gigi and gave them my best. I had to get home before it started to rain. Lotte and Uta had gone back to Germany for the week and I was already starting to get lonely. All I really had now was the crackling hearth and a few books by Goethe to keep me busy.

When I got home, more out of a curious nostalgia than a desire to recapture my days with Jillian, I picked up my old volume of Artaud and began to read it again. I was especially keen to see how I might react to it now that my life had changed so drastically. Once I looked upon him as a curious genius, and later as the source of some dark ideology that had dragged Jillian away from me but ironically also held the key for her return. And still later, after I had freed myself from Jillian, I began to see him as a man who rebelled against all that was vacuous in life. But since coming to Rodez I had completely lost interest in his work. It seemed like little more than the shallow and vacuous outpourings of a lunatic.

I sat beside the hearth and lit the oil lamp beside Lotte's baby picture. A few wisps of red hair sprouted from her head and her eyes were an almost impossible shade of blue-green. Lotte hatte die augen blauen, I thought, recalling the words from Jean Renoir's film La Grande Illusion in which a French soldier leaves the home of a single woman and her daughter to cross the Swiss border. Uta had named Lotte from those very lines.

I opened a collection of Artaud's letters at a random page, noticing that Lotte had drawn in pencil a picture of a noble-looking white stag with long and complex horns - like interlocking arabesques or coiling vines - on the inner front sleeve. It was a strange coincidence that she had drawn the form of the stag on that particular spot. The stag represented all the beauty of the inner world made flesh and blood. Wasn't this what Artaud was about? However it wasn't the beauty of the mind, but all its terrors and anguish that were struggling to be made flesh.

On the third page I spotted a quote that I had never noticed, but somehow felt I recognized. It was written during his last days at the Rodez asylum.

And Evil is only waiting for us to strangle us all, for a moment of weakness or merely of lack of vigilance on the part of the Pure who have defended me in this terrible business of magic and spells, which are the magic and the spells of Satan.

I read on into the night with frenzied enthusiasm, underlining words and phrases that rang with new truths I'd never noticed.

And Van Gogh was not there, he who painted the Arles Café. But I was at Rodez, that is to say, still on earth, while all the inhabitants of Paris must have felt, all one night, close to leaving it.

Indeed! All the inhabitants feeling close to leaving Paris with its burlesque whores and streets of rats and garbage. What a thin disguise were its colorful buildings and glowing promenades! How foolish I was to let myself sink into its mire. Yet perhaps it was a necessary process, like the prince in my story sinking in the pool before he can see true beauty. And this fairy tale was made up on the moment, giving credence to those who think that a man's spontaneous outbursts are telling barometers of his inner psyche. The Arles Café! Some of Jillian's very first words to me. How ironic, I thought, as I read on. Then I came upon a passage that was so unusual I had to read it aloud in front of the fire.

Dead to the world; dead to that which is for everyone else in the world, fallen at last, fallen, uplifted in this void that I once refused, I have a body that submits to the world and disgorges reality.

How different from his earlier period where he sought to escape the swooning vortex of his mind, to throw himself, as I did, into the world of the body. Yet, just as I did since coming to Rodez, he eventually rejected the crass world of the flesh in favor of an elevated world of love and beauty, however tormented he was. He disgorged reality in favor of the soul.

How clear the love act, how clear the sin. So clear. What seeds, how sweet these flowers are to the swooning sex, how voracious the heads of pleasure, how pleasure spreads her poppies to the extremes of the game. Her poppies of sound, of daylight and music, swiftly, like a magnetic tearing of birds. Pleasure playing a trenchant and mystic melody on the sharp edge of a thin dream. Oh! The dream where love consents to open its eyes once more!

And in this soul, sprang a new love and from this love, in turn, a new form of pleasure not at all related to the impulses of the body! In Uta, for the first time in my life I had learned to love a woman in a way that was free of any sexual desire. How proud I was.

Inspired by these passages, I dressed and grabbed my coat to take a long nighttime walk. The air outside was warm, yet dry and comfortable without a trace of the heavy humidity that might take the edge off my momentary bliss. I walked down a long road and then to a fenced area in the middle of which was suspended, as if hovering an inch or two off the ground, a rhomboidal sheet of light. When I moved closer, it became obvious that it was actually the reflection of a nearby street lamp off a shiny plastic tarp. I watched it ripple as a light breeze passed over its silky surface. I walked past this fenced area, which seemed to have some military or police-oriented function, towards a church with a twisted crosier-shaped spire standing at the end of a cul-de-sac. In the distance I could see the faint outlines of triangular rooftops poking through what appeared to be a light bed of fog that had somehow descended on the area. I thought it odd that in such dry air a mantle of fog would appear. Yet, the roofs sprang up from the bottom of a deep valley where all the night's dew and moisture could have settled, funneled down by gravity to the lowest point on the landscape. As I walked closer, I saw the beginnings of a path that descended into the valley. Curious as to the source of the fog - or whether it was really fog at all and not smoke or perhaps an optical illusion - I followed the path down through a dense thicket of bushes where for several minutes I thought I was lost. In the midst of tangled boughs and gnarled branches that speared out into my face and clawed at my body, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of primeval terror. I imagined each tree as a malevolent being whose purpose on Earth was to somehow guide me to my ruin. I felt I was surrounded by cackling gnomes and screeching demons. The faster I ran, the thicker the bushes became until it seemed I was surrounded by a wall of naked branches. For some time I continued to push in frantic desperation, escaping from the darkness like a child running up a flight of stairs imagining that he's being chased by a legion of shadows and ghouls as he desperately runs to the safety of his bed. I pushed as if through a wire fence, ignoring the scratches and lacerations to my skin, until I broke through into an open and well kept garden.

All was quiet.

I wiped my face with my hands and as I expected they became wet with blood. I looked around me. The lawn was trimmed close to the ground like a golf course and the bushes from which I'd just escaped formed a perfect circle around the green except for a narrow opening to a path. I walked across the lawn and followed the path, trying to see if what I had told Lotte about seeing with your mind was really true. The darkness was so pronounced that I had to walk with outstretched hands to ensure that I didn't walk into a bush or wall. At the end of the path was a light. I quickened my pace until I reached the path's end. It opened into a broad boulevard from which I could see, now from street level, the same triangular roofs that I had observed before I plunged through the bushes. The street was abandoned. I walked until I came closer to the houses from which the triangular roofs emerged. I was now in the middle of a tangled mass of interlocking streets and crescents. It was an area in Rodez with which I was completely unfamiliar. For a moment I wondered if I had not mysteriously found my way into an entirely different city. I searched for a road sign to offer me some form of bearings. I found only a traffic sign announcing the speed limit in large bold numbers.

Across the street was a children's park. I heard the squeaking of an old swing. But the wind was dead so there had to be someone in the park. I crept across the street to see who it was. Then I saw a brilliant streak of white blur across the schoolyard. A swan? A nun wearing a wide, winged hat? The swinging sound had stopped and I walked on slowly, turning my head to check my back, convinced that I was being watched. I smelled burning wood, suggesting that what I originally thought was a blanket of fog was actually smoke. I felt at ease, happy that the effect wasn't just my imagination or an optical illusion. In the depths of night any handle on reality is welcome. Then I saw the white flash again, but this time it moved slowly and gracefully like a ghost ship sailing through the warm air. I looked closer, riveting it to my eyes as it coasted across the park. I saw the outlines of a figure beneath it. It was a woman. As I approached, more detail emerged. It was like watching an image appear on freshly exposed photographic paper just immersed into a bath of developer. The figures crystallized. I heard voices. I ducked behind a bus shelter and studied them. The second figure was a male and had a deep, mumbling voice. They walked towards the fence across the sidewalk from the bus shelter. I crouched down. Since there was no streetlight nearby, I was sure they couldn't see me. Directly in front of me, on the bus shelter, was a poster-sized ad for a new brand of perfume. The light was so dim I could barely see the figures in the ad biting each other suspended in grainy static darkness. My focus shifted back to the two figures. They were approaching, now only about sixty feet from me and on the other side of the wire fence. Soon, they were directly in front of the fence. I stood up and pretended I was waiting for a bus. In the silence of the night their voices became audible. The deep voice echoed through the air with its deep, tense vowels. The female voice was lighter. I listened more carefully to their conversation. Some words were louder than others and jutted out of the baseline of silence like punctuated shouts. Other words were slurred or indiscernible while still others were spoken in uneasy whispers. There seemed to be no particular flow to the sound of their conversation. Whispers were followed by needle-sharp hollers, and then dreamy, vague words that sounded like an indecipherable foreign language. From what I could piece together, they were lovers in the midst of a passionate argument. I heard scattered words like imprisonment, anguish, and freedom. The man seemed to be trying to convince the woman that the reason she didn't love him anymore was because she was going crazy and only he could provide the cure. My hearing suddenly cleared and everything became sharp as if I were in a rapidly descending aircraft and had just swallowed to pop my ears.

"You've gone astray," said the male voice.

"Leave me alone," said the female voice in the irate tone of someone shrugging off harassment.

"You need to see things clearly again. You're losing faith."

"Faith? What do you know about faith? I had to push you to go through with our agreement."

"True. But that was last year. Everything has changed. Can't you see?"

"No. I can't."

"What happened to you?"

"Get away from me."

"What are you trying to do? Get your hands off me."

"No. I won't."

"Stop it!"

"There's nothing more to stop. It's over. Over. Do you hear me? Over!"

The male voice slowed into melancholy. "For me it's not," it said.

I heard a sigh of defeat and then a deep breath. A taxi rushed by and the silence persisted for what seemed like five minutes. Then the male voice broke through the dead calm.

"Jillian. Why?"

I couldn't believe my ears. I tensed up and pressed the side of my head as close to the glass of the shelter as I could, hoping that the sound of their voices would intensify. It didn't.

"There is no why. There is only the unknown. You're so simple. Such a follower by nature."

"A follower, now?"

"For you this whole thing was a formula without any substance behind it. The proposition of a physical law with no experimental proof that it corresponds to anything real. But for me it's different. It was the expression of a deep inner need and now my needs have changed."

I stood up and moved slowly, taking soft deliberate steps towards the edge of the shelter so I might confirm what my ears had just detected.

"You're crazy. We're in on this together. You and me. There's no out anymore. No out at all. Nothing! We're chained."

"Chained? I'm chained to no one but myself. There's no way you're going to keep me from doing what I want. I follow an inner paradigm, etched on my soul like an image in stained glass. You were merely one panel on that glass. One part of the story. Now I have to move on."

I reached the edge of the shelter and poked my head around with the silent slow motion of a chameleon on the glass wall of an aquarium. The light was too weak to be sure, but I could make out a woman of Jillian's height. I narrowed my eyes in anger. The man was pacing back and forth and waving his hands about.

"You can't. I won't let you," he screamed.

"Be quiet. The police might come."

"No. I won't. " There was suddenly a scream. It was so loud I ducked behind the shelter to cover my ears.

"You won't get away from me. I'll follow you forever," the male voice said.

"What do you have to gain? Don't be a fool. You'll find another."

"There is no other."

"Then you'll have to be alone forever."

There was a second scream, half in pain, and half in menace.

Then I heard a struggle.

"Put that down," said Jillian.

"No. I'll shoot if you don't come with me. We have a train to catch and you're coming."

"No I'm not."

A shot rang out. The air shook. I tensed up, certain that whoever prevailed would jump the fence and find me sitting there eavesdropping.

"And I only wanted to love you," the male voice muttered, faltering and weak.

"Don't die. I can't lose you..."

"And I loved you so much. I would have done anything."

"Don't."

There was a thud followed by Jillian's scream. I'd never heard the expression of such concentrated pain in all my life. Then silence. I moved quickly to the edge of the bus shelter. In the distance I saw a fading streak of white moving like a hunted rabbit through the night air. I moved from behind the shelter and up to the fence. I saw the outlines of a body on the ground. I jumped over and knelt down beside it. I turned it onto its back.

The light was so weak I didn't believe what I saw before me. Munif was lying down in front of me. It was like the first time I saw him wounded on the ground in the desert, but this time he wad dead. I threw my face into his stomach and shouted so loud I was sure everyone within a few blocks could hear me.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARDS, YOU SICK FUCKING BASTARDS!"

### III

In that one moment while leaning over Munif's cold figure everything I learned from Lotte and Uta vanished into nothingness. All the afternoons we spent sitting out on the patio reading passages from Schiller's Wallenstein, the times I helped Lotte with her English lessons and watercolors, and those faint evenings I listened to the words of Uta's prayers resonate in front of the glowing embers of the fire were gone. All the calm beauty I'd built between us came toppling down like a grass hut in an avalanche. I felt like a saint who, on dying and rising to the afterlife, discovers that God is a monkey and he might just as well have spent his entire life swinging from a branch for all this blank-minded, chattering idiot of a deity cared.

That night I could hardly sleep. I tried to piece together what had happened and whether or not Jillian had seized the gun from Munif at the last minute and turned it on him or if he had shot himself when he realized he couldn't do anything to change her mind. I also wondered what Sodergren had to do with Munif, and whether they were somehow in collusion, or if the Swede had been working all along to undermine their relationship for his own selfish ends and was taunting me the closer he sensed he was to winning her away from him – and me. As the night drifted onwards I should have wondered who Munif really was and why he and Jillian had both faked their murders, but instead I tried to remember how Jillian's skin and hair used to smell. The temptation was too much to resist. When I saw her by the asylum I had only caught a glimpse, but this time her presence was so much more palpable. She once again became a real person and ceased to be an abstraction. Eventually I fell asleep as the first rays of dawn stretched from the horizon. I shivered in my sweat as my mind moved from one dream into another. In each I was following Jillian down the same path that led me into the thicket the night before. In some she was close in front of me, waiting for me to catch up so I could grab her and kiss her. In others she ran like a phantom lynx through the bushes, slipping between the tangled branches like a creature woven from vapor and light. Through all of these dreams I tried to fight my feelings for her as if they were that deadly sense of drowsiness arctic explorers try to fend off before the onset of hypothermia. I told myself she was crazy - a murderess even - and had become so incorrigibly twisted that I could never love her again. Yet the more I lectured myself on her corruption, the more I yearned to break through the shimmering meniscus of her beauty and touch that brilliant darkness inside her.

In the morning I got up and passed Lotte as she was playing by the bottom of the stairs. A sadness descended upon me. However dearly I loved her and Uta, I now knew I had to leave. A tear came to my eye.

"Why are you crying?" she asked, hugging her weather-beaten teddy bear.

"I'm feeling a little sick. Do you know when you get a flu and you feel so bad that all you can do is cry?"

"You don't look sick."

"It's different than that."

"Why?"

"When you turn into an adult you get different types of sicknesses that don't have any medicine."

"That's funny." She turned to her teddy bear. "Don't you think that's silly? All illnesses have cures accept for getting shot. That's what mommy said."

"Maybe she's right, then. Maybe it's just the air. I think it smells like smoke."

"I hope it's not a fire," she said and ran outside with her teddy bear to turn on the sprinkler.

I spent the day fixing stuffed quail with bourbon and squash sauce for a banquet the restaurant was catering that evening. I didn't finish until seven at night, having to redo six orders after dropping them on the floor. Alan noticed my disconcertment and gave me the next day off. I resisted the temptation to tell him what had happened. He and Gigi would probably find out from the papers, but I just didn't want them to know I was at the scene of the murder. I just wasn't ready to talk about it yet. Changes were occurring inside me so quickly that I was starting to lose my bearings. That night I sat in silence eating potato and leak soup with Uta while Lotte was out playing with her friend. Eventually Uta broke the silence.

"Did you see the paper today?"

"No," I said tensely. However hard I was trying not to, I was already treating her as a person drifting away from me "Was there something unusual?"

"A murder."

"Really? Here?" I felt so cowardly feigning ignorance.

"Yes. Over in the valley. They say that it's someone who was presumed dead from a previous murder investigation. They also said the victim was blind because of a white cane found near the premises. The police aren't releasing any more information than that. It sounds like some sort of gang-related stuff."

The white cane! Since I had not spotted it the night before, a new possibility entered my mind. What if it belonged to Sodergren and he had shot Munif from some secret vantage point to protect Jillian? I continued eating and shifted the conversation to Lotte's most recent spurt of artwork. After a few minutes, silence fell again. After a few minutes silence Uta got up to go to the other room. She came back with a letter and handed it to me.

"It just came today. I'm sorry I forgot about it."

There was no return address or sender's name on it, and because of the lack of a stamp I assumed it was hand delivered. I opened it immediately and read the first two words. Dear Jean. The handwriting was unmistakable. I excused myself as politely as possible without revealing my anxiety and went upstairs to read it, tripping twice on my way to my room.

I sat on the edge of my bed, trembling as I read the letter...fearing every unread word as if each was a tiny but irreplaceable cog in the grinding wheel of my destruction.

Dear Jean,

Oh, how I've missed you. How foolish it was of me to ever think I could go on without you. The smell of your hair in the morning, the touch of your hand on my shoulder, all so irreplaceable. How much you must have changed! I'm sorry for leaving you. I can feel even as I write that you no longer care for me. I can feel our love slipping away from us like the shallow lives we both once led. But one thing I learned is that love doesn't end, Jean. It survives indifference, hated, and even death.

I'm sure that you want an explanation. I'm sure you think I'm twisted beyond belief. The reasons are so complex. The story is so long. To tell you in a few words would be to relate the story of the birth of the universe in a single minute. And we have very little time! Who knows what the authorities are thinking now...

Don't ask me how I know where you are staying. I have my sources. And please don't blame Annette. She has no idea where I am. There is no chance for us anymore. I'm afraid I'll have to go for the rest of my life without my little sister. How I began to hate her cloying smile. Everything she did was because of me. If I wore chartreuse, so did she. But then if I brought it up, she'd switch to, say, indigo, but only as a reaction to what I said. I suppose she even told you about my teen years. Did she tell you how she secretly longed to be like me? In spite of all this I love my sister more deeply than anyone. Anyone except for you. I've grown beyond my rivalry with her. To even call it a rivalry makes it look like I was actively competing with her. This is false. Entirely so. Yes, I love her, but I can afford to let that love pass into the realm of memories. You are the only one I can't shake from my life. You are the only one whose blood continues to pulse through my veins.

Oh, my God. A noise....

I'm so frightened Jean. I don't know what to do. I know you saw me last night in the park. You were hiding behind the bus shelter listening to everything I said. You probably want an explanation. That will come later. There is always a later in life. Always a later to give you a second chance, always a later to make your greatest victories crumble away into the past! I can't tell you where I am. All I can do is beg that you meet me back in Lyon. We can meet in that café we always used to go to. Façade. I've emptied myself of the past almost completely. Only a few items remain. A few loose memories. And you. Come with me. We could be together, Jean! You and I soaring over the wispy clouds like deviant angels of flesh and sensuality!

Meet me, Jean, meet me. In a week (October 23) at 11 p.m. at Façade. I'm so terrified about what happened last night. I can't face the consequences. I need to get away and settle down. I need to gain a new perspective before I know what to do next. How quickly does a new life, a new existence, fade into something drab and unbearable, rife with indecision and doubt. You must think I'm a terrible creature for what happened. It was an accident. Munif tried to shoot me first. I'd grown beyond him and he wouldn't let me go. He tried to blackmail me to stay behind with him. Oh Jean! I love you more than ever.

Love, Jillian

A lock of her hair was in the bottom of the envelope and the top of the last page was smeared with crimson lipstick the color of half-dried blood. I was so exhausted I fell asleep almost immediately. I even forgot to listen to Uta's prayers.

### IV

The newspapers were filled with stories on the murder. The police were baffled. Forced to come up with a different identity for the old corpse first thought to be Munif, the Marseilles police opened up the case all over again. In a matter of days they had already linked the first murder to a report of a young Arab man who went missing almost a year ago, although there was still much speculation. My mind spun with hundreds of theories as to what had really happened between Jillian and Munif, all equally horrifying and unbelievable.

A week after I received the letter from Jillian I was standing on the back patio listening to Uta and Lotte singing a musical adaptation of a Holderlin poem that Uta had transcribed herself. Lotte held up her teddy bear and sang to it as if she were a Broadway star serenading her lover in some bright clover-filled field. I turned around and looked at my watch, checking to see how many minutes I had left before I had to catch my bus to the train station. I suddenly wondered why I was even thinking of going to meet Jillian. I told myself it was only out of a perverse curiosity that I wanted to see her, and only to find out what had happened. We'd talk like old friends. Then, as the last busses of the evening were rolling into their garages, she'd plead for my love and I'd refuse her. How could I love her after all that she'd done? There I stood with two of the most genuine people I'd ever met listening to their vocals weaving like spectral violas through the bleak October air.

"Lotte hat die augen blauen," I mumbled. Uta heard me and smiled knowingly without breaking the flow of their song. I breathed in and listened, letting the words roll away like a golden river into the distance. That morning I told them I was going away for a weekend to check out a job in Lyon and that I'd most likely be back the next week. I wasn't sure exactly how much I believed what I told them, but wasn't the fact that I'd neglected to tell Gigi and Alan about the letter enough proof that my trip to Lyon was only going to be for a few days? Don't people normally give notice when they're leaving a job to take up a new life?

Lotte and Uta stopped and I hugged them both separately. I held Lotte like I would my own child. I kissed Uta on the cheek and felt her head turn her lips towards me. The gesture surprised me since I'd always seen her as a creature too pious to be moved by physical pleasure.

"Lotte hat die augen blauen," I repeated, curling my finger through a braid of hair hanging over Uta's left ear.

"You've seemed so gloomy since the letter. I hope it wasn't bad news."

"No. I've just been under the weather."

"Oh, don't forget to call Alan from the train station. He did want to speak with you when he called this morning."

I turned to leave and felt my insides hollow out with every step I took towards the door. I didn't know how much I believed what I told myself - that I couldn't possibly love Jillian again. Over those few moments as I walked away from the house I was already imagining that I was telling Jillian of all my adventures. How I'd crossed the burning dunes of lust and debauchery and come out unscathed. How I'd ventured across the frozen gullies of hatred and despair only to reach new levels of strength and conviction. We'd meet like transfigured souls. She'd relate her odyssey and I'd relate mine.

I caught the bus and it let me off about half a block from the main station. I walked towards the entrance, watching a slick silver train speed across the landscape far away in the distance. I found a pay phone by the outside stairs and called the restaurant. Gigi answered.

"Oh! You. I thought we told you never to come back."

"What?"

"Ha. Had you fooled. I suppose you want to talk to the boss."

I heard the receiver drop and in the background I could hear some clattering of silverware and what sounded like someone kneading dough or chopping meat with a dull blade.

"You always call when I've got chicken fat on my hand," Alan said with a light chuckle.

"Sorry."

"You got my message?"

"Yes."

"I just don't want you to take that job in Lyon. Our profits are climbing. I can't imagine the place without you. Just say that whatever they offer you, we'll match with a fifty percent increase."

"You don't have to..."

"No. It's not just for friendship. You've learned to pour the orange chocolate paste like a master. I never would have imagined it when I met you. You truly are indispensable."

"I don't know about this job anyway. I've still got the military thing to sort out."

"Stay with us. If some fatso general comes your way trying to send you to prison, we'll just invite him to our restaurant and I assure you that even before he's finished the first course, he'll be working out your amnesty papers in his head!"

I strained out a laugh and promised I'd be back. When the train ground into the station five minutes later, my mind had already wiped away the last vestiges of our conversation. One image dominated my thoughts. Jillian. Her face: long drawn and angry; her eyes: deep pools of seduction.

How quickly does love - even self-love - blossom into hatred. And how quickly does hatred once again become love. How easily is one confused for the other. I boarded the train and went to the bathroom once I'd claimed a seat. I looked in the mirror, admiring my chiseled jaw line and uncombed hair. Jillian would love me again on sight. She'd throw her arms around me and everything would unfold once more as if nothing had happened. Our love was like a book hidden away on a shelf that only needed to be dusted off and reopened to reveal all the beauty captured within its pages. As I washed my face my thoughts turned back to Uta, and with them my self-admiration turned to self-loathing.

How could I be stupid enough to leave Uta? For all I knew the meeting with Jillian was a set up and she wanted to do me in before I told anyone about the murder. I was the lowest of the low, crawling back to my old girlfriend like an alcoholic to a bottle of gin. There I stood, admiring the way the coils of my hair wound around themselves as they fell from the side of my head to just above my ear. I was no better than a bronzed playboy on the cover of some trashy European fashion magazine.

The train rumbled into motion. I watched the web of metal girders - fifty feet above the platform on the ceiling of the station - slide by the window. I'd be in Lyon by evening. I'd be face to face with Jillian. Love doesn't end, I thought. Perhaps she was right. It stretches so far into death that they eventually become one. Thoughts rattled through my head. How did she ever become the way she was? Maybe it was her beauty that had tainted her. Maybe that was her downfall, her one tragic flaw. Beautiful women were always surrounded by entourages of men. It's like that since their first day of school: all the parents doting over their wonderful little bows and ribbons, while all the scruffy little boys sit on the sidelines frightened and intimidated by the early levels of female perfection. The same pattern follows them through life. The teenage girl with her entourage of men. The lovely bride in her proud white dress. It's no surprise that as soon as any relationship becomes serious and a beautiful woman loses the attention of other men, she begins to feel inadequate. So, who was really to blame? Us or them? Myself or Jillian? But if I didn't let her get away with her crimes, then certainly someone else would. Someone like Adrien. There was always someone waiting in the wings ready to step up and take over the fools' pulpit in the love of a beautiful woman. Always. And right now it was me.

I trembled with anticipation for the entire trip. The only thing that kept me sane was the seemingly endless supply of beer at the concession and the rich scenery rolling by the window. Grassy slopes eased by in the late autumn light. Trees \- deep brown and auburn - formed little clusters and tufts of color on the otherwise green landscape. In the distance I could make out what I thought were small barns, castles, churches, and fortresses while industrial warehouses and nuclear reactors stood in dramatic contrast in the foreground. My head began to pound with dizziness and pain. I bought a small tin of aspirin at the concession and took five tablets. Within half an hour I felt like a plastic mannequin, only half conscious of the world around me.

Eventually Lyon appeared in the far edges of my window. It started with the same generic industrial sheath that encapsulates all modern cities. The computer chip buildings, the white cisterns, the warehouses surrounded by jumbles of strange machinery. It could have been Baltimore or Bangkok for all it told me. Gradually the warehouses gave way to bleak modern apartment complexes, hanging laundry and broken bicycles decorating their cement patios. So much like a woman, I thought. So much like love. So generic. A face, a look, an attraction. All on the outside. And who could ever tell what was on the inside. Was Jillian right or wrong? Good or evil? My lover or my killer? Or did it even matter at all?

As we neared the station I dusk was already washing over the city, dissolving the definitions between the buildings and street signs that fell away in the distance. When the train stopped all was dark except for some outside warning lights organized in even rows along the myriad tracks stretching out from the station. A light rain fell and soon even these warning lights lost shape and contrast, as miniature rivers of water flowed down the windows of the train, washing away the last vestiges of a once Cartesian world.

The train shook as it stopped. I stumbled towards the door and paused for a moment beside an older woman. I was suddenly self-conscious of the fact that I hadn't bathed for two days. When I stepped onto the earth I felt a sudden dizziness. The ground was softer than I'd expected. Almost like rubber. Or maybe it was just my knees that were giving way as I walked past a row of cigarette machines towards the exit of the station. By this time the rain had almost reached tropical proportions. I checked my wallet for money. I had enough for a cab. I stepped up to the embankment and hailed the first one that came into view.

Ten minutes later we stopped in front of Façade. I paid the driver and hid my face behind my jacket as I walked past the window. I had to get a drink at a nearby bar to get ready for what I feared I might be facing.

### VI

I barely had time to rest my arm on the table and order a tall glass of Paulaner before I felt a light, almost ethereal tap on the back of my shoulder. I turned to find Jillian towering behind me. She was wrapped inside the folds of a body-length black fur coat that flared out dramatically between her knees and her ankles, giving the impression she was standing in the middle of an inverted funnel. Her hair was luxuriously long and dyed a deep unnatural shade of red. Her tall furry black hat fell to just above her eyebrows, leaving only a few wisps of hair dangling over her wide dark eyes. I looked into those eyes, and then dropped my gaze to a point just below the nape of her neck.

"Jean," she said as if she had just awoken. "You came."

I said nothing and moved my eyes slowly up her neck, now looking in the direction of her face, but instead focusing on a wall of beer glasses behind her. They seemed to posit their own form of superior existence: one without pain or human worries.

I thought I heard her sigh before she turned and walked to the counter to order a beer. Little had changed since the last time we were here, yet everything had changed. As she pulled out her wallet to pay for her beer I was mesmerized, watching the circular rim of her coat precess about the axis of her body while she leaned against the bar, angling her hips away from it as though she wanted all the world to see. When she turned back to me I mustered up the courage to look her in the eye. Her gaze immediately locked on mine. I sensed she was trying to draw me in. I resisted by looking away yet again. But that one instant when our eyes met was long enough to see that her face had changed. There were tiny wrinkles on the corners of her eyes and her cheeks sagged, but only slightly. The effect wasn't one of diminishing her beauty, but one of deepening or enhancing it. Some women were lucky enough to have faces that incorporate the marks of age into their greater beauty like the hints of spice in the peacock's tail finish of a fine aged Burgundy. She was one of these.

She pulled out the chair opposite mine and sat down.

"You're alive, " I said. My flat expression broke into an ironic grin.

"Did you ever think otherwise?"

"At times I did."

"Well, now you know for sure," she clutched my wrist with her hands as if to give me further evidence of her reality.

"But if you had actually died, it would have changed little. You'd still be Jillian and I'd still love you." The words came out as if drawn from within by some cosmic magnet. I felt myself drifting towards the realm of automatic speech. Our conversation unfolded like a great poetic dialogue.

"I did die. And as you can see, nothing has changed."

"The ballerina. If only you would have let me dangle on that golden thread with you."

"I tried. Yet we both knew it was impossible."

"All things are ultimately impossible. Life makes them that way. And love is the most impossible of all," I said, not knowing what I really meant.

"Love is not of this world, Jean," she said slowly, shaking her head in remorse. "It's this great dilemma that confronts us. It's above life. It's the only thing we really have, yet we can never truly partake in it. Life traps us in its cellars and prisons."

"Yet that's no reason not to aspire to loving someone," I said accusingly.

"You have me all wrong."

"Are you so sure? We know each other so well, how is there even the possibility of error between us?"

"You understand nothing. Your words are so empty. I suppose you believe you've grown through your experiences since my disappearance, that you're a much richer and wiser man than you once were."

"Maybe I am. I took peyote with Poilblanc and for the first time I came face to face with something so evil, I spent the next year running away from it."

"Yes," she said as if I had suddenly touched a deep chord. "You are...we are...all enshrouded by darkness."

"It seemed to follow me everywhere."

"Darkness is our energy, Jean. Feelings...Jean!" She grabbed my wrist and held it tightly.

"I've ascended and descended. Descending while believing I was ascending and vice versa. But now I understand. You probably left me because you thought I was a selfish and possessive lover who wanted to imprison you in his mental image of what you should have been rather than see things the way they were. You carried my image of you around like a shackle. You showed me up as a narcissist merely posing as your lover."

"You were worse. You were also a coward. You weren't even a true narcissist. Your self-love came only through default, a mere by-product of your fear and cowardice. You were too weak to reach outside of yourself and truly love someone else. Your life was merely an act. A show. You were only concerned with the beauty of the gesture and cared little for the consequences."

"And you were any different?"

"I've always been different. Perhaps not always righteous or virtuous, but different. Yes. Always different," she said, looking off into space as she barred her teeth at an imaginary assailant.

"I've changed so much," I said. "If only you could listen." For some reason I felt a need to win her approval.

"I'm not so naive as to think that you haven't. What makes you so special that you think I wouldn't notice? You're so self-centered you think the whole world is conspiring against you. It is only a paranoid man that thinks his lover has forgotten about him, and paranoia is one of the worst forms of narcissism. But I always knew what you were up to. Ever since the day Munif pulled you out of the desert. Everything was so carefully planned, except the shrapnel...that was an accident."

"You hired Sodergren to watch me, I suppose."

She looked at me strangely as though I had said something both incomprehensible and offensive. The thought occurred to me that she was hiding something and that she was planning on pinning Munif's murder on me so she could run off with Sodergren. She shrugged her shoulders and continued. "No. An old girlfriend of mine."

"Lilli Braun," I said.

She shrugged her shoulders once more. Then an even darker thought occurred to me. "Heather..." I felt a pain in my stomach that seemed to have no center.

"No. That would have been too pat. But don't think I didn't know what went on. It's so horrible what happened isn't it?"

"I can't believe you're saying this."

She ignored me completely and continued. "And I was just starting to find out about Uta or whatever her name is. She's far too noble for you. I could just picture you feeling so lofty and spiritualized as you watched her genuflect every night. How fake. You were an actor in our love, an actor in my death, and an actor with Heather. You posed as a angry womanizer as you wandered drunk through the gutters of Paris, and you posed as some great humanitarian when you lived with Uta."

"You don't know a thing," I said automatically. Yet I didn't even believe it myself. I felt her aura drawing me in. My defenses were weakening and I was already starting to give in to her interpretation of who I was.

"Now I'm going to convince you that I am the one who truly changed. I was the one that climbed to the loftiest heights and crawled to the deepest lows. Look at me, Jean."

I looked away.

"Look at me," she whispered angrily.

I looked at her.

"You're just like Poilblanc. He never left me alone. He always wanted me to be the image of what his perfect student was. If he were as handsome as you were, there wouldn't be a much difference between the two of you."

"I read the letter about your first meeting with Munif."

"I guessed you would."

"I suppose you left it there on purpose to toy with me."

"No. Just to give you hope. I thought the blow of my death might be too much for you to bear."

"How kind of you."

"I fell in love with him while you were in the army. He wanted to take me away. I refused to go because I still loved you. He wanted me to escape with him and never see you again. Half of me said yes. I so desperately needed to reinvent myself. I so desperately needed to escape the past and start all over again. Yet part of me still loved you. I knew I could never go through with his proposal unless there was something forcing me to stay away."

"Like murder?"

"It's not what you think, Jean. With every murder comes renewal."

I stood there, both horrified and transfixed by her inhuman, almost Kurtz-like confession. I felt as though I were in the presence of a strange power whose dark wisdom penetrated through everything. Yet in spite of its evil, I craved to see the world through its eyes.

"I wanted to become a new person. I was sick of who I was and I craved to push my work to its logical conclusion. In Rimbaud we had the flowering of literature and the expression of a fragmented self, a disoriented sphere of the senses. Artaud pushed this even further by making his work a window to his insanity. Rimbaud's work was only a perfume, but Artaud's writing was the flower itself. At the end of his life he declared all literature to be pigshit because he realized he had failed in his quest to make his work a true mirror to the disembodied self. So to go even further I reasoned that one had to lose oneself completely, in short die. That is the true purpose of all literature. To write from the standpoint of death. Didn't Rimbaud once proclaim: I am not of this world?"

"All of this to write a book?"

"You don't understand. The book and the life are one, or should I say death? The Theater of Cruelty as it should have been, dissolved of all relationship to the narrative self. That's why the purpose of the murder was really twofold. It served to provide a corpse that would ascertain my death, while also acting as an insurance policy, something to make sure I shed my former self for good, forever preventing me from resuming my former identity out of fear of being caught."

"Yet here you are."

"In leaving my former life I found I loved you in more ways than I had ever imagined. I thought I could give you up if I just saw you one last time. That's why I begged you to come back from North Africa. I waited for you to return while Munif grew impatient. Eventually, in desperation he went to get you. He watched your battalion for days waiting for a chance to get you alone."

She turned her head down sadly and began to cry. I refrained from comforting her, less from bitterness than fear of slipping further into her dark umbra.

"I never wanted it to get this way," she continued. "Things went bad. The posters went up. Poilblanc was always looking for me. I couldn't let go of the person I once was. We moved first to Tunisia where Munif worked in a glass shop while I stayed home and wrote. I tried to compose a novel devoid of any reference to anything I knew. Something truly universal. All the great writers can only look at the eternal though the lens of the temporal self. Shafts of wisdom shine through naturalistic tales of a person's life, yet the great effulgence is never truly revealed. How can it be? It rests in the beyond. Like love. Or death. In every description lies a grain of truth, an element of the eternal. Out of the words, the sounds, the images one can extract something of the mystical. Words are signposts pointing both towards the things they signify and some sort of higher world free from all the banalities of day-to-day existence."

"But it all crept back."

"You say that as if you're glad I failed."

"No. It was bound to fail. You can't escape life."

"Yes. It's so much truer than even what you say. I grew sick of North Africa. My novel was going nowhere. Words are built on the predication of identifiable objects in the world. Even words for the most abstract concepts address the signified notion as if it was somehow an object in the world. So ultimately language does nothing more than drag the eternal down into the world. It sullies it. It was then that I realized that the only true form of literature was the act of death itself, or living in death, living through death, as I was doing. A form of literature with no language at all, but that of death."

Sensing I was losing her train of thought, I turned the conversation back to something more concrete. "I suppose you were on the island watching me when I took peyote."

"No."

"Then why did I see a white cane?"

"Your visions mean nothing. Why make more of them than they are? It had nothing to do with me or Munif."

"When did he go blind?" I interrupted.

"He didn't. The cane was just a prop. It was his symbol of his inner self, because he felt that only when his eyes were closed and he was essentially blind could he truly be Munif and not the person that others made him into. That's what initially fascinated me about him. He taught me how to rebel against the way other people cast you into their self-protective little molds. People only see in a person what is convenient for them. If they want an angel, they make their lover into an angel. But if someone annoys them or threatens them, then they simply ignore that person's virtues and cast them as a worthless rogue or troublemaker. Blindness, Jean. The white cane!" She grabbed my hand and opened her mouth, letting the tip of her tongue roll around the inside rim of her lips.

"Do you still love me?" I asked, trying to break through her veil of abstractions and get to the core of whatever it was that had brought us together.

Her tongue froze in her open mouth and then she straightened her posture.

"Love? You are the one thing that made all this go wrong. You are what stopped me."

"What about Munif?"

"How can I love a dead man?" I was shocked at how she could speak this way about a person she had apparently loved enough to fake her own death.

"You said it yourself," I said. "Love doesn't end..."

"No. Love does end. Only some loves continue."

"Like ours?"

"Yes, Jean! Although I loved him at the time I now see that Munif was just a platform allowing us to spring to an even higher state of love. He broke us apart only to bring us together in an even more powerful way. He was an angel of light."

"What happened when you left Tunisia?"

"We came to Rodez. That was a mistake. I should have known you would go."

"So you saw me there?"

"No. Like I said, I had a friend who kept track of you. That's how I knew you were in Paris. It's not hard. You also kept in touch with Annette."

"How do you know?"

"My friend kept a better eye on you than you think."

"You're sick," I said.

"No. Smart is a better word."

"And who did the killing?"

"So many questions. You're so official. Why can't we just let things flow?"

"I have to know. Did you kill them with your own hands?"

She went quiet and lowered her head in regret.

"Munif killed the first one. I never asked any questions. I was so desperate to escape. He just came in one day and said it has been taken care of. Yet with my new existence I quickly began to grow angry with him. He was lazy and kept his old identity. I took it as a sign of insecurity and soon demanded that we equalize everything. For our relationship to continue it was necessary - and you can't argue with this - for me to mirror what he had done and kill someone in order to liberate him from his former self. It was ritualistic, passionless, in short, a murder of essentialities."

"How could you say that? How could you? You've become so cold. So inhuman."

"How quickly you judge something you known nothing about."

"Tell me, then. How did you do it?"

"I followed a drunken man home from a bar in a neighborhood filled with ex-convicts and former sex offenders. When I caught up to him I asked him if he could walk me home. But I was still unsure if I could go through with it, still frightened of what I'd become. Then, on my doorstep in Rodez, he pulled out a knife and demanded I let him inside. I was terrified until I remembered I was carrying a pistol. So I let him in. I pretended to be attracted to him. After I lulled him into complacency, I pulled out the gun and shot him. Then I planted Munif's ID card on him. It was that simple. I even laughed afterwards. Laughed because I knew I'd liberated him from his wretched existence and gave him something better. Yet even then my laughter terrified me."

"But the corpse had no discernable features..."

"Warm water and bleach for several days," she said without emotion. "As far as I know, they haven't even correctly identified it yet. I knew they might eventually – with forensics being what they are today – but that was not the point."

As I looked into her eyes I wondered how I could have been so foolish as to leave Uta. Jillian was right. Some loves don't end. But it appeared that this wasn't one of them.

"Jean!" she pleaded, sensing my growing contempt. "I had to get away from Poilblanc and all his silly expectations. All those careerist traps that were dragging me down. How could one truly understand Artaud from the rigid standpoint of a modern university? You can't think lowly of me." Again she started to cry, her tears glistening in the early winter light like droplets of quicksilver.

"I don't," I lied.

"Walk me home."

"We have no home here anymore. Don't you remember?"

"Then take me to your hotel. I need to feel your warmth once more. This whole thing has become such a nightmare. I've got nowhere to go but you. And I know with you it could be so good."

"We can find a hotel, " I said. "There should be a lot of vacancies this time of year."

I took her hand and escorted her outside. We passed a policeman. I wanted to turn her in, but couldn't muster up the guts. She was almost sad in her hubris: a weak hysterical woman bolstering her image with self-made tales of transcendence and literary grandeur.

Just as we crossed a street near a small grouping of quaint-looking hostels I felt a hand fall heavily on my shoulder. I stopped and looked at Jillian. Then we turned in unison. There, standing directly behind us was Poilblanc. He held a pistol in his hand and was grinned lavishly, his fat lips pressed loosely together like two wet thumbs. He poked the gun into my chest.

"Figured out the mystery of the white cane yet?" he said in a thick Scandinavian accent, smiling as he waved the gun in my face.

"Sodergren," I said in slow astonishment. It all seemed so obvious now, from the second white cane on the island to the strange parcels and the old book of poetry.

"A name I once used as an alias to publish a book of essays. I needed some way of throwing you off."

"You fucking bastard."

"Come on, don't just stand there. I've decided to extend my hospitality and invite you both to spend the evening with me. There's no need for a cheap hotel for your reunion."

"I never trusted you," I said.

"And I never respected you."

Poilblanc rammed the gun into my back as he followed Jillian and me to his car door. I could feel its cold steel snout wedged between my vertebrae.

"Jillian will drive," he said authoritatively. He jingled his keys in one hand and let the gun drop from my back. I turned around to face him while Jillian leaned up against the car, staring coldly at the pavement beneath her feet. "Just like our first outing to Delacroix's island. But the outcome will be so different this time, so drastically different."

He opened the front door and gestured for Jillian to get in the driver's seat. He walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and motioned with the gun for me to get in beside Jillian. I did as he asked. Just then I turned to Jillian and swept my eyes over to the door handle beside her, hoping she would catch my gesture and open the door to escape before he had a chance to get in. The back door opened and I felt a cold poke at the back of my neck.

"We're going to Marseilles," said Poilblanc. Jillian turned to him and held out her hand for the keys. He dropped them in her palm and kissed her cheek. Jillian accepted the kiss with indifference. She turned the motor over and engaged the clutch.

The roads were icy that night. I felt the rear wheels losing their grip several times on the way.

"So, it was all a set up," I said as we crossed a narrow bridge on the outskirts of town.

"Who are you asking, me or Jillian? But perhaps it doesn't matter and the answer is yes from both of us."

"If you put it that way, then I guess it really doesn't matter."

"To be honest, then, no. I knew nothing of her plans, but I'm still eager to hear her full story. You and I were like two little boys on a treasure hunt. Unfortunately, just as I was about to find the treasure, it sprang up in your face. If it hadn't, then you never would have found her. Therefore, I am the better man. Only luck brought you to her."

"Luck?" Jillian mumbled sarcastically under her breath.

"So did you really chop off someone's finger, or did you chicken out and steal it from some Medical school?"

"No. It was Stillman. But I asked him to do it."

"Stillman?" I said in a mocking tone. "How's he doing? Still sailing the seven seas?" Poilblanc rapped the side of my head with the gun barrel.

"Don't bite the hand that feeds. It's only out of the tenderness of my heart that I haven't disposed of you already."

I lowered my head and didn't look up for fear he might do something drastic. For the rest of the trip we all remained silent, the sound of Jillian and Poilblanc breathing mingling with the sound of the wind blowing by the car's windows.

### VII

After what seemed like hours we pulled into Marseilles. We made our way through the city and drove up to the same pier we had parked at before. Stillman was waiting beside a red garbage can wearing the same sailor suit he wore the last time I saw him. The water was covered with a glossy metallic sheen as the first hints of light reflected off its surface from the furthest reaches of the horizon. I looked over at Jillian. Her face had that same look of quiet urgency that she had the very first time we drove out to the island. We stepped out and waited as Poilblanc took his keys back from her.

"How much time do we have before sunrise?" were her first words as she broke the silence.

"I don't know," I said.

"Less than an hour," said Stillman. "The sun always creeps up when you least want it."

"You shouldn't have taken your pen," I said to Jillian.

She looked over at me without the slightest surprise, as if she had planned out my every action and response, and my question was something that she herself had prompted.

"Why? I did it on purpose. I had to give you some reason to believe I was still alive in case things didn't work out. What if Munif had turned out to be a killer?"

"Yes, what if he did? " I said ironically.

We boarded Stillman's boat and set off immediately. It was dawn by the time we set foot on the island. The sunlight filtered through the wind-swept layers of morning fog, giving the impression of a light sandstorm in a desert.

We got off the boat and walked the path up to the house. I noticed Stillman was grinning as though he found the whole scenario amusing.

"Open the door and walk inside," Poilblanc said. When you get into the living room, sit on the couch and wait for me and Jillian. It's been so long since I've sipped from the chalice of her lips."

As I opened the door I imagined his face - bloated and heavy like a chunk of bread in a bowl of French onion soup - slavering all over Jillian's. It brought back the bitter memories of those days when he was always trying to seduce her in his office. Days when our love was as close to perfect as any love could be. The only dark spot being Poilblanc and the whole entourage of her suitors. As I looked over at Jillian I no longer cared that she was a killer. I no longer cared that I'd decided an hour earlier that she was crazy and there was no way I would ever give in to her. All that mattered now was my hatred and jealousy of Poilblanc. It lifted up my heart and created a provisional love for Jillian that was now just as strong as any real love.

I walked into the living room as instructed and sat on the couch. There was a table standing in the center of the floor. I heard some kind of jazz music coming from an adjacent room. Through the door I saw two figures at a table. Lilli and Delacroix. Stillman, who had slipped into the house without me noticing, stood beside her, laughing.

"What's going on?" I shouted. No one answered.

Then it all came to me. If Lilli had nothing to do with Jillian she must have been working for Poilblanc. I wondered why I had not thought of it before. That meant the fat bastard had read obviously all of Jillian's letters. Lilli was tied up with a sock stuffed in her mouth and a blindfold wrapped tightly around her head. She knew too much and so she had to go. To her right Delacroix was smoking a cigar the size of a bread stick and swirling what looked like whiskey in a large bulb-shaped glass.

"What is man's greatest curse?" asked Delacroix with a puerile grin. Then he laughed uproariously.

"Love," I said.

"Memory," snapped Stillman. "Memory is worse than love. Love is only one of the dreadful things that memory taunts us with. If there were no love, we would still remember other horrors. Yet, if we had love with no memory, we would always forget how painful it really is."

"But pain is a function of love," Delacroix countered. "Without love we would feel no pain and we would be indifferent to all memories, no matter how horrible."

Jillian walked into the room. Her hair was messed up and her lipstick smeared. Poilblanc followed, a smug Napoleonic look of victory radiating from his face. Delacroix handed Poilblanc a rifle. Jillian tensed up and turned her head away. She was always too proud to show her fear.

"I'm sure we've all met. Perhaps Jillian even remembers being followed by Lilli, here," said Poilblanc. He turned to me and his smile turned into jealous grimace. "I know you've met her, my young man. You seem to know all the prettiest women."

"Jillian never loved you, and she never will," I said.

"Death brings about great changes," he replied.

"So, you think if you kill us all that she's suddenly going to love you?"

"Who said I was going to kill anyone? After she lured you back to me, I'd think you'd be the one who'd want to do the killing."

"He's lying, Jean," Jillian yelled. Stillman looked on with glum satisfaction as if the whole scene were the final piece of proof he needed to corroborate his nihilistic theories.

"Who do you believe?" Poilblanc asked. "Do you actually think she would have come to you for any other reason but to use you? Look at her situation. She's a killer. The only ones who know are either here or dead. Wouldn't you want to eliminate all of your witnesses in one pop if you were her?"

"You're so full of shit," I said.

"What would you say if I told you that I'd rented out a room in the hotel you were going to this evening in order to meet Jillian and finally taste the petals of her love?"

"Why would she bring me, then?"

"She deceived me, as I knew she would. I knew she would never truly love me with you around. So, while she was thinking she was going to surprise me with you, I was expecting you all along. It seems she wanted you and me to kill each other and leave her free as a bird with no witnesses."

"So why is she tied up?" I pointed to Lilli.

"Ontology," shouted Stillman. "It all comes down to the horror of being."

"I tied her up in advance because I wanted Stillman and Delacroix to kill her," said Poilblanc. "I wanted to be the only one left alive with knowledge of Jillian's whereabouts."

"It's all a lie," yelled Jillian. "I'll always hate you, Poilblanc. I won't even use your first name, I hate you so much. You and all your coddling. All those years in your department having you drool all over me. All your expectations about my career. You never cared about what I wanted. You were even worse than Jean. At least he was spirited and interesting. Since my disappearance I've come to realize that no love can exist without captivity and limitations. I'll go off with Jean and it will all be forgotten and he'll go on thinking that I'm something I'm not. And that much will make us both happy. The last two years taught me the value of compromises in life."

Poilblanc looked disheartened for an instant, then his face solidified into a stern glare.

"Don't lie to me, my dear," he said. "You've always loved me but just haven't realized it yet. The universe is balanced. When one loves another and his feelings are not reciprocated, the other is just being difficult or is playing games."

"I never planned to meet you at that hotel and neither did I plan to kill Jean. Why would I kill the man I loved for so many dark lonely years?"

"You already killed Munif, " said Poilblanc.

"Death annihilates memories," said Stillman with the smile of a proud monk. Then Delacroix took a long savory puff on his cigar and blew the smoke directly into my face.

"Do what you want to me then, " said Jillian. "I've already died."

"Don't you remember?" asked Stillman. "Back in Marseilles?"

"This is getting ridiculous," said Poilblanc as he pointed the barrel of the rifle over towards Lilli. With his left hand he pulled a pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at me. "Get over here. Now it's your turn. Come on. Don't just sit there. Get over here and take the rifle out of my hands."

"I'm not killing anyone," I said.

He raised the pistol and pointed it at my head. Then he fired. I heard a loud crash behind me and turned to see the vase in the corner shattered into a thousand pieces. I stood up compliantly and walked over to his side, the barrel of his pistol following me like the gaze of an owl in the middle of a dark forest.

"Get down on your knees."

I knelt down beside Jillian, who remained standing. I looked at the gun barrel and then at Jillian. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead. Her face trembled as if it were about to burst into tears. In that instant I never hated anyone so much as I hated Poilblanc and never loved anyone as much as I loved Jillian.

"Take the rifle out of my hand, but don't move it one bit." He pressed the barrel of the pistol against my head and cocked the trigger. "You're going to aim it at Lilli's head and then you're going to kill her. Everyone's going to think you did it because you were jealous from the time you made love to her. But, there'll be a twist. While you're doing it, I want you to have your head up between Jillian's legs. I want to see what her face looks like when you make her happy."

I took the rifle from him. I pressed my face up against Jillian's stomach, but couldn't get the nerve up to go any further. I could feel her legs trembling. It was comforting to know that even she was afraid.

"What's the matter?" asked Poilblanc sarcastically. "All those years I so desperately wanted her to be mine and had to put up with her loving a Peter Pan like you. I guess she always loved you because she thought that you were so bold and daring. Yes, I remember the look of pride on her face when she first told me that you were going to go to war. Even Jillian with all her otherworldly charms and literary genius was foolish enough to fall for a commoner like you. But that's the way history has always written itself."

"You're a cowardly worm," said Jillian. "You'll never get up the guts to shoot him. You know it. I know it. So why the facade? I came back to Lyon knowing you'd be here. I came back because I sensed what you'd do. Do you actually think I'd want to start a new life with Jean? I could always see that you were his intellectual superior and that always irked me deep down inside. All those nights I spent with him lying arm in arm..."

"Spare me the details," Poilblanc growled.

"All those nights, as I was saying. You always had a habit of interrupting me. All those nights I wished he were endowed with the beauty of your mind. The dark seething landscape of your vast internal vision."

"You flatter me, Jillian. It excites me to even imagine what things could be like."

A lugubrious smile spread across Poilblanc's face. I imagined him undressing Jillian and cringed at the thought of his arms - like two moray eels - slithering around her supple figure. Poilblanc pressed the gun even harder against my head. I lost all sense of judgement. Floating through a moral limbo, everything suddenly seemed tangled and incomprehensible. The levels of deceit were so confused I could no longer tell what was real. Like a kind of filo pastry the lies and truth were pressed so tightly together I could no longer discern the individual layers. When I came to meet Jillian the day before I didn't know if I could trust her. After sitting with her in the bar, I knew I couldn't trust her. So how could I trust her now? Was this strange confession just another lie within a box of lies to help us escape?

Poilblanc let his grip on the pistol relax, but only slightly.

"Your inner beauty has always drawn me to you, " she said to him. "Why do you think I left Jean? Was I going to be another Maud Gonne and marry a man who would always be my intellectual inferior? Don't think I never loved you."

"Everything has gone too far, Jillian," said Poilblanc.

"What do you mean?"

"Whatever happens the outcome will be the same. We will make love. Whether by force or by fancy, I'll get my way. Thus your attempts to sweet talk me will make no difference. If I let Lilli go, the police will be after me in a matter of hours. We'd both end up in jail."

"They don't have to find us. I know places. Places..." She said the word with such drama and mystery in her voice that vast and mysterious landscapes opened up before my mind's eye.

"I don't care. It's already planned. We're going to Delacroix's island to stay. Delacroix has agreed to sell it to me, and there I will live out my deepest fantasies with you."

"So, you're just going to kill them?"

"No. Jean is going to kill Lilli. Then we'll leave Jean to run from the police. Even if he got caught, they'd never believe a word of his story. The truth is far more absurd than anyone could imagine. Only a fool would take it for anything but a lie."

"You don't have the guts to push this through."

"No, Jillian. This time you're wrong. Five years of lust isn't going to quit this easily. Jean is my insurance policy. As long as the police and the army are after him, we'll be safe. Now," he said, grabbing me by the hair and guiding my head up Jillian's dress with the help of the pistol, "do those things you always used to do."

All around me was darkness and the smell of some new perfume I didn't recognize. I felt the warmth of her thighs up against each of my cheeks. It was like I was alone with Jillian hurtling through a dark void of sensuality. The pistol was the only thing linking me to the outer world. I could feel it hard against my head, but as I pressed my lips against the inside of her leg, even that sensation disappeared. Jillian and I were alone at last! I dropped the rifle and pushed her dress back with both hands as I pressed my face up to the smooth cotton of her underwear. I gyrated my head around for a long moment, thinking of all those long nights we'd spent together in Lyon before I left for Algeria.

"Your face is rather tight," I remember hearing as if from the opposite end of a long narrow pipe and even then in a dream.

"Why do you have to embarrass me?"

"For all those years you embarrassed me by loving Jean."

"Those years will never die."

"Don't remind me."

"Even if we do love each other on your island, how will you treat me after he's gone? You'll still be jealous, no matter how much I love you."

"It depends on how much."

"Death doesn't change anything. I've been the killer and the killed. And once you've killed someone, you can't kill them again."

"What are you getting at?"

"I can't help it. You are like a magnet of ideas for me. With you around I can't help but speak the truths I've learned since I became some one else."

"I'm sick of these games. I want to hear it all. I want to hear what it is like to venture into death. I want to know what you felt. I want you to make love to me and tell me all about Artaud and the Mind. Get him away from you!"

"You have the gun."

"Yes I do, " said Poilblanc imperiously.

"Do you want rapture?" she asked with such infantile purity I could almost hear an erection bursting through Poilblanc's pants. The pressure of the gun barrel vanished. She kneed me in head. I took it as my cue. I grabbed the rifle at my knees, and ducked my head out of her skirt and in one blind leap sprang up into the light of the room. I looked around, the images still a dizzy swirl in my light-shocked eyes. I cocked the rifle and turned the barrel towards Poilblanc. When my eyes had adjusted to the light, I could see every last detail of his face. He had the self-possessed frown of a greedy child whose ice cream cone has just dropped into a mud puddle. With the rifle still pointing directly at him, I turned to Jillian. She was now guarding the pistol in her lap with both hands. She must have somehow wrested it from Poilblanc in all the commotion.

With wild vengeful eyes she whispered something, but I couldn't quite hear her. I asked her to repeat it.

"Shoot him."

Delacroix and Stillman looked on with healthy excitement as if watching a horse race with binoculars. Lilli was still tied up and Poilblanc lowered his head and stepped back against the wall. His large figure was enveloped by the darkness that defined the edges of the room.

"I said, shoot him," Jillian repeated. "Only then will our new love be consummated."

The room shrank in all proportions. Suddenly I was sweating under the blazing sun of the North African desert. The four others stood around me like frozen wax dummies. All about was stillness. It seemed the entire room had been temporarily transported to some provisional level of reality where all motion was forbidden by the native physical laws. I stood there staring Poilblanc in the face with the rifle in my hand. Jillian stood beside me with a look of disgust on her face as though she knew I was too weak to carry out her wishes.

I heard a noise outside and the room came back to me. I blinked and looked over at Poilblanc. His eyes radiated such a pitiable look of helplessness that shooting him would have been no more glorious than dousing a hamster with gasoline and setting it on fire.

"You'd never shoot me," said Poilblanc. "Although you are no saint, you love life too much to kill."

"You don't know a thing about me," I snapped.

"I knew some things. Lilli helped me with the things I didn't."

"Tell me, then. If you claim to know so much."

"Fair enough," he said. He cleared his throat. "Your experiences on peyote told me that you are the sort of person that sees the transcendent in everything. This is because at heart you are empty and you fear that emptiness. So all your quests for love or sex or what you call spirituality are just a way of avoiding yourself. You pursue beauty or Jillian or sex and alcohol or whatever and it is all just a smoke to keep you from the terror of all those lonely nights back in Detroit where you knew you were a nobody and were never going to go anywhere. And you are far too proud to accept that you are nothing."

"Perhaps," I said dismissively. "Yet coming from your mouth, it just sound like a clumsy attempt to save your skin."

"You'd never kill me," he said with certainty.

I looked to Jillian. Her eyes narrowed like those of a cornered wolf. She lifted the pistol and pointed it at Poilblanc. He turned to her and smiled.

"You'd never kill me either," he said. "You still have a thesis to hand in."

"You're not funny," she said. Then she swiveled around and pointed the pistol at me. "Kill him," she demanded.

"Jillian!" I pleaded. No matter how much I hated Poilblanc there was no way I could put a bullet through his head.

"I've killed one lover before. Twice. Don't think I wouldn't."

"But what about our love?" I asked, almost automatically, not even thinking about her as I said it.

"How soon you forget. Love doesn't end."

"You're both crazy," said Poilblanc.

"Jean." Her face relaxed into a deep, seductive pout and her tongue rolled in an arc around the fleshy inner rim of her lips.

"You need me, Jillian. I need you. Why kill me for the sake of him?" I pointed the gun at Poilblanc.

"It's not for his sake. It's symbolic of our love."

"Do something, you cowards!" Poilblanc shouted. "I'm getting sick of this." He relaxed his posture and casually walked back to the table where Stillman and Delacroix were seated beside Lilli. As he passed Lilli he landed a huge wet kiss on her forehead. "Lets get out of here," he said to Stillman and Delacroix. "Take her too." He cuffed Lilli on the head and grabbed his coat. Then he walked up to Jillian and lowered her gun with one hand while pulling her face towards his for a kiss with the other. Jillian resisted, but not enough to convince me that she wasn't in some way enjoying his attention.

In one motion I stepped towards Poilblanc and lifted the rifle to his face. He raised his hand and put his palm over the barrel as if he again thought I wasn't serious. That was the end of the line. I rammed the rifle past his hand and into his mouth and pinned his head against the wall. Delacroix and Stillman suddenly stood up as if they wanted to help him but weren't too sure exactly what to do. A moment later they sat down again.

"This may not be Jillian's tit but you're going to suck on it anyway."

Poilblanc screamed as best he could with his mouth all jammed up. I gave him one last knee in the crotch before yelling over to Delacroix to say a prayer.

"What's man's greatest curse?" I yelled.

"Memory," shouted Stillman.

"Violence," shouted Delacroix.

"No. You're both wrong. You're both so wrong it's almost funny. It's love you idiots. Love."

"Or, perhaps, Jealousy," Delacroix said while arching his eyebrows sardonically and looking at Poilblanc. He was sobbing and looking over at Jillian. There was no way I was going to let him pull his sympathy game on her. I'd seen that one too many times already. If it wasn't from Poilblanc it was from Adrien, Munif, or some other guy I'd never even met.

"Do you have anything to say in your defense?" I asked him. I pulled the gun out of his mouth.

"Yes," he said defiantly. "Every time you made love to her she was always thinking of me. How could she ever have been satisfied with an uneducated lout like you?"

Possessed with hatred and jealousy I pulled the trigger without even thinking. The gunshot was more muffled than I'd expected and left a scattered mess of blood all over the wall behind. Poilblanc's body wobbled for a few seconds before collapsing to the ground. Delacroix and Stillman leapt to the floor before I'd even turned away from Poilblanc's fat, still body.

"God help us," Delacroix shouted.

"We won't tell a soul," added Stillman.

I turned to Stillman and pointed the gun to his head. "Untie her," I said, looking over at Lilli.

I kept the gun pointed at him while he struggled to undo the knots on the rope. When it was clear he couldn't do it without some help, I ordered Delacroix to give him a hand.

"What are we going to do, Jean?" asked Jillian. Her face was covered with tears and her hands were shaking.

"We have to escape."

"What are we going to do with these three? What if they tell? I mean, why are we untying her? If we were smart, we'd be tying them all up instead."

"Wait," I said, turning to Stillman and Delacroix. By this time they had managed to remove the cloth from Lilli's mouth. It didn't matter since she'd already passed out in shock. Delacroix looked up and waited for my next word.

"I know," said Jillian. "We'll have to leave the island. Then we can hide out until we decide what we'll do next."

I looked over at Stillman. From his facial expression he seemed to be taking the scenario as a metaphysical statement against the possibility of love in the universe. My body surging with adrenaline, all I could think about was getting Jillian and myself away to safety. I was so set on self-preservation that the true horror of my killing Poilblanc had not even sunk in.

Jillian took the rifle and ordered them to bury Poilblanc in the back yard. I stood and watched over them as they dug a hole with some shovels that we found in the garden shed. She sat silently on a garden swing, her face illuminated by a bright porch light, watching us with dark swollen eyes as if she were reflecting on something too painful to articulate. By the time the body was buried it was five in the evening. Lilli was still out and it would be a few more hours before the last fringes of light began to vanish behind the edges of the horizon.

### VIII

As the evening fell the sky gradually lost its color, fading from blue to gray and deeper gray until finally there was only darkness. Randomness took over. The air was filled with the sounds of the night, both brittle and soft, echoing into Delacroix's beach house from outside. Occasionally I heard what I thought was a foghorn blowing in the distance. Jillian had just tied up Delacroix and Stillman and left them in the other room with Lilli. Then she went out for a short walk to the beach and asked me to wait until she got back. I looked about the room. It was empty. I was alone. As time passed I felt more and more guilty about Poilblanc. The true gravity of my actions was finally starting to sink in. I desperately wanted to open the door and talk to Lilli. Perhaps she could help me. She was a private detective and knew all the loopholes of the law. But how could I be sure she was trustworthy? I was now a killer and anything I said could be used against me. A feeling of dread fell over me and I started to sweat.

I heard a faint crepitation and the door opened. Jillian walked in with an arm full of firewood. The image seemed both awkward and ironic, like French royalty carrying a coal shovel. She put the wood down beside the fireplace and came over to sit in my lap.

"It's strange," she said.

"What?"

"Being with you again."

"Yes."

"I feel like such a different person than the one that once loved you, yet I can still feel that old person inside me. What you see now is the flower. The person I once was is the base of the stem. But just like the flower secretly wishes it could shed its chunky and awkward stem to revel in its own resplendent glory, I wish we could shed the past. I want to start all over with you. Things are finally equal between us. Now we're both killers. We've both blossomed into entirely new people. The only thing holding us back is the past, our past."

"You make everything sound so easy."

"The past is just our memories and memories can be forgotten."

"The past is all we have," I said

She tightened herself around me and kissed me on the lips. "Don't think that way. Memory...don't you ever wish you could just wipe out all of those old self-images that clutter your conception of who you are? Whenever some one yells at me I feel like a little girl being scolded by my father. It shouldn't have to be that way. I should be able to live forever in the present, free from all those past selves that haunt the corridors of my mind."

"What are we going to do?" I asked.

"You know what we have to do."

"How long will it be before the police come? Anyone who knows Poilblanc knows that he spends time with Delacroix. I bet it won't be long."

"That's why we have to act."

"What are you proposing?"

"They can't be allowed to talk. They know too much."

"We can't just kill them."

"You're already a killer..."

"I was forced."

"Not when you shot him. Even they know that much." She gestured to the door behind which the three hostages were tied up.

"I'd rather turn myself in than go on. Not only is the military after me, but now the police."

"There's one way to change that."

"What?"

"You know."

"They'd never mistake a fifty-year-old body for mine, if that's what you mean."

"Jean." She kissed me again on the lips. In her eyes was a look so tender and sincere that I suddenly felt more comfortable and secure. For a moment her suggestion seemed like a tangible possibility, a way to make everything right again. "I don't like all this bloodshed either. I never planned it to be this way. It all started with Munif. And this will be where it ends. Don't think I enjoyed those killings. Certainly it changed me. Lifted me up to a new level..."

"Of self-degradation."

"What difference does it make? Heraclitus said the path up and the path down are the same thing. The washing of the feet. Ablution. Of course it's not pretty, but what choice do we have? One murder begets another until the circle is complete. We can end it all now and be free once again. New people. You and me."

"It'll never work."

"Let me show you."

She put my hand on her breast and kissed me again.

"Let's go outside," she said.

I met her gaze. Her eyes radiated that wild seductive look they always used to have when I knew she was trying to get something out of me.

"Maybe you're right," I said in defeat. "I can't see any other way we could be together." Her eyes brightened. "However much I hate to admit it killing the hostages is our only way out." She smiled like a teacher whose student has finally understood a difficult lesson.

"It's not as bad as you think," she said supportively. "You're just feeling the jitters from Poilblanc. It goes away. At first the guilt contaminates your mind like a virus. You can't stop thinking about how awful you are. You want to die."

"That's how I feel."

She embraced me and whispered into my ear. "It'll go away, Jean, trust me." I closed my eyes and the words echoed in my head over and over again. It'll go away. It'll go away, Jean. "What will go away?" I thought. What was this it that she was speaking of?

"But before we do anything I need to see them alone," I said. "After all, I did share some intimacy with Lilli, you know."

"I know," she said with understanding. I saw a glimmer of the good person she once was. For a moment she looked like a suffragette for some new order of women.

I kissed her on the lips and walked over to the door. I nervously turned the knob and stepped in. After closing the door behind me, I turned on the lights. The two professors were tied up with bandages over their eyes. They were lying on the top and bottom levels of a bunk bed. Lilli was tied up on a second bed on the other side of the room staring blankly at the wall as if she was under the influence of a sedative. I walked up beside her and stroked her hair. She looked at me blankly. Even though she'd deceived me I still felt something for her. She was just doing her job like anyone else. But if it wasn't for her, I never would have seen Poilblanc again and I never would have shot him. She continued staring straight ahead, not acknowledging me at all.

"Lilli," I whispered.

She was motionless. I stroked her hair once more.

"Lilli," I repeated. "We're trapped. Each of us. You in Poilblanc's life, me in Jillian's. We're little more than pawns of other people's feelings. I don't know why it has to be like this." I wrapped my arm around her head and pulled her into my chest. "You can't fault me for what I'm about to do. It's all part of something beyond my control."

She turned her head to me and started speaking in a deep narcotic tone. "You don't have to do it," was all she said. I shrunk away from her. I felt like a spineless acolyte. All those days searching for Jillian in Paris were just a waste of what could have been a better life.

"Do what you like, then," Lilli said, her voice still withdrawn. "I've ruined enough men who may well have been innocent or just accidentally fell on the wrong side of a love triangle. So perhaps I deserve to die."

"Then so do I."

"Do you actually think she's still going to love you after you've killed us all?"

"It's not about love. Its much deeper than that."

"You're just a slave to everything, aren't you?" The way she smiled made me think of Annette.

"But if I let you go, then I'm just a slave to you. You'll turn me in and I'll be court-martialed for desertion, tried for murder and conspiring to protect another murderer. At least this way I have a chance."

"I don't see you as a killer. After all, you said you were a pacifist."

"I am."

Just then there was a banging on the door. I heard Jillian shout something about hurrying up, I couldn't tell exactly what.

I kissed Lilli on the head.

"I need time," was all I said. Then I finished what I knew I had to do and few minutes later I was outside with Jillian.

Jillian and I walked the hills and valleys of the island, across the miniature rocky plains, smoothly rumpled as if frozen out of some lava meringue. Silence dominated until we reached a flat plateau at the peak of a small summit. As she turned around to face me she tripped on a rock. I helped her up. She looked into my eyes and kissed me.

"We should rest here," she said.

I grabbed her and pulled her towards me. She kissed me again on the lips, this time working her tongue slowly into my mouth as she moved it around in small circles.

"I have something to tell you when we're done," she said.

"So do I," I said. I noticed a few snowflakes landing on her shoulder. I thought it strange since it was still only October.

She tilted her head and her face betrayed a sense of surprise and irritation as though she hadn't expected me to show the courage to keep any secrets from her. I was an item from her toy box and that was that. I detested her for that look. It made me want to rip off her clothes and fuck her brains to pieces. I saw the swirling cyclones in the clouded gray tunnels of her eyes. I saw her screaming in her bedroom as the mentally unstable teenager described to me by Annette but never witnessed by my own eyes. I saw her as a spoiled baby girl eating up all the mints from her pretty little candy dish. I saw it all in a vast panoramic vision of lust and anger as I guided her body slowly down onto the dusted rocks. Once she had stretched out on her back I straddled her body and started undressing her. By the time she was half naked, she was offering a look of total resignation. Both attracted and repelled by my own desire to dominate her I pulled off my clothes and went down on her.

"The Café at Arles," I whispered in her ear as I pushed inside of her. My body became a medieval war machine and my penis the sharpened tip of some primitive weapon.

"The Café at Arles," she repeated in a soft and submissive voice. I had never seen her act so weak and tender. Yet in spite of this I still wanted to slam her into the rocks for everything she had done to me and everything about her that I feared. But at the same time this tenderness opened me up to a new sympathy. Did I love her out of purity or jealousy, or did I hate her for the very same reasons? I didn't have a clue. I thrust over and over into the heart of her entire being. This time I didn't even care if she was enjoying it or not. I heard little coos that said she was, yet I would never know for sure.

When we finished I noticed our clothes were covered with a light frost and our bodies were dripping wet from the pool of melted snow around us.

"You know," she said after a five-minute silence, her head hanging down in remorse, "when I told you that the guilt goes away, I was just saying what I thought you wanted to hear. I can't let you go through what I did."

I stood there looking at her.

"Let me do it," she said like a person offering to do some unpleasant but trivial chore like taking out the garbage.

"Jillian!" I grabbed her arm and pulled her up as I rose to my feet. I was torn between the horror of her proposal and the beauty behind her sacrifice. All along I was assuming that she was just trying to use me one more time. But this proved that somewhere inside her tormented soul she still loved me.

"I know I'm stronger than you. I just want to go away with you and be happy. I want you to be innocent and pure again. Maybe some day you will justify your shooting of Poilblanc out of your jealousy and disgust of him. But if you shot the hostages, you'd never forgive yourself."

"But what about you? How could our love ever be the same with so many murders on your conscience?"

"It's not that black and white. There were moments after the first killing where I felt so sick and worthless, yet there were also moments where I walked barefoot through grass and marveled at the beauty of life. There were also moments where I felt exactly like I did when I was a young and innocent girl. Some mornings I'd awaken and walk through the house feeling nothing but emptiness. Other days I'd play happily on our swings. The true horror of life is that feelings are arbitrary and out of our control. A saint can feel depressed for accidentally trampling a flower garden and a killer can feel jubilant after a barbaric killing. Does a poor person really suffer more than a rich person? There's only so much pain or happiness a person can feel and everyone feels the same amount of each."

"You can't go through life measuring the relative merit of your actions by how they make you feel."

"Why not? That's all we have. We can never know how others feel."

"Yes you can."

"Love is just a projection of your feelings on those of another. Love is always alone. Even now in your warmth I'm alone and have always been so."

The sound of a siren filled the air.

"What's that," she asked.

"I don't know."

"Maybe a boat."

"Yes. The coast guard."

We began to walk back to the house. The siren bellowed through the snow like a divine admonishment against all who had strayed from the path of righteousness. On our way we passed the place of the hearth. I stopped and kissed her on the nose, holding her in my arms as if to protect her from the world.

"You seem so affectionate. What is it?"

"I don't know. It was just a reaction to your face. You looked so helpless as you stood there."

We continued along a ridge that I didn't recognize and eventually we came to the place where I had started hallucinating.

"This is where I realized what was really out there," I said.

She didn't respond and we continued to plod through the thickening layer of snow.

"It was when I took peyote with the professors. I encountered something that I took as a powerful mystical force underlying everything. It seemed to link up everything I was looking for in Artaud when I was trying to imagine what you might have been thinking if you were still alive."

"I felt something like that when I was a teenager," she finally responded. It scared me at first. It was like a long black shadow that was at once beautiful and terrifying. It wanted to seduce me and draw me in. I resisted and eventually it dissipated. But that experience planted a seed and I was always looking to find it again. I guess that's why I was interested in Artaud. I saw him as a portal to all that. But then I realized he wasn't. He hadn't gone far enough. He saw into something that I wanted to see into and reading him was only a substitute."

The sound of the siren intensified.

"I'm afraid," she said. "What if somehow they escaped and contacted a rescue party?"

I felt uncomfortable and turned my head down. I looked at my watch and then turned to her. "We should get back soon."

We walked briskly until we reached the house. Its roof was covered with a coat of thick snow that gave the appearance of a gingerbread house. I saw footprints on the left side of the house and I stood in front of her to block her view. We walked to the door and she took out her keys.

"I wish it was still as warm as it was when we left," she said.

She opened the door and looked inside. She shuffled her feet to shake off the cakes of snow from her boots. I followed behind her, mirroring her actions like a doppelganger.

"The siren seems to have stopped," she said. "That must mean we're safe."

"Yes," I said.

"Why are you saying it like that?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

"It's like you're trying to humor me."

"No." I pulled her towards me and hugged her, knowing it might be the last time we'd be able to do it. She held me for a moment before pushing me away.

"Well. I'd better check on the hostages," she said.

I cringed as she opened the door, anticipating what I was about to hear. I shrunk my head down into the collar of my coat and waited. Jillian screamed and ran back toward me.

"They've escaped!"

I couldn't look her in the eye. I was too ashamed to admit I'd betrayed her.

"Don't just stand there. We have to find them. What if that siren was from a rescue boat? They could have the island surrounded in minutes and we'd be finished."

"We were finished before we even started."

"What do you mean? I need you Jean. We have to capture them. We have to get out."

I heard footsteps crunching through the snow outside and voices. One of them was Lilli's. The others I didn't recognize.

"My God! They're here. We have to escape. Don't just stand there."

A look of horror fell across her face. The footsteps were closer.

"It was you! You let them out. You untied them when you were talking to Lilli before we left! I never should have trusted you!"

There was a knock on the door as Jillian frantically searched the house. I guessed she was looking for Poilblanc's pistol or the rifle.

"Come out with your hands up," a voice shouted.

I heard a gagging from the other room. There was a shot and then the door flew open. Two police officers entered the room. Lilli was behind them. One of the officers ran over to me and pointed a gun at me. The other officer rushed into the room where Jillian was. I heard him gag. Then he ran back out into the main room.

"Call the paramedics," he said.

"What happened?"

Lilli walked cautiously into the other room.

"She's not hurt, is she?"

"Don't worry, Jean. There was nothing you could do."

"Let me see her!"

"You don't want to."

My imagination went wild. The room became fear itself. It was so strong it hung in the air like a solid. My mind spun in circles as Lilli tried to comfort me. I ran towards the door of the room.

"He may be dangerous," said a voice from behind me. I felt a massive jolt go through my body as though I was a loose rope and someone had pulled as hard as they could on both ends. My mind went foggy. Before I knew it I was cuffed.

A few minutes later some men in paramedic outfits came into the house and ran into the room where Jillian was. After what seemed like a very long time, the paramedics hauled a woman's body out of the room. For a moment I thought there were knitting needles sticking out of her body. I turned to Lilli, who was petting my hair and crying. The policeman beside her seemed sad and tried not to look at me as he nervously twisted his fingers together. Lilli looked at me and forced a smile through her tears. She said nothing and just continued stroking my head. I wanted to cry with her but couldn't.

"It's time to go," said the police officer. For some reason, I don't know, I just stood there. The policeman repeated his order and put his hand on my shoulder. I pulled away quickly and I felt a second jolt just as powerful as the first.

The police then escorted me and Lilli out into the snow. Apart from a few red blemishes on its surface, it was more clean and radiant than anything I'd ever seen.

"Is this where white comes from?" I asked. I'm not sure why. The words just came out. Nobody answered. We just walked towards the icy water. Whatever was going to happen to Jillian I knew that I had just betrayed her and that tender moment on the icy rock she had redeemed herself.

December, 2010

I hope you enjoyed this novel! For more information on David M. Antonelli please go to www.inbetweenthefilm.com

