LAST REMINDER

Only one chapter to go. It will post next Tuesday, Saint Patrick's Day. Thank you all so much for reading this. Remember, if you are behind, all the chapters can be found numerically in the Archive List, starting with Chapter One dated January 8.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE BACKGROUND CHANGES

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

Small troubled thoughts occur to him in his sleep and briefly interrupt the succession of blissful dreams. There is some kind of chasm across which he must jump, and there are people on the other side, waiting to applaud his success, if he is successful in jumping across the chasm. Carl Rogers is there, on crutches, and there is Doralina Steindl Klaus, in her floppy hat, swaying like a willow tree, swaying in the wind. He thinks of Levon Blue Lake Moon, how sometimes you call him Levon, sometimes you call him Blue Lake. But Opal is always Opal. He thinks of Will and Arnie, and he thinks, we’ll never go back to those names, and he thinks what will they call us next? He thinks of names from fiddle tunes, Billy Berwick, Captain MacGreal, Denis Murphy. He thinks of names of Indians, Crazy Horse, Black Elk, Little Big Man. What will they call us next? So much hangs on this unanswered question.

Claudia returns the following afternoon. She’s in jeans and a grey sweatshirt with the hood pulled down. She wears no jewelry. There is nothing around her throat, nothing in her earlobes. Her only nod to color is a blue and green babushka, tied over her head. Her hair has been pulled off her shoulders and rolled into a bun under the cloth.

“Claudia, what’s happened to you? You look different.”

“Oh, I didn’t have time to get pretty for you, Wilbo. I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you.”

He reaches for her hand. “You look pretty to me, Claudia. You don’t have to do anything.” This is true. She looks as pretty as ever, but something about her appearance disturbs him, no so much for himself as for her.

“I got a job,” she tells him.

“You what?”

“You heard me. I got a job.”

“What for? I though you had plenty of money.”

She pulls her hand away from his. “I never told you I had plenty of money. You just inferred that because you think I’m a rich bitch.”

She’s kidding, he hopes. He smiles at her. “Where are you working?”

“At the Lighthouse. Waiting tables, the lunch shift. I wouldn’t work the dinner shift. I need my nights.”

Another wave of disturbance is carried to him by this piece of information. “I thought you couldn’t deal with those people. The last time I talked to you, you said you weren’t even sure you could live there any longer.”

“Oh, they’re not so bad, not really. I was wrong. I had a long talk with Jimmy. It isn’t like I thought it was. They’re not… I don’t know what they’re not, but Jimmy’s a good guy, really. He has some good ideas. I take it back, what I said about Jesus freaks. Besides, I really do need the money. My dad, he’s not a bottomless pit, or at least he doesn’t think he is. But what about you? You look great? Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, I feel better. Just a little weak around the middle. Look ma! No hands!” he raises his arms to demonstrate that he is completely free of intravenous attachments. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I’m looking forward to a decent meal.”

“I could bring you something to eat. Do you think they’d let me? The Lighthouse has great food.”

“Well, sure. You could try. But Claudia…” He stops himself, realizing that an urgent question has risen in his mind without actually announcing to him what it is.

“What, silly? You sound like a dying cowboy in a movie.”

“When I get out I’m… I’m going back to my house, you know. It’s OK for me to go back to my house. My brother Arno, he thinks it’s not OK for me to go back to my house.”

“Well, why would Arno think that?”

“He thinks it’s dangerous. He says, well, I’ve been attacked. It’s not a safe world out there. Of course it’s not a safe world. I don’t care about that. I want to live, not just survive. But he also says I’ll be in a weakened state when I first get out. I should go and stay with him for the first couple of weeks, or with someone else.”

Claudia sits with this for a while. She stares off into space. When she speaks it’s clear that she’s tapped into a deeper level of emotion than the one she came in with.

“Don’t talk about the future right now, Wilbo,” she says, “Or the past. The present’s just about all I can handle.” She looks at him and their eyes lock. Suddenly there’s a connection, like a little bit of kinko syncho quinto, like if either one of them was to move the other would move in the same way. But her next words completely break the spell.

“I’ve made some bad mistakes, Wilbo.”

He can’t let this pass. He grabs her arm. “What do you mean by that? Bad mistakes?”

She pulls away and shakes her head, like she’s shaking off a swarm of flies. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not ready to hear that. Forget it. I’m sure you’ll go back to your house. There’s no reason for you not to go back to your house.”

Then she’s quiet, and Wilbo is quiet, but he’s not quiet inside. In fact he’s churning with questions, none of which he can ask because they all have to do with the past, or with the future, the present being nothing but a hospital room, and how much can you say about a hospital room?

“Where’d you get the book?” she asks suddenly.

He glances down at The True Believer tossed open at the side of the bed with the dust cover falling off. “Oh, that was from my friend Carl, Carl Rogers. You know Carl, don’t you?”

“Well, actually we’ve never met, but you told me all about him. He’s the guy who said you spend too much time alone. Alone with your thoughts.”

Wilbo nods. “Yep. The very guy,” he says.

She covers his hand with both her hands. “Well, maybe you should be alone with your thoughts now. For a little while at least. You need to rest. Don’t worry, I’ll stay here with you. Get some rest, Wilbo.”

Vague troubled ideas rise up weakly to resist her suggestion but an overall sense of fatigue weights them down and he closes his eyes. He doesn’t know how long she stays there with him. He pieces together impressions in the misty borderland between waking and sleeping.

She had a long talk with Jimmy. He gets a picture of Jimmy, wailing away like a true pagan on the congas across from the blazing glow of the fire.

Don’t talk about the future or the past. The present is about all I can handle right now. Why did she say that? Especially at that moment, when the conversation turned to his release from the hospital, and where would he go? Bad mistakes! What bad mistakes? I’m sure you’ll be able to go back to your house. There’s no reason for you not to be able to go back to your house.

Over it all, though, there’s something larger, humming and hovering like a great alien mother ship over a barren Arizona landscape. Whatever it is it makes all other concerns seem petty and trivial, especially the matters of attraction and affection and all the bruises and the pleasures of the ego. What is this thing hovering? Maybe it’s just sleep. If it isn’t sleep, sleep is nonetheless riding in on its coattails. He feels sleep gathering like heavy blanket of clouds in the sky of his mind, asking him to forget all these disturbances and just follow.

When he wakes its night. A quick glance at the clock fixes his place in time: 7:45 p.m. The nurse is back in the room- the same one- banging about some metal objects in the corner.

“Hey!” Wilbo announces himself.

The nurse turns. “Mr. Hoegarden.”

“Why do I always wake up for you? Where’s the pretty nurse?”

“Oh, I lied. There are no pretty nurses here. But that little girl came back, just now. She said not to disturb you. She just wanted to bring you some food. Seems like you’ve been complaining about our rations.”

These words usher in an aroma of fresh garlic and basil, like a Mediterranean breeze.

“We don’t normally allow food this exciting into the hospital,” the nurse continues. “I snuck it past the armed guards.”

It’s a big piece of home made hand-tossed pizza smothered in pesto sauce, layered with crumbles of feta cheese and wedges of sun-dried tomatoes. There’s also a salad with generous portions of arugula. The effect this has on his appetite is explainable. What surprises him is the way it also cross-wires down his synapses into his sex, eliciting an immediate erection.

“You have to eat hearty and get strong,” the nurse tells him. “They’re talking about letting you out tomorrow.”

Wilbo looks up in surprise. “Tomorrow?”

“It depends on your brother. He was here tonight. He came with the girl, actually. He was negotiating with the management, trying to convince them you’ll be well enough to get out tomorrow. What do you think? You be well enough to get out tomorrow?”

But Wilbo’s head is swirling. “He came with the girl?”

“Well, I don’t know, maybe he didn’t come with the girl. They showed up at the same time, though. You’re a little testy, aren’t you? You must be feeling better.”

Wilbo considers throwing something at the man, maybe The True Believer. But he reigns in his impulses.

“Well, don’t you think I ought to try walking around a little first, before they decide to let me out? I haven’t even been out of this bed yet.” A question occurs to him, suddenly: where have I been peeing? Another, more pressing question follows immediately: where can I pee now?

“Well, of course you can get up,” says the nurse. “You should get up and walk around. Test out your sea legs.”

Immediately Wilbo is sitting up on the edge of the bed, and then he slides off the bed onto his feet. At first it feels like his stomach is going to rip open and all his guts are going to spill out onto the floor. The nurse grabs his arm. “Steady mate, you’ll get used to it.”

Wilbo straightens his back and places his hands gently over the scar on his abdomen. “Gotta pee.”

“Straight on back,” the nurse tells him.

The first few steps are the hardest, and Wilbo’s thinking, I’m not getting out of here tomorrow. But then he feels his strength kick in as auxilliary muscles wake up and rush to the aid of the ones that were wounded. He reaches the bathroom and finds, to his relief, the lid left up.

Unsupported by anything, standing free and slightly swaying, he feels what seems like a lifetime of impurities streaming out of his body. When he’s done the sense of calm and relief is far greater than one would expect after nothing but a good pee.

“Come eat this pizza before I do,” calls the nurse. “Then you can walk around. Go ahead, just walk anywhere you want. I’ll come see how you did after awhile.”

So the nurse leaves, Wilbo eats the pizza, and then he gets up to walk around. It isn’t until he’s out in the hall that he stops to notice what he’s wearing- a suit of institutional white pajamas underneath the standard striped hospital gown that ties in the back.

Well, at least you can tell the doctors from the patients, he thinks. But it doesn’t really matter. For the most part people treat him as if he’s invisible, and he can go just about where he pleases. With every step he feels his body grow stronger as if the kinetic energy from his legs is knitting him together, a stitch at a time. He wanders the hallways peeking into rooms where people lie or sit in various levels of infirmity, where loved ones armed with balloons and bouquets gather around ailing family members, and where lonely old men languish away in the blue television glow. He begins to like the idea of getting out of here tomorrow. He begins to believe it’s possible.

Shortly after midnight he is approached by his friend, the male nurse whose name turns out to be Nash, as embroidered on the pocket of his white jacket.

“Mr Hoegarden. You’re still walking?”

“Of course I’m still walking. What? Do you think I’d be dead by now? And also, I can answer your question.”

“What question?”

“Yes. I think I could go home tomorrow. In fact, I don’t think you could pay me to stay.”

The nurse glances around surreptitiously. “Well that’s good because you’re up way past your curfew, man. We don’t like to keep troublemakers like you any longer than we have to.” He takes Wilbo’s arm. “Do you realize how far you are from your room?” Gently he begins to guide him down the long dark hall.

Wilbo sleeps deeply through the quiet hospital night and wakes refreshed to a vision of Claudia sitting in the chair beside his bed. She looks better today. She’s wearing a black scoop neck leotard and a strand of African clay beads around her throat. She has earrings and her hair is loose and flowing on her shoulders. When he sees her he smiles both inside and out. He feels great. He feels like he’s ready to go home.

Then there’s a scuffling sound from across the room and another person stands beside the bed.

It’s Arno. He’s got the same punky hairstyle and the same earring and now he’s wearing a black, sleeveless tank top with a bold, dramatic picture of three empty crosses on a barren hill.
Wilbo’s heart falls and his face falls with it.

“Oh,” he says to Claudia, “I see you’ve met my brother.”

Arno doesn’t give her a chance to answer. He swoops in like a buzzard and grabs Wilbo’s hand.

“We met at the Lighthouse. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for turning me on to that place. It’s exactly what I needed. It’s like coming home. I’m not alone anymore.”

A sharp jab of pain bites Wilbo in the stomach and it makes him gasp, but he does it quietly, hoping nobody will notice. He realizes what it is, or at least what it means. I need to move my bowels!

Even so, he’ll be damned if he’s going to let on. He clenches his jaw, tightens his sphincter muscles, and contemplates his reply. But Arno speaks first.

“You saved my life, Wilbo. I knew you’d do it. I knew you’d come through.”

Wilbo feels a flush of anger. “I didn’t save anyone’s life,” he replies. “And I haven’t made you any promises. I already told you that.”

“You don’t have to make me any promises, Wilbo. You’ve been called. You’ve just been obedient to the call.’

Wilbo glances frantically at Claudia who just sits there, unsmiling. How can she just sit there, unsmiling? How can she just listen to this line of bullshit without saying anything?

But he decides to let it go. “So you’ve come to negotiate my immanent release,”

Arno smiles. He seems equally relieved by the change of subject. “Yes, we have, actually. I’ve been talking to the doctor. He thinks you’re ready, but you’ll need a few more days of bed rest. And the stitches come out in a week.”

At that point another wave of pain hits and his stomach makes an audible rumble. He closes his eyes and a brilliant display of phosphenes explodes on the darkened screen of his eyelids. He feels dizzy. Mostly he’d like to open his eyes and find that he’s alone, or at least Arno would be gone. He wouldn’t mind if Claudia was still there. He decides to vocalize his thoughts.

“Just go away,” he says, his eyes still closed.

“Wilbo…” It’s Claudia’s voice, and it softens him a little. He qualifies his statement.

“For a little while, at least. Go away for a little while. Come back later.”

He opens his eyes to see them both staring at him with matching dumb looks on their faces, like a pair of bookends.

“But… we’ve got it all worked out,” Arno says. “My car is waiting outside. We're taking you to my house.”

Wilbo releases an exasperated sigh. “Well, if you really want to know, I gotta take a shit,” he says. “Then, I don’t know, I just want to think about it for awhile, OK? Go away. Come back in a couple of hours, OK?”

Arno looks at Claudia but she doesn’t look back. She has her eyes fixed on Wilbo. Her expression looks like her thoughts are going a mile a minute. Finally she breaks the impasse but not the silence. She leans over and plants a kiss on Wilbo’s forehead.

“It’s all right,” she whispers in his ear, “Don’t worry. Trust him.” Then she straightens up and turns to Arno. “Let’s do what he says.”

But Arno’s not so quick to agree. “Wilbo, this is silly. We can wait out in the hall while you take your crap if you want. We came to get you. We came to take you home.”

Wilbo closes his eyes again. The pressure in his bowels is almost unbearable and the word home bounces around in his head like a bad oath. He hears Claudia’s voice.

“He just needs to be alone. I know what he’s talking about. I’ve been there. Let’s go. Let’s do what he says. We can come back later.”

Arno grumbles and mumbles unintelligible words under his breath. Wilbo keeps his eyes closed until he hears their departing footsteps, and he’s quite certain he’s alone in the room. Then he leaps out of bed. The pain of the impact is only slight this time, and the turbulence in his digestive tract is overwhelming. He reaches the toilet in the nick of time.

There follows a day of waiting, as long as it is deep. Having successfully voided his body of every solid and liquid impurity, Wilbo feels clean and strong and whole and ready to go. But nobody comes for him. Breakfast comes which he eats with appetite, and then lunch, which he eats with some reserve. He meets the pretty nurse at last, but she’s not that pretty. He asks her several times if anyone has come for him, or if anyone is waiting for him, but she knows nothing. In the afternoon, the doctor himself appears, a shaggy unkempt man who shows him his charts, presents him with a laminated table of the four food groups, and pronounces him fit for release with a sharp knock on the knee. But when Wilbo asks him has anyone come to get him, he knows nothing.

“That’s something you’ll have to ask the nurses,” he says.

Through the long afternoon Wilbo wanders the halls. He talks to people. He even attempts a few sketches of some of the nurses and interns but they aren’t very good. All he has is a number two pencil and a pad of ruled binder paper. Nonetheless, the subjects act impressed and the pictures get passed around the hall.

“This is what I do for a living,” he tells them, but it doesn’t ring true.

When evening falls he’s back in bed, wondering what they’re going to bring him for dinner, when a white-coated figure pops a bushy head into the room.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” It’s Nash, the night nurse.

Wilbo looks up. “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I live here.”

“No you don’t. You’re gone, man. It says here they released you this morning.”

“This morning?”

“Yeah. Your brother came and got you. Don’t you remember?”

Wilbo feels his whole body make a little jerk. “Oh yeah? Well, I must have died then, and this is hell.”

“Get up man, and get your clothes on. And hurry. We’ve got a liver patient supposed to occupy this bed in half an hour.”

“My clothes? Where are my clothes?”

“In the bag. On the floor. Where they always were.”

On the floor? Where they always were? Wilbo giggles. “You mean I could have just got dressed and walked out of here any time?” he asks.

“Well, it’s what you’re gonna do now, and make it snappy,” Nash replies. “Or I’m in big trouble. God, how was I to know this was happening?”

Sure enough, there’s a bag, on the floor, with all his clothes, except that they’ve been laundered in some kind of heavy starch and folded into a tight little bundle. The pants are so stiff he has to force them open with his legs and the shirt sits on his shoulders like a cardboard box.

Nash is already making tracks behind him, ripping sheets off the bed. “Don’t forget your book.” he says.

Wilbo takes the book but his thoughts are still in a puzzle. “But… what if there’s no one here to pick me up?” he asks.

The nurse stops what he’s doing just long enough to frown. “You’re a healthy man, Mr. Hoegarden,” he says. “You don’t need anyone to pick you up. You can go anywhere you’d like.”

With a nod and a chuckle, Wilbo takes one last look around the room until his eyes light on the one memorable object, the clock on the wall. Six thirty eight. Without another word he hurries to the door.

REMINDERY

Two chapters to go. Hang in there. If you get lost find your place in the archive list. Chapter One is the third post, dated January 8.

Thanks for reading!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: THE BODY MENDS

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

Stick figures appear against a continuous background of sky blue. Their bodies are elongated, like shadows at twilight, and they move slowly from side to side with their arms trailing slightly. They seem to be peering in from somewhere. The general tenor is inquisitive, curious, like they’re saying, what’s that in there? That’s interesting. We’ve never seen anything like that before.

Time doesn’t want to behave itself. It jumps ahead in fits and starts, then it slows nearly to a standstill. Sometimes it even seems to move backwards. Things that happen seem to happen again for the first time, even though they’ve already happened.

A door opens and someone comes into the room. This event repeats itself numerous times, both forward and backward. It seems to be the focal point of some sort of information. Whenever it happens a new piece of information is transmitted, or maybe it’s the same old information being transmitted, again and again. The stick figures are the ones who transmit the information. They are the ones who come and go.

For a long time, Claudia is there in the room with him, or maybe she comes and goes, like the stick figures. He’s not sure. He just knows that sometimes when he opens his eyes she’s there in the room with him, sitting in the chair next to his bed. He’s not sure if there are times when he opens his eyes and she’s not there. He can’t remember the time when she was first there, but he feels quite certain there was a time before that, when she was not there. He just can’t remember when it was.

It occurs to him that they’ve been talking, both of them. He’s been talking, she’s been talking, they’ve been conversing, but he’s not aware of what they’ve been talking about. It’s like the sound of a television left on all night in the next room. This bothers him. He doesn’t like the idea that he’s conversing with someone without any awareness of what he’s saying. He tries hard to bring his attention to the sound of his own voice. The effort of this attention forces his voice to be silent. The silence of his voice forces his attention away from his voice, onto the details of the room.

Suddenly it just pops, not unlike the popping of one’s ears. Suddenly everything just falls into place. A rush of consciousness floods his mind and he is fully awake and aware of everything that’s happening to him.

He’s in a hospital bed. His arms are harnessed with clamps and straps. Coils of plastic tubing bloom out of his wrists like tendrils of ivy. Something heavy and tight is pressing against his stomach. He can’t see what it is, or reach it with his shackled hands. Claudia sits in a chair holding his immobile hand. She’s wearing a modest blue blouse and a plain silver chain around her throat. He can’t tell what she has on underneath.

“Claudia.” he says. His voice is weak but he is fully inside it. He knows he has entered the conversation.

“Wilbo.”

“What have we been talking about?”

Claudia smiles, a little sadly. “Well, I’ve been doing most of the talking,’ she says. “You’ve just been agreeing with me. You know, you’re very agreeable when you’re drugged.”

“How long have I been here?” He has the urge to sit up in the bed but he lacks the strength to accomplish this.

“Oh, about twenty-four hours. You were in surgery yesterday, but I don’t suppose you remember any of that. It went very well, though. You’re gonna be allright, Wilbo. The doctors were amazed. They said it was almost like Gary knew exactly where to stab you so he would miss all the major internal organs. It’s weird and I hate to say this, but that seems like something that Gary would do.”

It’s not like her words bring back the memories for the first time. The memories are there. It’s more like she throws open a door and the light spills in and makes the memories visible. He follows the memories backwards. He remembers pulling the knife up into his stomach, so Gary wouldn’t get it. He remembers Gary’s words just before the attack: what have I done to offend you, Wilbo? He remembers how he and Claudia had moved in perfect synchronicity to grab the wrist that holds the knife. He remembers the boldness of his own words as he stepped into the alley: come away from the girl! He remembers the shock that sent him reeling when he first peered into the alley and saw them there, Gary thrusting himself into Claudia’s helpless body. This image is the most powerful. He won’t go back any further. He stops and his eyes begin to fill with tears.

“Oh, Claudia, are you all right?” he whimpers. “Did he hurt you bad?”

“Hell, no, he didn’t hurt me. I think I hurt him if you want to know the truth. But it doesn’t matter. Those cops, they hurt him a lot worse. I felt a little bad for him, actually. They clubbed him hard. Police brutality, but that’s OK. He deserved it.”

Wilbo closes his eyes and the tears spill out and slide down his face. With his eyes closed it’s harder to make time behave itself. Faces and words crowd in on him and he begins to forget where he is or who he’s talking with. He opens his eyes quickly.

“Where is he now?” he asks. “I mean, Gary. What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. They beat him up and took him away in a police car. He won’t bother me again. I’m sure of that, this time. This time it’s the end.” She squeezes his hand and a current of pain shoots up his wrist. “You’re a brave man, Wilbo. That was cool, what you did. My hero.”

Wilbo feels a wave of dizziness sweep over him and at the same time a host of little thoughts comes swirling about like leaves caught in the circular eddies of a whirlwind. He wants to say something but there’s so much to say, and the thoughts don’t fit together in any conventional manner.

“Claudia,” he begins, then he pounces on one of the thoughts at random. “There’s something… there’s something behind the rock.”

Claudia doesn’t say anything. How can she? He needs to be more specific.

“There’s something behind the arch rock,” he continues. “I need to go there. When the tide is low you can almost walk to it. That’s how low it is. The tide, I mean. And the seals have come back. I mean the sea lions. Carl tells me they’re sea lions if they bark. Seals don’t bark. Carl tells me I spend too much time alone. Alone with my thoughts. That’s why I’m telling you this. There’s something behind the arch rock. I need to go there.”

Claudia squeezes his hand again. This time it doesn’t hurt. “You be quiet now, Wilbo. You’re not making any sense. Just get some rest.”

Wilbo sighs. “I know I’m not making any sense to you, Claudia. But I am making sense. My brother, Arno tells me that God is calling me. I don’t know what I think about that. Hey, I don’t even know if I believe in God. But there’s something behind the arch rock. The other night it called me. I was naked and I just went into the water. Then… I don’t know what happened, it was like it just stopped calling me…Claudia! Something started happening to me the day that I met you. I’ve just been thinking it was you. Sometimes I thought that you actually had some kind of sorcery, and you’ve been practicing it on me, deliberately, for some reason or another. Maybe just because you’re young and you wanted to try it out. Young people like to try out new things. But now, I don’t think so. In fact, lately, I’ve been thinking that you aren’t the cause of any of it.”

When he says this he feels her loosen her hold on his hand.

“I mean, you’re a part of it. You’re an element, like the salamanders or Arno, or the way I lost my mime. It’s like it’s happening to you, too, like it’s happening to both of us, like when we do that thing, that kinko syncho quinto, it’s like something bigger than the both of us takes control. And then the other night I saw something behind the arch rock, like a light or something, it was not quite visual, but it was calling me, and I was naked, and I went out into the water, but then, I don’t know, it just stopped. I… I think maybe that’s what it is, or maybe that’s where it is, behind the arch rock. I want to go there. At low tide I could almost walk there, or I could wade there, or if I had a boat…”

His words trail off. His eyes are closed now, and in his mind’s eye he sees the arch rock and the waves crashing around it, and the faint blue light glowing behind it. Then words form, but he’s not sure if he says them out loud or he just thinks them:

I have a boat!

There follows a string of images, almost like a movie. Goddamn movies! In the movie he’s dragging the boat out to the breakers. He’s naked, and he feels the cold waves splash over his naked body as the boat takes float. Quickly he hauls himself over the oarlocks into the boat and grabs the oars. At first he has to struggle hard to overcome the waves. All this time there’s this exciting, discordant music playing, like in a move when a ship is battling against a storm at sea. He finally pulls through the breakers onto the smooth glass of the sea beyond. After that it’s just effort, the sure and steady effort of rowing toward the jagged arch rock, backlit by a pale, blue, unearthly glow. The music changes. It becomes mysterious and ethereal, and woven with a velvet strand of high, wordless female voices. The music is so seductive it draws him into a world of pure sound, and little by little the visuals begin to fade. Soon he’s just floating on the music and there is nothing else. He lets himself go and rides currents of peace and bliss for a long time. Updrafts of peace and bliss elevate him and he soars above the world, slowly drifting down until he catches the next updraft. At one point in the process he thinks to himself, I’ve lost consciousness. This thought has enough arresting power that it jolts him slightly, and he opens his eyes.

The room has changed. It’s dark, for one thing, and also, there’s nobody in it. He scans the room until his eyes light on a clock. It says one o-clock, but that doesn’t tell him everything he needs to know about the time. The door opens and a person comes gliding into the room.

“Mr. Hoegarden,” says the voice, a man’s voice, “I see you’re awake.”

Wilbo tries to sit up, and is painfully reminded of his restrictions. “Oh, hi doc,” he says weakly,

“How am I doing?”

“I’m not a doc,” says the voice, “Just a nurse. Sorry, I’m not as pretty as the last nurse. I’m just here for your goodnight cocktail.”

Ok, then. It’s one A.M. The nurse starts fumbling around with something on the sideboard.

“So, how am I doing, nurse?” Wilbo repeats his question.

“Well, as a matter of fact you’re doing incredibly well,” replies the nurse as he fills a syringe. “There was absolutely no major internal damage. Of course you’re gonna have a nice scar to impress your grandchildren. Now we just gotta juice you up with antibiotics. A wound like that is an open invitation. I’m glad to see you looking so bright and chipper. You were pretty out of it earlier.”

Wilbo smiles. “Yeah. I’m in of it now.”

“That little girl that was in here today. She your daughter?”

The words sting. Wilbo doesn’t answer. He just stares straight ahead. Perhaps the sting shows on his face.

“Whoops,” says the nurse. “Guess I overstepped my professional boundaries. Here, roll over. Take your morphine.”

Wilbo rolls over and he feels the needle. After that there’s a long, dark, blank space with very little in it, maybe a few images, some criss-cross grids, a couple of treble clef signs. When he opens his eyes again it’s day, with all its sound and color. There’s someone else in the room but he can tell at a glance it’s not Claudia.

It’s Arno. He doesn’t recognize him at first. He’s got a new hairstyle, a short, croppy cut with lots of pomade, so that his whole scalp is covered with tufts of greasy hair, pointing in every direction. He wears a sleeveless vest of bleached white denim. But the weirdest thing is the earring, a single silver hoop in the left ear.

“You look different, Arno.” Wilbo says suddenly.

Arno startles slightly. Wilbo realizes that this is probably the first thing he’s said since his brother appeared on the scene. Arno shakes off his surprise and forms a benign smile, like an undertaker.

“I am different, Wilbo. I’m a new creature. I’ve been born again.”

Wilbo narrows his eyes. “Yeah, Ok. But your hair’s different, too.”

Arno doesn’t answer this but he reaches up instinctively to pat his head, as if to make sure all the spikes are in place.

“And what’s with the earring? Is that symbolic or something?”

Arno brings his hand down from his hair to his ear. “Yeah, I guess it’s symbolic. It’s like a wedding ring, except even more so. A wedding ring you can take off and your finger’s still there, just the same. But you take the earring out and you got a hole in your ear. Jesus had holes in his hands and his feet. It’s like being married to Jesus. Wilbo, we’ve got to talk. Are you awake now? Do you feel OK enough to talk?”

Wilbo looks around the room until he finds the clock. It says nine-thirty and there’s sunlight coming in the window. At least he’s got his bearings in time.

“Yeah, I’m Ok. What do you want to talk about?”

“I was here yesterday, after the surgery, but you were out cold. I just want you to know that. I came as soon as I heard. I’m your brother you know.” Arno gets up from the chair and walks to the window. He seems to be looking for something outside. He turns back to the room. “I talked to mom. I called her as soon as I got home. She seemed to be OK. I mean, she didn’t fall apart. You know mom, she doesn’t fall apart. She said, you tell Wilbo to get better and come see me. She wants us both to come see her at Christmas. So I said, mom, Wilbo doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t even have enough money to pay the hospital bill. It’s like, he doesn’t have any health insurance or anything. So she said, Oh don’t worry about that. I’ll just sell one of my stocks. You tell Wilbo don’t worry about the hospital bill. I can pay the hospital bill. I just want you two to come see me at Christmas. That’s what she said. So I guess you don’t have to worry about the hospital bill, Wilbo. Pretty cool, huh?”

Wilbo smiles a thin little smile. “You should have told me that later, Arno. I wasn’t at the point where I was starting to worry about the hospital bill yet.”

Arno sits back down on the chair. He gets a perplexed look on his face. He’s perplexed by something Wilbo said, but there’s more to it than that. It’s like a programmed perplexity, like there was something he wanted to say and he was just waiting for an opportunity to say it. Wilbo knows this but he doesn’t know why. Arno is his brother. He just knows these things about him. Arno speaks.

“I don’t want you to call me Arno anymore.”

“Why not? It’s your name.”

No, it isn’t. My name is Arnold. They call me Arnie. Your name is William. They call you Will. Will and Arnie. Those are our true names. The names we were given. Those were our names before we sinned. That day when we became Wilbo and Arno. That was the day we first sinned.”

Something like a bolt of blue light, like the light behind the arch rock, illuminates Wilbo’s mind for just a flash when Arno says this. He speaks at once. Perhaps at another, more guarded time he would have weighed his thoughts and stopped the words.

“That’s not true, Arno. You have to change your name. More than once. The background changes and you have to change your name to fit the background. It’s like Little Big Man. Maybe we aren’t Wilbo and Arno anymore, but we aren’t going back to Will and Arnie. We’re becoming something else.”

Arno sighs. “You’re not making any sense, Wilbo. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Wilbo’s exasperation is almost tactile, like a fluid surging through his veins. “I’m tired of hearing that I’m not making any sense. That’s what Claudia said, too. I’m making more sense now than I’ve ever made before.”

“You’re not making any sense, Wilbo. I’m sorry I brought it up, about the names. We can talk about it later. Besides, there are other things we need to talk about. Practical things that need to be addressed right now. Like where are you gonna go next? You just can’t go back and live in that little shack again.”

These words infuriate Wilbo, and his fury sends an instinctive signal to his body to get up and start pacing around the room. But the moment the signal reaches his muscles, even before they can respond, a jagged blade of pain rips through his stomach. It’s like he’s feeling his injury for the first time. This only infuriates him all the more, and he has to take several deep gulps of air to calm his nerves so the pain can subside.

“What’s the matter with the shack, as you call it?” he says at last.

Arno lifts his arms and drops them to his sides with a slapping sound. “Oh, come on, Wilbo, you’re living in the eighteenth century, can’t you see that? You’ve been attacked. This is the modern world. These are the end times. The world’s gone mad. People are totally out of control. People need the Lord, but they’re not all gonna find Him. That’s sad, but true. We have to face it. You can’t live in a shack on the beach without a lock on the door, without a telephone, without even electricity or running water, without a gun at least.”

Wilbo grabs rapidly at the waves of rage that are flying at him and tries to funnel them into someplace safe, where they can’t hurt him. This requires considerable deep breathing, as words form slowly in his mind.

“Arno… is that what this new religion thing has done for you? It’s made you into a neurotic paranoid. It’s stolen away your trust and love for the world. And this is what you’d like for me to embrace? I’m sorry, Arno. I’m not going there. I’m going back to my little shack as soon as I’m strong enough.” A wisp of memory of voices singing drifts through his mind. “And I will never own a gun.” he adds.

Arno is silent for a while. It seems like maybe this little speech has had some effect on him. He bows his head and folds his hands. Perhaps he’s in prayer.

“Well… at least you shouldn’t go back right away. You’re gonna need some time to heal, even after you get out of the hospital. Won’t you think about coming and staying with me for awhile, or if not with me… maybe you’ve got a friend that you like better.”

This remark causes Wilbo’s feelings to shift, just a little. Well, shucks ,he thinks, I’ve hurt the poor little bastard’s feelings. But that’s OK. Let him stew in it for a while. He’s got some growing up to do.

“Yeah, OK, Arno, I’ll think about that one. We’ll see how I feel when they let me out of this place. The doctor says I’m doing remarkably well.”

After that neither of them speaks. Wilbo begins to feel a wave of weariness, mixed with nausea. He closes his eyes. Immediately an image appears on the inside of his eyelid. It’s a picture he remembers staring at, many times as a child; a stormy sea, three stars-Orion’s Belt- shine weakly in the distant sky. In the near distance, a sinking ship; in the foreground, a bearded man struggling against the waves. Then there’s Jesus, standing right on top of the ocean, his body bathed in light, his red robes dancing in the wind, reaching down, pulling the shipwrecked sailor out of the water to safety.

Eventually the picture disintegrates into a warm, comfortable darkness and he falls into a deep peaceful sleep. When he awakes he’s clear-headed and feeling fully cognizant of his position in space and time. The clock on the wall says six and the color of the light says PM. There’s someone else in the room, a nurse- the same nurse as the night before. He’s bringing a tray of food. It smells like cardboard and brown gravy from a package mix, but nonetheless, Wilbo feels his appetite stir.

“No more hard drugs for you, Mr. Hoegarden,” says the nurse. “You’re on your way to recovery. It’s solid food from now on.” He sets the tray on the extended table by the bed. It bears some kind of white meat with a pad of mashed potatoes and peas and a soft white dinner roll. “Oh, yeah, and there’s a package for you. Came in the mail this afternoon.” He sets the package down on the tray next to the food.

The package is obviously a book, wrapped loosely in a salvaged grocery bag bound with twine. The paper is torn open to expose the title. It occurs to Wilbo, this is not the condition in which this arrived. The hospital must censor all incoming reading material.

He rips off the remaining shreds of paper and frees the book from its bodice of twine. A paperback, obviously used and often read. Eric Hoffer: The True Believer. The nurse leans over inquisitively.

“Religious book, huh?” But Wilbo can’t answer because a wave of tenderness has made his eyes go teary. He blinks to regain his vision, then he opens the book to read the inscription.

WILBO
I’M SORRY I WON’T COME TO SEE YOU. HOSPITALS GIVE ME THE CREEPS. BUT MAYBE THIS IS YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO READ THIS BOOK. GET BETTER BUDDY; I’LL SEE YOU SOON.
CARL
Ps: if nothing else, it’s a good way to meet girls.

The nurse senses the moment. “Well, enjoy your food then,” he says. “I’ll check in on you later.”

That night after ravenously devouring a meal of bland white hospital food, Wilbo reads The True Believer from cover to cover. It takes him until 3:47 AM and his attention never leaves the page. It’s not that he is all that much interested in the subject matter, or that he feels any great investment in Hoffer’s train of thought. To be honest, he finds Hoffer’s style of writing rather maddening. The man uses expressions like the great leader, the true believer, men of conviction and passion. But he’s obviously talking about something negative, something bad for us, a dire warning of a great danger. Yet he won’t commit himself to his role as a lone prophet crying out in the wilderness. It’s all so objective. Some new little Hitler could just as well get a hold of this book and use it as a guidebook to fashion some brand new mass movement!
But these thoughts don’t matter. What he feels the strongest in those chocolate-rich hours between 6:30 PM and 3:47 AM is the living presence of Carl Rogers, sitting next to him, perhaps staring into a fire, into the wee hours of the morning, sharing a mug of Tawny Port, talking about ideas, books, people, anything at all, talking in slow comfortable tones to a background of waves and wind.

At 3:47, when Wilbo finishes the book, he turns to the back sleeve and reads about the author.

At age seven, and for unknown reasons, Hoffer went blind. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was fifteen. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, but Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading. He was completely self-educated.

There is no picture of the author on the sleeve but there is an odd little space above the writing, where a picture should be. Wilbo stares at this space until a picture of Carl Rogers appears there. When it does, he allows the book to drop to his chest and he falls into a deep peaceful sleep.

REMINDER REMINDER

three chapters to go. If you need to catch up, find your chapter in the archive list. Chapter One is the third one, dated January 8.

Thanks for reading!

CHAPTER TWENTY: BLOODSHED

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

By the time their passion is spent, the pale glow of dawn has crept almost imperceptibly into the eastern sky above the wooded hills. Naked and exhausted, they lie entwined. The oil in the lamp is almost gone. The wick sputters. A cluster of stars, neither the full moon nor the crescent planet Venus, peers in on them through the chimney opening. The waves boom. Sea lions occasionally bark in the distance.

Neither Claudia nor Wilbo has spoken since their lovemaking ended, some time ago, at some undocumented hour of the night when the limits of their bodies took control and the lamp began to sputter. Now Wilbo is beginning to sense words forming, or at least concepts that will eventually ripen into words.

One must choose one’s words carefully at a time like this, he tells himself. These are the first actual words that come. He attends to the concepts awhile longer, and to the search for words. The concepts have to do with the concept of concepts, and their relation to words. It’s a slippery slope for sure, but finally he thinks he has a handle on it.

“The moment we… try to describe our experiences… we are no longer experiencing them.” he says, out of the blue.

Claudia props herself up on one elbow and looks at him quizzically.

“Would you like me to disagree with that?” she asks.

Her voice surprises him. It’s not that it’s any different than before; it’s just that he hasn’t heard it in awhile, and he’s surprised by its lilt and its timbre. He doesn’t really hear her words, or at least register their meaning.

“Civilizations are built on the concepts we come up with to describe our experiences,” he continues. “But the concepts are not the experiences. The experiences are always private. When I try to describe my experience all I can give you are my words. I can never give you my experience. There’s no proof that anything that goes on out there has anything to do with what goes on in here.” He thumps himself soundly on the chest.

She flops onto her back and folds her arms across her chest. “Oh, shit!” she sighs.

Wilbo feels a little stung. “You don’t want to talk about this, do you?”

“No, no, it’s not that. You can talk about anything you want. I just remembered. I got a class in the morning. I mean, it is morning. I mean it’s almost morning. I got a class. That’s my experience, right now. Sorry, Wilbo. It’s interesting, what you’re saying.” She sits up in the bed. “Tai Chi. I’m going to fall asleep right in the middle of Repulse-the-Monkey. I’m so sorry, Wilbo. I’ve got to go home. That’s my experience. Whether you get it or not.”

Wilbo stares at her naked back, at the curve of her waist, at the velvet of her skin, and the way her crimson hair cascades onto her naked shoulders. He almost feels as if he could become aroused again.

“Well, I’ll walk you home, then. Of course you’ll want me to walk you home.”

“No, Wilbo, please don’t. Don’t treat me like a child. I know how to get home. It’s safe. All the bad guys are either dead or unconscious by this hour.”

She stands up, finds her dress on the floor, raises her arms and lets it fall onto her body.

“Do you know what happened to my shoes?”

“They’re by the door. Where you put them, I thought.”

Claudia frowns and wrinkles her eyes. “I didn’t put them anywhere,” she says. “I haven’t seen them since the other night when I was… so upset. I thought maybe you’d picked them up.”

In the short confused moment that follows her remark, Wilbo feels something that he can’t quite grasp, a sort of tremor of dread, a foretaste of danger. It’s a private experience. He knows he can’t explain it.

“Please let me walk you home. I’m worried about you. It’s so late and dark and you’re so… so naked.”

She seems to be stumbling about in her mind for a response. She turns to the door, awkwardly. She turns back.

“Wilbo, please don’t turn into an old man on me now, Ok?” Her voice is pleading. “What we did tonight… was beautiful. Take your own advice. Don’t start thinking about it. Don’t start thinking about the future, or the past. And for God’s sake, don’t start worrying about me. I’m Ok. I’m safe. I can find my way home.”

She turns again. This time she makes it to the door, a little clumsy, but she makes it. She steps out. Wilbo stands up. She turns back.

“Don’t follow me, Wilbo,” she begs. Her voice has a ragged edge. “It would be a bad mistake!”

Turning back she trips on something that turns out to be her shoes. Wilbo hears them clunk several times on the deck before she manages to get them on her feet. Then there’s the sound of her trying to maneuver her way through the various items of party debris outside the house. She stubs her toe on some beer cans. She bumps into the sitting bench. She mutters, “Oh, shit!” under her breath. Then there’s silence. Wilbo realizes she has successfully made her escape.

Sitting on the edge of the bed in the flickering lamplight, he suddenly feels incredibly alone. Alone! How many nights has he spent by himself in the house with the wind and the seagulls and the seals, and never once has he thought to himself, I’m alone. Years of nights. Nights in the winter when the rain beat so hard that the windows bled, and the wind blew so hard that pieces of the house were ripped off and carried away. Summer nights so warm that he slept naked with the quilt pulled off and the moonlight streaming in. Nights like this one, in the springtime when the scent of laurel mingled with the seaweed and the sea lions freshly arrived from the south sang their exuberant songs of welcome, even into the light-turning pre-dawn hours. Never once in all these nights has he stopped to think to himself, I’m alone.

You spend too much time alone, Wilbo. Alone with your thoughts, I mean.

So how is one to respond then, to this being alone? He asks the question of the darkness; then he sits for awhile in silence, stilling his thoughts, listening for an answer.

You’re naked. Put your clothes back on.

Not quite the answer he expected, but there it is. Like something a skunk would say. He finds his clothes on the floor where he dropped them, still partially folded. He climbs into his pants, throws his shirt over his head, locates his socks and pulls them over his feet, then sits on the bed and steps into his shoes, tying them securely.

Fully dressed, his next move is obvious. He stands, throws open the door, and steps outside.

It’s not long before dawn. The sky over the sea is pale blue. There are other sounds besides just the ocean sounds, flitterings in the sage on the cliffs- little birds perhaps, stirring in their sleep, and the sound of a single, tired cricket, his chirp slowing after a long night of chirping.

Wilbo walks to the sitting bench but he can’t bring himself to sit down. The pondering he has to do is too kinetic. He has to pace. He paces, back and forth in front of the sitting bench, pondering.

Alone.

But aren’t we always alone? Isn’t that what I was just trying to tell her, before she decided she had to get up and leave? Every experience is private, even when bodies are together. This is just yet another private experience I’m having now, this experience of being alone.

Alone. What does that mean? What do people mean when they say they’re feeling alone? Does it have any connection with what I’m feeling now? When people say they feel alone, it means they’re feeling lonesome. They’re feeling sad because they’re by themselves. I’ve never felt lonesome. I’ve never felt sad because I’m by myself. I don’t feel sad right now. I like being by myself. Besides, I can always have companionship if I want it. I can go down to the Dogfish. I can go see Mac. I can go down to the boardwalk and annoy the tourists. It’s not like I’m a curmudgeon. It’s not like I’m a hermit. I enjoy the company of people. I just don’t have any problem with those times when I’m by myself. I need those times. I need to ponder.

He sits down for a moment on the bench but his body won’t let him stay there. It’s like his legs have little legs inside them, and the little legs keep moving, kicking at the big legs from the inside, forcing the big legs to keep moving. He gets back on his feet and resumes his pacing.

It’s because of the party, that must be what it is. Such a big dose of companionship all at once. Every friend I have was there I think, and a lot of friends I don’t have. And it was all about me! All the presents and all the music and all the dancing. It must be the contrast, that’s what it is, all that companionship- such a big, strong dose of it, and then suddenly here I am, like this, all alone. Like how silent it seems when you first unplug the amplifiers, or how dark it seems when you first switch off the light.

And then of course there was Claudia.

Oh, Claudia!

She was so beautiful! She was so incredible! She was everything I’d hoped she would be. The way she touched me- perfect! The places she touched me- every move was perfect! Her thrust and her release; the way she rode me like a bobbing buoy; the way she carried me like a diving dolphin. The way she came on strong, like a gypsy dancer, then pulled back shy like a frightened child. They way she moaned and whimpered and howled like a she-wolf in the night. She was everything I could hope for. She was every fantasy come true. Oh, Claudia!

What have I done?

I have broken all my vows! I have abandoned all my resolutions! I have forsaken my moral code! I have released all my inhibitions and poured myself without restraint into the essence of another person! And the worst of it is, I feel no regret. At the merest suggestion I would do it all again. There is no restraint against what I might do. What have I done?

“What have I done!”

These last four words he cries out loud, with full voice into the silence of the pre-dawn sky. Part of him, the spectator-bird, wakes up when it hears these words, and stiffly flaps the fleas and dust out of its molting feathers. What is that man hollering about now? I swear, he’s been doing entirely too much of that lately. I think he’s seen too many movies.

Wilbo pulls himself together. He stops pacing and sits down on the bench- on the very edge of the bench, so he can hop right back to his feet if necessary. But no. It looks like his legs are going to behave himself. Perhaps that outburst was what he needed. Perhaps that was where it all was leading, all this pacing and shuffling about. Perhaps it just needed some form of release.

Perhaps I exaggerate, he ponders. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Besides, there are mysterious forces at play here. Mysterious forces. Things are happening to me that seem to be out of my control. I don’t know what it means, but it’s not like something I can just resist. There’s some stuff I’m gonna do, and that’s all there is to it. I’m doing things that don’t even have a name yet. Kinko Syncho Quinto. Last night, with Claudia, that was just part of it. I don’t think that’s the end of it. Maybe that wasn’t the most moral thing to do, maybe not by conventional standards. But I had to do something. Maybe there was a better way I could have responded, but I had to respond. And it isn’t all just about sex, either. That’s not it. It’s not just sex. Even if it seems like it.

However true the thought may be, it comes heavily weighted with a string of powerful images, and the moment he thinks it he stops thinking, and slips into a reverie, entertaining these images. He remembers the moment she first pulled her dress up over her head and his immediate certainty that this nakedness would be different from her other nakedness, that this time there would be nothing standing in the way of what their bodies were compelling them to do. He remembers the artlessness of their first coupling, the uncontrolled rush toward penetration, without foreplay or technique, and he remembers the grace and precision of their subsequent couplings, movements like dance, or like watercolor, with big, bold brush strokes, or like waves rolling over each other at high spring tide. He remembers the textures of skin and hair and the smell of perfume and perspiration and garlic and cilantro. He remembers the hot wind of her breath on his chest and his belly and he remembers the liquid velvet of the inside of her mouth. He remembers the unmistakable clench of her orgasm, and the cry of surprise that flew from her throat. Slowly the memories have their way with his body until he finds himself sitting there on the bench, fully and foolishly erect.

Oh,this will never do! He jumps to his feet and resumes his pacing. Where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?

But thoughts don’t immediately gather in the wake of the retreating erotic images. A heavy mental fog cloaks his mind. Although he paces, his tread is slow and wandering. Perhaps he’s beginning to feel the effects of nearly twenty-four hours of uninterrupted consciousness. The approach of dawn is accelerating. Shapes in the sand begin to take form. That’s a bucket, a shovel, a cereal bowl. Some of the brighter items begin to fill in with their true colors. He identifies some items of clothing laid out flat on the underside of the overturned boat- a couple of sweaters, a pair of socks, perhaps they were left by the party-goers.

Wilbo wanders about as if he were investigating the relics of some antediluvian culture. He picks something up- a glass, a shoe, an exhausted party-popper. He examines each item briefly and tosses it back down. He’s not really looking for anything. He’s looking for thoughts to appear on the horizon of his mind, and then come rolling in on him like breakers. But instead, the breakers seem to be moving out into the open ocean where his conscious mind will not go. There are limits to the conscious mind, even while the hidden thoughts roll on forever.

His eyes are just beginning to droop when he notices something that shocks him awake, although at first he’s not sure what it is, or why it shocks him. He first sees it in silhouette, as something hanging in the air, or hovering like a humming bird just outside the cabin door. In an agitated stupor, he stares at it for a while, not registering anything except for a vague uneasiness in the pit of his stomach. No, it’s not floating or hovering. It’s hanging there by something, hanging by a string or something like a string, from one of the driftwood limbs that jut out from the side of the house.

Well, that’s not so strange, he tells himself. But then a second shock wave hits him, the shock of recognition. With one quick step he lunges onto the porch and grabs the object in both hands.

Yes, he was right. It’s the amulet. It’s the Arlequino. The mournful eyes. The joyful smile. The skunk said it might offer him some clues. The last time he saw it, it was…

The implications, although not specific, are overwhelming, and they all point to one thing.

"Claudia!" he cries out loud. He drops the amulet and staggers away from the house. Out in the open he scans the beach, following the trail up to the cliff where it disappears into the tunnel. But that’s foolish. She would be long gone by now. By any logic of time she would be in her apartment by now. She would probably already be undressed and in her bed, drifting off to sleep, repulsing monkeys in her dreams. But if that’s not where she is…

His feet compel him. He sets off at a brisk pace. He’s wide awake now, and his heart is pounding. He feels frightened, but he also feels excited, and animated with a strong sense of purpose. It’s almost as if he can hear exciting music playing in his ears, pacing his footsteps, trumpets and flugelhorns and snare drums, like in a movie when the hero is rushing into the adventure. Mostly he feel single-minded, at one with his body, a whole new level of Kinko Syncho Quinto.

Due to a trick of light, day seems to have dawned more fully over the public beaches on the other side of the tunnel. Pale feathers of reflected pink are drifting in the southwest sky over the sea, and the sea itself has a silvery gleam. Everything is still sleeping except for a couple of pelicans cutting a horizontal line over the waves. The beach is devoid of human life and no boats blink on the horizon. All the campfires of the night have smoldered out. There are no curling wisps of smoke. There are no sounds of traffic or industry from the town across the cement wall. Even the breakers are muted, like respectful janitors in a hospital of sleeping patients.

On the public beach Wilbo slows his pace and strains his eyes in the pale but rising light, looking for clues. In the wet sand he identifies a single pair of fresh footsteps, small feet, surely they’re hers. And at this point she is still alone. He follows them and they lead him where he expected, up to the trail, along the cement wall, and through the notch into town. There’s enough blown sand on the trail that he can follow the footsteps all the way to the notch.

So far, so good. He slips through the notch himself and faces the town, the darkened storefronts and restaurants, the public bath house, the warehouses with their high loading docks. There’s no more sand, no more footprints. There are several routes she could have taken to the Lighthouse and her apartment above it. Which one to follow? He stops and sniffs the air and scans the maze of streets. He stills all of his body sounds so he can listen hard for clues.

At first he’s not sure of the voices. They could be seagulls, drifted inland, fighting over a scrap of food in some back alley, or they could be the whine of a belt slipping on some piece of machinery somewhere in the caverns of the warehouses. The sound comes from the warehouses, though. That becomes increasingly clear. He starts in that direction, taking care that his clothes do not rustle in his ears and obscure the sound.

The clamor of a car engine, turning and firing, breaks into the morning quiet, obliterating all other sounds. Wilbo stops and waits. He’s reached the block of the warehouses and he stands in front of a bank of frosted green windows. From a side street a Sears delivery van appears and rolls up to the stop sign. The driver looks both ways, then looks both ways again, even though it’s obvious there isn’t a car in sight. Perhaps he’s no quite awake yet. Perhaps he too is recovering from a night of love. Finally he emerges cautiously into the invisible line of traffic and disappears into the vortex of the road that leads out of town.

In the wake of the engine sounds Wilbo hears the voices again. This time there’s no question about it. There are voices, and the voices are tense, even shrill, and one of them is disturbingly familiar. His heart jumps into his throat and he begins to run.

A thin fissure of an alley opens where the two warehouses almost meet. It’s no more than five feet across and at least three stories high. A chain link fence spans the opening but it’s broken down and the links have been cut. A strip of frayed orange tape hangs loosely from the ruins, bearing the words POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

Hushing his footsteps, Wilbo scampers to the wall and then creeps along it until he reaches the opening where he first crouches, then peers in.

The alley ends at a small metal door lit by a single bare light bulb. In the glow of this bulb a man is leaning into a woman. The woman has her back against the wall and her arms are flying, striking against the man who thrusts himself at her repeatedly, one hand clenched at the fabric of her dress, just below her throat.

“It’s what you deserve, bitch! You like it, don’t you? You’d pay for it if you had to. You can pay for it. You got money, bitch!”

He pulls her toward him by the hold he has on her dress, then he shoves her back against the wall.

“Please, don’t, Gary!” she wails. “You’ll regret this. You’re gonna be so sorry when you realize what you’ve done. Please, stop!”

“Oh, you think I’ll be sorry? I’m not gonna be sorry. I’ve had enough of you. You’re nothing but a fucking rich bitch! You deserve to be fucked!” He forces himself onto her, pressing her hard against the wall.

Reeling with shock, Wilbo staggers into the alley, nearly tripping on the broken chain link fence. Quickly he regains his composure and rises to his full stature.

“Let go of her!” he cries.

Claudia gasps and Gary throws himself off of her, stumbling backwards against the opposite wall. He spins around and then he appears to puff himself up, all fur and muscles, like a cornered tomcat. He’s covered in leather and spikes and the spikes seem to bulge out like bristles all over his body.

“Who’s that?” he snarls.

“It’s Wilbo Hoegarden. Come away from the girl.”

“Wilbo Hoegarden? You mean the artist? That Wilbo Hoegarden? Hey, I been looking for you everywhere, man. I went into that weird little bar you told me about. You weren’t there. I went to that place on the boardwalk where we met. You weren’t there. What gives, man? I told you I wanted some portraits.”

Gary starts advancing toward Wilbo. His posture is loose and casual but there’s something menacing in his gait.

“You’re not coming out of this alley, Gary.” Wilbo tells him. “You’re not getting past me.”

Gary keeps coming. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wilbo.” he coos. “You seem upset. What have I done to upset you, Wilbo?” His arms move quickly and suddenly there’s a flash of reflected light. In his hand he holds a short, sharp, shiny switchblade knife. “What have I done to upset you, Wilbo?” he repeats, this time with a whole new inflection.

"Wilbo! Look out!” Claudia cries. She’s running up the alley. Gary spins around and waves the knife at her. “Stay out of this, Claudia! You don’t have any idea what’s going on here. Wilbo’s my friend. My old buddy. We just have a little score to settle, that’s all.” He turns back.

Wilbo doesn’t waste a second. Impelled by a rush of adrenaline, he lunges forward, thinking I’ll grab the wrist that holds the knife! But a weird thing happens. In a moment of perfect kinko syncho quinto, Claudia rushes forward as well, mirroring Wilbo’s every move. Their hands come together on Gary’s wrist- the hand that holds the knife- and with their combined strength they pull him to his knees.

But he doesn’t drop the knife, and he doesn’t lose much momentum. He jumps to his feet so quickly that Claudia is thrown back against the wall.

“You don’t understand me, Wilbo.” he growls, no longer concealing the threat in his voice. “We just have a little disagreement. We have a little score to settle.”

It happens quickly. Wilbo has his hands at his sides, ready to grapple, but he doesn’t see the knife until he feels the blade sink into his stomach. There’s no pain, just a strange sensation of numbness radiating out his arms and legs. Just before he falls he has one furious thought: don’t let him get the knife! He grabs the knife in both hands, pulls the blade up hard into himself, and crumples to the street.

“Wilbo!” Claudia cries. Suddenly there are lights, spinning red lights rolling on the alley walls, and a short whoop of a siren. Claudia stands up straight and waves her arms.

“Hey! In here! We’re in here!”

Gary takes a furtive glance around and begins to run, but Claudia is immediately onto him, leaping onto his back and pummeling him with blows. The last thing Wilbo sees before he loses consciousness is Gary falling to his hands and knees, with Claudia riding his back and pounding him furiously with both her fists.

RE-RE-RE-REMINDER

Four chapters to go. If you need to catch up, find your chapter in the archive list. Chapter One is the third one, dated January 8.

Thanks for reading!

CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE PARTY AND WHAT FOLLOWS

copyright 2009 by Jim Nail

The first guests to arrive are the young ones. No one seems to know who they are- they’re just the young people who keep one ear to the ground for the approaching rumblings of a party. None of them brings a gift but many bring bottles of beer and wine and one man carries a beat-up Silvertone folk guitar without a case.

Doralina welcomes them as if they were old friends. She takes each one of them on a tour of the house, both inside and out, pointing out distinguishing features like the way the Austin Healy hubcap is modeled after the Rose Window at Chartres, and demonstrating how the full moon and the crescent Venus will be visible from the bed through the open chimney window. The young people are duly impressed and they set themselves to the task of gathering wood and building a large bonfire in the fire circle.

In the distance Wilbo sees what appears to be a man and a woman approaching, but the woman’s movements are stiff and brittle and the man has to help her along. It turns out to be Floyd Collins and his date, the lovely but edgy Amanda, punk-queen of the mannequins, patron saint of lunch meat.

“This is not my present,” he announces upon arrival, his voice breathless from the effort of his escort. “I just thought she’d like to come. Here. Amanda has your present.”

Amanda has her fingers wrapped around a long, rolled-up poster. Her grasp is not too good. A rubber band, stretched around her wrist, holds the poster in place.

Wilbo unrolls the poster. Mott the Hoople. All the Young Dudes.

“Well, what would you expect from Amanda?” Floyd explains. “Besides, it will be collector’s item. In ten years it’ll be worth a fortune.”

The next recognizable guests are the Moons, Levon Blue Lake and Opal. Levon’s gift is a glass salamander, actual size and correct in every detail except that you can see right through it and it’s flecked with speckles of gold. Shortly after arriving, Opal positions herself comfortably but properly on the sitting log, and Levon stands behind her, with one hand on her shoulder, smiling at everything. They assume this post for the duration of the party.

Mac arrives with things to eat. He’s closed down the Burger Shack early and unloaded the larder of bratwursts and corndogs and curly fries, all tossed into an oversized ice chest and hauled down to the beach with the help of his assistant, a Chinese boy named Ken. Ken quickly strikes up an acquaintance with Amanda, who represents for him everything he is not and wishes to be. He remains close by her side throughout the evening.

Many other people from the Dogfish arrive, people whose names he can’t remember or never knew but whose faces shine with a comfortable familiarity. They bring gifts like tablecloths, welcome mats, boxes of fancy pastels and stoneware serving bowls and leather-bound journals. Some who had no foreknowledge of the nature of Wilbo’s house, in particular its lack of electricity or running water, have brought gifts that are wholly inappropriate, things like electric coffee grinders and decorative incandescent lamps. These people hide in the shadows, feeling embarrassed and awkward but not wanting to lug their gifts all the way back up the beach with them. Doralina ferrets them out, takes the gifts and welcomes them back into the circle.

“Don’t worry,” she reassures them. “Everything will be used.”

The young man with the guitar starts to play. He sits on the hull of the overturned boat and starts plunking out some folk riffs and some twelve-bar blues. Phase One of the party has set in, the phase where most everybody has arrived and has a glass of something in hand, and short little volleys of conversation are ricocheting about. Topics come to the surface at various places in the crowd and get handed around without much development, like interesting artifacts from some third world country that nobody knows much about. Everyone is poised and waiting, ready to go with the flow of the event, but the event has not yet begun to flow.

This effect is accentuated by the setting. There are no walls. The beach, although small, is broader than a ballroom, and then there’s the ocean, the edge of the unknown, right there in plain sight, probably the largest object in the picture. It’s not quite dark and the fire is not yet full. Some people are out at the breakers with a Frisbee. A dog is chasing seagulls.

The name of Carl Rogers pops up here and there. There is some concern over his whereabouts. The last person to have seen him is Wilbo, that night that he came and drank the wine, search party number one. Speculations are conjured up. What if a sneaker wave got him on the way back to town? What if he’s been mugged? He likes to walk around late at night. Maybe he just walked down to the freeway and stuck out his thumb, like he did that one time before, just to see where he would wind up. He wound up in Ensenada and he came back with a knapsack of books about the Mexican Revolution. Has anyone been to his house? The subject of Carl Rogers begins to draw the crowd together. More and more people are talking about the same thing.

Suddenly there’s a shout from the fringes of the crowd, out at the shoreline, a woman’s voice.

“Hey, look! Look at the moon!”

She may not have intended for everyone to hear, but due to a coincidence of acoustics, everyone hears. Even the guitarist stops playing, and the crowd turns as one to look at the sky over the horizon.

It’s the new moon in the old moon’s arms. Engorged by the slant of the earth’s atmosphere it appears twice as large as it should, and its lowermost point is just piercing the grey line of clouds between the sky and the sea. It’s a normal sight, but a pretty one, made all the more pretty by the fact that attention has been called to it.

From various places in the crowd rise exclamations of the sort normally reserved for a display of fireworks. Then someone starts to applaud. It’s such an odd thing to do that it catches on. Someone else starts to applaud, then someone else. Suddenly the whole crowd turns as one and moves out, away from the fire, toward the beach, applauding the moon.

Across the face of the beach a girl, perhaps the very one who called the herald, leaps forward and starts doing cartwheels in the sand. The applause grows. Now it’s for the moon-girl combo, and some people start whistling and some people start cheering. The crowd, having established its collective identity, is rapidly growing very happy.

Then there’s another shout, just as loud as the first, a man this time.

“Hey! Who’s that?”

Again the crowd turns, this time toward the cliffs, and the cheers and whistles melt into a cacophony of inquisitive voices.

The silhouette of a man is approaching with a slow, studied effort. He’s walking with crutches and with each step he stops, checks his balance, and peers toward the crowd. He could be Christopher Columbus fresh off the Santa Maria, approaching a crowd of Indians who have never seen a white man before. His face is obscured but a strange trick of twilight causes his whole shadow to shimmer and shift through a spectrum of dark colors.

“It’s the Green Knight!” somebody cries.

The shadow man seems a bit nervous. He lifts one of his crutches high in the air and waves it over his head.

“Hello, everybody!’ he calls.

Wilbo recognizes him at once. “It’s Carl!” he cries and he starts running across the sand. His running is contagious. About a dozen people follow him including some people who have no idea who Carl Rogers is. Fueled by the warmth and goodwill of the moment, Wilbo delivers Carl an enormous bear hug and nearly knocks him off his feet.

“What have you done to yourself now, Carl?”

Carl looks down sheepishly. “Oh, I stepped off my porch. It’s just an ankle. Here, I brought you a present.”

He lifts up his massive arm and pulls out something wedged between his armpit and the butt end of his crutch. A dark green bottle. Almaden Tawny Port.

“Hide it,” he says, “For the right moment.”

This is the point where the party hits its stride and becomes a party. With Carl’s arrival and the approaching darkness, everyone moves back into the glow of the fire. More drinks appear and a few joints are passed around. The guitar player returns to his guitar, this time playing songs with words, singing in a gravelly second-generation Bob Dylan voice. Soon other people join in. He doesn’t sing any Bob Dylan songs, at least not at first. He sings songs by Neil Young and Cat Stevens and The Byrds until finally Floyd Collins edges in sideways through the crowd and taps him on the shoulder.

“You know any Rolling Stones?”

The guitarists nods and segues gracefully into a rendition of Ruby Tuesday. This works. Soon all the oldsters are interspersed with the youngsters, and everyone is singing the chorus together.

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday Who could hang a name on you?

After that the suggestions come flying in from all walks of life, and amazingly, the guitarist knows them all. They launch into the Beatles catalog, singing Yesterday, and Michelle, and Yellow Submarine. They attempt All You Need is Love, but the weird rhythms overwhelm them and the song falls apart into a tangled mess of noise. Quickly recovering, they turn to Cream and take on White Room, belting out a rowdy rendition of Sunshine of Your Love, shouting loudly and only half-melodically to the ocean:

I’ve been waiting so long To be where I’m going….

Badge, however, suffers the same fate as All You Need is Love, tumbling into chaos by the second verse.

After that they turn to the folk songs, Puff the Magic Dragon, Man of Constant Sorrow, Blowin’ in the Wind- the first and only Dylan song of the evening.

Carl wants to sing, This Land is Your Land. This gets absolutely everybody singing on the chorus, and almost everyone on the verses. Carl tugs the guitarist on the sleeve.

“Let me sing the unknown verse,” he says.

Propped up on his crutches and booming his voice out over the hooting and the whistling, he sings

As I was walking that ribbon of highway I saw a sign that said No Trespassing, But on the other side it didn’t say nothing, That side’s the side for you and me.

During the last chorus Wilbo slips from the crowd into the house to fetch his concertina. As the song ends he approaches the guitarist, instrument in hand.

“Do you know any fiddle tunes?”

The guitarist nods slightly. “Name one.”

“How ‘bout Devil’s Dream? The key of A.”

“You start it.”

Wilbo starts it, and yes, the guitarist is with him, quickly catching the rhythm and chasing down the chord changes. They play Devil’s Dream for as long as they can, and then without a break Wilbo calls out, “The Crippled Kingfisher, key of D!” and off they go, into The Crippled Kingfisher, followed by Soldier’s Joy, and Star of the County Down.

The partiers, no longer able to sing, take to dance. It starts out with just a couple of girls dancing hand in hand like lonely farm girls at the barn dance without a beau. But it isn’t long before practically everybody is moving in one way or another to the music. The crowd swells outward to make room for its own movements. All styles of dance are represented. There’s ballroom and hoedown, and Irish two-step and ballet and belly and Grateful Dead-style free-form, plus there’s jitterbug and country line dance and samba, and of course the twist, the Watusi and the Bristol stomp.

New sounds enter the mix. Propelled by the flow of the moment, not to mention the flow of alcohol, people have sidestepped their inhibitions and sacked the house for pots, pans, plates and spoons to use as percussion instruments. Variously tuned wineglasses tintinabulate about the crowd when struck with sticks and forks. Every now and then one of them breaks with the lovely cascading flourish of shattering glass. Someone is playing a harmonica. It’s a D harp, which only works on some of the tunes, but he continues to play it nonetheless.

Then there’s the sound of real drums from somewhere on the other side of the fire. Wilbo glances up. There’s a man there with a set of congas. The drums are painted with brightly colored African designs. The man is wailing away, throwing his head back, having the time of his life. He opens his eyes briefly, catches sight of Wilbo, and flashes a big loopy gap-toothed grin. It’s Jimmy from the lighthouse! And that woman, next to him, swaying with her eyes closed- that’s Toni, Claudia’s friend, or one-time friend. They’re all Jesus-freaks, Wilbo. All of them. Even Toni, she’s a Jesus freak.

Eventually they run out of fiddle tunes, or they just lose track of them, and the music evolves into an open jam, staying close to the key of G so the harmonica can fit in. This is when Opal starts to sing. She sits on the bench with her eyes wide open and she sings in a high, wordless voice that sounds like the wind in the pines, or the coyotes in the hills, or the song of the seal-people just after they shed their human skins. When she sings, the mood shifts from that of riot and revelry to something deeper, more thoughtful, almost like worship. The music slows and the dancing slows with it. The fire is low now, and the dancers cast long fire shadows on the sand. Some couples dance together, lovers entwined, oblivious to anything but the magnetism of their bodies. But most people dance alone, each one moving to a private music. Some spin like dervishes, arms extended. Some trail pieces of cloth, or even pieces of seaweed, floating out from their hands like banners. Others are weaving in and out of the crowd, deliberately, gently caressing people as they pass, while still others just stand in place, eyes clothes, and sway.

Amanda has one arm raised over the crowd like she’s passing a blessing. Ken sits cross-legged at her feet, his head slowly listing from side to side. Doralina has a bubble wand. She stands on a rock and produces a blanket of bubbles, barely visible in the darkness. It drifts down and settles on the crowd. Levon Blue Lake rests his hands on Opal as she sings. He runs his fingers down her long straight hair, caresses her shoulders, then returns to her hair, over and over. These things go on for a long time, and during them, no one speaks a word. There’s only the sound of the music, the rustling of bodies, and the crashing of waves. In the future, when the party is remembered and talked about in places like the Lighthouse and the Dogfish, many people will report that they heard something like the sound of a flute, in perfect tune with the music, coming from somewhere out beyond the breakers.

But even a moment frozen in time eventually gives way to the movement of time. One by one people come out of their trances and begin to converse in muffled tones. Someone checks his watch; the action is contagious. Other people start checking their watches. The dog barks. People start looking for their shoes, their jackets. Finally the event horizon is breached and the guitarist stops playing. Wilbo sets down his concertina. There is a scattering of applause. A few flashlights go on.

Out on the beach two girls are still dancing. These two have been pretty much connected the whole time, but now they dance apart, whirling and swooning in two big circles like the hands of a clock. Whenever they intersect they reach out to each other, clasp arms, unclasp and spin away. On their outermost orbits they are lost in the mist. When they draw near to the fire their happy singsong voices drift on the air.

The migration begins. Some people are sloppy and stumbling. Other people help the stumbling ones along. Some people are stiff and sleepy, others are loose and jangly and talkative. Almost everyone comes to give Wilbo a hug or a handshake or a punch in the arm or a Dutch rub. A line of flashlights, like fireflies, grows and moves along the trail up to the tunnel. Doralina, Floyd, Ken and Amanda leave together as a foursome. Floyd has had a bit to drink and Doralina holds him up. No one knows how Amanda feels, but mysteriously, she seems to be walking on her own, propped between Floyd and Ken, with Ken clinging to her hand.

Carl lingers by the fire, leaning on his crutches. Wilbo sits on the log, stirring the ashes of the fire with a stick. Neither of them speaks for a long time. Wilbo’s arms are sore from playing so much concertina, but he’s feeling content and alert. He’s wondering if Carl wants something and he’s waiting for the right words to ask for it, like maybe he wants open up that bottle of Tawny Port. This is when it dawns on him that he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol, not by any discipline of choice- it’s just the way it fell out. It hadn’t even occurred to him until now, and even now he wonders if it’s true. In his arms and in his head he feels the pleasant glow that lingers after a night of sensible drinking. But no, if he were drinking, he would remember it. He would remember the taste.

Finally Carl speaks. “Well, I guess I’d better be getting along home. It’s a long way to lug this tired old bag of bones.”

“You could spend the night here if you want, Carl.” Wilbo suggests.

“Naah, I miss my own bed. Besides, there’s some pills there I’m supposed to take.”

Suddenly they are not alone. Out of the mist like dream figures, the two dancing girls have materialized in the dim glow of the fire. They could just as well be mermaids. They are both very young and very pretty. They hold hands.

“Whoa!” says Carl, “You scared me.”

The girls giggle awkwardly. “We come in peace,” one of them offers, then the other says, “Peace and love.”

A few waves break. Nobody speaks. Then Wilbo gets an idea.

“Well then, maybe you girls can perform an act of love for us,” he says. The moment the words are out of his mouth he realizes they are fraught with implications, none of which he intends. Quickly he explains himself. “My good friend Carl, here. He has a long walk ahead of him before he can sleep in his own bed, and as you can see he is old and infirm. Perhaps you girls would oblige in providing him with a safe escort.”

The girls drop hands. They study Carl, up and down.

“He doesn’t look so old and infirm,” one of them says.

At that moment a log in the fire turns and throws up a shower of sparks, casting an orange glow on Carl’s face, providing the distinct illusion that he is blushing.

“Well, I uh, well…you know…” he stammers. “Well, it’s just an ankle.”

One of the girls pulls away from the other and takes Carl’s arm. “Well of course we’ll walk you home,” she says. “You shouldn’t let that mean man say those things about you. Don’t believe a word he says.” There is a lilt of mischief in her voice. The other girl comes forward and takes Carl’s other arm.

“But maybe we won’t go straight home.”

Carl gives Wilbo a helpless look. “Wait a minute, Wilbo, I don’t know about this. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

Wilbo bites back his laughter. “Well, of course it’s a good idea, Carl. What are you worried about? You know, if I were in your shoes…”

“Well, you’re not in his shoes, man.” says one of the girls. “Sorry. You stay here by yourself. We’re taking Carl home with us. Come on ,Carl, let’s get away from this place.”

Gently but firmly they begin tugging him by the arms, away from the fire.

“Wilbo..”

“See you, Carl. Thanks for coming. Thanks for the present. Thanks for everything, Carl.”

“See you, Wilbo!” “See you, Wilbo!” cry the girls as they disappear into the mist. Then Wilbo hears one of them say, “Hey, Carl, have you read any good books lately?” There’s a pause, then Carl’s voice.

“Well… Well, there’s one book that everyone should read. It’s called The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer. He was a longshoreman, like me. I used to be a longshoreman, but then I got in an accident. Hoffer. When he was a little kid he went blind, all of a sudden, with no reason. And then like a miracle, he got his eyes back. When he got his eyes back he made a vow that he would read every book that was ever written. Of course maybe that was a bit hyperbolic, but Hoffer, he says…”

Wilbo never gets to hear what Hoffer says. Carl’s voice is swallowed up in the sound of the waves and the wind and a flock of noisy seagulls that happen to pass over at that moment. But he’s heard what Hoffer says. On many occasions, actually.

He sits on the log for awhile, enjoying the silence and the way it fills with the echoes of voices, voices singing and laughing and shouting:

Don’t worry, Everything will be used..
Hey, look! Look at the moon!
It’s the Green Knight!
Let me sing the unknown verse.

It’s not exactly pondering he’s doing. His energy is too high and jangling for anything as steady and studied as pondering. He wonders how he will ever get to sleep. It must be very late.
Then he remembers his ritual. Yes! Of course. The four directions. Some things from the old school must carry over into the new.

Inside the house he lights the lamp, and for a moment his senses reel. Everything has changed. Nothing is the same. The bed, the dresser, the cupboard, the windows- nothing is where it used to be. Even the walls are different walls. The effect is both disorienting and exhilarating, and does nothing to subdue his high, strong spirits.

He takes off all his clothes and folds each item, even the socks. In the old school he used to lay these on the trellis at the foot of his bed. Now the trellis has gone, he’s not even sure where, and a new order must be established. It’s too much to think about. He drops his armload of folded clothing onto the floor and steps outside naked into the crisp night air.

At the water’s edge he stops when he feels the damp sand under his bare feet. The night is dark and moonless and fog obscures the stars. He can’t see the waves but he can hear them. What is visible is one blinking ship on the horizon, and a faint blue glow in the western sky. Just below the glow a dark band of clouds rolls slowly over the water.

He faces the west. Inhaling, he raises his arms high above his head. Exhaling, he begins to lower them, as is his practice. But then something happens. It’s as if his arms, in their descent, catch an updraft, turn inward and then begin to spiral back up, over his head. There are currents in the air, all around him. They direct the movements of his arms, his hands, his fingers. He finds them irresistible. His hands rotate on his wrists and his fingers wave like the tentacles of anemones. The movement streams like water, or like something stronger than water, down his arms and into his body. He begins to dance.

At first it’s just a gentle sway from side to side, a naked man on the beach with his arms above his head, swaying gently from side to side. He takes a step- it’s a graceful one. Every movement he makes is imbued with a grace that seems to come from somewhere outside, or very deep within. The step leads to another step and the steps, one after another, lead to a slow whirl. The whirl leads to a swoon. With his arms outstretched like eagle’s wings he whirls and swoons. Unconfined by walls or by crowded streets he fills the beach with his movements. He whirls out to where the waves splash onto his feet and he whirls in to where the dry sand clings to his salty steps. He makes noises with his voice, half singing, half shouting. He dips and glides and skims over the rocks and the seaweed and the contours of the beach. He can feel all his pent-up energy funneling into his movements. It’s movement itself, free from any thought or purpose. Its Kinko Syncho Quinto for solo artist. It’s Coltrane on the saxophone. It’s Hendrix on the guitar. It’s what would happen if the wind could blow without any obstructions, or the river could flow without a bank, or if ideas could course through the brain without having to pass through synapses.

Eventually though, his body weight gets the best of him. A clumsiness of foot leads to a passing thought- something like well, that was clumsy, and this thought breaks the flow which leads to more clumsy moves, which lead to more thoughts, culminating in one massive clumsiness, a sort of forward staggering that nearly hurls him to his knees. When he gets his balance he realizes how winded he is, and how hard his heart is pounding. These things were happening all along but they were masked by the dance. Standing still he feels the momentum of the spin continuing in his head, in fact, the whole beach seems to be spinning around him. Perhaps I should sit, he thinks, and he sits abruptly in the sand.

The spin continues for a while but seated securely on the beach he can handle it. Like Dylan’s Rainy Day Woman, he’s got no place to fall. He feels no remorse. He enjoys the spin and the way it gradually slows. He enjoys watching his breath grow calm and his heartbeat steady. He enjoys his tiredness and the approaching possibility of sleep. He enjoys everything there is to enjoy about the moment and his place in it. He’s thinking, maybe this should become a new ritual.

After awhile he gets up and starts back for the house.

From a distance he can see the embers of the fire still glowing. They offer him a directional beacon in the dark. In the sand outside the house a few artifacts of the party are strewn. Wineglasses, some broken; some beer cans, some wrapping paper blown up against the bushes; something he doesn’t recognize or remember- a child’s rag doll lying across the bench.

Then he sees the shoes. Claudia’s shoes, the little red sandals, placed neatly, side by side, in front of the door. When he sees them, his heart resumes its pounding. But of course her shoes are here. He brought them here himself on that night, when they parted so badly. Last night. He doesn’t remember placing them by the door, but someone else could have done it. Doralina, maybe. Then he sees something else. Through the multi-colored cellophane of the Rose Window, a pale light is glowing.

I left the lamp burning. Strange I would leave the lamp burning.

A trembling in his arms and legs propels him to the house where he throws open the door.
Claudia rises from the bed. She is wearing the same black lace dress she was wearing the last time he saw her, but this time she has nothing on underneath. When she sees him standing there, naked in the doorway, and when she sees the immediate effect her presence has on his anatomy, she pulls the dress up over her head and tosses it to the floor. Without a word their bodies fold together into the union they have been craving since the day they met.