

_Triple Vision_ is the perfect title for this collection. The author sees life through the eyes of a philosopher, a painter, a poet. As a widely read student of philosophy she knows that, before finding answers to life's mysteries, the seeker must figure out the right questions. As a painter she finds beauty all around her and as a poet she wields language as artfully as she does her paintbrushes. Her stories are rich in exquisite imagery and deep with multi layers of meaning. The lens of her mind's eye is microscopic, telescopic and kalaidescopic and these stories will challenge you intellectually, stimulate you emotionally and delight all your senses.

—Sandra Shwayder Sanchez

### TRIPLE VISION

by

Ita Willen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

******

PUBLISHED BY:

The Wessex Collective on Smashwords

Triple Vision

copyright 2012 by Ita Willen

Cover:

Smashwords Edition

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*****

### Table of Contents

The Master's Chair

The Mask

Lilacs

Camille

280 SE

A Thousand Lights

The Night Garden

Blue Moon

Look Away

One by One

Enterprize

Rain of Gold Leaves

The Window Washer

Chinese Laundry

The Wizard of Ice

Gallery Uno

Lily Mark

Avalanche

Woman in White

a note about the writer

The Master's Chair

He saw the chair covered with fabrics, carpets and masses of flowers around it. To an elegant house in Maryland he had come. He was a guru, around 60, with close-cropped white hair, sunglasses, a white shirt, in a grey business suit, smoking a cigarette—a small thin man with the face of a hawk, he resembled a CIA agent.

He glanced at the chair and followed his hostess up the stairs. He would be a guest here for a week. From the bedroom window he saw rolling pastures and orchards so perfect you knew they had been arranged. The picket fences were just so, and the horses beyond them like horses in a dream, gliding silently through the green landscape. The orchards were in bloom, clouds of pink and white trees. They looked unreal.

But of course, it was all unreal to him. It was not just that he came from India and might be comparing it to Bombay, for he had already been to Paris and Cairo. It was ALL unreal to him from his view of reality as an illusion. His father had been a guru too, perhaps even a famous one, in Trivandrum, in Kerala.

His was, like most Hindu families, quite extended, expanded even more by the constant flow of disciples, some coming from very far away. It was the first time in centuries India had seen so many seekers from the West. After his father died, he took over. Gurupatan found people coming to him all the way from France and England. Something must have happened in the West, he thought, to have sent so many people in search of the Truth.

One had to be cautious, of course, not to get involved with Americans. They looked penniless and might take the liberty of not leaving at all. He accepted a few disciples from Europe and the Middle East, and taught them everything he knew. Vedanta, as postulated by Nagarjuna, had been transmitted to him, in both written and oral form, and he was qualified to pass on the teaching to anyone who could understand it.

He quickly discovered, though, on the veranda in Trivandrum where he received his students, that they understood very little, particularly those from the West. Their basic premises were completely different. They saw the world as concrete and not in a state of flux. They saw reality as something to manipulate. Their egos were huge. They pursued the Truth as a form of aggrandizing themselves. A kind of personal salvation which, with enough money, could be bought and flaunted, and best of all, could be attained while still alive.

Needless to say, all his Western disciples were of the wealthy variety and somewhat older than the hippies drifting through. He selected his clients very carefully for aptitude as well as funds. When there were enough disciples in one place, he went to them, all expenses paid of course, there was no other way. That was how he came to give Talks in Cairo and Paris.

This was, however, his first time to the States. How this came about is a long story but its fate is in the details.

His father had a certain Ram Raji as a disciple, the two families having been gurus and disciples for many generations. This Ram Raji, however, had gone to the West as a young man, married a French woman briefly, lived many years in France (hence the Paris connection) and had in his old age gone to the States to teach Buddhism at a college in Texas, of all places. After forming a small coterie of students around himself, this Ram Raji invited Gurupatan to give Talks in America. Since Gurupatan already had several wealthy American clients, the time seemed right for a visit. He was very curious about America. His disciples were thrilled to finance the visit and vied with each other for the opportunity to host him.

A wealthy Maryland matron (who had gone to India to see him and had been devoted to him for ten years) won him as her houseguest. All the European disciples who could afford it came, along with a few Californians, and all of Ram Raji's handpicked students from Texas, who could presumably understand the Truth. An encounter with a guru is a most serious event, the gravity of which must be clearly understood, in order that the participants approach him with the utmost reverence and decorum. It is considered that the guru appears when the disciple is ready. But many people, in 1970, who thought they were ready, were denied access to Gurupatan and the Talks were surrounded by utmost secrecy. Disciples never uttered a word about him or their involvement with him. The truth was closely guarded and shared with only a select few.

Some of these individuals would be arriving over the weekend, under the auspices of Ram Raji. These people might be anyone, not particularly destined to meet a guru. Raji was known to consort with a wide variety of people and most of it had nothing to do with the Truth.

"I don't like it," said the Guru's wife, before he left.

"What do you mean?"

"The trouble with America," she said, "is that they have no caste, no lineage as even the Europeans have. You have no way of knowing who someone is. No Brahmins, no Untouchables, nothing in between. Since the purity of ancient lines has not been preserved, it is a Brahmin's duty to regard them all as Untouchables."

"Come, come, my dear. You have no need to be concerned. They will all be Raji's friends."

"That's just it! He is indiscriminate in his friendships! He has known actresses and Communists! One cannot tell whom he will bring. The thing I dread most is the hippie element. These people, from the way they dress, seem to be penniless or, I suspect, have been disowned by their families. And worse, they indulge in drugs. How could Raji, a Brahmin's eldest son, your father's disciple and friend, fall prey to all this? If any of the visitors are not qualified, it could ruin your credibility and good family name. It is crucial that you keep your affairs spotless. Keep a wary eye on the Americans!"

#

The owners had vacated the house to give him privacy. The seekers were arranged to stay in the main house itself or in guesthouses on the grounds, geographical proximity ordained by intimacy with the Guru. Disciples from abroad booked themselves into nearby hotels, at which they were adept, having followed him like fans of the Grateful Dead. These included some ladies from England and people from France. Then the American disciples who were known to him because Raji had told them they were "ready for India," and they had shown up in Trivandrum, and those he hadn't yet met, were slated to use nearby land as a campground. Tents were erected and cooking stoves were on hand. But this activity was not visible from any of the windows.

He lit a cigarette and decided to go for a walk. Better to do it now while he was still in trousers, his western attire. Once he made himself comfortable in the house, barefooted, wearing a dhoti, he was not likely to venture out.

He went downstairs. The house was empty. Twilight bloomed. In the kitchen he found a bowl of fruit. The refrigerator held melons, cooked rice and yogurt. He made himself a dish of yogurt and fruit, then opened the kitchen door and stepped out.

He was surrounded by a blue so intense as he'd never seen before. The houses in the distance glimmered white. The rolling hills turned black against the peacock sky. The moon rose. He walked in a straight line for a mile or two. Out here it was really dark. So few houses, so much space, what they could do with such space in India!

At last he went back, climbed the silent stairs, did his puja and went to bed. The Talks were slated to start Monday morning. All the disciples would be assembled by then.

#

Ram Raji, former dilettante, now (to his own surprise) a professor of Eastern Philosophy, had been very busy organizing the American contingent. Around 60, the same age as Gurupatan, he had a dark equine face on a small wiry frame. His grey hair was shoulder-length, he wore only black Nehru suits. His large nostrils seemed to scent out the world. He was a Brahmin, but had lost his sacred thread and, as the black sheep of his family, had indulged in the glitter of Paris for 30 years. He neither drank nor smoked and was a vegetarian, but loved seducing women. His large and powerful family owned entire villages. But the extent of their wealth was not visible on him. He now lived in a two room garage apartment stuffed with old furniture and books. He always wore the same black suit or had several identical ones, usually rumpled, buttoned all the way up to the neck. He did not seem to be personally in possession of any wealth. It was said he had been disowned when he absconded with the French woman and had signed over his share of inheritance to his sister. At any rate, he was not inclined to live in India, having tasted the freedom of the West. He had never expected to go as far west as Texas, but Austin resembled Trivandrum in all its tropical glory, and he probably needed the money.

Raji had assembled from among his hundreds of students (his large lecture hall was always jammed), a few individuals he had gotten to know well. The fellows chauffeured him around and ran errands. The girls were all of a certain kind, with a raw shining edge. A few dozen people in all. They had private sessions lasting hours in his office. They gathered at his place for tea and more talk. They attended all the lectures he gave and accompanied him to dinner every evening, which invariably consisted of salad and baked potato.

From Texas they were coming by air, those who could afford it, others by car. He himself was coming from New York where he had stopped for several weeks on his way back from Paris. He could not think of anyone in New York to travel with him to Maryland. All his chauffeurs were coming from Texas. He inventoried everyone countless times. Over and over he ran through his mind the students who would be attending. Some of them had gone to India, on his recommendation. Others had studied with him long enough to earn degrees and had shown by their devotion to him personally that they were worthy.

For Americans, and for Texans, he thought they had grasped his teachings readily. They had no difficulty understanding the concepts of Vedanta. It stunned him that simple-minded students with no sense of history and not a brain in their heads, like all the emptiness of America, could actually comprehend what he was saying. And this was with no folk wisdom, sacred texts or any other knowledge. The Americans just stepped into space and saw it. The wisdom of the ages, nurtured from one generation to the next like some frail flower on the brink of extinction, these Americans were somehow able to grasp it.

Raji was impressed by how open they were, like a fallow virgin field ready for planting. The ancient Vedic wisdom sank in, took root and grew. He could tell by the questions they asked. They understood.

For starters, _reality as illusion,_ an ancient Vedic concept, was readily accepted. Nobody seemed to have any trouble with this. Maybe television had something to do with it. Also, the Absolute as the VOID was easy for them. They had seen enough outer space in movies to know what he meant. They were the people, after all, who had gone to the moon.

All in all he was quite confident the students he had selected to meet Gurupatan would present themselves with the dignity of their comprehension and was even imagining, as he drank tea in his Manhattan hotel room, how good these Americans would make him look. He felt like a missionary. He could take credit for the young people on their way to Nirvana. They were tall and fair as Renaissance angels, open-faced and red-cheeked, straight off the land. And the questions they asked were amazing. Gurupatan would be impressed.

He was practically ready. He would fly tomorrow to Baltimore where someone would pick him up and drive him 80 miles. Everything would have been perfect if only one of his lackeys had come to New York to escort him. He phoned everyone he knew who might be going to the Talks, and berated himself for not having groomed a few disciples in Manhattan. It was most inconvenient for him now to travel alone.

A seemingly frail man in a Charlie Chaplin suit, he had always managed to find a lot of assistance. His main problem was his breathing machine, a heavy metal unit the size of a VCR. He could certainly not carry that himself. And it had to be physically held during the flight in case he needed any oxygen. He would go by taxi to the airport, how exasperating that there was no one to take him! He could expect the driver to lend a hand. But he could not expect the man to carry the machine all the way to the terminal and onto the plane for him, or could he? He would offer to pay.

While he was dwelling on these logistics the phone rang.

"Oh, please, Lord," he prayed, "send someone to help me."

He picked up the phone.

"Yes?"

"Ram Raji?"

"Yes."

"It's Ruby."

"Ruby?" It was Ellen Rubinsky, known as Ruby. "Ah yes. Are you in Manhattan?"

"I've been here two years."

"Very nice. And so? What is it?"

"I heard you were in town."

"I'm leaving tomorrow," he said.

"I'm leaving too!" she exclaimed. "I can't stand it here. I can't stand the gloomy weather or the gloomy people. I've got to get out of New York!"

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. She had been part of his inner circle. Perhaps she was ready to meet Gurupatan? And just coincidentally, carry his oxygen machine.

"Where is it you intend to go now?" he asked.

"Austin," she said. "I still know a lot of people there."

His wheels were already spinning.

"I am going somewhere," he hesitated. "There will be people from Austin present. You could get a ride back with some of them."

"Really?"

"But I must first make some inquiries," he backed away. "Ring me again in an hour."

What he really needed was time to think. He did not want any problems.

It was not that she was Jewish, that was no problem, most of the disciples from North Africa were Jews.

His mind swept like a searchlight through everything he knew about her and it was precious little for some reason.

He had the feeling that she was not entirely a good candidate. She was more than likely to do or say something outrageous.

He recalled the first time he'd laid eyes on Ruby. He'd been talking about the immortality of consciousness, that we all really know we are immortal, the soul tells us so, and that deep down no one believes he will die, because there is no Death, only Illusion. "You were never born and you will never die. There is not one person in this room who believes he will die."

The redhead at the back, standing at the wall, stepped forward, looked him in the eye and said: "I believe I will die."

He'd blanched and clutched his chest. When he regained his breath he said, "See me after class."

Ruby proved to be a puzzle. She came to see him after class, had a long debate with him about something and returned to his office many times after that.

She was attractive but outspoken. Her opinions were frightening. She had once told him blank to his face that "something must be done about India." ("Why?" he'd asked, horrified. "It's been that way for 5000 years.") She'd even introduced him to a Maoist! The fellow had actually defended Mao as setting China on her feet! He gasped to think what she might say to Gurupatan.

He looked at his breathing machine again. It looked bigger than ever.

When Ruby called back he said, "You may come with me to this place but you will be there only to observe. From among the participants you can find transportation to Austin. But do not say one word while you are there, or anything about it to anyone ever."

This was fine with Ruby. She knew about Raji's little group, they fluttered around like saints with pulled faces, living on watermelon, always doing puja to a photo of a small man, which she found revolting. But she was interested in Buddhism enough to be drawn through its shining waters like a fish on a hook. The idea of liberation pulled her along. What was it she wanted to be free of? Ah yes, she always said: hunger, poverty, violence, suffering, grief.

Ruby arrived at his hotel as expected, did not hesitate to pick up and carry his breathing machine. For leaving Manhattan she carried very little. They went by taxi to the airport, got on the plane, chatting amiably about nothing in particular, and flew to Baltimore. There they were picked up by someone who drove for an hour and a half into the spring countryside of an Impressionist painting. Raji relaxed. He was aware of Ruby beside him, looking out the window, the machine on her lap. With her smoky eyelids and red hair she reminded him of his French wife, so long ago, a century it seemed. He wondered if she would be open to advances from him. But best not to start anything. It was nerve-wracking enough just to get through the Talks. One never knew what anyone would say. He was not responsible for any of them. Everyone was responsible only for himself.

This put him at ease.

He was too tired to think much about anything. When they arrived he went straight to his room. Ruby had been dropped at the encampment. From here on out he would pretend to not know her. A hundred people would be present. He wasn't expected to know everyone. Besides, he would be busy with many duties, most important among them, arranging appointments for private conferences with the Guru, so that he could ascertain the level of their spiritual development. Meeting with the Guru in private was sought after by the disciples, who competed for time slots, as there were always many personal things they wanted to discuss with him. Raji had already decided that there was no need for Ruby to have an audition, as she was only there as a spectator.

With that, he took off his jacket and shoes and lay down on the bed.

He had a brief nightmare of Ruby telling Gurupatan that Mao could set India straight. He clutched his heart and reached for oxygen.

"Oh Lord," he thought, "why did I ever bring her? It was a demon's trick, I will be ruined." As he got his asthma attack under control he reviewed the situation. Ruby was a flamboyant student of the kind he had known in postwar France, idealists who were mainly intellectuals. They were smart, usually from good families and knew their manners. "I hope her good manners prevail," he prayed. "I'll say I scarcely know her."

But he felt uneasy, he couldn't deny it. There was something about her, she was not like the others, she was not open-faced and receptive as a cornfield in the sun. She was under some shadow, she was on the run, not just now but always. She wanted to take the world and shake it up and set things right. She was _political._ There was nothing worse than that.

"Please God let her keep her mouth shut!"

He had brought nothing but agitation on himself and that was even before thinking about anyone else! He began to think through the faces of the participants. No loose links, he decided.

Monday morning the disciples began gathering in the living room. Everyone entered with great ceremony and found seats facing the Master's chair. He would not come down until everyone was settled. Those who'd slept comfortably looked well rested and calm. Those who'd been in sleeping bags and spent the whole night talking, looked frazzled and wild-eyed. Rain the night before had soaked the campers to the bone. Many had driven three days to get there and were spent. There was a wistful, near-starvation look about them, caused by exhaustion and the vegetarian regime they were not accustomed to. Drained and damp they sat down on the floor. The folding chairs were reserved for those in stockings and heels. They wore sandals on bare feet and clothes that hung like seaweed. Their hair was long and flowing, uncut and uneven. Their faces were blank. They looked like they had just now come from India. They started up a chant and kept with it until Gurupatan came down.

He entered with a nod and namaste and sat down.

He spotted Ruby right away. She was standing by the white wall, hair aflame, she looked like a woman on fire amid these drowned souls. Her face jumped out at him even though she was the furthest away.

The Guru composed himself and cleared his throat, then crossed his legs and got comfortable among the flowers. These were several dozen of the largest bouquets money could buy. He was grateful they had no fragrance. He sat there in silence.

Ruby stood patiently, not knowing what to expect. The room was beautiful, open and bright, two stories high with an immense round window in one wall, six feet in diameter, looking out on green rolling hills and the pastel foliage of a few clumps of trees. A frail white fence ran across it, beyond that, a few horses. For a while she preoccupied herself looking out the window and marveling that some people actually lived like this.

She looked at the Guru. He was a small man, like a bird. He had an intelligent face, eyes sharp as an eagle's. "How long do they just sit here together?" she wondered. Maybe it was some meditation to clear their minds. Maybe they were trying to get on his wavelength.

She waited. Half an hour passed.

The fact was, the Guru was waiting for questions. This was how he conducted all his Talks. He would sit in silence until someone asked a question. Then he would answer it and fall silent again.

A great silence lapped the edges of the room like a lake. He enjoyed the silence. Everyone else did too. It was a deep, pure resting place. It gave people space in which to clarify their questions. No one wanted to seem ignorant by asking something stupid, and even good questions almost evaporated. In his presence most questions dissolved by themselves as their answers became self-evident. Also, each person hoped someone else would ask the same question and they could benefit from the answer without exposing themselves. So the silence went on and on.

Ruby was bursting at the seams. When was someone going to say something? She had a few questions, if no one else did, and she was not going to let this opportunity slip by. Unable to contain herself, she blurted out, "Why is there so much suffering in the world... war, hunger, oppression, poverty, misery?"

Everyone was staring at her. The Guru looked at her intently.

"You are asking," he finally said, "why is the world _the world_?"

The entire room fell into a long silence. She looked out the round window. The scene was so idyllic, the graceful horses in the distance beyond the strip of white fence. How could people live like this when homeless alcoholics and addicts lie in garbage strewn alleys or wander through Hades in search of the next fix? The eyes of Africa looked at her, the enormous eyes and deep gaze of children near death. She could see young men dying on god-forsaken battlefields, overlaid on the scene in the window like a kind of triple vision.

What do you do with things like this? she wondered. How can people live in a house, in a place like this, all tranquility, even hosting a guru, with a clear conscience? If the Truth they had here in this room was so valuable why were they keeping it a secret? Why wasn't it being given to the world? Why allow so much suffering to continue? She felt the Guru could read her mind. She looked at him. Then she burst out crying and fled from the room.

Someone immediately stood up and took her to a restroom. She cried very hard. Then she washed her face and looked in the mirror. As she toweled it, she saw what must have been a tan, or city grime, peel off. It came off first on her forehead, a white spot the size of a silver dollar. As she rubbed, the rest came off so that her face was several shades brighter. She washed it again.

Her attendant looked at her in wonder. When she reentered the room she thought she heard a gasp go up. She took her place at the wall. Evidently no one had said anything while she was gone. She decided not to say anything either. Ram Raji caught her eyes. He put his finger to his lips and glared at her. She could see from his face that he felt like killing her. If he had been nearby he would have dragged her out of the room by her hair and strangled her.

During lunch break she went with a group back to the encampment. Out of view of the house, under a stand of towering trees, several tents were sitting in a field of mud. The rain the night before had washed the world, but here it had made a mess of things. A few women fired up a camp stove and put on rice and lentils. Everyone ate, then returned for the afternoon Talks.

She managed to get through the day without saying another word. The questions were always the same. "Is reality real?" "Is reality unreal?" "What is the middle way?" "How can one escape the brutality of existence?" "How to keep disturbances at bay while meditating?" "How to shut the world out?" What was the use of all these useless questions? Even if it was a dream, why did it have to be a nightmare? Why was no one asking, " _How should one live?"_ It did not sit well with her, this "You are asking why is the world _the world_." That meant the world was, by definition, a place of grief and sorrow. Like asking why hell is hell. That meant nothing would ever improve, nothing could be changed. Nothing could be done. She remembered the words of a friend who'd said, when she tried to explain Buddhism to him, "That kind of attitude can tolerate ANY form of government."

That evening after dinner the campers were sitting around a small fire, even though they had been explicitly told they could not make fires, but a group of Californians was cold. A dozen of them were sitting in the lotus position passing a hash pipe. Some declined, others indulged. The pipe had just come to Ruby when one of the Guru's henchwomen appeared and told her Ram Raji wanted to see her. She took both Ruby and the pipe with her.

"Smoking hashish!" he roared. "Did you bring it?"

"No. It's not mine."

"You were holding the pipe, is that correct?"

"I was passing it on."

"Whose is it?"

"I don't know."

"Do you understand how serious this is? If word of this ever gets out, can you think what it would do to Gurupatan? At the Talks drugs are forbidden! He must not get wind of this! Whoever was involved will have to leave immediately!"

After Ruby left he felt elated. What a perfect excuse to get rid of her. She could go with the Californians. They would take her wherever she wanted, even if they were on motorcycles; who invited them anyway? They obviously had no business being here. The Texans among them, he would reprimand, but permit to finish the retreat. And he would not have to be tormented every day for a week by the fear of what Ruby might do or say.

He was free! Free of the fear hanging over him for having brought her in the first place. God bless the fellow who'd brought the hashish. It had saved him from having to give Ruby his well-rehearsed speech on how she had disgraced him. The pipe had dropped into his hand like a talisman. With it, he would banish her.

But when she got back to the campground, the Californians were gone. With her white gleaming face she lay awake all night. She felt drained. That morning she'd had the best cry of her life. It covered everything. She felt completely empty and calm.

First crack of light a henchwoman came. There were several. They were Americans who'd gone to Trivandrum and had stayed as his disciples and servants. They all looked alike, taller than Ruby, straight-spined as from the military. They acted as body guards and guardians and kept the gates. Anyone who wanted to meet him applied to them. Theirs was the final decision and they turned many people away. Spiritual bouncers. They took care to protect him from misguided strangers who thought he could change their lives. They were brawny as Roman centurions and always wore white, like nurses in an insane asylum.

The same one as the night before came up to Ruby, who was up and dressed at first light as she'd never undressed the night before.

"Gurupatan wants to see you."

"About last night?"

"You must not breathe one word of it to him. Please keep it brief."

At the house the master's chair was empty. She was led to a small study upstairs. The Guru was behind a desk in a swivel chair, playing with a pencil. He motioned her to sit. He looked at her shining face, her flaming hair, her crushed garment. She said nothing and waited.

With his cropped hair he looked like a western businessman or professor of physics. He did not carry or wear any sign of his position. He was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, grey slacks, black leather shoes made in Italy. There were no rings on his hands, but he wore a Rolex.

"Tell me about yourself," he began, pretending to ask very casually.

"Why? What difference does it make?"

"It can make a difference."

"I thought the Truth is always true, regardless of personal details."

"I just wondered who you are, what is your background, who is your family?"

"Why should it matter?"

"I'm just curious," he smiled.

Why should she tell him anything? If he could read minds, well, let him read hers. She didn't have to tell him anything. If he could utter the Truth and she could comprehend it, nothing else mattered. Why should she tell him anything when she hadn't bought into the game?

It was a beautiful game, but she couldn't see herself spending her life playing it. It was a cop-out, from doing anything constructive. It was the perfect activity for people near death, who have nothing else to attend to.

She looked him in the eye, not in the least afraid, challenging him, in fact.

He sat up straighter.

"I've been told you are Jewish," he said. "Some of the other disciples are also Jewish, some ladies from Alexandria and Morocco."

"Yes," Ruby said. She knew it didn't make any difference. These gurus would sell snake oil to anyone.

"Your parents, are they still living?"

"Yes."

"What is their background, where are they from?"

Ruby was beginning to squirm, he could see it. He could also see that, feeling threatened, she was assembling her weapons, and pulling from the black sheath of her inner being a blinding sword, she brandished it to stop him once and for all, then swept it through the air decapitating him.

"They're holocaust survivors," she spat out.

It fell like a lump of kryptonite between them.

"Ah," he said, "now I understand."

The interview was over.

That same day, before lunch, she was asked to join the women in the kitchen, all disciples, who prepared the Guru's meals. He was very particular about who prepared the food he was consuming. In India a Brahmin's food could be prepared only by Brahmins. When he traveled, disciples prepared it for him and afterwards fought over the remnants.

Ruby was given a small knife and a bowl of cherry tomatoes. She held the first one up and asked, "How does the Guru like them cut, quartered, halved or sliced?"

"Any way you want is fine."

"She quartered all the cherry tomatoes and with each one she thought: "So this is the secret of squaring the circle."

The Mask

Before sunrise the clouds are crimson above ice blue mountains, ephemeral splashes of color soon to dissolve.

The sun strikes over the horizon like a fist hitting the mountains in the face, striking them pink. When you see pink mountains in illustrations (as in the work of Maxfield Parrish), don't think: Well, that's just in fairy tales. The mountains ARE pink at dawn.

From a bottomless sleep in which dreams are dark rooms left unopened, I open my eyes. Who I am, I am uncertain for a while.

What day it is, what month, what year, will come later. Meanwhile I prop up my head and see daylight. Daylight is creeping over the earth once again, as always. Before me, after me, with or without me, the light spreads. Vague shreds of glimpses into some of these rooms, which opened their doors to me as a lover opens his arms, beckoning me in. But I no longer enter them. I know they are filled with generations of old furniture, heaped up as in storage, covered with dust and appraised by strangers for purposes of disposing it. Or utilizing it. Usually, it all seems too useful to discard and I decide to pull it out of storage and put it to some use, polish it up. From this endeavor I'm always thwarted by some stranger who shows up and says it's his.

Well, if it's not mine why should I even look at it, much less decide what to do with it? I don't enter rooms any more. If a dream wants to catch me it'd better be outside.

I stand up and look out the window. The mountains look made of pink sherbet, one of those unnatural colors you hesitate to eat. The bedroom walls are blue, intense, an also unnatural color as you'd find in a swimming pool.

Like a window the mirror steps up to me and a small round sink moves towards me. A thin arm with a rough dry hand turns on a stream of clear water.

How is it we have water here, out here in outer space?

Maybe if I splash some into my face I'll stop thinking about these things.

Even hot, the water is still clear, what a marvel, this stream, like liquid light!

I dread looking up, into my face, but I know I must. The passage of time, all the days of my age, are written there. The blotches, the wrinkles, the silver strands. The bloodshot eyes and dark circles from too many cigarettes. The teeth look like someone else's, not mine. That whole person there in the mirror is frightening, so thin, is that the beginning of a stoop, is that the spine caving in? I can see my whole body folded up like a card table and put away.

No no no no no. I say. I don't want to die, even if it _is_ part of the plan. The fact that it's there, at the end, if you're aware of it, kind of heightens the poignancy and futility of everything.

Everything is futile. It will all disappear.

I brush my teeth, wash my face, run wet hands through my hair but they don't look like my hands. When did they get wrinkled and dried. When did the nails get black and broken? Twinges of pain in the joints. I'm only 50, but this whole body is not the body I knew. Never mind. The show must go on.

As on every other morning, I put on make-up. I do this even if I'm not leaving the house, even if I don't expect to see a soul. That way, when I catch myself in a mirror (and the house is full of mirrors) – I'm not shocked.

As I smooth foundation onto my face I feel like a Noh actor preparing for the theater. I am a male, in his late 30's perhaps, famous for a female role. You know, of course, that in Noh drama all parts are played by men. This feeling, of being a male impersonating a female, is so intense I ought to give him a name, or find out his name. I buff the mask of my face with a tissue. The surface is even as paint. For a Noh actor, the foundation would be white. Tagata. OK. I outline the mouth with a carnelian pencil, and fill in the lips with the darkest shade made.

Tagata, as a Noh theater female impersonator is probably bisexual. With his fine bones, slender frame, perfect mouth and winged brows, enhanced by make-up, he makes an attractive woman. I feel him in my fingertips as I pat my lips and spread the color on my cheeks. From an old colorless hag a diva emerges, he will heighten the illusion with kohl and lengths of silk. I have a feeling he committed suicide.

This must be from a past life. My husband also had some connection with Japan. He's furnished this whole house in Japanese style, and wasn't it just last night we ate at a Japanese restaurant? And there ran into someone we hadn't seen in ten years. Maybe he was there with us too, in Japan, 18th century, or maybe 15th, I really ought to find out when it was. It was definitely at the height of Noh theater; that would be a way of pinning it down. This fellow we ran into, an old friend from school, he's got the persona of an old Japanese woman. My husband, on the other hand, has never been a woman. There is not one shred of female identity in his consciousness, and to him I am always a woman.

Well and good, we can eat more sashimi and wear kimonos, vacation in Kyoto and listen to koto. We can perhaps even find the very house we shared, probably nothing ever changes in Japan.

I had a revulsion for Tokyo the 3 days we were there. The militarism puts me off. The mania for perfection is unnatural. I would rather step into a piazza than a temple rock garden. Better to be Italian. I can't stand these Japanese. It's all exquisite but in a dead sort of way. The chaotic fountain of emotions in the piazza, the warm sun, the pigeons, the old palazzos sunk in vines, lovers openly fighting and reconciling in the street.

If I was ever Italian I was one of those women who had ten lives squashing grapes with her feet. She had ten children and stayed within the Church, adoring the gold face of the Madonna. A peasant flush with life who never questioned anything. What is there to question? The sun pours honey over the hills, the grapes swell on the vines, the harvest is brought in. Through the piazza she walks on Sunday, to and from Church. Everything is always the same, as it should be, as it is. Forever in the same village she's gone barefoot. Her feet are flat and broad, firmly planted in the soil, like a vine herself she grows, on her head the crown of morning.

Enough, enough. I come downstairs, it's almost 7:30 A.M. I must get going. My dog is waving his plume of a tail. He's the size of a wolf. Alright, alright, perhaps a walk. But first, let's put on the coffee, my kingdom for a cup of coffee!—and a cigarette. I am dying, probably literally, for a cigarette.

Say good-bye to the kids, good-bye to this vaguely Japanese husband—good-bye, good-bye, kisses and good riddance. I light up.

Can't smoke and walk the dog at the same time, he's too strong, but then finally there we are, running up the morning street, children at the bus stops, on until we reach the park where not that long ago buffalo were running. There is still a protected herd a mile up the road, on Federal property—I actually go up to visit it once in a while—this vision of buffalo, shaggy deep brown against green and tawny hills. My dog and I run across the park under a big sky. A few clouds in the west will bring the weather in 3 hours. I know this from my Indian self, met in a shock of awareness one night when just as I was falling asleep three ruffians with unshaved cheeks and old flannel shirts, miners they looked like, dragged me into a ravine where they raped and shot me,—and slit me open like a deer.My husband wanted to buy me a deerskin jacket once. It was beautiful, western cut, a white stripe down the back, but just looking at it gave me the shivers. With long braids in my youth and long skirts, I planted corn on every piece of dirt.

My dog and I run over the rolling land of the park with its gone-to-seed streams. We were together then too, weren't we? Was this the gully, the one behind my house, where it happened? I had on fringed buckskin and was inside her, I could only see her hands, my hands, that view one has of oneself, gaze pouring down one's own body—the state of no-face.

I am a no-face Indian girl with her dog, running, running—the dog, once my brave, absent and unable to save me then, protects me now.

Flushed and alive we return home. I give him food and water; an embrace.

It's 8:00 A.M.! It's time to leave!

I check my mask before going out the door.

Bad Reichenhall

Last night I dreamed I met my mother in Bad Reichenhall. As the site of my childhood state of innocence, I was relieved to see it for the first time in a dream. To this place I would have gone every night of my life if I could have. How fresh and sweet were the memories of the childhood I had spent there. A small Bavarian spa town, nowhere as renowned or elegant as Baden-Baden, Bad Reichenhall was nonetheless a charming place. Surrounded by crisp mountains, it had a beautiful park with an ornate bandstand made of wooden lace, where a band always seemed to be playing. Its main attraction was the Kurhaus with its mineral baths. Next to it stood a tower covered with vines. Mineral water dripped endlessly through it, clearing the air with a scent of snow and pine.

Here my childhood unfolded, in the deep shade of the large trees surrounding the house. It was a square butter-colored apartment house of 3 stories, with balconies overlooking the park. Here I was a little girl in a red hooded coat with white satin lining. My father had dealings in Munich and Salzburg. It was just after World War II and the Allies had not yet restored order. Money could be made transporting cigarettes, coffee and chocolate. My father, young and handsome, brought me wonderful things, an entire zoo of stuffed animals, an exquisite doll, and countless colorful books.

My father was a Polish Jew who had survived the war by the skin of his teeth. His entire family had been wiped out by the Third Reich. But he hadn't yet mourned or realized the impact it would have on him. He was caught up in the post-war excitement in Germany and would have done better to stay there; would that we could all have stayed there, in that perfect world.

A little town, Bad Reichenhall had all the amenities health seekers require, first and foremost, half a dozen konditories, that is to say, pastry cafes. Amid shops carrying souvenirs and toys were butcher stores fragrant with sausages and bakeries with amazing window displays. A baroque movie theater painted cream and tiny boutiques and cafes made up a main street. All the buildings on both sides of this street were made of butter-colored plaster, with statues of saints carved into the eaves. From all the sparkling windows hung waterfalls of flowers. Ten blocks down, the road curved to the left into the mountains, the foothills growing deeper green and blue, one behind the other, in the fine rain. In the top corner of the last building was a sewing shop. It must have been where my mother bought her embroidery thread.

As I recall, we frequently went, perhaps every day, to a pastry café and had a piece of torte. We also went into the forest, where she would read or sew.

I can see myself there on the forest floor. I am lying in a pool of sunlight, biting into the sweet stem of a white clover blossom. All around are bushes loaded with fragrant white flowers: spiraea, bridal veil, snowball, white lilac. I have not yet discovered what just happened in the world. Everything is still pure.

My mother was young, far from her war-torn home. So much had been lost, nothing gained, as she played with me. But she too seemed at peace in Bad Reichenhall.

Compared to what happened afterwards, that was as good as it got. The wheel turned and with it the channel, from sunny Bad Reichenhall to gloomy mid-winter Manhattan. From there an ever descending spiral carried me down, to the lower depths, where the truth raised its head.

#

I dreamed I met my mother in Bad Reichenhall, the last place I knew to be sunlit and clear, where shadows were blue and the color black did not exist, even in the deep shade of ancient trees. No poverty, illness or death was visible anywhere. As at all resorts, an air of light and gay illumination shone on people's faces, pervading the air like the pine-drenched fragrance of the spa. The glistening white peaks of the mountains twinkled. There was no fear or dread anywhere.

This was all soon to change. When we left Bad Reichenhall, blown by the winds of history and fate, the fragile shining bubble burst. I was six when the gates of Eden closed like a mirage behind me.

The wheel turned.

By black wind over black water we were carried to another continent, where we learned how to be humble impoverished refugees. My father no longer smiled and fell into what was to be a 20-year silence. The golden balconied apartment overlooking the park vanished and I found myself on a street with dilapidated houses, cracked sidewalks and backyards filled with weeds. My father, relegated to the lowest order in a factory, grew sullen. My mother cried a lot. By the time word of the holocaust reached me, I had already lost everything.

Down through the black bitter hole of the years I remembered Bad Reichenhall. I could almost taste and smell it. In the spring it bloomed with the fragrance of chamomile and lilac, the bushes weighed down with white flowers dripping rain. Like a square yellow wedding cake neatly frosted in cream, the house stood facing the flower-lined park and its emerald eternity. But I most fondly remembered the garden with its deep shade and huge trees. To one side stood a small private library, the size of a playhouse, facing the side street. This garden was as deep as a forest, under a canopy of dazzling shade, where I played with other children. The tiny white library which stood on the property was very clear in my mind through all the dark years. The whole town remained in my mind, in infinite detail, like a rose floating in a bowl of water, like a lotus on a lake, like a vision, or the one primal memory of freedom a prisoner retains, like a crystal it remained, untouched and unchanged, through all the gloomy painful years of exile.

One summer, when I was in college, I found myself in Europe and made straight for Bad Reichenhall. There it was, untouched and unchanged as in my memory. There was the park, there was the house. I stood there transfixed, unbelieving. Walking through the park and town I looked every child in the face, looking for one I recognized, looking for myself. But my childhood self and all my childhood friends were gone, adults now. And though Bad Reichenhall was still pristine as a postcard, I now knew what had happened and I viewed the Germans with different eyes. These Germans had done things no one could comprehend. But Bad Reichenhall remained pure, as I had been pure in the days when the world was perfect and suffering, misery and death did not exist. Bad Reichenhall, even in my horrible knowledge, remained pure.

The years washed over me in waves, some murky, other clear, which took me everywhere I didn't want to go. Philosophy was grace but the demands of fate dragged me through terrains I now hold dear, but which were, at the time, sheer Tibetan hells. The paths of ordinary life were darkened by the shadow of mass mourning.

Buddhism zapped the gates open and blew out the windows too. What's a few million dead in the face of the annihilation of the whole universe? And even IT is only an illusion.

Ten years later I showed the house on Marienbadstrasse to my husband. We were driving around Europe and went straight from Munich to Bad Reichenhall. There was the house, still standing, in a spa town virtually unchanged. The library was still in the garden, but abandoned. And the house itself was a bit frayed, now with a sign, a retirement home. The rest of the town was unchanged. The Kurhaus was open, its ornate whipped cream entrance still led to the baths within. The marble halls shone like mirrors along inner gardens where elderly Germans strolled, holding cups of mineral water. Outside, the tower of dripping vines stood, fragrant as heaven. The house, its facade slightly peeling, made me wish I could buy and restore it to a small hotel. My husband confessed that he'd never believed the part about the library in the garden and we looked in the windows that were dusty and cracked. It was empty inside, of course, and locked. But the blue shade under the high trees was the same, and the white bushes bloomed, and the white mountains ringed the town as always.

By then my parents were on their feet. My father had come out of his mourning, but it was too late, I was grown, and didn't know him at all. But much of the pain was left behind, there was only that far we could drag our dead. My father had survived, even America. My mother bloomed beyond the mantra of her losses and beautiful always, was ravaged now only by the vicissitudes of ordinary life.

"Wouldn't you just love to go back and see Bad Reichenhall?" I asked her as we looked at the few pictures I'd taken (why hadn't I photographed every square inch of the town?)

"No," she said. "It doesn't have such happy memories for me."

"What do you mean? It was beautiful!"

"Well, I lost my family. We didn't know where we were going. We didn't know from one day to the other what we're doing. When we got to Poland and Daddy saw everything what happened, his parents, brothers, everybody dead, he cried... like an animal. We were 4 years in DP camp. The house on Marienbadstrasse was for a short time at the end, only 18 months. I wouldn't go back. I got nothing there to look for."

"It was the happiest time of my life," I said.

#

Ten years after that my husband and I took our small son the see the house, but it was gone.

I couldn't believe my eyes. We had come from Munich. Munich was the same, as was Salzburg and the entire town of Bad Reichenhall except for the one spot where my house had stood. The property had been absorbed by the park and Marienbadstrasse turned into a walkway with flowers and benches. I couldn't believe it. How could my house disappear? The lot had been entirely razed and replanted. None of my bushes were there. My little library, my tall trees, my blue shade, all gone. I could find no shred of my former life there. But the town, well, the town was still the same, except that the whole main street had been turned into a pedestrian mall. But still, some of the magic remained. I would not let go.

Now my father is gone. My mother has another life. Even the weight of all the words said and left unsaid has evaporated. We sailed out of that dark storm into a shining cove of calm water.

The pain of the past is shed as water, shaken off as dark dreams that never really were. The pale scrawny refugee and all the rest that followed, along with the millions of souls following me, melted off like running water.

A while ago the mountains on my horizon began to resemble those around Bad Reichenhall, even if they are further away, and the shadows began to look blue. The fragrance wasn't there, but it was close enough to give a fleeting feeling that I was still a child in Bad Reichenhall. I learned to sustain the exact feeling for minutes at a time. It feels like regaining a lost world.

It is only after turning my whole world into Bad Reichenhall that it appears to me in a dream. After so many years of longing to dream of it. I dreamed I met my mother in the street. We had been expecting to meet and spent some time looking for each other. After going through all my beloved streets I found her, in front of the café. All was calm. The trees, the shops, the park, it was all there, even the house, brought into being by the magic of the mind.

I awoke as from a long illness.

Lilacs

I was looking at the lilac bushes in the garden. "I have my own lilacs now," sprang into my mind—and with it the memory of an incident when I was around 10, getting caught breaking off someone's lilacs.

The memory surfaced from nowhere very clearly. My friend Annette and I were walking home from school through an old alley lined with lilac bushes in bloom. I had just broken off a few stems when a patrol car was suddenly rolling towards me. It stopped and the policeman asked:

"Are these bushes yours?"

"No," I meekly confessed, my thin body quaking.

"You're breaking the law," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"I'll let you off this time but don't do it again."

He took the branches away from me. I recall it as one of the great horrible moments of childhood.

The fact was, I wanted them for my mother. Where we had lived before, the lilacs were ours and when they were in bloom she always had a few stems in a vase. Their fragrance filled the rooms. She loved lilacs in particular. It went back to her own childhood.

When I was 10 we lived in a rented house in a strange city and felt a profound nostalgia for home. If I was breaking off some lilacs it was for soothing my mother's heart.

But then, as I stood in front of my own lilacs it suddenly occurred to me that it must have been around the time my mother lost that baby.

I try to bring the memory in—even though I dread to think about these things—they are so long ago, after all. But there is some connection here.

All the circumstances surrounding the death of this baby take me out of the lilac lined alley where I'm humiliated by the policeman to an even worse moment when my father and the mortician meet in front of our house and transfer a small box between cars.

"Let me come with!" I plead.

"No, it's not a place for a child."

They left me standing on that corner, at the center of the intersecting sidewalks, crucified by the light.

My mother was still in the hospital. She knew the baby was sick, but not that it'd died. When she called a while later, I was crying, or rather, I burst into tears at the sound of her voice. I thought I should tell her the truth but was afraid to. It wasn't my place. I knew unequivocally that I must say nothing.

"Why are you crying?"

"I fell down."

"You never cry when you fall down."

She knew, alright, that something was wrong. They'd refused to show her the baby. Shall I breathe the word "Thalidomide?"

Why was all this coming back to me in connection with a lousy bunch of lilacs? My own lilacs haven't even bloomed yet and already their fragrance is suffocating me. I see myself in the back seat of a car with Annette. Her mother is driving us home from their house. On the empty front seat sits a wrapped package. I fear it might be a baby gift but I say nothing. What if it's not a baby gift and my comment implies she ought to be bringing one? Can you just blurt out such words as "The baby died?" I am struggling for words and air but can't find either. We don't know them that well. She hasn't asked, "How's the baby?" If only she had asked I could have told her. She did ask "Was it a boy or a girl?" "It was a boy," I croaked, stressing the WAS, but couldn't get the rest out; before I could say "...but he died," she'd jumped in with, "Oh how nice!" I keep thinking, as we drive, that a moment will come, that kind of perfect moment when words speak themselves, but it doesn't.

My mother is home from the hospital, grieving over the truth. To my horror Annette's mother gets out of the car with us, to come in. I feel the icy hands of death around my throat. Why didn't I tell her, why don't I stop her? Mercifully, or intelligently, she has left the gift in the car. I feel like screaming, Don't go in, the baby died! But it's too late, she's in the door, she's hearing it from my mother. She's shocked and angry, turns on me with "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?" I want to sink into the floor. I want to die.

I wonder if Annette told her mother about the lilacs and the policeman. If she did, she made out it was all my idea, and it was. I wanted to put some lilacs in a vase and see my mother's face sink into them, into the fragrance of home. Bereft and bankrupt I was then, poor and broken in body and soul. But that was a very long time ago.

I have my own lilacs now.

Camille

Lester Stone's fiancée almost ruined my life.

It was only after he'd had his heart broken but good that he began to really paint. He's famous now. I can't afford his paintings.

They are exquisite and gallery owners snap them up before they're finished. These small canvases sell for five figures. Delicate faces that look you in the eye. Street scenes at dusk after rain, a sky like pink wine falling through dark trees to shine on silver pavements. He paints in the style of the last great Impressionists, a hundred years later. His hand is sure, the images pure, classics before he paints them.

Lester Stone is an old acquaintance. He was the friend of a couple we knew and sometimes he tagged along. Once briefly married, he has a grown daughter, spends the summers in Wisconsin with his aging parents, is a vegetarian and belongs to a meditation group, although he seems to know nothing about Buddhism. Nonetheless, a gentle soul, living off a tiny trust, in a monastic manner. One room with a mattress on the floor, but always immaculately groomed and dressed. A perfectionist, if you must know, very meticulous about paying his own and only his own exact share to the penny of every restaurant bill. He usually omitted the tip. But he was very mellow and otherwise had good manners, he didn't get on our nerves.

He was a friend of Fran's, who'd met him in a painting class. She was as slow as honey on ice and he was too, lazy and shiny as a house cat. He did not work at any job that we could ascertain and we had no idea how he spent his time. If he were as much of an artist as Fran, there was no danger of it ever amounting to anything. We regarded him as a dilettante, except that he was practically devoid of ideas.

He often brought a female friend along, each time a different one. They tended to look old and hard, carried rucksacks, wore hiking boots. He always claimed he wasn't hungry and drank only Fruitopia. It was just lucky he wasn't obnoxious or we would have banned him right away. He never talked about painting and for ten years we forgot all about it.

One Christmas, to escape loneliness and depression, Lester booked a Club Med vacation somewhere in the Caribbean. When he returned a week later he was ecstatic. He had met a woman, a wonderful person, French Canadian. She knew all about health food and healing. They were going to get married as soon as she liquidated everything in Montreal. He was radiant, a changed man.

"She's not like the others," he said. "She's different."

We were dying with curiosity. He showed us some photos of a lovely, winsome 45-year old with a pale oval face, sparkling eyes, dark hair. Camille.

When Camille arrived in the spring he introduced her to us. We were at the Riviera, a very old Mexican restaurant in a sunken shack dominated by a bar and pool tables. The place is an institution, dwarfed by 30 years of commercial development around it. In recent years they'd added a greenhouse (glassed in garage) and a patio with plants and umbrellas. The food is good and ridiculously cheap. Maybe that's why Lester and Camille agreed to join us. By then she'd been in town two weeks. From the foliage of the greenhouse she emerged like a flower.

Her French accent was very strong and, to my surprise, her English very weak. She had that lovely Parisian flair, her straight hair cut simply, her clothing subdued. And she _was_ different from all the others: her face was alive. She spoke and laughed with abandon, hands aflutter, eyes bright. Her eyes literally sparkled. Yes, she was lovely and charming. I was happy for him.

But when we went to the Ladies Room, Camille cornered me.

"This not going to work," she declared. "I don't know how to get out now, I give up everything to come here, now I am here and he have nothing."

"Yes, he does live simply."

"No bed! Only mattress!"

I had to smile. I sleep on a set of mattresses on the floor, sans frame. In brightly colored sheets it looks very modern, almost Japanese, and the firmness of the floor is great. I fondly recall the 60's when sleeping on a mattress was cool. Pity I don't know any French. But what's this? She's crying?

"He give me no money for food, not enough to buy meat – I am dying for steak. He gives enough only for radishes!"

"I thought you were a vegetarian, aren't you a health food expert or something?"

"I am, but I must have meat. I am craving it."

"Little things like this can be worked out."

"Little things? No furniture! One room!"

"Didn't he tell you about himself when you met? When you decided to get married?"

"He tell me he have everything he need," she sobbed like a cheated child.

"And so he does." I embraced her. She pushed me away.

"I cannot live this way! I sell my car. I give away my piano! Let go my apartment. I have no place to go and I must leave. I kill him if I stay."

"But what about this romance you had? I thought you were so attracted to each other?"

"I was but no more. I am repulsed by him."

"You must have seen something in him, felt something, to have gotten this far."

"I DID! But it's gone. And if I want coffee I must drink in secret on the roof!"

True enough. Lester did not touch anything that had caffeine, nicotine or alcohol. She felt he'd misrepresented himself when he told her he had everything he needed, which was true because he'd reduced his needs to almost nil. She at a later point confessed that her old life was such a mess she'd seen Lester as a savior. But now she stood looking at her new life as into an abyss. It was too Spartan, too big a leap; he was too human, had flaws. She now saw the reality of day to day life with him and wanted to flee it. She had deceived him, too, by depicting herself as a health food, yoga and meditation expert. She could have told him right off that she needed a steak, a cup of coffee, perhaps a glass, oh well, why not a whole bottle, of wine or even a cigarette. Better yet, she could have told him she cared about money and things. Saw them as the bolts holding life down. Could have told him she was crazy, had tried suicide, but didn't.

"If you love each other these are just details."

"I hate him!" she screamed. She was distraught. She splashed water on her face and ran wet hands through her hair. I was tempted to invite her to stay with me until things cleared up, but knew she'd accept and make me an accomplice to the demise of this affair. The length of my acquaintance required loyalty to Lester who, even if she left, I'd have to see again. Also, I took his side. I secretly envied his lifestyle. Never did he crave nor did he toil. He was enlightened, or rather, had enough money coming in to keep his leisure if he kept it simple. If Camille wanted to change, this was her chance. She could become someone else. But she didn't see it as an alternate lifestyle.

"No table, no chairs! I can't invite people!"

"Most couples start out with almost nothing," I said as we returned to the table. "You buy things together, things you both like. You can look for a larger apartment, you will choose it, then a house. It's a gradual process, Camille. Give it time."

A few weeks later when we went on a picnic (he refused to lunch in a restaurant) she brought pasta salad and radishes.

"Lester needs to loosen up a little," my husband observed on the way home.

"That would help, wouldn't it?"

Lester couldn't expect everything to stay the same. The appearance of Camille in his life also demanded some changes in him. So far he hadn't changed one iota.

Whenever Camille and I were alone she'd poured out her heart like a bottle of bitter Algerian wine. She didn't know what to do. Couldn't decide. Couldn't stay, couldn't go. It was nauseating.

Her lively face and glittering eyes were still a joy to behold and I could see why he'd fallen for her. Utterly feminine in behavior, in a way American women aren't. She was blatantly emotional, weeping freely, flaunting her hands. Particularly when we met alone for coffee, as we did sometime later. She would sit at the table and cry openly. It was revolting. How could a woman not make up her mind and act on her decision?

It really had nothing to do with Lester, he would agree to anything. She was like a typhoon that had blown into his life, he loved her and wanted it to work, and would probably even have bought a bed on a frame and taken her to a steak house. But he was at a loss now, what to do with her. He wouldn't rent a larger apartment without some commitment on her part that she would stay, but she couldn't decide. In his passive way he simply waited.

"Do you cry in front of him?" I asked, sipping my cappuccino.

"All the time."

"Do you make love?"

"No."

"Has he given up?"

"No, he still try for it to work."

"Camille, what do you want? He's a good man. He loves you."

She's crying again. I'm looking at her and I see a manic-depressive.

"What sort of life did you have in Montreal? Can you go back? Did you have a job?"

"Yes. I am dietician."

"Were you involved with someone?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"A rich man. Much older. Married."

"Can you go back to him?"

"Yes but I sick of it. Also a younger man, he don't want me. I running away when I meet Lester."

"Now you've met him and you're running away again."

She nodded.

"How many more chances like this do you think you'll get? He's a truly nice guy. You are not going to do better. You could have a wonderful life together. He loves you. He will not abuse you. If nothing is waiting for you in Montreal, why not take a chance?"

But she couldn't hear me. She was sobbing wildly. Like a rollercoaster she was plunging and taking me with her into her whirlpool. She didn't know anyone else in town and was clinging to me. It was raining just as wildly outside and I needed to get home to be there for my 3rd grader getting off the schoolbus at 3:20. I kept looking at my watch and trying to detach myself from her. I was afraid to take her with me to my house so she could continue her mental breakdown uninterrupted because I was afraid she'd never leave. I desperately needed to go. The rain was coming harder and the distance, since I live in the sticks, was far. I had to wrench myself out of the middle of her operatic performance and depart. I hadn't counted on the traffic barely moving. It was like driving through Niagara Falls. By the time I got home I had missed the school bus. I drove into the garage and ran out to the driveway, looked on the porch, up and down the street. The child was nowhere to be seen. Lightning and thunder crashed all around. I ran to the houses of neighbors whose children had been on the same bus. Three houses had boys the same age who played with my son but as I rang and banged on those doors I couldn't believe that no one was home. Where are these people with children running around in this storm. Not a single door opened to me. I was wild with grief. What if he'd disappeared? What if I never found him? With a sword through my heart I stood in the middle of the street in the pouring rain and shrieked his name. That damn Camille could destroy everyone around her. I finally found my child under a pine tree but my heart would never be the same.

Months went by. Lester was silent as a saint. Camille tore around, a storm of emotions, a tornado. One of the things that happened was that she'd fixated on his paintings and dragged him around to galleries.

Whatever paintings he'd done she photographed and showed to galleries. The photos even surfaced at the Riviera, where they were passed around the table. I looked at them closely. A street scene I fancied was done in twilight blues, a man in top hat, a woman in a long pink dress reflected in the rain-swept street.

This involvement was good. He ought to try to have his work shown and sold. She was perhaps a bit too fervent about it, like someone who has found a new religion. And there was the taskmaster about her, lashing him onward to paint more, faster, to produce.

"She's a slave-driver," he'd say with a wan smile. He looked pale, his beard silver. He wasn't a young man, to put up with Camille. And she wasn't that young either but took the prerogative of acting like an adolescent, plunging from laughter to tears. Euphoria and tragedy occupied the same space. I wasn't surprised when she left, nor when she came back, and no one was more relieved than me when she ran off for good.

280 SE

It had never occurred to Charlotte McKenna that she needed a new car, until she saw Peggy Huxtable getting into a bronze number that looked like an antique. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She opened the door to her light blue 14-year old Volkswagen bug, with all its fenders bashed in. Her husband, Paul McKenna, had bought it in Amsterdam as a set of wheels, had driven it around Europe for nine months and shipped it back, shortly before they met. He meant to give it to his sister and gave it to Charlotte instead. It was like a member of the family. But when Peggy Huxtable waved as she drove past, something changed, some window opened up deep inside of her.

"I need a new car," she announced to Paul one night.

"Oh? The Volkswagen still runs."

"It's going to run forever!"

"I thought you liked it as a statement."

"I did. But it doesn't fit my image anymore."

He looked at her. Outwardly she hadn't changed.

"What kind of car do you have in mind?"

"I don't know."

"Then where did this idea come from?"

"I guess it happened when I saw Peggy Huxtable getting into the most gorgeous car."

"Huxtable? Oh, that ass. I heard he bought an old Rolls, piece of junk. Is that what it was?"

"I don't know. It was kind of boxy and bronze. It was the most mellow metallic sort of copper or bronze, like an old penny. It was beautiful."

"Well, I would never buy a piece of junk like that, nothing but headaches, you can't trust the Brits with cars, their cars get more vertical miles than horizontal ones, but we can look around and see what you like. I don't have any objection to the idea."

#

Driving through the city she became conscious of cars for the first time.

"Oh, there's one I like," she pointed to a large black car loaded with chrome.

"That? That's an old Mercedes. Twenty years at least. You don't want anything that old."

A few nights later in a parking lot they saw a white one. They walked around it in the moonlight. It was perfectly restored. It was, they now got very specific, a 280 SE.

On a Sunday they were standing and admiring a cream colored one in front of a gallery, when its owner came up.

"Nice car," Paul said.

"Thanks, I just got it."

"What year is it?"

"'72."

"My wife likes this model. Do you mind my asking how much you paid for it?"

"Not at all. I got it for $5,500."

Charlotte and Paul looked at each other. Not just a window but a whole wall slid open.

It was not long before they were spending Sundays studying the classifieds and going to see every car in the state. They were all '71's and '72's. All well over 100,000 miles.

"Does it have to be such an old car?" Paul asked. "Maybe you'd like one around seven or eight years old. It's not what you pay up front, you know. What's it going to do to us later? It could drain you to keep it going. I just don't think it's wise to buy a 20-year old car.

"Let's get a Lexus," said 6-year old Charlie.

They looked at younger cars, but the height of the grill dropped after '72 and she finally said, "If it's not that model, let's just forget it."

The first car they considered was in an older, exclusive neighborhood with full grown trees. The car was a beautiful deep forest green, but the hood...the paint on the hood was completely cracked and stained.

"The engine overheated," the owner admitted. Caught fire was more like it. "But it runs great. You can take it for a spin."

"Go ahead," said Paul. "See how you like it."

"Me?" Charlotte was suddenly paralyzed with terror. "Drive it?"

"You might as well. It's going to be YOUR car, isn't it?"

Nervously she got behind the wheel, found reverse and backed it into the street, then lurched forward and drove several blocks. The car seemed huge, compared with the Volkswagen. It was like driving a hotel lobby. The dashboard was wood and she liked that.

"How much are you asking?" Paul asked the owner.

"You can have it for $2500. I got a new car and need the space." He pointed to a BMW.

When she returned, Paul stepped aside with Janis and said, "What do you think, do you want it? It's so cheap it's a joke. It's a piece of junk but you could have fun with it for awhile."

Charlotte felt uncertain. "You know, if the idea is to make an impression, then that hood ruins the whole thing."

The following Sunday they looked at another car, in a suburb to the west of the city. The car had been painted an odd metallic pale green. The owner, a balding doctor, said he was moving to a small town and didn't want to appear ostentatious. ("With that piece of junk?" thought Paul.) $5300 seemed fair but who could live with that color? It was like a piece of metal that had lain in the ocean a millennium and begun to glow.

It was after the tenth car, a pale blue one that still didn't look right, that Charlotte confessed what she really wanted was a black one.

"You want a black car? You'll look like a dope dealer."

"The chrome shows up better."

Once she had narrowed it down in her own mind, the exact vision of what it must be, the car itself materialized in a short while. A '72 midnight blue 280 SE. Paul found it at a dealer after seeing every dealer in town. He brought Charlotte in the evening to see it.

"That's it," she said.

They bought it but she was too terrified to drive it home. She drove the VW back. "I am not afraid of a car," he said and took the wheel. Classical music came on. The car sailed like a ship, silently.

For days she was afraid to drive it, but then Paul sold the VW and she was left alone with the big black machine. Its fenders were like the flanks of a blue black stallion. Chrome outlined the entire body, trimming the windows, forming the bumpers that shone like mirrors. The grill rose like a monument of chrome, topped by the hood ornament, the star. Inside, the dashboard was exotic wood and felt like the cockpit of a vintage plane. She fell in love with it and learned to dream in its arms as she drove.

One night, outside a Chinese restaurant, parked on a dark side street, the star was broken off. They noticed it right away, when they got in. It was visibly missing. It rode the hood like the crosshatch of a telescopic lens. Without it, the whole driving experience was different.

Even though they replaced it within a few days, Charlotte was horror struck. At first she thought the whole hood would have to be replaced. Even after Paul restored it, she was still in a state of shock.

"Because it swivels," he was saying, "there's an assembly of about seventeen pieces under the hood holding it on. Took me an hour and a half, I don't have the right tools, not to mention that it cost $74.95." Then Paul forgot the whole thing. It wasn't his car. He didn't give the Mercedes another thought, except to say, "You might watch where you take it. A car like that invites vandalism. You won't be able to leave it just anywhere." But after that, he gave it no more thought.

Charlotte, on the other hand, began having nightmares. Every night she dreamed that her car had been stolen. Even though Paul had paid twice as much as its Blue Book value of $4,500, he'd decided not to carry theft insurance. What could you buy for $4,500? He carried liability in case she hit someone, but no comprehensive. If the car was stolen, it was gone. And besides, it was irreplaceable.

Every night she dreamed that she was coming out of some building, desperately searching for the car, unable to find it. She had dreams where it was stolen right before her eyes. She had dreams where she stood stranded in the countryside at night. She had city dreams where a police officer even said, "Don't get upset, you're dreaming."

"How can I be dreaming when this is all so real?" she snapped at him, rapping her knuckles on a brick wall as they walked up a city street to file a report. The wall felt very solid.

Every morning she awoke bathed in sweat, her heart pounding, totally relieved that it had only been a dream and her car was safe in the garage.

But she even had waking nightmares, like the night she came out of an evening class and couldn't find her car in the parking lot where she'd left it. She waited until all the other people had come out of the building and driven away....but her car wasn't there. She stood on the empty asphalt convinced it had been stolen. Then, in desperation she looked across to the next block where there was an identical parking lot and there, all alone, stood her stallion.

There turned out to be many parts of town she no longer went because it wasn't safe for her car.

"That car is running your life," he best friend said. "I couldn't live like that. Just get rid of it."

But how could she part with her car? She loved it as she would love a man. It drove like a dream, like a silent jet plane. She wanted to die and be buried in it. She thought driving off Independence Pass might be a good way to go when she was ready. But every night, there she was again, discovering with that awful feeling, that her car had been stolen.

It never got easier. Each time was equally intense. Each time she was shocked and distraught. Each time she had the sinking certainty that she would never see her car again. She worried more about her car than about her child.

One day, in the middle of July, Charlotte was at a swimming pool with Charlie. After the lesson he liked to splash around and she was gazing at the sky when far in the distance, coming from the northwest, was a single pointed black cloud. It looked like a smear in the clear blue sky, far, far away. But as she watched, it approached very quickly. Everything got dark and windy.

"Everyone out of the pool!" a loudspeaker boomed. "We have a tornado warning! Everyone clear the pool and stand under the awning!"

The awning over the refreshment stand looked very flimsy.

"Let's go!" she called to Charlie.

"Can we make it home?"

She considered shielding the car with her body, with towels, looked for somewhere to move it, some shelter. There was no safe place nearby.

It was windy but she could probably make it home, a distance of three miles. She was halfway home when the sky opened up with a torrent of ice and hail that obscured everything and felt like an avalanche of rocks. She couldn't see anything through her windshield which she thought would end up in her lap. She couldn't see to move forward, but was afraid to stop. She kept crawling through the deluge of ice and stones, leaning her head out the window to see the road. It was like being under an iron tub pelted with meteorites.

How she made it home she didn't know. She pulled into the garage and went with Charlie into the house. The downpour of water, ice and hail was just incredible. She couldn't see the trees in the yard. The wind howled and ripped around the house, fist-sized hail battering it from all sides. But as quickly as it came, so it passed. Suddenly the sun came out and everything was calm. Six inches of hail lay on the ground. The July sun shone brightly.

She went to the garage and looked at the car.

"Maybe we can get a Lexus now," said Charlie.

Even in the dim light she could see the damage. She didn't need to back it into the driveway to see it. She could see deep dents the size of quarters all over the body. It was bruised. She caressed its navy flank with sorrow.

But she never had another nightmare about her car.

Every few months Paul raised the topic of having the car restored, but she ignored him. Two years later it still hadn't been fixed.

"Maybe now that it's going to qualify as an antique, we should get the body fixed." He was becoming insistent and couldn't understand why she wasn't interested.

"I'd rather not," she finally confessed. She loved her car more than ever. "Once it's fixed I'll have to worry about every scratch and dent. My nightmares will return. Please, let's just leave it the way it is."

A Thousand Lights

At 68 she had married a man who took her shopping to Neiman Marcus, because he had worked there many years as a tailor and got an additional 30% discount off the sale price, which put everything within reach. Widowed, they had fallen into a kind of first love. They took long brisk walks every morning, usually at the new enclosed mall with its palm trees and waterfalls. Here she already knew the contents of every store. If a jeweled purse or strange shoes caught her eye, Oscar would buy them for her.

He adored her and had a bit of money, not much, for how much could a tailor have? But he had held on to all of it and wanted to spend it on her.

She had always loved beautiful things and loved possessing them. She herself had stepped out of the Italian Renaissance or Russian, rather. A longing for Czarist Russia, as portrayed by Tolstoy, pervaded her being. She was forever Anna Karenina in love with Vronsky and doomed to throw herself under a train.

She sometimes told vignettes of sitting at a table under the trees at her paternal grandmother's house near Kiev. "They were as poor as mice," she said, "but as devout as saints." She often saw herself, dark-eyed and scrawny, sitting at that table eating sunflower seeds.

Her father, an idealist, embraced Communism. He worked in the stables of a wealthy family and outraged everyone by running off with the youngest daughter, a milky beauty with dark hair and eyes. In an old photograph she looks made of ivory.

He was not permitted, even after the birth of four children, to enter his in-laws' house. She was allowed to come and during the war she smuggled food out of her father's house for him.

Sonia was 14 at the outbreak of the war. After her father got TB, the family survived on the sale of her mother's clothes. "She sold one piece at a time. We could live a whole month." This was Russia during Stalin, World War II and 20 million dying in the frozen mud.

She was sent to a factory in another city, because they would give her daily bread. "I would try to save it to eat later, but it was always stolen from me."

They walked through the shining halls, black marble waxed and polished daily, outlining the elegant, brightly lit stores. The jewelry winked at her. She especially loved jewelry. But today nothing called to her. All the beautiful things in all the stores held no allure.

Outside, the April day was dark and raining. At 4:00 they needed to attend the funeral of a dear old friend. To be buried on such a day! For two weeks the sun had been pulling blossoms from bare branches like a magician pulling colored scarves from his sleeve.

But today it was dark as night and pouring rain. They had driven to the mall anyway. It was an enormous place with many distractions and diversions. They often ran into people they knew who also exercised there.

In illuminated windows stood glittering displays, mannequins in sequined gowns, gold and silver shoes, drifts of silk, all drew the eyes as into aquariums of glowing fish. One's gaze fell in and rested upon some lovely thing, as in a trance.

But she no longer wanted anything.

This was the second funeral in a week. People were departing. People they knew. People they had known since they were young and strong.

Now some of these titans were falling. It was terrifying to ponder one's own fate. Did they really have so little time? They had just married and everything was so perfect, how could it end? It wasn't fair! It made her furious with God. How could the perfect conjunction of all things come down to nothing?

Why did God allow death to exist?

They stood before a crystal store. Her gaze fell into a crystal bowl flashing with a thousand lights.

It blocked out everything else.

It hung in space like some kind of incredible diatom, some holographic map of a condensed universe. She stared into its carvings and edges, this bowl on a pedestal, this empty bowl of flashing lights. How could something like this exist in a world where we must all die?

Everything but the bowl disappeared, Oscar, the mall, the other people and the echoes of their voices, the marble, the palms and water, even the glass between herself and the bowl, everything vanished. She had no body and was conscious only of a glittering geometric apparition hanging in black space.

"You like the bowl?" Oscar was asking.

She shut out his voice and could not tear her eyes away from it. She remembered her father, tall and dark as Pushkin, dying in a make-shift hospital. The war years were condensed into a single frame: among the hundreds of beds, looking for him. He had died and was not there. Unbelieving, she ran, tears streaming, from bed to bed looking for him. It had sunk in so deep in her, and lain at the bottom like an ancient anchor, for so long. So long. And with the funeral last week, and now the one today at 4:00, in this rain... she stopped thinking and stared, transfixed, into the bowl.

Oscar stood lost in his own thoughts. Then his ceaseless energy roused him. He said, "Let's get going."

The Night Garden

She had taken to going down into the garden at night because the days were too hot, the light blinding. July had been unbearable. The geraniums were scorched, their flowers black, their leaves withered and etched with the palm prints of death. The big trees languished pale and thirsty. The sky blared with white heat day after day.

The house was a large three-level structure with a wide deck a floor above the ground. She and her husband used the deck, first to eat dinner, then to watch the sunset, and on into the evening when the stars came out.

Victor would bring his small Sony out and watch it, its mass-media message disturbing the silence of the night. Wherever he went, mass media went with him, magazines, newspapers, TV, radio. There was always the noise of the outside world around him. He disturbed the silence the moment he came home, by turning on the TV on the kitchen counter. He seemed to have a thirst for news.

What news is he always searching for? Anna asked herself. What is he waiting to hear? The news always seemed the same to her. Always an earthquake, a flood, a fire somewhere. There was always a war. What was he looking for?

One evening she slid open the vast glass door to the deck, walked past him sitting in the darkness listening to his TV, and plunged down the deep wooden steps, like one falling, into the darkness of the garden.

At the very bottom of the property stood a solitary streetlamp. It illuminated the garden with an unearthly blue light. The pine trees seemed much larger than in daylight, their blue arms cast swaying indigo shadows. The cottonwoods, wilted in the heat of day, seemed immense in the cool swimming air.

It seemed like a perfect time to water the vegetable garden. She set up the oscillator and on bare feet walked back through the cool grass, up the dark slope, under cage of the deck jutting out overhead, and came to the wall where she turned on the faucet.

The water sprang to life like a fountain in paradise. Between the black trunks of the trees the moving curtain of water was lit by the streetlamp. She sat down on a bench, transfixed. The light spun immense rainbow webs between the trees which stood in a 4th dimension. The big dark house seemed far away and the trees loomed up clear and huge from the blue ground, the moving fountain of water, like light under the sea.

Now every night she no longer sat on the deck listening to the electronic words of strangers, but descended, instead, into the garden.

If she were an Indian on peyote, she knew, this night landscape would open its soul to her. The trees would speak. Flowers would be lit from within. Shadows would turn into animals. Everything would be an omen. The hidden world was there but she couldn't reach it, couldn't shift her awareness to it, much as she tried. Was it really possible, she wondered, to attain that state of awareness through meditation, yoga, vegetables? She doubted it. But she knew the hidden world was filled with glowing symbols.

Now she was a wife and mother, in suburbia with its shopping malls, swimming pools, carpools, supermarkets, birthday parties, schoolbus mornings. She looked at the black trunks of the trees, none straight, all flowing, stark against the white spray of water. She thought about the distance she had put between herself and Victor. He probably didn't understand the meaning of her search. He mistook it as a rejection of some kind. Why was she sitting down there instead with him on the deck? She was wearing a black T-shirt and he couldn't see her. She was performing a disappearance act. She vanished completely among the trees. In his mind he could conjure up her white face and arms, her hair choppy as an act of vengeance. "To fit better into suburbia," she'd said. The length of her hair didn't matter to him. Or that she'd traded her embroidered clothes for black silk. Her external changes hadn't bothered him in 20 years. What bothered him now was the disappearance of her soul. Where was she tonight? He couldn't tell, but knew it was far from him. What possessed her to spend her time down there away from him? He searched through his mind for some transgression. Had he said or done something to cause this? But he felt innocent. He always blamed these distances on what he believed to be her homesickness for the past. He took it as a sign that she was unhappy with the present, i.e. the life he had created for her. She was a romantic, that was it. Illusions, all illusions, he thought angrily. Why was she always thinking that she could do or be something else? There was absolutely nothing wrong with their lives.

"Anna," he finally said when she mounted the stairs. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, sure."

He would have liked to ask her many questions, but it wasn't in his character to pry. Leery of feelings, he didn't pry even into his own. He felt that something was wrong but couldn't put his finger on it. But he really didn't want to know. He just wanted to be assured that it had nothing to do with him.

"What's the purpose of life?" she finally asked.

Oh no, he thought, not that again. He said nothing but waited for more.

"I was watching an ant climb the tree next to me and got to thinking that ants probably don't wonder about their purpose in life. They just go about being ants. They're completely programmed. An ant doesn't ask 'Why am I here?' An ant knows his purpose is in his anthood. He is here to be an ant. Nothing more. And being an ant is such an involvement in his colony he can't even imagine his life has any independent purpose of its own. If an ant's purpose is fulfilled by his anthood, is human purpose fulfilled by humanhood? Is that all we have to be, just human?"

"Humans have more options," he said. "An ant can only be one thing. But we can choose different lifestyles."

She understood his fear that she was questioning her lifestyle, which had been largely created by him, they were living in his world. But she wasn't wondering if she would be happier in another lifestyle, as he imagined, as he always interpreted her silent moods.

"No," she said, her white arms shining like ivory tusks in the moonlight, "these options are superficial. Any self we could choose to be would be equally fictitious. What I mean is, What is humanhood? How does one fulfill one's humanhood? She was herself surprised by the unusual word.

"Don't you mean humanity?"

"Humanity isn't the right word. Humanity is showing kindness to children and animals, having pity on the poor, sorrow at death, joy at birth, etc. etc., all the emotions that humans have experienced from time immemorial, all going nowhere, a cycle that never ends because we never learn anything. But what is humanhood? What is our position to the cosmos? Why are we witnessing it?"

Oh, man, he thought, what does she want? He tried to divine within her abstract speech some factual discontent.

"What are we here to do?" she continued. "What's the point of being here?" She said this with anger, as if the universe were playing a trick on her. Her hair glowed under the moon and her white arms lay disembodied on her black t-shirt like the lost broken arms of Venus de Milo. Her head, too, seemed to float in space like a piece of marble in a museum case. With her bare marble foot she touched his leg in reassurance. He said nothing.

"I'm afraid," she said.

"What of?"

"I'm afraid of something happening to us. Everyone we know has either died, divorced, moved away or gone crazy."

It was true. Anna's brother and Victor's sister had both gotten divorced. Their best friends had separated a few weeks before. Another had gone crazy and had to be institutionalized. Victor's father had died. Anna's was losing his mind. All around them things seemed to be sinking into chaos. On a Saturday night they couldn't even find one other couple to join them.

That must be it, Victor decided. He felt relieved to know she was distressed about other people's marriages, not their own.

"I'm afraid," she said, "that something might happen to us."

"You mean, why are we getting off so easy?"

"Yes, exactly. I'd like to believe I've already paid my dues, but probably everyone can say that. I've paid my dues, I gave at the office."

Victor laughed. This was not a serious problem after all. It would pass. She must be having pre-menstrual blues. Who can understand women? Why even try? She's a woman and the best thing for him to do is stick to his manhood before he got dragged into the quicksand of emotions. Someone has to stand firm. He would stand firm and wait it out. It would pass.

"Disaster," she said, "can take so many different forms."

Two of her friends had been diagnosed, one with leukemia, the other with stomach cancer. The second's ashes had already been scattered to the wind.

"So you're waiting for something to happen," he said, discouraged. These blues were deeper than he thought. These blues were beginning to make him blue as he himself began to question the meaning of existence. What was it all worth, if it all came down to nothing? There did seem to be a run of negativity striking people around them. But why dwell on such dismal things?

"We're ok," he said. "We're healthy. We'll make new friends. It's just age. We've gotten to the age where the people we know are going to die, divorce or go crazy. These things were always happening. You just don't notice them when you're young."

He was right. They were in their 40s. By that age you're bound to have seen a few things. But in their own home everything was stable. The house was built on a rock. The marriage was calm. The children were growing. Anna stroked Victor's arm, in the dark, under the stars.

"I'm afraid," she said, "of myself, that I'll wake up some morning with some insane idea of running off, something beyond my control grabbing and hurling me into some idiotic predicament like Adam's."

Adam had recently left his wife to move in with one of his employees, a woman with six children. They thought he'd lost his mind.

"I'm afraid of doing something like that, of being seized by some delusion to invent another identity."

Victor knew she was capable of anything. He knew she aspired to do great things, though he couldn't understand what doing great things meant, in light of mortality.

Sitting in the garden under the trees, she waited for great truths to descend and flood her mind with comprehension. She wanted to see beyond reality, but what would reality do to her while she wasn't watching? She might wake up some morning and find herself divorced or insane, in some strange house, in a strange city, with a stranger. She was afraid of herself. She needed to be vigilant, to guard her life, her marriage, her children, her home, her dog, her dishes, her dust.

Victor said nothing. Her distance made her even more desirable. She had always been distant, he realized, in one way or another. She seemed to have secret rooms that were larger than the one they shared and called their marriage. With her pale face and cropped hair, she looked like Joan of Arc. There was another seized by madness! Women! Who could comprehend them? As silent as the Sphinx, she sat on the deck which jutted out like a cliff over an abyss. They lit no lamps, to keep the moths away. But she, like some gigantic luminous moth herself, sat before him.

She was facing him but looked past him to the white peonies floating in the gloom below.

As they went upstairs to bed, Victor wondered what had gotten into her. The next morning while shaving Victor happened to glance over to Anna's sink. There, on the porcelain ledge, sat a large piece of glycerin soap like a chunk of amber with the word PURPOSE carved into it. On the other side, on a square white bottle with a blue label, stood the same word. He picked it up. _Johnson & Johnson_. He owned some of its stock. But now he didn't know whether to buy more, or sell it.

Blue Moon

It was a summer full moon, the second that month. Later she recalled that she had been outside a church fundraiser and it had become unbearably hot inside. She had gone out onto the lawn for a breath of air. A heavy-set bearded fellow standing there said: "This is the closest the moon's been to earth in 238 years." "Really?" Amy looked at the moon again. Earlier, it had risen, like a red molten sun, into the night sky. Now it stood higher, white. She'd gone back inside to watch the women clear the meal while a magician in street clothes, with a green canary and a few scarves, did simple tricks for the children, and she gave the moon's proximity to earth no further thought.

It was two or three days before the scene was evoked again by a phone call.

"Hello? Oh, hi Flo. How're things going?"

"Fine with me, but I wanted to let you know that Julia's dad died suddenly and she's gone to Texas."

"Died? He was just here, Easter, I think. I talked to him in the driveway. He looked fine."

"Well, it was sudden."

"How can that be? What did he die of?"

"Don't know. She didn't say. Anyway, I thought you'd want to know."

"What about the kids? Who's taking care of them?"

"Her in-laws came in."

"Let me know if I can be of any help."

She put down the receiver and stared into thin air for a few minutes. Julia's mother had died of cancer fifteen years ago. Her father had lived alone, in his reportedly disheveled house, ever since.

Amy had briefly chatted with him on his last visit. To this suburban enclave no one ever came except relatives for the holidays and so she had met several of the parents of her neighbors. In some ways, she was friendlier with the parents than the neighbors themselves, particularly in the case of Julia, whose father Edwin was a simple man, or perhaps he knew all the arias of Scarlatti, but he presented himself as a laborer.

Julia, on the other hand, was quickly going places. Her husband had recently become a judge and they were on their way to a much more exclusive neighborhood. They had joined the newest country club in town and their children no longer played with the kids on the street.

Both Flo and Amy had withdrawn from her. In her heart and social life, Julia was already gone.

Amy went to the supermarket and studied the floral department. She wanted white lilies but there were none. She settled on a miniature rose bush, with tiny red roses blooming on it. She also bought a small Chinese ceramic pot to put it in. It looked very pretty, like bonsai.

Then she walked across the street with it in her hands like an offering and rang the doorbell.

It was opened by Julia's mother-in-law, a pleasant woman, of farm stock, from the great plains and sunflower lands.

"I've brought some flowers for Julia. I'm so sorry to hear her father died."

"Yes, it's a shame. We've come to help with the children. She won't be back till Sunday." Her steel-haired husband stuck his head out of the kitchen. He had the face of a patrician on the tall lean body of a pioneer.

"How did it happen? What did he die of?"

She shrugged her shoulders, palms up. "Just died."

"Just like that? Had he been sick? Was it a heart attack or a stroke?"

"No."

Amy hated to press further. "Well, please give these flowers to Julia with my condolences. If I can be of any help, please let me know."

#

On Friday Flo called again.

"He committed suicide," she said.

"NO!"

"Yes."

"Oh my God. How do you know?"

"Julia called me. She's told everyone, even the children. She decided to go with the truth.

"Oh God, how did he do it?"

"Hung himself."

"Why?"

"Nobody knows. No note. Nothing."

"Is she back yet?"

"Nope. She wants to close up the house, sell it, fold the whole show."

"Jeez." Amy shook her head. What was the world coming to that 75-year old men, who were still functional and no one was bothering, hung themselves?

"There was something about a woman," Flo said.

Even before hearing the rest of it, Amy knew he'd done it on the night of the full moon.

#

A week later Flo called and insisted Amy come over for a cup of tea. She walked up the street marveling at how so many flowers, invisible all winter, could suddenly appear.

She mounted the steps to the porch and let herself in.

At the kitchen counter sat Julia, devastated as by a hurricane.

"I'm so sorry," said Amy, embracing and holding her. They had only exchanged three sentences in the last year and Amy had assumed Julia now had other friends. She was surprised to be here, at this break-down.

"I'm so sorry," she said again. "It's a terrible burden. I don't envy you carrying it. God, you can carry a thing like this your whole life. It's got to be the worst feeling."

"I feel so guilty," Julia cried.

"Everyone does, probably. Even if you know you didn't cause it, you still think there must have been something you could have done or said to avert it, even a phone call, a good talk that morning. I'm sure guilt is part of it for everyone."

"But I AM guilty. It's all my fault!"

"How could it be your fault?" Amy asked incredulously.

Julia continued miserably. "He'd gotten involved with a much younger woman. I mean, she was MY age. I thought she was taking advantage of him. He bought her things and gave her money. She was just using him. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen. I'd already bought a plane ticket for next week to go there and take charge of his finances. He'd already given her $23,000!"

"Really? He must have really liked her."

"He said he loved her. He was furious with me because I objected to the whole thing. He was mad and depressed. He'd been drinking. The psychologist said that's why the antidepressants weren't working. He'd been drinking heavily that day. It happened on the night of the full moon."

Flo, pouring tea, said, "I once knew a nurse who worked at Belleview who said that on nights of the full moon there was heavy traffic in the emergency room. Three times as many people would go crazy or have terrible accidents."

Amy thought back to the full moon. The old tree in front of the meeting house was so big she'd had to swim out of its inky shade and tilt her head to see it. There it was, like a spotlight. What was it that mild-mannered fellow had said - that it was closer than it had been in 200+ years? He'd claimed to be some kind of scientist. She wished she'd paid better attention.

She remembered clearly, though, that the members of the congregation had struck her as marvelously happy and simple. The women were, without make-up, beautiful. The men looked solid, squarely rooted. The children horsed around, ran and giggled with flashing eyes. They were all so happy!

Suddenly the sound in the room came back on. Julia was still talking! Amy was amazed Julia had so much to say. If it had been her father, she would have swallowed it and never told a soul the truth.

"I tried to tell him she was a con-artist, taking advantage of him and his loneliness, but he wouldn't listen. She came over and did things for him, straightened the house, did the laundry and shopping and he said that since I didn't need anything, he wanted to spend it on her, because she made him happy. He was upset that I objected. I didn't care about the money. I was just trying to protect him!"

"Listen," said Flo, "I've got to run down to the school and drop off some supplies for art appreciation, but let's not break up our little talk just yet, why don't you all come with me."

They got up and moved through an obstacle course of chairs. The light was blinding when they stepped outside. They'd forgotten whether it was day or night. They piled into the van and drove through a river of heavy traffic, sunlight glaring off the metal. The noise, the heat and million movements made Amy dizzy. The whole world was a swirl of flashing lights, reflected infinitely. Why had she come along? She should have said good-bye and gone home. There was really nothing anyone could do.

But now she was trapped in this sheet-metal cage in the school parking lot with Julia, who could not stop talking. She was talking a blue streak, as if the whole thing could be cleared up with words. She was repeating the same things over and over. It occurred to Amy that Julia would continue like a broken record until someone broke her arm.

"You're going to have to get to the bottom of this," Amy said, desperate to halt this spinning wheel, if only for her own sake because she couldn't breathe and was getting a migraine.

"All I wanted was for him to see that he was being taken."

"How do you know she was taking him?"

"She was a professional."

"Is that a fact?"

"I had her checked out by a private eye. She's done the same thing to two or three other men. Took them for all they had."

"It's a wonder you couldn't convince him, if it was all so evident."

"He refused to listen."

There was a long pause. Flo returned, got into the van and they reentered the silver river of traffic.

"He was furious with me. He felt I was denying him his one last love. He said she was the first person he'd cared for since mom died and he couldn't understand why I wanted to ruin it for him. I was going to handle his money, whatever was left of it, for HIS sake, HE might need it some day, I told him and he was angry."

"So you think he killed himself out of anger?"

"He was angry."

"You think he did this to get back at you? To hurt you?"

"It looks that way."

"You don't want to carry THAT the rest of your life," Amy said.

"But what can I do?"

"Well, you'd better get busy looking for a way out. Something like this can poison your life, how are you going to live? You can't let this spoil your days and nights."

"I don't see any way out."

"For one thing, if what you say is true, that the woman was a professional, then eventually she would have gotten to the bottom of his money. He wasn't a rich man. It would have lasted what—a few months? And then she would have left him for greener pastures and he would have realized that she had deceived him. Disappointed, he might have killed himself anyway. The outcome might have been the same."

"You know, someone else said that," Flo said. "There must be something in it."

They drove home in silence. At least, thought Amy, she's gotten to the end of words.

Flo invited them both in, but she'd had enough and walked home through the green landscape of summer. It seemed cooler now, and she could breathe. She dropped down onto a couch on her porch and gazed into the lush arms of the trees. Do people kill themselves out of anger? She didn't think so. Out of anger Edwin would have married the woman, if only out of spite.

She sat there for a long time, sinking a long plumb-line into a deep well, deep down. She sat there an hour. Out of anger, he would have married the woman, she decided. It's more likely people kill themselves out of disappointment, or when they can't live with the truth. He must have allowed himself to see what he had known deep down ALL ALONG and had refused to recognize. With the help of a few drinks and the full moon he had opened that door within himself, where the truth stood naked.

Amy jumped and ran to the phone. She dialed Julia's number.

"I know why he killed himself..."

"He saw the truth," Julia answered.

"Then you know!"

"It's only one of so many possibilities. I've thought of them all. I'll never know for sure."

"Listen, people don't kill themselves out of anger. Out of anger he would have married her. He would have done what he wanted. He must have seen the truth and couldn't live with it."

"But why would he see it now, when he refused to see it before?"

"He saw it all along, but denied it. He let himself see it that night, and didn't want to live with the truth, that she had never really loved him."

There was a long silence.

"You know," Julia said, "that crossed my mind, but I wouldn't let myself believe it. It seemed too easy. Too easy a way out."

In the long silence that followed they both knew she'd better take it.

Look Away

The night before leaving Bangkok to fly at 5:00 A.M. to Srinagar, Alice Parelli had this dream. She was with her husband and the tour group, as in reality. Everyone was there, even the brazen redhead. Alice was in a room, looked out a stone window and saw an immense mountain changing colors, the ice flashing from purple to green. She turned around to call someone, anyone, to the window, it happened to be the redhead.

"Look at this," Alice tried to show her, but the apparition had vanished.

Why did she look away? Why hadn't she just focused the vision? Why did she have to bring someone else into it?

And why Kathleen McCarthy, the redhead with Botticelli features, the pointed nose, tall and graceful, with the perfect wardrobe consisting of 3 outfits in permanently wrinkled fabrics of muted green? She was traveling alone but soon confided to Alice that she need to get away to think about a rich man who wanted to marry her, whom she couldn't stand, but she wanted one of his houses, which she could get in a divorce. He was a wimp, not worth her time, but she had to think of her own security. From a military background, she had spent a childhood migrating from one base to the next, all identical. She did not think of any of them as home. It might be worth pandering to him to get a house. And he understood that, she'd told him in plain English, that she would marry him briefly, for a house. And that was alright with him. But she was on this trip to think it over. Alice was appalled.

The tour group was composed of about 20 people, all of them, except for Kathleen and the Parellis, over 75. The group had assembled in Hong Kong, where they met their tour guide, and had already made their way through 3 days of Tokyo and 5 in Bangkok. It had been so hot that Kathleen had not really focused on the other members. Now she noted quickly that they were, for the most part, paired and the singles were much older women. Her shark-like scanner quickly zeroed in on Charles Parelli. Of all the passengers he was the only attractive man or perhaps it was that he found _her_ attractive, she was a professional, with eyes alone they could cut deals. He noticed it, her copper hair amid the heads of gray. Charles and Alice had never taken a tour before and hadn't realized that it would be comprised of retirees.

The redhead Kathleen formed a loose alliance with the Parellis and they acquiesced, she was the only person remotely near their age.

There was Harry Horner, 75, retired from the Navy but still straight as a board. He and his wife Lorraine, recovering from the removal of one lung, had already been twice to China and were going again in 6 months, it was already booked.

"Why would you go to China three times?" Kathleen asked Harry when she gave him the once-over. He'd returned her nuances with a wink.

"It's a big country," he said.

Then there were the Tolsons, a very tall couple, also in their 70's, who immediately became fast friends with Harry and Lorraine, they all drank scotch, and as the one couple had a divorced daughter, and the other, a single son, they embarked on a matchmaking binge. They went through the introduction, engagement and wedding in no time flat and within a week were no longer talking to each other, their rooms had to be booked at opposite ends.

A few other nondescript old couples and three old maids who were on this trip for the sole purpose of seeing the Taj Mahal by moonlight. Other places were entirely lost on them with echoes of "where are we?" and "whose dogs are these?" They probably started drinking early in the day. They all carried their own bottles. They trudged through India with no complaints, not matter how hot or miserable it was. They seemed, this group of drinkers, to be impervious.

Harry took a brief interest in Kathleen, only for his son, of course, and realized immediately the sort she was. Not exactly a prostitute, though she did hang out in luxury hotels all over the world. She carried no camera and did not photograph anything. She claimed to have one in her suitcase, and that she had no use for pictures and at Gandhi's Tomb in Delhi, while everyone had their cameras in front of their faces, Kathleen was looking around. Alice caught a picture of her making contact with a Sikh.

Right away Alice thought: Sikhs, IRA. Kathleen was of Irish ancestry, had been to Ireland recently, she claimed. Alice photographed them again a few times, just to be on the safe side. Kathleen's copper hair looked striking against the Sikh's white turban. It was not an accidental meeting, but an assignation. What was it, a transaction of money for weapons or information? But there was something very intimate about the way their bodies fit together, the way their eyes locked onto each other, anyone could see they had just been or would soon be lovers. The next two days she did not show for any morning tours, and skipped the Temple complex altogether.

At the Taj Mahal a few days later, Alice photographed her having a long conversation with someone dressed like a beggar. She was next seen at the Oberoi in the company of a very rich man. In the hotel's expensive restaurant she was seen to put what looked like an envelope in her purse.

But it was in Srinagar, Kashmir, where young local tour guides made pronouncements of mutiny against India. "Wait and see," one told the startled group. "In one year, we win independence, like Pakistan."

This from the fellow steering their boat, a narrow water taxi called a _shakira_ , like a gondola with a flat roof. They were staying on houseboats and merchants came to them, bringing all their wares. The Parellis were sharing their houseboat with Kathleen, who promptly befriended the houseboy. He took her to meet his cousins in the hills and she made the only purchase of the entire trip, two enormous ceramic jars.

"Aren't you afraid they'll break?"

"They're well packed," she said with a smile and Alice realized they'd been packed with hash.

#

Kathleen lay by the brand new rooftop pool of the Royal Orchid Hotel in a black swim suit, like a spider at the center of its web, waiting, for the next fool.

One By One

After his surgery I went to visit Isaac Eisenberg and his wife Nadine. They were friends of my parents. Oscar is a survivor of five concentration camps and always drops odd bits of horror that fall from his lips like scorpions and purge him a bit, perhaps it's a process of purifying himself. But more often encounters with him were tranquil affairs enhanced by Nadine. A survivor herself, she couldn't bear to hear the details and quickly steered attention to her glamorous self, her glittering apartment and the savories and tea she presented with flair.

The place was like Ali Baba's cave, stuffed with treasure. In their lives in America they had marked occasions with silver trays, crystal vases, figurines. On mirrored glass shelves they stood displayed like in a store. Each piece was exquisite, and then there was the cobalt and gold tea set. Romantic prints hung on the walls, elaborately framed. Crystal chandeliers covered every light fixture. An ordinary apartment had been transformed. They had reprised their pre-war lives.

Nadine told many jokes and served hot black tea in tall glasses with sugar cubes. Raspberry jam was also offered, to stir in by the spoonful. The spoons were ornate affairs with gold bowls attached to twisted silver handles.

Nadine always wore glittery clothes and tried to put a happy mask on everything. With great dark eyes, her now white hair dyed auburn.

Her husband whom I didn't know all that well had needed a serious surgery, the 4th for cancer which kept popping up in different places, he'd already lost part of his colon and one kidney. But he was an iron mountain of a man and exuded strength. He must have been very strong when he was young, to have survived when so many others perished. And he had survived mentally intact, with a love of life. He owned five tuxedos of different colors and the Eisenbergs were to be seen around town.

They had many friends but were keeping the surgery a secret from everyone. How I happened to know hinged on the fact that Max, my 12-year old, knows all about answering machines and VCRs and Nadine had called to beg for his services. They were desperate for the answering machine because they did not want to answer the phone and have to talk to anyone. The VCR they'd never figured out how to use and now they wanted to rent some films.

At any rate, I found myself in their dining room drinking tea with Isaac while Max and Nadine worked on the machines in another room. She wanted to learn how to program it while she was at it and I knew it would be awhile.

Isaac's white hair waves back in ridges, his large face florid, his bulk wrapped in a silk dressing gown. The sleeves only come to his elbows and I see the blue haiku of numbers running up his forearm.

He is smiling, telling jokes and anecdotes. He is telling me about someone who is a part owner in a Russian restaurant.

"I knew right away he's Armenian," Isaac said, "even so he's from Turkey."

Before us on the lace covered table sits an array of sweets and fruit. The colors of the sliced kiwi, strawberries and mango are almost blinding.

"He didn't say he's Armenian. He only told me he has a holocaust too. Wonderful man. I love him. And so hairy, you can't imagine. His whole front is covered with thick hair."

I sipped my tea.

He glanced to see if Nadine was not coming. No, they were still immersed in the other room.

"They had showers across the compound, it was the middle of winter."

I thought he was going to repeat a story he'd once told me about how the showers in midwinter had been used to freeze 20,000 Russian POWs to death by forcing them to run around wet, a scene he had witnessed. Perhaps he wanted to tell this story again.

My parents had also told the same stories again and again, but always with some variation, some new detail, I would catch something I had missed or had been too young to comprehend.

So I listened again with interest and patience, but with a horrible sense of dread, the fear of discovering something awful I didn't know of yet.

I looked around the room at the Lladros and Laliques. Deep down I was praying he'd merely repeat the story.

"The showers were on the other side of the compound. We had to run naked back to the barracks. I was with a good friend from my hometown, tall and handsome, he had such a hairy chest too, like a thick mat. A German officer noticed him. He called us over. He pointed to me and gave me...what you call this?" he made the motion of plucking his eyebrows.

"Tweezers?"

"Yeh. Tweezers. And he told me to pluck out from mine friend every one, all of them. And just one at a time, he showed me with his fingers, not two. One by one."

"Did you do it?"

"Yup." He raised his hands and dropped them again. He looked toward the bedroom where Nadine and Max were deep into a lesson. "I did it. It took 5, 6 hours."

"Was he standing there watching?" I was hoping that the German had given the order and walked away to forget about it or check up on it later.

"The whole time he stood, with a pistol."

A large pool of silence engulfed us. Except for the distant prattle of the TV we sat in a vacuum.

"It took 5, 6 hours you were saying."

Yeh, I pulled every one. It was so painful to him you wouldn't believe, every one I pulled blood spurted out, he was all covered with blood. I begged him let's stop but he said no, he'll shoot us both."

A burst of activity in the bedroom, they emerge triumphant and are heading towards us.

"What happened? Did he survive?" I ask quickly.

Isaac leans in close and murmurs, "He died that night. Looks like I killed him."

### Enterprize

Late at night in Heidelberg, Joyce and Nabokov confer. Old Soloviov, the writer, down below, has begun to imagine himself one of them. As Nobel-prize winning demigods, they play a part in the selection process, advising the committee, albeit in their dreams. They had been watching Soloviov through all the years of lonely struggle with the written word. Of late, he wrote very little, small, spare pieces caught in a clear medium. The details were there, but very few. But they were pure. Obscure literary journals had already published three of them and lanky Soloviov, starving himself to death living on nicotine, had begun to fancy himself on a podium in Stockholm. He even announced to his sister, a pale spinster, that he would take her on a cruise of the fjords.

"Those are in Norway," she corrected him.

"I know, but it's so close! We'll go to Riga too!"

And she, poor soul, believed him.

"It won't do," said Joyce. "He was at Majdanek. Elie already covered that subject." He didn't mind being in Heidelberg. He never wanted the meeting held in Dublin, he still hated that place.

Nabokov, who religiously attended every session, would have preferred St. Petersburg if the Soviets hadn't ruined it, so they had that in common with Soloviov, they couldn't go home again. Besides, he found the subject matter more intriguing than the scenery and would go anywhere.

"Don't get stuck there," he said. "Soloviov has moved on, as even we did, from our pasts. You'll notice that his recent work has transcended his norm and that his clear-cut sentences ring from the universal."

"Must you be so pedantic? Either he defines his time or not. And as I said, Elie has done it and so admirably that there is no room for any other in that field. That time frame has been defined already."

"Soloviov can define another time. Portions of his life are in other time frames. Things that haven't happened yet."

They bantered thus, while they were waiting, Joyce in a white suit, Nabokov in grey, for Kafka to arrive. There was another exile, who wouldn't go near Prague. The beer garden they had chosen had a direct view of the castle which, now that it was night, stood illuminated by spotlights, a feature both men detested. But the river sparkled as it flowed by, with purple, black and silver sequins. And the beer was just as good as it had ever been, though Joyce was drinking white wine.

A street lamp threw the nightshade of some trees upon the garden filled with small white tables and chairs. A stone wall, probably from the Romans, surrounded it. A small green neon sign glowed over the gate.

They awaited Kafka but did not really want his opinion. He was too slanted, like the ancient slanted dwellings with their Chagallian slanted windows and slanted shadows, making even ordinary lanes look like graveyards.

Hesse's opinion would have been welcomed, but he refused to set foot in Germany, not even as a shade, and did not really care to look at anyone else's work. He knew he had already attained the ultimate with _Glass Bead Game,_ as had Kawabata with _Master of Go._ Kawabata, as you know, after winning the Nobel prize, committed suicide. There was no point in asking him.

Mann might have been useful in a case like this, he seemed to have a feeling for epics, diverse time frames, but he was always busy, had gone on to other things, the affairs of the world lost their interest for him, as they had for most who had been dead for more than a hundred years. If they were keenly curious about something, they might unexpectedly appear, as Proust did once, to examine some microscopic details in a set of poems.

Tonight it looked like just the three would be in attendance on the fate of Soloviov.

It wasn't that he was by any means near to being chosen for anything, as he had only just begun his project and had not yet created any meaningful body of work. He had wasted a great deal of time, to be sure, but still had enough time in front of him to actually write it. And at the rate he was going, he was likely to have it all written in five or ten years. Once he'd had that glimpse of himself, up on the podium, accepting his prize, and then gliding through the green fjords, and even seeing Riga, nothing could stop him. He was racing like a demon through his work (with any stub of pencil that came to hand), or typing (on his neighbor's IBM) or buying (envelopes, paper, ink), or running to the post office to mail things. He was sending everything he'd written everywhere. He lamented the works he'd destroyed – now they would have been worth something! And began to dread the thought of odd pieces of writing and correspondence surfacing without his permission. He could already see every piece in print, every word of his canonized. He could see the critics all finding their own meanings, and the biographers digging up every last scrap of information about him – not a moment of his life would be his alone.

He too had given a lot of thought to this enterprise. Did he want to take the plunge? He knew that it would be a life of toil and that his name and work, to be lasting, would have to outlast him. The deal he made one night (not with the Devil, he hoped) was that he would create a body of work on the condition that it be recognized, and he agreed, rashly perhaps, to accept recognition after death. If he saw himself in Stockholm, it must be said that he saw himself as very old, white haired and frail as a bird. He was, in fact, not interested in fame during his life. He did not want the scrutiny that came with it. The money did not matter either. He was getting by just fine, not from his writing, of course, he practically had to pay them to publish him, but he was getting along and material things did not beckon him. He was, in essence, a satisfied man.

With his wife deceased and his children grown, in desperation he had turned to his first love, the written word, and the more he read the more he knew that he, too, belonged there. As descriptions of places bloomed before his eyes, so did the scenes which he would describe. As the dilemmas and dramas of characters evoked emotions, so did he clearly recall his own emotions, his moments of joy and anguish. If he used the material of his own life, he could do it.

His only fear was that he would run out of time, die before his body of work was finished. But in deals with forces greater than ourselves, there is sometimes a hidden bonus. Deep in his bones he knew that once he had accepted recognition after death, he would be given all the time he needed.

This, of course, led him to decide to produce a great volume of work, immense, as it were, so as to ensure a ripe old age for himself.

Perhaps he could even outwit death. For that, it would be worth postponing fame indefinitely. At any rate, he knew it was in the bag and began to work feverishly.

First he disposed of all his books which were not recognized classics and began to coalesce a new library. Slowly, one by one, he bought the books he was missing. He haunted used bookshops all over the city. He acquired only hardcovers, preferably with gold lettering on the spine. Strapped for funds, he tread cautiously. Needless to say, he concentrated on Nobel prize winners. Then he read them all voraciously. Over and over until he was sure he understood how they'd done it. Hamsun, he granted the prize on _Hunger_ alone. Faulkner, whom he could not comprehend, he granted the Nobel for a single line, for three words, in fact: "curling flower spaces." How he delighted in the words of ink stamped on each page.

Then too, he spent a great deal of time rummaging through his mind, examining every detail for its literary value. His sojourn at Majdanek he set aside, for now. He would get to it later. He had been a child, passed himself, with the help of his height, as older and thus survived. It had been awful. He had, at one time, tried to write a few lines about his experience there. But this nightmarish block of five years was blocking his mind, his fear of facing the material paralyzed him altogether and it seemed he would never be able to write. At last it occurred to him to use material from pre and post-war life, which had until now seemed pale by comparison.

The ordinary details of ordinary life turned out to be what the immortals disclosed. The ordinary portions of his life, which he had not before considered, now jumped to the fore with a clarity of detail that astounded him. He had not thought of himself as being alive in the ordinary times – life seemed most brimming when he was desperate to hold the vessel together. Prior and subsequent years, from a distance had seemed strangely empty until now.

Now he had a deal, a hand worth playing. Now he would show them what he could do. He lived in a flurry of tiny bits of paper showing addresses of all the literary publications extant. He made dozens of copies and sent out his stories at random, choosing only by required length. He was feverishly running in circles with his project, neither eating nor sleeping, when he suddenly became very ill.

I can't die, he told himself. I have a deal, a contract.

He hadn't even begun his magnum opus, he hadn't even decided on its topic yet.

When the doctor told him to go immediately to the hospital, he ran home instead. He dragged himself into his modest library, now cleansed of mediocrity, and studied the shelves. The immortals were arranged alphabetically. He looked for his name. Not there yet!

I will stand, he noticed, as if for the first time, between Singer and Solzhenitsyn. That will do. I accept the position. He moved a book from the end over to another shelf and created some space, the space where his books would stand. He wedged a talisman to hold the space open, but had only given himself an inch. "An inch here is a mile out there," he chuckled to himself. Then, overcome with fever, drenched in perspiration, weak in the knees and unable to breathe, he pushed everything after Singer aside and gave himself a foot of space.

"You just wait and see," he whispered to his immortal friends, their surnames on the bindings glinting. "I'll do you proud," he announced and then caved in.

When Kafka arrived it was past midnight. He looked at his watch repeatedly. "It's broken, not moving at all!" he exclaimed, much annoyed. They ordered a pitcher of foggy beer. "So what is it?" he asked. "I really must drop out of our little society and take rebirth."

"Oh, come now," said Joyce, "you don't want to go through all that again. You could never outdo your most famous life. Face it, you've already hit the jackpot and you may as well spend eternity here, drinking beer. And have you no interest in your compatriot? Look at him, he's near death. Do we yank him out and restore him to his delusional contract? Is he worth it? Is his work worth it? That's what we're here to establish. Do we have a candidate?"

"Well," said K., "I think he's too linked to his origins."

"Who cares about that?" asked Nabokov. "We are looking at his words, not him."

"Yes," said Joyce. "He is a sorry specimen, looks worse even that I ever did. But his work has become very clear. He doesn't drink so his liver will hold out but his lungs are shot."

"What are you saying?" asked K., in black, looking like a mortician.

"He probably won't live long enough to achieve anything."

"What about what he's got already?"

"Written, you mean? Not much. Not much at all. He seems to view himself as an arsenal of potential," Nabokov said. "Cannon, rockets and missiles waiting to go off. I've been watching him. His mind is capable of exploding into a landscape as rich as you want. And yet, his control is good. He seems to have his finger in a dike and threatens at any moment to remove it. A deluge is waiting, trembling like a living wall of water."

"Enough," said Joyce, "you're already famous."

"I mean, he has enough material to actually do it."

"You mean, if he doesn't die," said K. "He's already outlived me by 20 years. If he didn't do it when he was young, why would he do it now? I don't think he's a very good choice. Say, isn't that Goethe over there?" At a table in a leafy corner sat a very old man, large as a titan. "Let's consult him."

The three approached, relieved that he seemed to recognize them.

"Ahem," said Joyce, "you know that we participate in the Nobel prize committee's nominations and have quite a bit of pull with the final selection, sometimes decades in advance. We have also the power, as you well know, to assist the writer himself. It's a task but someone must do it and we've deferred our rebirth, both on earth and anywhere else, in order to lend our services. We have in mind someone who believes he is worthy."

"I wouldn't dream of intervening."

"Why not?" demanded Nabokov. "He's near death from pneumonia and lung complications and yet has much to do."

"His name?"

"Soloviov. Anton Soloviov."

"Never heard of him."

"We were all of us unheard of at one time."

"But I have never heard of him in the future either. From where I stand I see both ways. Looking forward a century or two I do not see any Anton Soloviov."

The three conferred then turned to the grand master. Joyce stepped forward in his wrinkled white suit, his eyes invisible behind bright lenses. "What names DO you see?"

The astral body of Soloviov stood trembling at the gate, overhearing.

"No problem," he shouted. "I'll change my name!"

Goethe looked up. "In that case, it's a deal. As long as you don't mention Majdanek."

### Rain of Gold Leaves

I could not have known 45 years ago that the image of falling gold leaves would be a moment of epiphany.

It had appeared, fleetingly, as an image from an old film seen as a child in Germany. In the film, of which I remember nothing, was a scene in which a little girl is smiling upwards at a rain of small gold leaves. These leaves are about the size of pennies. Wait. It's coming to me now. She is an orphan, penniless flower girl and these round gold leaves, falling by the millions in a gentle rain, are turning into coins which she catches in her apron. I didn't care about the coins. The one frame of the film that stuck in my mind was the leaves, and her happy face turned towards them. They are like aspen or locust leaves, very small. There is no wind, perhaps a barely perceptible breeze, the leaves are falling by themselves. The film would have been in black and white but I saw this moment in color. It flashed in my mind every so often over the years, like a first memory.

I had just come to the nursing home to see my father. After an absence of two weeks I was shocked to see him asleep, as if dead, with no blanket, a washcloth across his loins, gaunt as death in a darkened room.

The family of the patient in the window bed always keeps the privacy curtain pulled between the beds, shutting out the light from my father's side. He had probably been left lying in darkness the whole time. Upset, I had them get him up, dressed, into a wheelchair, I grabbed it and pushed him out into the courtyard, into the sun.

You just can't trust these places, I thought angrily, to take care of someone. Their idea of taking care of someone was writing down things about him, how many cc's of liquid he drank, his mood, his diet, medications. The staff always seemed to be in the act of writing lengthy dissertations. They were nice, friendly people, you couldn't call them mean, but their idea of their job did not include actually interacting with the patients. If he was in his bed and alive that was enough.

I cursed myself for not coming more often. It was hard to do, to see him that way. But then, I was thinking of myself. It was hard for ME. Now, I think of him. This shift of focus took so long that I lament the lost years. He sits in front of me now, unable to respond, unable to see me, probably, with his eyes all glued up. What he means to say and what comes out are unrelated. What holes my words fall into, in his mind, I cannot know. We sit in the sun, a hot afternoon in October. He always loved to sunbathe. He is turned to face the sun. He lifts his face to it. All the intervening years wasted by my focus on what he thought of me, that I was not what he'd envisioned, I didn't think he could understand me. His judgments were conscribed by pre-war Polish orthodoxy. He had no secular education. What I wanted and what I did probably angered him. But he was helpless to stop me. So many years of superficiality in which I didn't embrace him. So sunk in the myopia of what he thought of me that I didn't think of him, who he was, what he'd done, what he'd wanted. That's the problem when you're self-centered, the time goes by and you've lost oceans of love. It was there, underneath, but neither of us let it bubble up to the surface. Once every few years we would hug and say "I love you," usually in desperate moments.

Now, as he sits helpless in the sun I embrace him. Tell him I love him. But what am I doing about it?

Even though the nursing home is on my way home every morning after I drop off my 7th grader at a school across town, even though I could drive right past it, it's only 8:00A.M. and I don't have my make-up on. We leave the house at 7:15 but I can't lift my head till 7:05, so the dash is made in sweats, no make-up, uncombed, in short, a wreck straight from my bed, with the dog along for the ride, tall as a passenger in back. Being seen by others is not on my agenda. Again, it was, how do I look, never mind that I was seeing him at his worst. I need to get back home, speak with my husband before he leaves for work, shower and get ready for the day. Running like a scarecrow into the nursing home is not in the plan. And the afternoon pick-up drive isn't perfectly suited either. One, because I have my son with me who might be frightened by all the decrepit people, and two, after lunch they put the patients down for a nap until 4:00 and you're going by at 3:30, the boy has tons of homework and you don't know what you're fixing for dinner, again you'll have to hit the store. You don't want to get caught in rush hour traffic and you're just dying to get home so you can have a drink or a smoke or a bathroom break.

Maybe I could see him in the morning if I either got up earlier or didn't care how I looked. Maybe—maybe I could overcome my fears of what condition I'd find him in and just BE there. Maybe I could find the strength somewhere to come every day. Maybe there was a way to improve the quality of his life.

His radio had been stolen, along with all the stuffed animals I'd brought, like he used to bring for me. I resolved to replace them, alerted the staff that I wanted the privacy curtain open to increase the light, and decided to stop every morning and open it myself if necessary. I would cover his walls with pictures and have flowers. I would ask them for a window bed, as I'd done a dozen times before, but this time I would talk to the right person, and demand it, as soon as one opens up, of course. And in the window I'll put chimes and on the sill, flowering plants. I would create a cozy little world, facing south to get the winter sun. If they would stop stealing his things I would even bring my needlepoint pillows. I see stained glass medallions on the window. Pieces of quartz crystal on the ledge. One big piece, triangular, set with the pyramid pointing up. I will pour cosmic energy back into him. I will heal him, he who adored me when I was a child, whom I lost in a strange country, where we became strangers to each other, until now. Now, when he's all but gone.

In the courtyard the sun has become too hot. We move to the shade. An imperceptible breeze cools the skin like a silk hand and a few windsocks, filled with light, blow rainbow streamers. After an hour he finally speaks.

"But I have nothing," he says.

"You will get everything back and more," I hear myself utter. I feel like an angel talking to Job. My father, too, has lost everything in these seven years. And like an angel's edict, uttered with conviction, we both believed it too. I would have old black and white portraits of his mother, wife and children enlarged and mounted. I would do everything I vowed. I would tear open the curtain every morning and flood him with sunlight. I would. I would. It was in my power to do all these things, to get him a haircut and a manicure, to get some dentures made, to buy him socks and undershirts and royal blue sweatsuits. I would get him white shoes. My mind was reeling with my new-found powers. I could change his world. I could affect things. I could not bring him back, not completely, but mostly, I had the power to resurrect him.

At that moment there was a shower of gold leaves from a locust tree we sat near. A locust tree, like a mimosa, has fronds composed of tiny leaves. When they fall they separate like confetti. They were just ripe for falling and seemed to be falling all at once and the air and the light and the drift of gold was exactly the image glimpsed over the years.

_This_ is the moment which prefigures the memory.

### The Window Washer

Al Luftman drives around town in a car strapped with ladders and washes windows. He is thin and stooped, with black curly hair and a tanned deeply lined face. When he isn't outdoors washing windows, he is on the slopes. He earns just enough to live simply and ski. He had skied in his native Austria before the war. When he was 14 years old, his father sent him, with his mother and sister, to the States via Brazil, before the Vesuvius of the Third Reich erupted. Somehow his father never made it out. He had arranged 4 visas but gave the 4th to his daughter's fiancée. From there a relative got them to the States. Once here, the family arranged a visa for him and sent it, but he never got it. They received an ever more frantic series of letters. When they went to the consulate they were told another visa could not be issued because the first one had not been lost but _used_ by him or someone else. In his last letter he said he was being sent to a concentration camp. They never heard from him again.

Al Luftman grew up on a shady street of small brick houses and has somehow not amounted to much. But with the face of an eagle his eyes have that calm steady gaze, where you know that washing windows, at the age of 64, is alright with him.

His old battered station wagon, which seems to have been squashed by the ladders, can be seen in some of the best neighborhoods. In The Highlands, where he has many clients, primarily from word of mouth, stand houses of two and three stories with open atriums and windows out of anybody's reach.

There is one house where, although his rates have risen to $150, he continues to do the windows for $75, even though it has the most glass of any of them, and this is why.

This house seemed to contain the answer to a mystery he'd lived with for many years. It was a huge cedar structure, set into an aspen grove and had a large tree-filled yard obscuring everything else. He comes here twice a year, in spring and fall, and each time he feels closer to grasping the truth.

He greets the lady of the house and sets to work. First he moves aside all the geraniums, which the windows are packed with. They are all bright red, the size of fists, bursting and radiant. The plants are large and in heavy pots, and there are many, up against every window. He always moves them first. He doesn't mind. They remind him of the geranium-filled windows of his boyhood home. He managed once to go back to Vienna. There, geraniums also stood in every window.

After he moves the geraniums, he carries in his ladders. He begins in the dining room. The space is angular, two stories high, a right triangle of light.

Al loves this room. It's warm and bright when he tackles it early in the morning. With windows on three sides and facing east, like a large greenhouse.

This October was buried in a sudden snowfall which brought down half the leaves. All night the storm whipped the houses, even outdoor dogs barked in fear of the wind lashing the trees.

This morning, it's already 40 degrees at 7:00 A.M. The room is alight. At the top of his ladder with his supplies he begins to spray and polish the glass, wiping off dust, grease and film.

He sees the aspen, most of their gold coins brought down by the snow. The few leaves left are shot through with light. The frozen snow is starting to melt, falling like rain from the trees.

The rooftops of neighboring houses cannot be seen. He loves this house, it's like a chalet in the mountains, where he has once been. He is content as his arm circles the glass. The scene touches some secret place within and opens it up. A gold key clicks in a dark lock and a door swings open.

He goes through it, back to his childhood where trees dripped water and mountains stood white against a cloudless sky. He is in a place somewhere in or near the mountains. The house looks like a chalet. He's about 14 years old. He concentrates. It seemed to him a perfect place, cool as only mountains can be with their melting snow and rushing stream. He works his way around the house.

From the top of his ladder he can take a good long look at the mountains. The peaks are white but the foothills are turning blue, even before his eyes, as the snow melts.

"Today," he decides, "I'm going to find out what really happened."

He stands like the captain of a ship observing the horizon. The view is crystal clear. Through the branches, which only yesterday still had all their leaves, the mountains appear. There it is again, that feeling, that he is back in Austria, 14 years old. He breathes deep. The air is pure. The frost and warmth release pine scent. Each breath goes in like a lance, opening the esophagus wider and wider until he is virtually drinking a river of air.

He cleans the glass in large circles, he's beginning to sweat. He also cleans the mirrored wall. Deep in the mirror floats the landscape he once knew.

Thrusting out all the extensions on his longest ladder, he tackles the long panels either side of the fireplace. From the very top he sees a few rooftops framing gold tiers of nearby fields and the playground two blocks away, and a lot of sky. The landscape below seems far away as if he were a bird soaring through the shining air. His arm is going in circles but he's flying.

He's tried to take it home with him, this lingering feeling of a pure bright world, but it evaporates like cologne. He's tried it at other houses, nothing works. He would have come to wash these windows every week for free, but unless he can find it within himself, and take it with him everywhere, what's the use? If only he could grasp it. He takes one last look around the rooms. The glass sparkles. "It must be the trees," he says to himself, "I should get myself a place in the mountains." morning sun.

The lady of the house stays out of his way. Other women try to make conversation with him, following from window to window chatting mindlessly and pointing out streaks. He can't stand the racket. Here all is silent. Maybe that's it. Maybe silence opens the door to eternity, because it feels like eternity, when you know that what you are, what you have ever been, or will ever be, runs together like a river. It must be the silence, he decides. The glowing geraniums, the glittering trees and the silence. "It's the noise of the world that distracts me."

But he has total silence at home and it's not doing that much for him. It has an enclosed, hollow feel, like a coffin. Here the silence rings like a bell struck once, and the light shimmers through everything.

"I'll get to the bottom of it," he tells himself as he carries the ladders outside.

The glade of aspen against the house poses no difficulty as he climbs up into the semi-leafy branches wet with melted snow.

He pulls his spray bottle off his toolbelt and sprays, then wipes, looking in. Very little furniture, he notes. That probably helps. Gives the mind more space. He works his way around the house looking through it.

He studies all the rooms for the answer.

He climbs to the very top of the ladder, barely balanced on the slope amid crimson sumacs and silver Russian olives. The sun has climbed and warms the wall. The fresh air has invigorated him. He feels agile as a boy. He finds his footing, cleans off the grime of the outer world and looks into a serene place, a bright void in which he can find himself and all that he has ever been.

The space is transparent, the gleaming hardwood floor is alive with light from both the glass and mirror walls. From a collision of light on the floor rises a bright form. An image flashes into his mind. There she is, with freckled face and spun gold hair and eyes like sapphires.

In Austria, at age 14, he was leaving for America with his mother and sister. It had been a hard winter with continuous bad news. They had come from Vienna with all their possessions to a small town in the mountains to await their visas. A non-Jewish business associate of his father owned a chalet, which was not in use and offered to help them. They could wait there as long as necessary. The chalet had a view of a frozen lake. It was bitter cold but indoors geraniums bloomed.

He'd met her in the dead of winter when her father came up to settle them in. They'd walked around the house, finding frost flowers etched on the panes. Snowflakes clung to her lashes like microscopic lace. He saw her again in the spring when she came with her father to say good-bye.

She rises out of the shining floor to greet him, a web of frost and flowers in her hair. He can see her! He's done it! Has recaptured her!

"What happened?" he asks.

"My father used the visa," she answers.

His hands tremble, his whole body shakes like a frozen chrysalis waking to the warmth of the sun. His entire being vibrates.

Weak in the knees, he climbs down.

"That's about it," he says to the lady of the house.

The whole house shines.

"How much does it come to?" she asks.

"Same as last time," he says, "$75."

"Are you sure? You quoted a friend of mine $150 for a much smaller house."

He looks around the rooms, seeing only a Stonehenge of light.

"I charge by the window. She has more windows. Yours are just bigger."

She writes him a check. He feels like paying her. He draws a deep breath as he steps outside, regains his balance, throws his ladders on top of his car, gets in, slams the door and drives away.

Chinese Laundry

I stand here ironing, facing the wall, but there's a big window in my mind, floor to ceiling, and through it pours a white light.

I'm ironing a silk blouse I bought at the Goodwill, old ivory with same-shade silk embroidery down the front. The buttons are intricately knotted ribbon. The cream colored silk goes flat and shining under the point of the iron. I can just fall into a color like this. The flowered motif blooms from the fabric, the work so delicate and perfect it's hard to believe it came from human hands.

In addition to this blouse, I've got a dozen others, also bought at the Goodwill, all of them different.

I've always felt comfortable with silk. I don't mean wearing it—you can't DO anything when you've got it on. You can't cook, bake, garden, paint or even wash your hands. I mean I feel comfortable cleaning and restoring it. I wash it by hand in icy water, use a yellow bar of naphtha soap on the stains, rinse it endlessly, wring it out, hang it up to dry, taking a full ten or fifteen minutes to smooth the whole thing out. Iron damp, very hot, the fabric crackles and takes on a sheen.

I am in an Imperial laundry room in ancient China. There are about 30 others here. We are washing and ironing all of the silk clothing of the Imperial court.

I am young, about 17, with two long braids swaying in front of me as I iron, with only the point of a heavy iron heated over charcoal, the intricate cutwork and embroidered details.

These clothes are very beautiful. The piece I'm ironing would be worn by a young lady of the house, perhaps to view the blossoms or the moon.

The moon, I suddenly realize, would really illuminate silk. This ivory blouse would come alive and glow with a moonlight of its own.

I am not envious that she is rich and I am poor. I have a lover. He works in the foundry. We meet in the evenings under the moon and the trees.

The volume of clothes is just enormous, mountains of it. The Imperial laundry serves several hundred people, it seems, though I know the number is much smaller and the reason for the load is that everyone changes six times a day.

It is all made of silk, from the shimmering undergarments rippling like water, to the stiff outer garments heavily embroidered with colored dragons.

1500 years ago.

I try to visualize it as I iron a cuff, its edge as detailed as a snowflake. I try to rouse the Marxist in me to anger, that the rich can do nothing more than lounge around in silk while the people work for them night and day.

But all I see is the incredible handwork of another woman like me, who has _made_ this thing.

What the rich are doing is no concern of mine. That I am poor and must work, I would rather work. The true Imperial daughter is the one who cut the shining silk and sewed it into this garment; and the one who embroidered it. And me, who stands on swollen legs twenty years later, having married my lover and born him many children, who irons this piece, who resurrects it from drowning and crushing and makes it new again.

The Wizard of Ice

It was the day after a major blizzard which left the town sitting in two feet of snow. The sun was out, hard as a diamond, the turquoise sky brilliant. It was as if the town had been set into whipped cream. Around Eva's house it lay in pure white mounds. There was so much of it the pine trees' jade branches were pinned to the ground.

From icicles on the eaves, water dripped briefly, only for an hour, then refroze, even longer than before.

It seemed like a calm day with most of the city frozen, but it was a Monday and just a few minutes after 4:00 in the afternoon, the phone rang. It was Eva's mother.

"Daddy's gone," she said in a low voice.

"What do you mean, gone?"

"He was kidnapped. Someone stole the car with him in it."

"That's incredible! When? Just now? Where was the car?"

"I picked him up from that daycare center he goes to on Mondays and we'd stopped for dinner. We came out to the car and I put him in. Then I remembered I'd left my scarf inside. I went back to get it and when I came out, the car was gone."

"Oh my God!"

"It took me half an hour in this snow just to find a phone. The restaurant didn't have a pay phone and refused to let me use theirs even though I said it was an emergency. By the time the police showed up it had been 45 minutes."

"Oh God, he could be anywhere by now. Half way to Kansas. But why do you think the car was stolen? Maybe he drove it away."

"He hasn't driven in a year. He can't even open the door by himself. He would have had to unbuckle his seatbelt, open the door, go around to the other side, get in and turn on the engine...."

"You didn't leave the engine running?"

"The engine wasn't on but the key was in the ignition. He would have had to turn it on, put it into reverse, and back out. He could never do all that."

Eva tried to think. If her father was driving the car, the scenario she favored, he would have run a red light or had a smash-up within a few minutes.

"How long has it been?"

"A good hour by now. I don't know what to do. The police gave me a ride home. I want to go look for him but I can't leave because the police might call and say they found him and I don't have a car. I can't believe it. It's like a nightmare. I just looked away from him for one minute, and he was gone."

"I'll be right over."

She left a note for her husband and kids, put on her coat and drove twelve miles to her mother's house. This was the house where she had grown up. She sat down on the white couch, next to her mother, and gazed at the intricate white Vienna-style curtains on the windows.

Her mother looked defeated. Her dark doe eyes seemed larger than ever. She was clearly terrified, but numb, in shock. For a while they sat looking out towards the black night, waiting for the phone to ring.

I can't believe this is happening," Lydia James put her face in her hands and began to cry. "I'll never forgive myself. Who knows where he is now? Maybe laying scared, bloody, cold and hungry in a ditch. Whoever took the car would hit him over the head and push him out by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I can see his face in front of my eyes! Like a scared child. He'll think I left him there. I'll never be able to live with myself!"

"Mom, please." Eva was in shock and felt very turgid. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. A fleeting sensation of relief flooded through her. If he was gone then the problem was gone. God had with the great palm of his hand swept Henry James away. They wouldn't have to worry any more about lawyers, assets, power of attorneys, living wills, nursing homes. For a brief instant, their main problem of daily and nightly care had vanished. It seemed perfect, but only for an instant, when she realized that if he were never found, she would never know what happened to him and would end up going from flophouse to shelter looking for him, looking every wino in the face, trying to recognize him, for where would he end up if he survived? She could see herself going from one soup kitchen to another, searching for him, the rest of her life. It was unbearable.

"Why are you so sure the car was stolen?"

"There was an old junky car stuck nearby. I think the driver of that car was watching for an opportunity."

"Why haven't the police found him yet? They must be looking for the car. Maybe we should call the police station and all the hospitals again. Then let's go look for him."

#

They got on the phone and placed a few calls, yielding nothing. Then some concerned neighbors turned up to wait by the phone, while Eva and her mother went into the night to look for Henry. Eva drove up and down the boulevard adjacent to the restaurant. If he'd driven off himself he might have parked the car and gone into a restaurant or store if he was cold and hungry. They searched in every parking lot for the car, and in every store for him, looking up and down empty aisles. But nothing turned up and at 9:00 P.M. all the stores closed. They locked their doors and turned off the lights. Eva ran in and out of several restaurants. They drove back and forth on a few main boulevards, looking at pedestrians but it was too dark to see. The city was completely frozen and as black as the tomb.

By 9:30 they had no option but to return home and let the neighbors go. Mr. and Mrs. Prentice had both come over, and brought their adult daughter with them. When Eva suggested they all go home, they refused. Valerie, their daughter, had either come with them or surfaced later, Eva couldn't remember, her senses were so slowed.

Valerie Prentice felt helpless. "Let's go out again to look for him. I'll go with you, leave your mother here. Let's take some photographs of him down to the TV stations and try to get him on the 10:00 o'clock news."

Eva looked at her watch. It was 9:40. Their hands swam through a box of photographs and they picked out a few, then bundled up against what was now a totally frozen night.

Why Eva offered to drive, she didn't know. Her big old Mercedes had bald tires and the brake light had been coming on for months, she didn't think her brakes were that good. Also, as they pulled into the night, like a ship on black water, she realized she hadn't brought her glasses, which she used for movies and night driving. Now the streetlamps and headlights of other cars bloomed, each with ten halos.

The night was black and cold as outer space. The streets leading downtown were almost deserted. The entire city lay under a thick meringue of frozen snow, bisected by streets of solid ice.

In a daze, Eva guided her ship through lunar streets until she got to the first TV station. The doors to the building were locked and a buzzer finally brought out a security guard who listened to their story and agreed to take one of the photographs to the inner sanctum, promising nothing. At two more stations it was the same. At the last one their were no security doors, they just walked in and found themselves in a chaotic smoke-filled room jammed with metal desks and chairs with fifty or so people milling around. They stated their business and were led to two chairs. A young man with rolled shirtsleeves faced them. Eva stared at the sea of half-filled styrofoam cups and overflowing ashtrays.

"My father has Alzheimer's and is lost in the city tonight. Maybe you could put his picture on the news so that people can help us find him."

"Have you got a police report?"

"Yes. He's been missing since 4:00 P.M. Case number 2483259."

"It's too late to get it on tonight."

"But the news is still on."

"We can't put it on until 24 hours have passed or everyone in the city will be wanting us to look for people. We just can't do it."

"But he's an older man and it's below zero outside. He'll freeze to death."

"Leave the picture. If he hasn't turned up, maybe we can get it on at 6:00 A.M."

Dejected and hopeless, Eva cautiously maneuvered her big black car through the ice-maze of downtown and towards her mother's house.

Eva and Valerie trudged back into the house. The police had not called. There was nothing. The Prentice family insisted on staying, but at midnight Eva persuaded them to go home, with the promise that, if her father turned up, she would call them, even in the middle of the night.

Then they were alone, she and her mother in the dimly lit room that resembled a stage set from Chekhov, with the awful truth that her father was missing on this freezing deserted winter night.She hoped they would find his body. She couldn't live with having to search for him through the shelters and soup-kitchens of America.

He did not even know his name, much less his address or phone number. Even if he survived, he had no way of telling anyone who he was or where he belonged.

"He must have some I.D. on him," Eva said. "Someone will find him and call us."

"No. No I.D. at all."

"Didn't he have an I.D. bracelet?"

"I took it off a few days ago. It was chafing his wrist. I was going to get a different band."

"Nothing in his pockets?"

"Nothing. I needed to change his clothes several times a day. Oh, I'll never be able to live with myself!"

Her mother looked like a vision from the netherworld, like an Ophelia, her eyes red with crying, her hair in disarray. Lydia had taken off her wig and put on a dressing gown. Her whole body was shaking violently.

"He's lying in a ditch, wet and crying. I can see his face before my eyes."

"Mom. Sit down. Let's just sit and wait."

Her mother, who loved opera, looked like a diva on the brink of doom.

"You can drive me to Echo Lake." This was the site her mother envisioned for suicide. An excellent swimmer, Lydia had once said that she would swim to the center of this mountain lake, a mere hour's drive away, and go down.

"Please Mom, just sit down, they'll find him."

"It's my fault! How could I take my eyes off him even for a minute?" Lydia was crying and wringing a cloth. Her grief was overwhelming. Anna embraced her and forced her onto the couch.

"Let's sit here and wait."

"You go home. Your family needs you. I can wait by myself. I'll be alright."

"No, I'll wait with you until they find him." This could take days or weeks, Eva thought.

#

They settled into sitting, and sat, and waited. The minutes seemed frozen and what felt like an eternity went by. Eva could not imagine that anyone could steal the car so quickly, but even if someone had, they would have put her father out. Even so, the car would be found. The state patrol was on the lookout for it. They could find the car but not her father.

Let's assume, she tried another tact, that her father had, somehow, driven away himself. He would have run a red light or crashed into someone and they would have found him by now. then, he may have left the car somewhere, gotten out and walked away, immediately lost, he got lost in his own house. He would freeze to death on a night like this. The temperature was ten below zero. The sky was clear and the hard stars shone but the city was like a freezer, as if on a planet too far from the sun.

He would die, he would probably die on this night, if not found. There was nothing she could do. She felt completely stripped and helpless. The sitting was endless. They could wait for days. She jumped up.

"I'm going to look for Daddy."

"Wait, I'm coming with you."

"No, you stay here in case the phone rings."

"I can't stay here by myself. I'll go crazy with worry for both of you."

It was 4:00 A.M. but time had stopped for Eva. She stood by the foyer, holding her coat. The sheer magnitude of this event, which she could not alter, paralyzed her.

#

Henry didn't know how he'd gotten there, but he found himself on a deserted street glazed with ice. Abandoned warehouses and a few wretched dwellings looked trapped in an ice age that had somehow enveloped the world since he last looked. He could see it was the middle of the night, some eternal frozen night illuminated by dim streetlamps whose lights bloomed. He struggled to get up. He took off his shoes. He took off his coat and threw it aside. He began to move. Toward the light. Several blocks down he could see more lights, blooming like electric flowers. Purple shadows lay across thick white blankets of snow, patterned like quilts. A sharp wind blew, rattling the branches and pieces of paper swirled through the streets. He ran after them. Important messages for him were written on them, but each time he finally grabbed one, the message dissolved. It's a conspiracy to drive me crazy, he decided. He continued stumbling towards greater bunches of lights, which receded from him as in a dream. "The women are waiting," he began to sing, "for the prince to return from the seas. But the seas are frozen and the ship won't return, pity me, pity me." He crashed into the corner of a metal dumpster and cut his face open. He reached up and felt something warm. In the alley a black dog was nosing through refuse. Henry was afraid of dogs. Always had been. In his family, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, on their deathbeds, had all seen a black dog enter the room. A black dog no one else could see. He turned and stumbled in the other direction, the black dog following him. The Milky Way was thrown across the sky like a starry shawl, the moon lit the landscape like a lamp, glinting off icicles sharp as daggers. "Under the full moon I found my love," he sang, "but the moon waned and now we're old." "Under the full moon," he tried again, "everything is cold." Cold. Why is it so cold? Where is everyone? Are there no longer any people? Am I the only one left? Like the sole survivor of a neutron bomb he stumbled through glacial streets. Except for the dog there was not a soul to be seen. He moved faster, the dog after him. This is an experiment, he thought. A scientific experiment. He had still not reached any meaningful bank of lights. He had not seen a single car go by. He was moving slower and slower. His feet, in socks, felt nothing. His hands, when he looked at them, were covered with blood from his head. The quilts of snow, patterned with the moonlit shadows of branches, began to look like a feather quilt he'd had as a child. He washed his hands in snow and looked at them again. He looked at his hands a long time. They were blue. He lifted his pant leg. He was all blue. "Don't fly away," he sang. "Don't leave me here all blue." He tried again. "I'm blue for you." By God, a blue man in a white night followed by a black dog which will probably bite off and eat my hands. "Don't cry for me, I'm coming home." Home. It was a unique thought for him. Home. Do I have a home? Where is my home? He tried to picture it. There was the vast apartment of his childhood with its dim drapery-hung rooms above teeming-traffic streets, where he played with his brothers and mourned his mother, lying pale as ivory in a brocade bedroom. He had seen the soul vanish from his mother's face. She lay like a dead doll made of china. He had lifted her cold white hand to his lips, to his eyes. He had cried waterfalls of tears. Then there was his room near the university, into which sunlight poured. Maybe he could make it back to that room, littered with books, air filled, through which music washed. Then he remembered Lydia, his love, radiant as a Byzantine icon dipped in gold. Once wed, they had rented a small brick bungalow with mirrored walls. He could clearly see the large square mirrors, one above the fireplace, the other covering an entire dining room wall. Large squares of light. Sheer light. He would go there, to these rooms of floating light. He would walk in and find his 20-year old Lydia. But wait, there was yet another place full of crystal and lamps, across from a park where he jogged every day. He could see the park clearly, with all its trees and green ground, green, green, green. The birds are singing and there is a baseball game. All the people of the neighborhood are taking their daily turns through the park, a blue paved path like a Mobius strip, never ending, around and around, as the trees sweep past him, as he runs, the green trees and their greener shadows spinning as if he were on a merry-go-round. The turning platform of the green park spinning like a record. And his blond brick house. There is the driveway. There's the front door, with its golden knocker. He lets himself in and goes to the bright yellow kitchen for a drink of water. Lydia is there, ready with lunch. They sit on the patio next to the garden filled with roses. His children are grown and gone. He stares at the lawn, green as Ireland. Where is that green world? Where is my home? The snow-covered rooftops glimmer like fluorescent rectangles. He is lost in the geometry of space. I'll just lay down a bit and rest. Pull the feather quilt over me. When I wake it will be that summer place, green, green. Don't wait for me. It's a long time coming, a long time gone. Lydia! He seemed closer to the sea of lights than before. He could see streams of light flowing down a distant street. Lights of different colored neon blinking and blooming like fireworks. Lights spilling like jewels just there, so near, so far away. He stumbled on a jagged curb and did not get up again. He could not feel his feet. He had no feet, no legs, no hands, no body. He was just a heap of clothes left out for the trash collectors. He was no one and nothing. He had never been anyone. The rooms of all his homes flashed past him like dreams. The black dog came over and sniffed him, licked his blue bloody head. Henry floated like a ghost through all his luminous ghostly rooms, the rooms of a lifetime, lived and unlived, dreams fulfilled and dreams abandoned. And the deep freezer of the night with its distant flowing lights brought his mind to a standstill. All was white and frozen. He was trapped in a block of clear ice. He curled up and pulled the quilt over himself, the quilt of moonlight. All is forgotten, he realized. He could not remember anything. With open eyes he lay, now warm as a child in its bed, gazing at the fountain of colored lights. It's so beautiful, he thought. It's all so beautiful.

And the dog's tongue felt like his mother's hand stroking his face. With the jagged curb as his pillow he lay in a sea of swirling colored ice. Distant traffic on the street of lights sounded like the sea.

#

In the waiting room the women sat, trapped in the tableau of doom. Time dripped like an icicle and froze up again. It ceased to move. They had gone far beyond words. Lydia was sobbing. Eva was getting desperate. Would this awful night never end? It was like one of those nights when you fly to the other side of the world, when the night is two nights long. This night was already three nights long and she felt herself half-way to Mars.

Help me! Something within her cried out, the thought flung straight above her and caught the image of her grandmother, whom she was named for but had never known, dead before Eva was born. Help him! Help your son, your child! Help us find him!

#

The phone rang. The phone was ringing. It was ringing in the bedroom far away, like a hallucination.

They ran to get it. Eva picked it up with trembling hands.

"Is Henry James there?"

"No," said Eva, let down. "He's missing," she added.

"Not anymore, he's not!" chirped a cheerful voice. "We've got him!"

"Where?"

"Southside Hospital."

"It's a miracle! A sheer miracle! How did he get there?"

"A patrolman dropped him off."

"How did you know to call us?" Eva asked incredulously.

"He was able to tell us his name. We had him in our database."

"It's a miracle! What condition is he in, where was he found?"

"He was picked up on Broadway, on foot and half frozen. They brought him in half an hour ago. We're treating him for hypothermia, but in an hour or so you'll be able to take him home."

It was a miracle, nothing short of a miracle. She'd never realized prayer could affect things that fast.

The two women fixed themselves some tea and her mother got dressed. Then they drove across town.

It was 5:00 A.M. and the frozen city trapped in the eternal night of outer space turned blue.

Driving home they asked him the same three questions again and again.

But he couldn't tell them anything.

Gallery Uno

Outside it's 5 below zero. At 6:45 in the morning she leaves her apartment to walk to the gallery.

It's a dismal way to earn a living. Oceans of time go by between patrons, the hours stretch like eternities.

Tanya Palovski is a fair Polish woman who looks like Greta Garbo. Or Faye Dunaway, you know the face. She's living in the States under the auspices of an uncle who has since died. Unless she finds a husband she'll have to leave because her visa has run out. She lives in a little room of an old hotel, furnished with nothing but occasional light. There is a bit of a gaunt look about her. But with her exquisite face and accent bordering on French, she was able to get a job with Gallery Uno.

There is no reason to open the place so early. Most galleries open at noon – but being down-town, as it is—a lot of people pass on foot between 7 and 9 A.M. and this is, in fact, the best time to sell a painting.

Out of the bitter cold some man runs in, having a few extra minutes before work to look around. This is the time of day when people, fresh from nightmares about the meaninglessness of it all, need resurrection. You have no idea how many people will but a painting under these conditions.

You discover that you have 15 minutes to spare. With your freezing hands and feet you step into a gallery that you have passed a thousand times but have never been in.

Today, you decide to do something to alter your life.

The strung jewels of the days, so sparkling once, now look like plastic pop-beads, even if they're different colors, as the seasons turn, the days are all the same, dulled by routine. It doesn't matter if you're married or single, male or female, or in between. It doesn't matter if you're the CEO or the janitor.

You know, that run of days when you almost can't even remember what it was you wanted to do or be.

So, you step into the gallery. It's an act of desperation. If you don't find a talisman you might as well kill yourself because you know you're already dead.

The door swings open to a few empty rooms painted yellow. There are very few things on the walls. This modern art will kill us all. Pictures as meaningless as your life.

A bowl of flowers. An enormous clear glass globe half-filled with water in which stand a few gigantic stems. Behind a formica counter sits a fair, not that young, woman. The spotlight above her head pours down her hair a cascade of light. She is illuminated. She greets you with a knowing smile and turns back to her work, to give you a chance to be alone with the things in this room.

She disappears, so to speak, and you turn again to the paintings. Her illuminated smile gives you hope that something somewhere must have meaning.

You look at the pictures more closely. Large frames, large mats. Small images of total destruction, like pieces of houses burned down or letters ruined by rain.

"If this represents the 21st century," you think, "then we're really in trouble."

Where are the lush, sensuous impressionists who tore things down to atoms but restored them again to a more luminous state. Even the art of ancient Egypt is preferable to this stuff. What are we looking at? What does it mean, these sparse lines that never intersect, these gloomy splashes of colors, these alienated scenes? Where is the sun, for God's sake! The sun which illuminates all great paintings. Never mind Raphael, even Ingres has light pouring in a window.

You peer closely at these randomly meaningless images. Even as calligraphy it doesn't work. The sculptures, too, gigantic things, black geometrics, sharp as instruments of torture.

Where is the sun of Van Gogh? Is no one painting in the warmer climes? —or is it a frozen state of the soul? You know it is. You're sure that mankind is going into an ice-age of frozen Brave New World souls.

The soul will be frozen up by the Anglo-Saxon mania for keeping all roads in good order and never revealing you're human.

At any rate, you're disappointed with this art. "Starry Night" it's not. Not that you could afford any of it anyway. But even if you could you wouldn't want any of it. Being in the same room with it would drive you to suicide.

Some classical music is playing very low. You hadn't heard it till now. It sounds like being in heaven.

"Must be Bach or Mozart," you think—"no one writes anything like that nowadays.

Where are the Vivaldis?

Some exquisite piece of music flows over you and into your ears like rivers of a drug, lulling you on your feet. It is celestial.

You promise yourself to listen only to classical music and to look only at art at least a hundred years old.

I know, I know, you're saying, even then there was plenty of dross, surely even now, in own time, masterpieces are being created, in some form, somehow. You have to believe that. You know that the problem is with you, that you can't see it. You've been left behind by the train of time. 17-year olds understand it. You don't.

You're only 35 and already you don't understand. Any older and you don't even try. What is it we're going towards, a robotic existence? Are we all then to become machines or be replaced by them?

Was Huxley right when he envisioned a future without feelings? Let's not express our feelings! It might be against the law.

Painting like Van Gogh painted will be against the law.

The world would be a better place if it were governed by Italians.

Where is the gold light of Giotto, the white light of Botticelli?

There is the clear light of that fellow who paints interiors like a designer, rooms dominated by huge windows with wonderful views.

Maybe you should look for a poster of his, not too expensive, frame it yourself and hang it up in your home.

Then every morning instead of looking out your own windows you have a suddenly different view, filled with sunlight.

The woman is reading, pretending to be occupied. Perhaps she is thinking about something. You're tempted to speak but don't want to interrupt her reverie.

Outside the world is blue with snow slashing the air like knives, dark as midnight, 5 below.

"Thank you!" you say as you open the door, hit by a blast of cold wind. She looks up. Her pointed chin and agate eyes and crown of spun gold, a work of art herself.

The wind pushes you back in.

Lily Mark

When the lights went out at the wedding, except for the groom, everyone knew why.

It happened just like that, just like the hand of God reaching down and putting out the lights. Just as the lavish sit-down dinner was about to be served.

He should have seen it coming. All afternoon it snowed. By twilight he should have known. The quantities of it should have been alarming. But he was lulled by the blueness of it all. In New York it was never this blue, there it was always white, grey or black. It was the blueness that sucked him into complacence. He should have seen it was a blizzard. Not that he could have stopped the wedding, if he had foreseen the outcome, but it could have been postponed. The following Saturday night, for example, or even the next night, it would have gone off without a hitch. How was it that this very day had been picked so long in advance, of all the days why was it this day more snow would fall than ever before?

He couldn't understand it.

Asher Rifkin was from a Hasidic family back east. He'd met Lily at Yeshiva University and had every reason to believe he was making a good marriage. You never knew, of course, with Jews out west what they were made of. They were not Orthodox, he knew that, though Lily had pretended to be more so than she really was and everyone in her family, when he came to visit, was terrified he might find them not traditional enough.

Well, they fell in love anyway. Now he sat in the dark room with 300 people he didn't know. There was loud talk and confusion. The power had gone out. "Surely," he thought, "it will return in a moment." Everyone expected that in a few minutes, perhaps half an hour at most, the lights would come on, dinner would be served, alas, probably cold—but the wedding party would progress with hot coffee and cake and music for dancing the night away.

"Don't worry," said his father-in-law, beside him, with a broad red face. "In a minute it will be like nothing happened."

This was to him, however, a most ominous sign. Even if the lights came back on instantly, it had happened. A sign from God. Something somewhere was wrong. He would go into this marriage with a blot on his mind, a stain on the purity of the union, a shadow of a doubt that would plague him the rest of his life. He would spend his marriage waiting for something to go wrong.

Why couldn't the power have gone out before the ceremony? When he could still have reconsidered things.

Not only was the darkness in the room as black as the grave, as no one seemed to be able to locate any candles, but it was becoming very cold.

People were grumbling, openly voicing complaints, getting up, fumbling around, demanding their coats. Better to get home before the blizzard imprisoned them.

There was the rising level of noise one expects to break into pandemonium.

"Don't worry," his father-in-law was saying. "The main thing is the ceremony. Now you're already married. Everything will be fine."

When a few candles were finally brought in most everyone seized the opportunity to find their coats and depart.

By the faint light of the candles in the room where few remained he noticed the death-mask of his mother-in-law. She had planned this wedding for a year, no expense was spared. She would show everyone who had ever talked behind her back that her daughter could marry into a devout, famous family of rabbis. She had driven herself crazy with all the arrangements, everything had to be perfect and she invited everyone she knew. Now this! She sat grim faced and furious with the Fates that pursued her. Was there never an end? Would she never be forgiven?

The groom looks at the bride. By candlelight she looks purer than ever. In a state of shock beyond tears.

He looks at his father-in-law. From the smile lines you can tell he has never given anything a second thought. His conscience is clear. He just does what he wants. If others don't like it, that's their problem. He works primarily on his tan.

The groom's eyes come to rest again on the face of his mother-in-law. Her fists are clenched. Her mouth is twisted as mangled steel and her tongue as sharp, but she holds it. She could tell them all a thing or two! Didn't these beastly herds clamoring for their coats understand anything about love or money? Damn them all, it was their curse. What difference could it possibly make to anyone that she took her best friend's husband? That he left his wife with three small children, well, that was his choice. So what if the woman was now destitute after telling her lawyer, "I trust him, he'll take care of me." Whose fault was it that the son was in a car wreck at 19 and became a paraplegic? They'd been married now for over twenty years. Life had been good to them, as if the price had been paid, had even given them a child, her innocent child, "my child, our child," she thinks.

Avalanche

She was running away from Manhattan like some fleeing a conflagration. She saw, all of a sudden, how tawdry it was. The brick buildings with their blank windows seemed to be toppling, locked in by pavement littered with both trash and humankind. The faces of the people suddenly frightened her. People, even close friends seemed twisted in upon themselves, all were seeing shrinks. The fantasies played out in the workplace shrank in stagnant apartments. Old people lived in the same rooms for 50 years and never changed a thing.

She had made the mistake of befriending one of them in her building. She had helped old Mrs. Tannenbaum with groceries, and been invited in. The room, like a time capsule, with its doilies and dust-encrusted plastic flowers, exuded a kind of death – beyond death, decay. That and all the twisted faces on the people she passed in the street, from madmen to your average defeated soul.

There were those, of course, who did not work, they could be seen in diamonds and furs, getting out of limousines near Lincoln Center. They had their opiates and plastic surgeons to smooth out their faces, but on the faces of ordinary men and women the twisted forces of the city could be seen, the two sides asymmetrical and twisted like a yin/yang sign.

The parkway on Riverside Drive offered some reprieve, in terms of grass and trees, but she never knew what she might encounter there and watched the sunsets only through her windows, which faced the other way. In the morning her three east facing windows were flooded by a sun 93 million miles away. It struck her as remarkable. But then, the rooms themselves, allegedly former servants' quarters but more like a pantry, had dingy walls and cockroaches, the formerly handsome building facing the Hudson had degenerated and the people within it seemed sunk too, into themselves.

The summers were, made by the concrete, infernal. The winters were dismal, even visually. The run of events had gone in such a way that she suddenly had no option.

Things loomed in on her, she saw the buildings caving in, a mass concrete grave.

The bare trees bent with a yearning that could never be fulfilled. The sky shone faintly behind its layer of smog, as behind frosted glass.

Another winter looked her in the eye, with its icy wind blowing debris through black streets.

The many layers of exhaust-colored snow looked like a geologic site in which she had died a long time ago.

Gloria Matucci, of Italian extraction, one of 10 children, the oldest in fact, had foresworn marriage and parenthood. She slogged through the slushy streets, shoulder bag weighing her down, and groceries. And her own bulk too, and her hairy arms, really she should have been a man, except that she was raped by some teenagers at the entrance to the subway last night and she is trudging from the hospital to the police station. Her shoulder bag seems filled with rocks.

The buildings looming over her leaned in. A long-time relationship had fallen apart, or so it seemed, while she was off visiting her sister. When she got back last week, it turned out to be over. Everything was ending here it seemed.

Her sister lived in Denver, an incredibly clear place in which there seemed to be nothing to do. That was fine with her. She skipped filing a police report, ran home, gave her cat to her neighbor's daughter (a successful ploy), threw everything she could fit into a suitcase and called the airport. She could get out the next day. She could stay with Phyllis until she got a job. She could get her own place, try to make a new, completely different life for herself.

It was so clear out there, the sky was so blue and clouds drifted through it like ships, like Spanish galleons.

In Manhattan, not only could you not see the sun and its attendant shadows, you never saw a cloud either—there was just a sheet of haze.

The clouds in Colorado alone were worth the price of living there. And you could actually see the shadows of clouds moving across the landscape down below, like submarines.

To live in between these two phenomena, to breathe the air, to take a single breath, was all she wanted.

Ever since last night she couldn't breathe. They had begun by making cracks about her breasts, which were ample, and ended by nearly killing her. She hated men. If only Lucy had been more dependable they could have bought a farm in upstate New York. Or they could have even stayed in the city, anywhere in the city as long as they were together, her lithe body and blond hair, like an angel. As beautiful as an angel, but with the heart of the Devil himself.

It wasn't just this time, it was all the time. Lucy would be unfaithful, talk about it, make her jealous, they would break up but eventually Lucy's pleading for forgiveness wore her down. Lucy was becoming a weight, a problem. She had already called twice, crying.

Not this time, thought Gloria, not this time.

Woman in White

I used to be a private eye, a regular guy without any mental problems. I had an apartment and a girlfriend and an office in Fort Collins. One day Fritz and Sofia Sonnenheim walked in and hired me to look into the disappearance and possible drowning of their daughter, Marjorie. They hadn't seen her since 1970.

"Good god! Why didn't you get in touch with me sooner?"

"We were afraid to have the law involved," Sofia Sonnenheim said.

"Why, what was she doing?"

"We don't know."

"Well, when was it you last heard from her exactly?"

"April 21st 1970 we got a call from Drop City. She told us she was getting a ride back to Texas with her crazy boyfriend."

"So she was what, 25 years old? Did she ask for money?"

"No."

"Why did she call?"

"Just to say hello and tell us she'd found her ride."

"And that was the last time you heard from her?"

"We got a postcard six months later from Llano, Texas. All it said was 'I'm fine, I'm at a lake'"

#

I stood up from my desk, littered with coffee cups and ashtrays, and shored up the stacks of papers and books I was sure would cave in on me during my conversation with the Sonnenheims. My already small office shrunk as I tried to visualize my mission. Marjorie was probably murdered by a drifter on the side of some road and left for carrion. That's what happened to young girls from good families when they ventured where they didn't belong.

My office, off a small side street in Fort Collins, suddenly became unbearable. Windowless, all four walls, which were within arm's reach, were shelved and everything on all the shelves threatened to avalanche like the snow avalanching off the roof .

It was in April 30 years ago that she called from Drop City. I was familiar with Drop City. Years ago I'd been hired to fish out a kid. I knew that commune. It was the one with geodesic domes made of car hoods. Hundreds of people were there in '68 when I saw it. They had this whole farm going. They were trying to grow things but the garden was kind of skimpy and all they really did was sit around tripping. I found the kid and shipped him back to his parents. That one was easy. He was too stoned to go anywhere else.

But Marjorie, assuming she was alive, would be a woman in her fifties.

"What is the sort of thing your daughter might have done?" I asked Mr. and Mrs. Sonnenheim.

"She could have done anything," her mother said. An ageless black-haired woman, Sofia was either a Brazilian aristocrat or actress, I didn't catch which.

"She was fearless," added her father in a German accent. He handed me a few photographs of Marjorie. The oval white face rimmed in straight black hair seemed to wink at me with recognition. She had one of those faces you always see on the covers of fashion magazines, all alike with fair skin, straight teeth, thin noses, large brown eyes.

"So, let's see, 1970, she must have fallen into politics, drugs, the whole thing?"

"Absolutely not. She was a college student. She'd come home for spring break and was on her way back to school."

"And you never heard from her again? This is the first time you've thought to look for her?

"We look around a bit every five years or so."

#

Armed with the photographs, a $500 retainer and some notes from previous searches, I picked up the trail, thinking I must be really desperate to even get involved in this but I needed the money and looked at is as a vacation from sitting in my cage waiting for the phone to ring.

The very next day I packed up my old Volvo and headed south to Trinidad. I really didn't think anything remained of Drop City. I expected to find a shopping mall or trailer park on the site, but I was getting paid to go south into full-blown spring.

Drop City came up on my left, I could see it from I-25. It looked like a car junkyard. There was a drive into it. I pulled in. The domes were still there. The triangles cut from car hoods, tops and trunks were still welded together but weather-beaten and rusted. The place looked deserted. A small dog ran out, a baby cried. Two very pale people crawled out from some hole and approached me with hollow eyes.

"Looking for somebody?" asked the scrawny fellow with tattoos all over his arms. His wife, pale as a wraith, held a squalling infant. They looked a sorry sight, like they hadn't eaten in weeks, and were as dirty as stray dogs.

"I'm looking for someone who blew through here 30 years ago."

"Nobody here but us now."

"Yeah, I can see that."

"We been here three years. Ain't seen nobody. Xcept that squaw with her dog."

I looked up to see a bare-footed woman approaching with a large chow. His purple tongue hung from his black mouth and his teeth looked very sharp.

"Looking for something?" she asked. She was brown and looked around 50. She wore a long skirt and a long black braid. "Nobody here but us," she said before I had a chance to open my mouth. She acted like she owned the place. Like a queen she swept her arm around her domain, as if to say, this is all mine. "What do you want?" she looked me in the eye.

"I'm looking for someone who came through here in 1970."

She burst out laughing. "Do you know how many people have come through here?"

"How long have you been here?"

"Always."

"Well, were you here in 1970?"

"What's it to you?"

"I've been hired to find someone, a Marjorie Sonnenheim." I pulled out a picture. "Ever see her?"

The woman squinted at the photograph. "White girl, huh?"

The desolate landscape around the domes was too depressing for me to consider this any kind of vacation. The passage of time had brought no progress to Drop City and I wondered why I was standing there looking at this pitiful scene. The pale scarecrow family stood to one side, glad I hadn't come to evict them, and the Indian, well, I knew her type. If she knew anything, she'd never tell. And if she told, it'd be all lies. I was the dumbest of the lot, looking for someone lost in time.

"Can I look around?" I asked.

La Madonna with her vicious dog said, "Stay as long as you like."

#

I went to the nearest dome to look around, to see what might still be there after a third of a century. In that one and in a dozen others were clothing, artifacts, magazines and books, entire libraries, it was a dumping ground. The civilization the travelers had brought with them they left in Drop City. Here, they had dropped everything, all vestiges of former lives. I guess it got its name from all the acid that was dropped here, but everything else had been dropped here too, names, identities, possessions, treasures, aspirations and lots of books. The books were too heavy to carry further. Trunks of clothing stood untouched. Whoever left Drop City took nothing with them. In the dirt outside one of the domes I found a tiny silver cross. The things that people lost here, it would be an archeologist's paradise, or a psychiatrist's nightmare.

I was getting into my car, glad it had wheels, when the Indian sauntered up, her dog nipping at her heels, baring his teeth at me.

"You know," she said, "I recognize the woman. I remember her. She was with a tall skinny fellow."

"What do you remember about her?"

"She wore white."

"What about the guy, who was he?"

"I knew him well. We called him Whitey. He been here the summer before. Took a lot of acid. Every day for three months. But Jesus it was long ago, he'd be a grandfather by now. What'd he do, kill her?"

"Maybe."

"Her folks want to find out?"

"They're paying me to find out."

"Why don't you stick around for awhile? We could use somebody with some money. Fix this place up."

She might have been beautiful once. Now she was very plain with a flat round face and little black eyes that glittered like stars. Her limbs were round as columns, her neck too, was thick as a trunk. Her feet were large and filthy. The hem of her skirt was ragged and torn. Her dog looked hungry, jumping on me, barking his head off.

"They went from here to Morning Star," she said.

"What's that?"

"Another commune. Behind Taos. Up a mesa. But it's gone. Everything's gone. You stay here with us."

I had a vision of myself becoming like the scarecrow family, drained of will and blood. She had my sleeve in her grip but I pulled away and got into the car.

"We could have some fun," she shouted, her fist pounding on the windshield. "Don't leave," she began to cry as I pulled away.

Christ, I thought, there sure are a lot of crazies in this world. I wasn't sure what to do. There seemed no point in looking for Morning Star, it had probably long ago disappeared. Still, I could postpone returning to my dingy office and get expenses covered. Browse around Taos a little and pretend to be doing something. I drove south.

#

The connection of Marjorie with Morning Star continually brought to mind Natalie Wood who played Marjorie Morningstar in a film of the same name.

The next day at noon I was asking at every gas station in Taos, one finger finally pointed to a mesa to the north. The streets were deserted at mid-day. The bright light that illuminates O'Keeffe's paintings was here, thrown on everything. All objects stood out unique, with no shadows to bind them together. Each object stood out like an icon. The flesh-colored adobes with corners round as shoulders, were backed by a blinding turquoise sky. The trees stood out in 3-D, every shadow a razor's edge. The landscape I drove through was barren, it was the sky that looked alive, with sheaves of clouds moving through it quickly, as on a river.

When I got to the mesa it seemed high as Masada, and the road going up it was even worse. The old Volvo rattled its guts out. All I needed was to completely destroy my car to be put out of business altogether. It wasn't a road but a rocky zigzag up to a plateau, and I proceeded in a thick cloud of yellow dust and the banging of rocks under my car. I caused such a stir it must have been visible for miles.

I arrived at the top with only one question in my mind: Why would Natalie Wood come up here? For in my mind Marjorie Sonnenheim had merged with Marjorie Morningstar. Her white oval face with even features, nice nose, dark eyes, with even the same smile! I was looking for the young Natalie Wood, the way she looked in _Rebel Without a Cause_ , those immense fear-filled eyes, the strained laugh, the nervous hands and again the immense black pools of her eyes. She died of drowning, didn't she, now that I think of it. Marjorie Sonnenheim was also thought to have drowned. What the hell am I doing at the top of a mesa if she drowned? I should be down in Texas at the lake.

I got to the top, parked the car and got out. It was way past noon but up here it was green as dawn. The light was pearly and planted fields reached away from me in rows green as creation. In the distance several horses, one white, began to run. That white horse running through the green fields at the top of that mesa was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. All around, floating in thin air, were the tops of surrounding mesas, like a barely-there Japanese watercolor. There were shadows, all shades of mauve and blue. The horses kept running, in slow motion. I approached a stone structure, made from the same stones as on the road. It looked, in the pearly light, made of pearls. A series of add-ons from other materials, unmatched roofs, a couple of old pick-ups rusting out front and a brand new Land Rover.

"Hello, hello?" The door stood open.

A young woman in black shorts and white Nikes appeared.

"Hi. I'm Jack Froyd. I'm writing an article. Do you know if this is where the Morning Star commune used to be?"

"An article? On communes? Oh Larry, come out," she called. "There's a reporter here. He wants to know about Morning Star."

Larry emerged from the inner room, wearing Polo shorts, and shook my hand. He looked around 30.

"Do you know if there was a commune called Morning Star up here in 1970?"

"Yes, this was it. I bought it last year. Come in, I'll show you around the original section. But you haven't got a camera with you."

"Oh, they send out a professional photographer for that."

"Which magazine did you say you're from?" asked the lady, her straight chestnut hair cut shoulder length with razor sharp bangs. Her nails, I noticed, were polished pink and silver.

" _Mother Earth Times_ ," I improvised. There was probably nothing they could tell me. They'd have been barely born in 1970. And from the magazine way they looked, their parents hadn't been part of it either. No thread of light from 1970 fell here.

They took me inside, showed me around. The central building was made of stone, inside and out, large stones made up a round center room, pretty big, about 30 feet across, with stone seating all around a central hearth. On the slate benches and flagstone surfaces lay fans of slick magazines. They probably welcomed the publicity, so they could sell all the surrounding land to a developer to build million-dollar homes. I looked out a window and thought the mesa big enough to hold quite a few. I tried to visualize this building boom and could see the mesa covered with homes, surrounded by the floating empty mesas punctuating the distance as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful. It looked vaguely Greek, mostly white, columns and domes, geometries of glass for it was a New Age City I envisioned. Canals of water, waterfalls, lotus pools, fountains. These were rich people after all. Probably David Bowie would buy a house up here, but he'd want the whole mesa to himself, except, of course, for a few Indians and white horses.

The Greek city sitting in the mesa looked like Utopia. A monastic city in the Himalayas, a Greek monastery, one of those Macchu Picchu kind of places that attract pilgrims from all over the world. Seekers of truth. Come drink the water.

There was water up here, strangely enough. I could see Natalie Wood looking at the silver water running through trenches. The New Age City with its tinkling music dissolved as my vision focused on the lush green fields and their canals filled with water, and beyond them the horses, a few brown and black and one white. The floating pink mesas were vanishing in the mid-day sky.

I turned to my hosts. "Is there anyone around here who might have been here in 1970?"

They turned to each other and consulted.

"The fellow we bought the land from has been here forever. He's probably immortal. He lives in the Taos Pueblo, his name is Joe. Joe Joseph."

#

Did people really live in the Taos Pueblo? I'd seen it several times as a tourist, annoyed that they make you pay to bring in your camera. I thought it was more of a tourist site, like the old cores of European cities, where businesses in the historical sections are owned by merchants who live in suburbs. This was how the Taos Pueblo had appeared to me, not that anyone was getting rich selling fried bread and silver. The merchants probably lived in square brick houses with air conditioning and plumbing.

"Does he have an address?" I asked.

"Just ask anyone in the Pueblo for Joe Joseph."

#

I drove down the tortuous road, relieved to hit the pavement and drove back to Taos. Taos never seemed to change. It was a designated tourist trap. It did have a lot of charm. In the late afternoon light the adobes glowed pink. The green, what little there was, was the bright green of mosses. The trees dripped with new leaves and at the entrance to my motel a few scrawny lilac bushes were in bloom. The dirt in the courtyard was rose tinted. The motel had been recently painted turquoise and looked terrible. I should have told the Sonnenheims that because of my dependency on computer technology I only stay in Hyatts. But I was too exhausted to care and after a glimpse at the empty pool, crashed into bed like a mummy.

I dreamed of the white horse running across the mesa.

When I awoke it was night but not much cooler. I walked into town for dinner and gazed into the windows of a few shops and galleries. A few Indians in blankets wandered the fringe of town, and beyond that, a flat blackness filled with stars.

I drove north to the Pueblo, still wondering if anyone really lived there. Through molded windows like square openings in flesh, shone a few electric bulbs. No one bothered with a shade, but the bulbs must have been only 15 watt, so dark did everything remain. The Pueblo loomed up into the night sky, now an electric blue with the moon's arrival. A structure of 3 and 4 stories with perhaps a hundred dwellings, stood out in black silhouette.

I entered a stone maze which looked like a stage set. The moonlight ascending ever higher blotted out all the stars and with its bright rays cast boxy shadows. I felt like the golem sneaking through the midnight streets of Prague.

"Hello?" I called into a window opening.

An enormous woman waddled out in a muumuu. Her flat face was covered with nicks and scars like an unearthed Mayan head. She looked at me and waited.

"I'm looking for Joe Joseph."

"Joe? Joe!" she called. "Somebody here looking for you!"

"Tell him I've gone to the moon!" Joe hollered back. I couldn't believe my good luck in finding him at the first place I tried, unless everyone here had the same name.

An old guy in a t-shirt ducks into the room. I'm still standing at the doorway. Next thing I know I find myself at a formica table in his kitchen. His kitchen looks like an ordinary kitchen, except for all its light coming from one 15 watt bulb.

I whipped out the picture of Marjorie Morningstar, I mean Sonnenheim, and asked, "Have you ever seen this girl?"

"You the cops?" he appraised me from the corners of his eyes.

"No."

"Feds?"

"No."

"So what is it? That hit and run I heard about?"

"No. I'm looking for a woman who disappeared 30 years ago."

He peered at the picture again.

"I dunno, where was she at, here?"

"Maybe here, maybe in town. She spent some time on that mesa, I understand it was your property that the Morning Star commune was on."

"Are you saying she was murdered on my land and I'm responsible?" He leaned towards me and reached for a sharp kitchen knife with his free hand. His large face was red and white hair hung to his shoulders. His features were craggier than Mount Rushmore up close.

"Not at all. It's got nothing to do with it being your land and she's probably not even dead. But it's been a long time since she passed through here, so I wanted to talk to you because you were here then, in 1970, or am I wrong? Do you recognize her?"

"Who wants to know?"

I paused to think of an answer. "I'm her brother."

"Oh, that's different," he said. "Wait. Let's have a drink." He poured out some whiskey and drank his own neat. Then he concentrated on the picture.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Don't know."

"She jest dropped out, huh?"

"That's about right."

"What's her name?"

"Marjorie Sonnenheim."

Musta changed her name, that's why you can't find her. Got married or something. Probably has ten kids. That's what that fella she was with wanted to do, stay here forever. He called her Maggie. I knew him from once before when I nearly killed him in a fight. He came back a coupla years later with Maggie. He brought her here. Thought she could become an Indian. Trouble was, he was no Indian himself. No Indian, no Chicano, nothing man, he was a ghost. White as a ghost, not one hair on his chest, smooth as a woman, made of ice."

"What was his name?"

"I dunno! You want me to know that? Nobody used their real names back then anyway. We called him Whitey. He was one of them hippie trippers who always stepped on the wrong feet. Seemed to be his gift."

"What about Maggie?"

"Ah, she was like the moon. She had on a white dress. She was pretty thin, they both were. They didn't say much. She didn't say a word. I thought maybe they had a fight. After she went to bed I had a coupla beers with Whitey and he told me they'd broke up. I could tell from the scared look on her face, she was looking for a way out. I sent them up to Morning Star where a hundred other kids just like them was looking for ways in or out. They stayed up there a few days. I wonder where he's at now? Probly living under a bridge. Your sister didn't seem the sort at all to be with him.

"Was he angry that she wanted to shake him?"

"Nah—he got his news from the songs on the radio. He turned on this one right here and they was playing _She's Gotta Ticket to Ride_ and he accepted it."

"Where did they go from here?"

"On down south. I loaned him 20 bucks. Nothing happened to her here, I promise you sir," he placed his hand on his heart. "But what, she don't show up for 30 years and you lookin for her now?"

"We've been looking all along."

"And you ain't found her yet? I feel sorry for you, man. Give it up. She don wanna be found. She coulda called. Collect, right? An if she's dead then her soul's long gone. You gotta let it go. You gotta wife?"

"No."

"Well, get one! You're on a cold trail. Ice cold."

#

It felt November cold when I stepped out of Joe's place in the middle of the night. A faint sense of the absurd washed over me. There was no Marjorie Sonnenheim. She was a white moth flitting out of reach. The enormous gulf of time separated us. Her parents were just going through an empty ritual.

I decided to drive south. I felt the drive would do me good. My few minutes with Joe seemed eternities long and I couldn't wait to hit the open road. The bits he added solidified the case around me and I knew I was losing that detachment and getting sucked in by curiosity. I was becoming too curious about Marjorie Sonnenheim. She had hooked me with her Natalie Wood smile. Not that Natalie ever smiled. She was much too serious and reserved, but you know that kind of face, the kind which you know that if it smiled would be beautiful. I drove south with this face moving across the landscape.

#

I consulted the notes they'd given me and pulled into Big Spring, Texas the next day, late afternoon. The heat of the day still lay on everything like a quilt. The place was suffocating, dry land all around, no spring that I could see. To get a drop of water they would have had to wrench it out of a cloud. But the clouds all dried up before they got here. One gas station sagged into the ground of not much of a town. I felt like I'd stepped back in time. There were a dozen carcasses of cars all around the establishment. Inside, a tall rangy fellow up in years leaned back in a chair with his boots on the counter.

He eyeballed my Volvo through the filthy glass and said, "Gotta problem?"

"Yeah. Nothing but problems. You the only garage around?"

"Yep."

"For how many miles?"

"Few hundred. Whatsa matter with your car?"

"Overheated."

"Them old cars'll do that. Hope that's all it is cause there ain't no Volvo parts around here."

"Listen," I said. "How long have you been here?"

"All my life."

"At this station?"

"Got it from my dad. What's it to you?"

"I'm a private eye. I'm looking for someone."

"Oh yeah? Who?"

I showed him the picture.

"What, her again? When you guys gonna stop looking?"

"Well, can you tell me anything?"

"I can tell you all the same stuff I said before." He lit a cigarette. He was going nowhere and seemed glad for the company. His arms were twisted ropes of muscles and his hands were greased black to the wrists. "Ok, here's the story. I come to work one morning and find a white Austin Healy parked on the lot. It was early, man. My dad'd sent me over to see about what he'd heard from a cop, someone sleepin in this bus we had sittin here an I came real early, bout five in the morning and caught em sleeping on the bus. It was jest an old broken down thing with no seats in it that crapped out on some hippies, they'd left it with me. Anyway the bus was of no account and there was nothing in it to steal but my old man told me the night before to go and I found em. She and this fella were sound asleep, in their clothes. They had this finicky piece of junk that we didn't have any parts for, and they left it here and hitch-hiked out. He was tall and skinny, typical Texas boy. She looked, I dunno, kinda Italian. They jest left the car and walked off down the road."

"That's it?"

"That's been it til now but I like you, I'll let you in on a little bit more."

"There's more?"

"I never told this part while pa was alive, he woulda killed me, but he's dead now. Anyway, I felt sorry for them, biggest mistake of my life. I took em to my house to get washed up. My wife and kids was gone to see her folks for a week and I figured it was no harm done. They splashed their faces, didn't shower or nothing, didn't go that far, but used the bathroom, washed up and combed their hair. She had long black hair and asked if she could use the wife's brush. I said fine. Then we walked back to the station. I gave him fifty bucks for the car and they walked off. It was all over an done with by 7:00 A.M. That was the last I saw of em. My house is just round the corner, wanna see it? I'm lockin up now."

The town looked deserted. I followed him two blocks to a small crumpled frame house with broken steps and screens. He kicked the door open and let me in. There were three very tiny rooms wallpapered with hideous flowers but so dingy and dark you could hardly see them, they looked more like stains.

"Come on, I'll show you something I never shown nobody."

I followed him into a little hallway, tight as a coffin, and into the bedroom completely dominated by heavy dark furniture. On a large bed, which filled the whole room, lay a wine-colored fake velvet bedspread. From a tall narrow window fell a little white light. He directed my attention to the mirrored dresser, the entire top of which was covered with perfume bottles, pictures in frames, miniature vases with dried flowers, brushes and combs and countless knick-knacks. The beveled mirror reflected the room a bit brighter than it really was. He picked up a picture in an ornate frame and handed it to me.

"The wife," he said.

I saw the head and shoulders of an attractive woman with curly blond hair and a winning smile.

He handed me a silver-backed brush with soft bristles, part of a set, the whole set was still there on a silver tray. I looked at it but saw nothing.

"See that there?"

"What?"

"Long black hair."

I carried the brush to the window. There was one long black strand of hair wound through the bristles. I pulled it out and wrapped it round my finger. I looked him in the face, confused. His plain hardened features folded down the center and he managed to choke out a few words.

"The wife come back. She sees the brush. Figures I had some other woman in here, thinks she even knows who it is, that goddam Martha phone operator who's got black hair and who I wouldn't give two cents for, with her mouth, though I did fool around with her a little, but never _here_. The wife takes one look at this brush and she jes turns around and goes back to her folks. I coulda killed myself, I was so mad. And I coulda killed her for not believing a word I said. You wanna beer?"

"No thanks. My car's probably cooled down enough to start now."

"Wait a sec, I want you to hear something."

He took me to the kitchen, big as a shoebox, and put on a record, Roy Orbison's _Pretty Woman._

"You know this song?" he said laconically, having recovered himself now. "I played bass guitar on it, you know, that acoustic rhythm in the back. That was me. Went down to Nashville to cut it. Played it for them after she'd brushed her hair."

I put the circle of hair in my wallet with the thin silver cross. We walked back. He stood watching, chewing on a weed. I started the engine and backed out. The sun was going down but that didn't help Big Spring much. It was just a parched, faded place. If it had a spring, it was deep underground.

I arrived in Austin at night. It was hot and sultry, humid as a sauna. A pungent smell of moss and black earth. A few frail Victorian houses were still standing among new condos, with white paint peeling like tissue and wooden fretwork pale as rotted lace. In neighborhoods long occupied by students the sidewalks lurched and cracked, unable to contain the giant roots of trees hurling off the cement.

I would have liked to stay a few days and could have justified it to the Sonnenheims who'd given me a short list of people to interview, but I knew they would just repeat their stories and besides I was dying to get to the lake. The next day, over bitter coffee in my room, cold, the way I like it, except for the white moth floating in it from the night before, I browsed idly through the notes. I noticed it just before taking a sip, floating on top of the murky liquid, its wings like two blossom petals, smooth as silk. I fished it out, patted it dry with a napkin and put it in my wallet.

I saw from the notes of those who'd gone before me that his name was Whitman Smiley. He wasn't hard to find. The phone book was full of Smileys and I talked to enough of them over the phone to know half the family, who directed me first to Lampasas and then to Llano, to the lake house.

I drove a hundred miles to get there but it looked like a thousand, nothing but rolling hills like a petrified ocean, not a dwelling in sight. I couldn't imagine why she'd come out here.

I finally found the lake. Heavy rains had evidently swollen it because the banks of green grass led right down into it and there were a few trees in the water. He was waiting for me on the porch. He was tall and thin, lanky in boots and jeans, an inscrutable face with high cheekbones and a pointed nose; except for his round steel rimmed glasses, he looked just like James Dean.

I was exhausted and had long ago given up. This was the end of my trail. I was going to drink three beers and drive away. Just for billing purposes to show something to the Sonnenheims, I would interview Mr. Smiley, who looked a lot like Jett Rink without the money. He looked at me with cold grey eyes and a frozen smile.

"I understand you're looking for Maggie Sonnenheim," he spoke first.

"Yep," I climbed the porch stairs, defeated, collapsed into a wooden rocker and looked out at the lake. It lay like a silver plate between the hills. It was near sunset and the sky was Technicolor. It was hot as hell and the lake floated before me like a mirage.

"I know I'm not the first to ask you questions."

"Not the last either," he drawled.

A fan of cirrus clouds turned orange and purple. The lake looked filled with paint. I wanted to ask him pointblank: "Did you drown her?" knew he'd say "Nope." We drank a couple beers each without talking. I was hoping he'd say something himself. He had the long fingers of a pianist and a silver skull ring on one hand.

When the lake turned black and vanished into black hills I got up and turned to leave. In the light of an interior room sat a woman in white, reading at a table. I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again. The inner room seemed sacred, a private realm beyond my reach. I stumbled down the stairs and drove away. I never sent the Sonnenheims a bill either. Just a note to say I couldn't take the case.

From the line of her face, it could have been her. In fact, I'm sure that it was.

Only trouble is, I see her everywhere.

a note about the writer

Ita Willen was born in Poland in 1945, has a BA in philosophy from University of Texas in Austin and currently resides in Colorado. She was named for her paternal grandmother who died in a concentration camp, exact time and place unknown. In 1972 Random House published _The Grubbag_ , a collection of weekly columns she wrote (under the name Ita Jones) for the Liberation News Service from 1968-70.

