A Sample from Kehoe's Morning

by Ernest Clayton Cordell, Jr.

Portions created between May, 1979 and Jan 26, 2003


Part 1
Demain L'Aube:
The Morning Concept


Chapter 1
Time To Kill

A Troubling Dream Starts Kehoe's story

but his acknowledged reality presents other difficulties ...

I sat up straight in my chair and gazed at the evanescent after-image of the scene on the dusky light-blue wall with nipples of cold water standing up on my brow. I had stayed in the office because my rent wasn't paid regularly, so I wasn't sleeping well. I must have dozed: That realization made me pray whispered thanks. My world had been restored to me.

I reviewed the events preceding the dream like a checklist, the way one does in order to reorient to a changed reality. Given the scenario running through my head, one would think that I had to check my life to see whether such an event had ever taken place....

Day after day I confronted the potential of an eventual necessity to take life in the performance of duty, but more often I was facing it night after night....

I had gone from a turbulent emotional state to a review of events and thoughts leading up to the dream, and now I was beginning to calm down, but the dream was still a bugaboo. I felt as safe as I could in my current environment, but I had the lingering feeling that the dream had some other meaning, that my mind was reminding me of some loose end, some vestige of a recent-but-former existence that would come back to haunt me....

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I hoped that the sun would soon rise on a day that would see the end of all the vain training that stressed and strained me, hung me out to dry and drained me. I could see it on a horizon whose distance eluded my senses. I knew how it would look, I knew how it would feel. I discussed it with myself and made up a name for it, a way to focus on the concept, hopefully a shortcut to its realization: The Blue Light of Morning.

Chapter 4
Ode To Morning

It was morning. Of course, we know that morning doesn't always come at the same time, and that made this morning very special. The arrival of morning is judged or determined both according to season and by convention. By the standard of local consensus, it was about seven-thirty in the evening, but the vast majority of the world's population agreed that it was morning. Morningness is a peculiar concept: It doesn't depend upon the hour of the day. It is the birth of a new day, and needn't be linked directly to the rise of the sun. It hinges, rather, on perception. Daybreak arrives on many horizons. For me, it was morning....

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Chapter 5
The Dream Change

This was one such morning. A beautiful evening morning. It was painful because I had spent the whole day awake just to witness this dawning.... I had to be patient to find my path, so I walked a bit and waited. I waited for a sign because awakening always starts with a sign: It came as steam puffed from under the baseboards, giving a yellow tinge to the stained wood. A cloud rolled along the floor and there came the smell of roses; that's the way it always started with me-with some sort of aura-sometimes the smell was more like those strawberry flavor-straws that you put in milk to flavor it, and once in a while it was like Root-Beer-flavored Kool-Aid....

These drifting holes would scintillate before me like graininess in a movie or videotape and then assume the appearance of specks of radium, or maybe tiny particles of phosphorus strewn through the air. The area in front of me became like a cheese-grater where my reality was but a reflection on its smooth surface, while another world peeped through the holes that were made up of those contrasting spots of light. I didn't ask her what they were because we always had more important subjects to discuss, but I always figured that it was what myth and legend called Fairy Dust.

Amid the beams from the headlights of passing cars that bounced outside in the fog, blowing mists floated in the street, as well as in my eyes, bearing images of cloudy dreams. I was tired. I was determined to await the appropriate morning dream, though:I wouldn't want to catch the wrong one; it might be one of those nightmares. It was there that I found the path I was to take. Hints of a glowing, green mist effervesced, leaving enough of a trace for me to follow. When I did, I came out the door and down the walkway to the curb where there appeared gleaming balls of light, like what is often called ball lightning, ignis fatuus or will o' the wisp.

The dream began right in the middle of the street. It was a dense night, but the morningness clung to the trees with an incredible thickness that refused to yield to the night air. It was there that we met, in a daybreak dream, in a place with neither walls, ceilings nor floors. This was a world where the blurred fringes of a weary imagination rub against the sides of the incompleteness that surrounds almost-forgotten memories....

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Chapter 8
Getting Out
Of The Office

....Footfalls and heartbeat synchronized into a happy efficiency as I felt the ease of a new neighborhood roll over my face....

I relaxed as I found my way through the construction sites of the new highway that was to promote business downtown, but which currently carried people expeditiously past us. It seems that progress is always two-sided: My building would doubtlessly be slated for replacement, after which the lease would rise above my reach.

Traffic already surged full-bore from the narrow black asphalt road that was divided by hashed, bright-orange lines. Columns of vehicles poured onto the bright concrete lanes with their neatly-painted white stripes. In the absence of any new walkways, I would have to cross an exit or an entrance ramp to reach the surrounding residential neighborhoods on foot. The potential did exist to find a traffic crossing at a nearby school, but that would put two miles on my trip.

Near the junction of the old and new routes, I paused on a shoulder to wait for a brief pause in the activity on the exit ramp. Since I planned to cross under the next overpass, I squinted at the approaching cars under a blanket of clouds that lacquered them in a diffuse light. I backed for a moment to the huge steel guard-rail that was firmly bolted and welded onto a series of precisely-spaced I-beams rooted in round pockets of concrete that were sunk into a ridge over an embankment. I perched lightly on the rail for a moment while I watched a truck whose size produced the deception that it moved slowly.

As it drew nearer, I knew I was right to wait as its form began to fill more and more of the road on which it arrived. In fact, the driver must have hoped to gain momentum on the new road ahead, because the huge semi-trailer accelerated in the great, level straightaway. I watched first with the notion of crossing behind him, and soon with greater concern. Next, I saw a somewhat-removed spray of gravel as the huge utility tires spun momentarily onto the shoulder. I calculated the direction of the tires and the alignment of the trailer in disbelief as the truck continued to the left, farther onto the shoulder rather than away from it.

Does he think I'm hitch-hiking? I thought as a ghostly figure came into view, leaning on the wheel behind the thick plates of reflective glass. There was no time to consider more and I dived over the guard rail. Something smacked the rubber sole near the heel of one of my Rockport Dressports. When I pulled myself up in the high grass of the embankment, I saw that what struck my shoe had been the quivering steel guard-rail itself, then vibrating where one end had been separated from two of the I-beams.

I looked toward the overpass where I'd heard a scraping sound. I climbed up out of the ditch to where I had stood before, and I saw a large white smear and a series of scratches where the semi-trailer had failed to completely clear the stone as it raced under the overpass. I looked back at the guard-rail for a moment and ran probabilities in my head, watching in incredulity at how it still waved back and forth over the embankment....

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Chapter 11
My History
With Lara

I counted my change from the store and saw that I was not left with much. As I looked for a good spot to eat lunch, I thought back over my history with Lara. We had some good times, and really, at that point, I figured we'd have many more. When we were formally introduced, she was a sophomore and I was a senior, but she became a major part of my decision to enroll in graduate school-especially without leaving Ohio State.

We had seen each other from a distance: She bobbed in and out of the fringes of my life since our turbulent teens, barely leaving a ripple on my consciousness until her influence on my social circle grew enough for me to feel it. Finally when we met face-to-face, she didn't make much of an impression, but then I was swayed by what may have seemed like trivia at the time. She offered me a cigarette, and at the time I was sternly anti-smoking. It seemed bizarre to me that she tried to persuade me on the grounds that the filters were pretty. Was I being tested? Aren't we always being tested?

Ever since grade school I had been called `Reynold Kehoe' and back then, both first name and last, although my name is and always was René. It's René Descartes Kehoe, if you want a mouthful. People would just assume that they knew my full name because friends called me Wren or Renny. Those who learned my true name would either imitate a French accent with excess nasality and a stereotypical Aun-haun-haun-haun laugh and call me Frenchy or, since grammatical gender awareness had faded among the Ohio River Rats, they would say, Oh, that's a girl¢s name! usually following with some comment as to the nature and location of my pudenda. When I got out of school, I put R. KEHOE on my business cards and let them all assume.

The teachers called us by both names and since neither our first names nor our last were unique in this tight little community, and not even the closest of friends received first name distinction. As a matter of fact, my cousins with exotic Slavic names carried the whole of their names around with them because first names were scarcely identifying in a culture that was forcèdly predominately English. In grammar school, even in shouts across the playground you heard, "Rebecca Zimmerman!" or "Kevin Cooper!" But in my preparatory and college group, there were secretive aliases, technical handles, club monikers, pen names and assorted nicknames.

Lara was from the nickname set:Even now it is difficult to assign a name to her. It seemed that everybody in her close company even gave me different nicknames: In each circle of associations we seemed to have different names....

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At the "Nostalgia Hop," songs from a group called Jefferson Starship played. From both the sound and the theme, it could have been a musical group from our own era. Still, I had a vague recollection of the band, while my dance partner was surprisingly familiar with the lyrics. Strangely enough, the typical American view of French Culture didn't seem to have changed from the time of the 1890s-everyone from France was expected to appear in a red-and-white striped shirt, a scarf and a berêt. I'm not even sure where that stereotype started, but the expressions toujours gai and sans souci were still heard-and for the most part, we were always joyous and without care. In other words, we were young and had not yet donned the mantle of responsibility.

This does not mean to say that there was no danger: When Lara and I were in school, we were probably closer to an expansive nuclear confrontation than at any other time in recent history. People examined readings at great distances from the Ukraine in other countries during the Chernobyl accident, but some still thought of winning a nuclear war through first-strike capabilities. Fortunately for our gastrointestinal health, ours was an age of power, when we hoped to be able to do something about nuclear madness and put an end to mutually-assured destruction.

Of course, we were all at odds on the means to achieving this end. I saw the masters of full disclosure by day regularly become the great deceivers by night, so I didn't put a lot of stock in an honest and straightforward approach. This didn't mean that I believed in duplicity and double-dealing, I was just convinced of the legitimate role of espionage in the protection of national interests. It wasn't that the spying of others justified ours, it was that others conducted surveillance and we would have been foolish not to counter their efforts. Besides, that which is concealed eventually must be revealed-it has never happened any other way.

The political gist of conversation never seemed to matter:Lara had an engaging smile and an easy-going manner. She either hypnotized the zealots, or she scared them. She would look at them, smile, change the subject and laugh, and they were either dragged in by her charm or wondered away in bewilderment. Among moderates she seemed to fit in among any crowd:I could postulate a lot of things, but my personal opinion is that she just liked celebrations and found every technique for lasting as long as she could at parties. I had my mind on a longer-term scenario:I wanted to help perpetuate the system that allowed all of us to gather like this.

So I trained myself for the eventuality, if not for the particular vocation:You never know what skills life may demand of you. I figured that foreign language skills would be helpful, no matter on what side you might find yourself. Of course, my nationalism wasn't something that could be hidden: Singing patriotic songs at every turn since Kindergarten is a bit of a clue about your convictions. Of course, I could have been confused with any number of reactionary groups that just wanted the best for America and by the groups of interpretations that one can put on that phrase.

Many future encounters were determined as we tried to dance to Go Ask Alice and eventually sat it out, just talking. I asked her about the hippies and the peace movement and she said, "That generation of Americans really had it all figured out." That was in the margin of my comfort level, because speaking of a generation of Americans at least made her moderate enough for me to reach. I answered with "I don't know, the resolve and persistence of the World War II generation was pretty remarkable." The fact that this statement didn't send her running for the wings was further encouragement. We found mutual interest in French Language and Culture: There were some preliminary survey courses that the administration forced me to take in order to keep my major, so we agreed to take some classes together.

It was only natural to spread from foreign language knowledge to concerns about surveillance: The University Placement Office gave me enough pamphlets that I had to entertain the possibility of a career in Defense. I made a lot of decisions in my frequent trips to the library:To keep each language fresh, I read newspapers from several other countries. It was surprising how many versions of the truth I could find in objective reporting; Really that's even true in English, but there is less of an effort to be consistent throughout the international press.

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Part 2
The People
Dramatis Personæ

Chapter 13
Sarah McKenzie

13.1  Getting There

On my own. I had to have more coffee or give in to the fatigue: This suggested a restaurant menu to me and then I imagined a menu panel floating in front of me. Instead of a variety of food and beverage, I saw a list from which I could select the next bizarre phenomenon.

I hate to kill time, but my manuscript consultation was medication for my sense of loss and the menu was full of visual effects. The menu had a rather creative layout with strange commercial slogans printed all over it. All though it matched our current vision of a futuristic design, it was arranged in some kind of art deco patterns that reminded me of imitations of 1950s advertising. My impressions of the content blended in with it:

What is the mission in the morning without a manuscript? Escape! Flying little dishes in the waking mission engirdled a crescent of doom around the half-shell of naked luster on the banks of the Seine. I could make it to the library to watch the daily exposition of jellied raindrops. Frogs From Heaven were appearing at the Computer Center and objects from the sky were popular this year, so the Science Building was featuring A Plague Of Locusts.
I had until two o'clock. I could have gone to pick up the mail, but the letters had stopped coming. Faye didn't write anymore. The lack of contact with Faye caused me to make comparisons: I seemed to be surrounded by women, and not one of them was my lover. I didn't want to think about it. I could keep my mind busy. Obviously.

Sarah McKenzie was one of these women. She was a brilliant woman, but one who tended to presume that everyone knew exactly of what she spoke while she would often leave out much of the necessary context. She was indeed special; so they all were, all special women. As was her manner, she had mentioned that a few friends were coming over before she left for vacation, so I took it to mean that I was expected to visit, too.

I recalled how she had told me about her planned trip to Nova Scotia with a gleam in her eye. I knew that I would miss her during this particularly difficult interval, so I probably didn't show the appropriate enthusiasm. She had seemed surprised, saying, Don't you like to travel?

At first I had thought she was asking why I wasn't excited for her, but then the fleeting notion crossed my mind that her question might be an implicit invitation for me to accompany her. Not wanting to be presumptuous, I decided that I'd wait for a sign that she really wanted me to tag along....

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....I did a six-eight quickstep down into the brilliance of the courtyard and decided to see Natalie for a while. On my way from the courtyard to the street my memory jerked and drifted like a backup tape in search of a lost file.

Chapter 14
Natalie

I kept flashing back to my brief visit with Natalie at The Old Watering Hole, a local gin-joint where, in days previous, I had spent a good measure of my time. It wasn't quite the place it used to be. Four times a year was about par for my visits, even then. I was running about three under par, so I tried it out just for the hell of it. It was just as I had imagined it. Nobody who frequented the place now could give a damn for the Ossian Cycle, and many didn't care about Harleys, either. Not that I had wanted to hear any chop talk, but Apathy For All should have been etched on the mirror over the bar as a motto. I'm not so particular as to require the stilted dissertations of withered mentors, an Indonesian cigarette and a nice liqueur, but at that moment, when Natalie entered, I know that two words of Homeric Greek and a semi-hemi-demitasse of espresso would have put me on the floor in amazement.

With no warning whatsoever, Natalie had thrown her arms around me and said, "Oh, I do care for you. And, well, I think, I guess I'm trying to say that our minds go well together, but I'm not too sure about our bodies." Was this an oblique reference to Faye? Oh, what was I thinking? it must be a common expression....

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[Thespians have the most annoying habit of teasing without pause...] I'm sure it was not his design to alienate anyone: It was just Tim, and it made him a difficult read, but all of us accepted that....

Then there was Leila. I loved her. It was as simple as that. I couldn't stand to think of her being in danger. It was actually frightening upon occasions, how much we thought alike. We tended to say the most bizarre things and even stranger, the same things at the same time. Both of us exerted a colossal effort to be reliable, but luck wouldn't have it. At least that's what I had to tell myself.

Every time I saw her, she me in the process of struggling to be somewhere at a certain time. There days when I felt guilty about seeing her for that very reason: Together we amplified her effect on logistics....

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Faye. Was she really at the core of my problem? ...not the answer. I had felt what it was like to be a part of her life, and I didn't so much want to be in the middle of it, as I felt that her draw was so strong that I couldn't imagine any other future.... I didn't feel uniquely qualified or especially deserving, but I didn't feel that there was any other bearable option, either.

I didn't care about the strengths of my competition, nor did I dream any longer of that all-consuming passion that kept one faithful through an eternity. I can't expect that kind of fidelity and strength to visit mortals. Oh, I'm not saying it's impossible; only that it's difficult. Why should I place that kind of limitation on another human? What is my right? Besides, although Faye had said that she really loved me, I knew that she had other lovers....

As for the other lovers, there were certain practical considerations. As our hygiene instructors always said, venereal disease doesn't know your social class, your income level or your family's name. As for fame, it would seem all too oft that the diseases were what gave celebrities their name and reputation, and celebrities who gave diseases notoriety, care, treatment and research funding. When it came to blaming Faye for recklessness, I was hardly the one to be giving lectures.

Loneliness drives one to recklessness:It was in loneliness that I first sought comfort from the lovely Tatyana in the Ukraine and set off the whole mad cascade of events that led up to that very incomprehensible moment at Tim and Leila's. Loneliness has nothing to be with being alone, and everything to do with feeling alone. It is loneliness that punishes a prisoner: Being surrounded by those who do not share your interests, experience and plans-in short, your life-this is the most gruelling part of confinement. One can feel lonely in a crowd.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

Spatial confinement is but a part of imprisonment. There are few of us who actually miss the feeling of galloping through meadows or roaming through grain-fields, but to separate us from the familiar and endearing, that is unbearable. In the movie Casablanca 1, the patriot Victor Laszlo 2, senses a connection between his wife Ilsa Lund3 and Richard Blaine4 and asks her whether she were alone in Paris when she met Blaine....

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I was feeling a little twitchy at Tim and Leila's, especially with this tape playing. I'd had a lot of coffee, and I was weary but not sleepy. I did feel a little more inclined toward emotional reaction, though. I excused myself frequently, one time slipping into the bathroom to splash water on my face. I stared at my bloodshot eyes and decided that my appearance would have to do for the remainder of the occasion.

Lara caught me with my face still wet, and she touched my cheek, "Have you been crying ... crushed ice?"

I explained that I threw cold water on my face because I didn't sleep well the night before.

"I don't care much for this music," Lara seemed to sense something, "Should I have Tim play something else?"

I shrugged, but I thought she knew that I would welcome the change.

The music changed, but What a change! I saw Tim and the stranger put their heads together over a box of tapes; ultimately they chose a British release of Ian Gillan's Toolbox album. I recalled how the once-and-again vocalist for Deep Purple screamed when he hit a certain emotional pitch in the music-one of the Vietnam Vets from the Computer Center had said laughingly ... he's always squealin' the whites off his yolks. The song Hang Me Out To Dry was a pretty good expression of how I felt, but it reminded me of a concert in the Ukraine that I attended with that sweet lady named Tatyana:

I can't lose
Got this strange infatuation
When my seeds were sown
Then the cold wind     blowing in my face
My life was just confusion
And when I roll my eyes they say
I've lost my sense of reason
...
I can't lose
You don't know the things that I know
And when the rain comes down
I see the lights in town gently calling
But I have to keep on walking
...
Hang me out to dry
I had grown to know several different flavors of isolation in the days when I was off on assignment, before I met Faye. When I was in Oposhnya, I wasn't even allowed to call home because I might give myself away. Since they'd cast me in the role of a black market trader, it wasn't considered a necessity for me to speak Ukrainian. I employed the language passably most of the time, but varying from standard Russian would come out in a multi-slavic salad once in a while, like some kind of reading from Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch.

I was supposed to be Sergei Korolyoff, a smuggler from a family in Moscow that sent me to the West, according to the file most of that time was spent in France, in order to attend La Sorbonne. Sergei, or rather I found Catalán a more challenging language, though: My internship for the family business was spent in Andorra la Vella, but when I came back, the story said that my father's syndicate had been broken apart by Soviet authorities.

With the Soviet Union collapsing, it was my opportunity to reorganize the Ukrainian arm of the syndicate, and there were many opportunities for trade....

...I was supposed to run a non-territorial penny-ante operation just remote enough and insignificant enough that it would give me distance from the Muscovites.... The combination of these influences relieved concerns that I'd run into entanglements over there. But I managed.

Chapter 17
Tatyana Chervenko

Tatyana Chervenko was her name. She was my enchantress and it was with her that I became entangled. I was instructed not to go any further than Godjish because it could cause State Department problems if I were caught: I would be disestablished.... I could roam the fields as long as I was accompanied by my men, but there were a few of them on whom you wouldn't want to turn your back, and I wouldn't have been very convincing as a ringleader if I had....

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I got my rebyata together as The General called them. General Yuri Fedorovich Shastansky was supposed to be a brigadier from some eastern campaign, but as far as I could verify, he was only a former Soviet prison guard. In any case, he kept the boys in line, and I felt safer with him there. He was always barking out orders in military style, and he frequently confused our henchmen....

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[Tatyana] was an orphan in a way: She'd had a kind of privileged upbringing, but most of her family had been killed. It was the sort of thing of which one would have a horror in opening a dialogue with somebody, with everything from agricultural accidents to war stories. Fortunately we chanced to discuss many cheerier things in the springtime that exploded into the end of the Ukrainian winter during which we were acquainted....

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I was looking for a way to turn off all the noise in my head and Tatyana was close at hand. Both of us clearly wished for stability as we discussed home and family, and I wove tiny parallels to the detail in my real life into the fiction that I had learned to recite for my assignment. She seemed surprised when I brought tenderness into the lifeless narrative that was supposed to be my existence prior to meeting her. She held me close and responded in a special way. It always struck me how she kissed so deeply and passionately with her eyes wide open. I don't know what it was that I said during a nuzzling breath in her silky, black hair, but when I returned to her lips, a flood of tears poured from her eyes.

One barely uneven canine tooth gave character to her otherwise-perfect smile as we compared notes on college life. She told me that she did have opportunities because of her father's influence, but it had been rather through serious striving that she had earned the marks to stay at LGU. I thought of enrollment as a transition into a family life from a more aimless time. She saw it differently: It was then that she told me exactly how she'd lost her family. So matter of fact and frank was her account that you could imagine her reliving it many times in her mind, and as she told it, just listening to her was a poignant experience.

Her brother Dmitri had written her a letter about the endless pounding of machine-gun fire: He was surprised not only by the fatal feeling of the vibrations in the air, but the jarring sensation that the puli gave him as they embedded themselves into the fortifications. He also mentioned that a friend from elementary school had just come in from back home.

A few days after Dmitri had written the letter, someone had relieved him on his position and he had taken his guard down: Many people mentioned the disturbing quiet before the shots rang out. Before his relief caught a rhythm, and after Dmitri had walked away, the perimeter was compromised by a single shot. First the pounding beat entered the camp and then they were overrun by a screaming hoard. Backed off to a rock face, those who remained poured practically all of their ammunition into the advancing enemy that accumulated in a bloody heap before them....

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....Somehow I missed a whole war, although my debriefing told me that I was involved in it, and I still hadn't learned all the details of the eruption of Mount Pinitubo.

Not only did I come back to learn from Western News Services that some guy named George Hennard had driven his Ford truck into Luby's Cafeteria and shot twenty-three people in Killeen, Texas....

....Seeing Wendy in the light of my current stream of thought or, river of consciousness, I remembered rushing to see her, determined to mend fences and heal wounds to the point that I had envisioned a big emotional scene. She was more interested in telling jokes. One look into her dark Gypsy eyes reminded me of her extreme aversion to sentimentality. I must have worked too long among Russians. I was reacting to all this like a character from The Cherry Orchard. Hugging, weeping, and those thunderous slaps on the back were very queer to the average Midwesterner. It was not as though we had just faced death together.

Wendy was in the mood for levity again. It must have been the way that she maintained professional separation: Although she didn't have regular clients, everybody was always approaching her as a counsellor-that is, when they weren't badgering her to complement their vague and erroneous impressions of Freudian notions that were just so much dated, movie-inspired mysticism surrounding their view of the mind. Just as easily as Wendy tossed those long tresses of raven hair over her shoulders, she dismissed all my prior offenses. Maybe, from a certain point of view, I was just one of many offenders.

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[Kehoe hears a sound in the metal covering of the phone cord]... "You're at a payphone, aren't you?" Just when I thought I'd hit my limit [on lucky clues], I was surprised again.

"It's not safe," Ron answered, "But no phone is if I'm talking to you."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"What do you mean, What do I mean?," he paused a bit realizing how he tangled the phrases, "You're not even supposed to know that I work here...."

Chapter 49
Bicksford:
The Section Chief

...I decided to let [Bicksford...] repeat something for a change.

"You're right again:Her name is Nicole Quintaine (he pronounced it Quinn Tane, as though it were some measure of verse). Originally I had planned to surprise you," he changed his plan, "I wondered whether you'd catch it in a face-to-face, but I don't think your confidence will be diminished by a little foreknowledge-we arranged a little proof of concept in the cafeteria-down below here, where we feed the Marines who are assigned to us."

"Doesn't she pronounce her name like Can Ten?" I tried to assert the correct pronunciation without being brash.

He answered so as to tell me that my American subtlety was lost on him, "She most likely does, but I don't pretend that I wasn't reared in Cambridge, nor do I pronounce Quixote as though it were a tea grown by your ancestors."

"Won't it look like she's my field support if we hang out in the cafeteria together?" I opted to bring us back to business.

"Her assignment is to investigate the financial transactions of an unknown arms dealer. She doesn't know that you'll be looking for her-apologize for me, won't you? It was part of the original plan-I told her it'd be a test to see if you could find her out. Now there isn't a chance you'll miss her. Afterwards you can reconvene elsewhere." Many levels of meaning were nested in his phrases, but I waited for a more opportune moment to unwind the Bicksford enigma.

Chapter 50
Nicole

Amid the flashing reflections in the glass of the revolving door and the clatter of cups, I sat in the Base Cafeteria surrounded by youthful commotion in tidy tan uniforms, wondering whether I could seize the gist of my new assignment. The she walked in; the girl from the photograph. Bicksford was right: I couldn't have missed her. Even through the thick, greenish glass and reflections of the pale yellow pine tables, I was stunned by her physical perfection. So this was Nicole.

They say that photographs don't lie, but the one I had seen had at least seriously understated her beauty. She had light brown hair that, no matter how unexceptional in color, held a distinct shape, had a kind of body that shouted fastidiousness. This unique coiffure also hinted at a measure of freedom, subtly repressed by perhaps a sense of duty or obligation. The movement of her head caused the curls to bounce ever so slightly as she glanced carefully around the room like someone accustomed to the occasional pricking of fear's tiny darts.5

She was a study in balance, a set of opposites delicately poised one against the other, like gothic architecture. I thought suddenly of the single spire at Nôtre Dame; fragile and singular in appearance, yet strong enough to bear the weight of stone and the fickleness of the years of Parisian climatic assault. She wore a bêret, a sort of large blue falûche that accentuated her deep, dark and cold ocean-blue eyes.

She caught sight of me, but looked away with a nonchalance that was too deliberate. I couldn't tell whether she was nervous, or just annoyed with the awkwardness of gathering utensils for cafeteria-style dining. She picked up a fork, inspected it, and pursing her lips in unmistakably French indignation, she placed it aside and selected another.

During this time I examined her profile. I looked for imperfections in her complexion, but found none. She was very fair-complected, just short of being pale; Up to that moment I had always chuckled scoffingly at the stories about women with skin like alabaster. My professional attitude was dissolving. I was spellbound as I watched her move up the queue, closer and closer and more beautiful for the proximity. I felt somewhat outside myself:I was not ordinarily so moved by externalities. Then again, her outward appearance was also complemented by her movement; it was a dance that was bound to reveal her character. If her personality didn't mirror that precise movement, it would have been comical and contradictory to any notion of reality. We had not yet met, but I was already proud of my new partner. I was going to enjoy working with her.

Still confused by reassignment, I turned my attention to the folder of newspaper clippings and reports, trying to untangle the past. While looking down at the table I saw a shadow. I wasn't ready. At the same time I heard her voice, "Excuse me," she said, "it's terribly far to the next empty seat ...."

Unsettled by the familiarity of the words, I nearly slipped into a daydream, but I stopped myself and motioned, "... of course ..." I thought at first she was too obvious in her attempt at feigning timidity. Then I realized that her game would have been very convincing, had I not anticipated the like. She claimed to be English and made casual conversation about the countryside, going into great detail about an arrival at the train station at Wembley. I felt as though I were watching an old travel bureau film. The absurdity of the circumstance was catching up with me: I remembered an old joke and had to fight myself to keep from smiling. I nodded and pretended to listen with great interest. A gleam of satisfaction came to her eye and she sparkled a smile. I politely returned her smile and took a drink of my coffee.

She became more enthusiastic and started to speak more quickly. Her English was outstanding. I was enjoying the drama so much that I nearly brought myself to believe her, until she stopped and asked, "What's the matter?"

I noticed the all-too-familiar signs shown by someone covering for a loss of words and played along, "What do you mean?"

Evidently fearing a recurrence, she smiled, "Why you've scarcely uttered a word ...."

I tried to help her play out her act and tell me the truth before we embarrassed ourselves, "It's seldom that a beautiful woman is so intent upon entertaining me ...."

She reddened. I noticed her makeup. Although it was tastefully applied, her skin was so smooth that the cosmetics seemed coarse in contrast. The natural flush ridiculed the light touch of rouge that she used. Then I understood her blush. The gleam in her eye was pride. She thought she had me fooled. Her confidence was getting the better of her. When that idea struck me, I felt foolish; the warmth of a moment's anger reddened my cheek: She must have thought that I, too, was blushing. I looked into her eyes where she was veiling the secrets of her soul. She was an excellent actress, but with the help of what I had already been told, I saw the doubt and guilt of one who is distressed by lying unnecessarily.

She never dropped the charade, "A penny for your thoughts ..."

I knew I had to put an end to this act, but it had gone so far that I couldn't do it gracefully. My tone was far too serious for the occasion, "Don't you think that men are especially skilled at hiding their emotions," I stammered, "I mean ... that the habit forced by social custom ..." I felt a corresponding anger was rising in her throat as I spoke the last few words, "gives them some practice at deceit ..."

She knew what I was trying to say. She drew a sharp breath:Her reflex was to rise and go. I grabbed at her wrist, but she snatched it away and whispered breathily, "You cur! You knew all along!" She gave me an exasperated look, "Why didn't you stop me sooner?"

I thought about how I had tried to keep her from leaving and it made me defensive, "It wasn't my idea ..."

She seemed a bit calmer, but she blinked her eyes as if she were afraid I could read her mind, "It's still a poor excuse!" She shook her head, "You knew when I introduced myself that I wasn't Deborah Waterford from Bristol."

I began to feel that we had attracted attention and became anxious to leave, "... but-you see-I love the theatre, and I was charmed ... by your ... performance."

When I looked up I was startled to see that she was laughing. I saw a human side that I had not anticipated. People were ignoring us again and I felt more relaxed. Nicole displayed an intentionally artificial frozen smile, "You've still some accounting to do to me-Let us ..."

No, I interrupted, "I'll say it-let us reconvene elsewhere."

She blinked. I rose. We left.6


Part 3
Past, Present, Future
Real and Imaginary


Chapter 51
The Roles: Agent,
Witness, Target

Leaving the cafeteria, I stopped a moment to smack the bottom of the folder on a table to even up the sheets inside. When I looked up, Nicole wasn't with me, ah, yes, according to procedure, we shouldn't be seen leaving together. She would follow the book in arranging a rendezvous since I wasn't advised. But where would I find her? I was sure she would have left some sign: Maybe in the folder. I went back to the table and started to look through the paper file.

With all the larger sheets, I hadn't noticed the little yellowed paper on which Bicksford had written, there in the back from where he had removed the bluesheet and photograph from Nicole's dossier. It read:

Don't worry about your schedule, you have a very large window and you'll be able to follow your partner's lead. See you bright and early in the morning.

I had no sooner closed the folder when a Marine approached me, "Sir, that lady said you dropped this pencil."

"What lady?" I asked.

"That one." He pointed to the doors where, on the other side of the glass, an auburn ponytail bounced over the back of a conspicuous long, red coat with a button-down cape and long tails.

"Thanks," I said, looking down at the pencil as I walked, thinking, Bicksford is telling me to follow my partner's pencil lead, not her guiding lead....

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Excuse me! I shouted to the driver [of what looked like a golf cart]:He slowed to the pace at which I jogged and asked, Going back to the main hall?

Rather than risk dropping the folder and to avoid jogging any farther I hopped on the seat, Is there any way we can figure where that shuttle is going? He shook his head, Probably where we're all goin'-utility storage-it's quittin' time fer mostuvus.... [Kehoe asks whether they can follow the cart ahead of them...]

"...if you can get me out of here before curfew, with your badge you can go anywhere but Special K." He offered.

"Special K?" I asked.

"That's what we call corridor K," he explained, "It's just a hallway, but it requires special clearance-I can't even drive through it."

The cart [that was ahead of us] pulled over at the main hall but the girl hopped out and continued walking at a pretty good clip. "Bail now and hoof it or pay to play?" The driver asked.

I pulled out my wallet, "Keep goin'..."

The girl reached a cinderblock wall that was a pastel yellow apart from a plum-colored upper corner at the entrance where a space in the shape of a letter `K' was left unpainted so that the canary background shone through.

"End of the line for me." the driver pointed at the wall.

I stuffed the wad of small bills into his shirt pocket and checked my folder again as I followed the ponytail down Corridor K. I was glad that I wasn't trailing someone for an arrest, because it wouldn't be legal: This could be four different women as far as I really knew, because that's about how many times I'd lost sight of her....

I was doing fine for a while, keeping at least a tuft of red fabric in view as she drew me through the research labyrinth. I got as far as K-18 when I heard a faint whining and saw a red filter rotating over a light bulb in a cage above my head.

A voice came from behind me, "Turn slowly with your hands up."

I obeyed the best I could with the folder in my hand, turning to see a Marine with his sidearm drawn. I fought my instinct, but he had surprised me and as I clutched paper, my heart pounded.

He approached, just close enough to read my tag clearly, "You can't go in there, Sir."

I didn't care if I left right then, I just wanted him to lower that weapon before somebody slipped and caused an accident. My legs were feeling more and more unsteady:They didn't have to buckle to cause a problem, even if I bobbed a bit or lost any papers, he'd assume I was trying a move and then he'd fire. It would take more than luck to make him miss at that distance.

"I'm not interested in going in there." I told him.

"You can't go in there, Sir." he repeated.

Oh, crap! I thought, He's scared too-he's gone into robot mode-that's really bad news. I stopped thinking about anything else and started gauging the tension of his finger on the trigger.

Another voice surprised both of us, "Oh, I didn't think you'd be able to find an escort this late." The girl in the red coat appeared behind him, but I was in no position to focus on her face.

He took one step back and rolled to the wall, "Is he one of yours, Ma'am?"

Yes, she answered, "He's a test subject, but he's not dangerous, so you won't need the gun."

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Chapter 56
Third-Country Debrief

The flight in the strange jet was very uncomfortable, but it wasn't just the cramped compartment where they had stowed me like a case of munitions:I had napped in the black demon car and was still in a bit of a bunch; I had eaten bread and water aside from the canned sausage which had subsequently been centrifuged out into a single layer in my gut; the way that we cut through the air was a little disconcerting and I couldn't look out the window to try to orient myself to some horizon; Porter's consolation that I could halfway talk to them seemed possibly to mean that I could talk to them half of the way through the flight.

The tension of the assignment was draining out of me, though. If I felt sure that I would see Tatyana soon, I might have gone so far as to say that I felt glad.

"Still alive back there?" Porter now shouted.

"And glad!" I shouted back.

He shouted over to Stick, pretending that he thought I couldn't hear him, "I can just tell he's still thinkin' about that woman."

I thought, Maybe I should focus a little less on my complaints and a little more on being glad that I'm alive....

------------------------------------------------------------------------

We passed easily more than a dozen C-130E's, most sitting on the grass, just off the runway. As we approached the flight line, tail numbers blurred such that when we arrived, ours looked like just another series of threes, nines and ones. Once we'd gone all the way to the lead plane, the patrolman tossed my bags onto the tarmac and drove away.

A man with clusters trampled down the cargo ramp and rasped, "What can I do for you boys?"

Stick pointed at his lapel, then reached into his breast pocket, went through some envelopes and handed it to the officer.

The officer either had a tic or he chewed something, maybe gum, "I'll check this out: Anything else I can do you for?"

"You could demote that patrolman so I don't have to shoot him." Stick said.

"He'll get his-We're thinking about bringing Shalikashvili out here in civvies." his grating voice was followed by a wry smile.

"A Georgian?" I told Stick, "I don't get it."

"You've been away too long-Lt. Gen. John M. Shalikashvili-An operation commander." Stick laughed.

The officer came to the edge of the cargo ramp with the opened letter in his hand and waved for us to follow him.

As I got my footing on the tailgate, men in desert fatigues grabbed my bags and reminded me of safety protocols, Keep one hand free. Another officer came down to help us, "I'm Lieutenant Swenson, I'll take you on in, just let me know if you need anything."

"What is the mission here?" I asked.

"Well, this cargo carrier is being pulled anyway, so we agreed to carry you to England." he answered, "It was last used on Operation Provide Comfort in Greater Kurdistan."

"Damn!" I said, "Has that much changed while I was gone?"

"Oh, sorry Sir, I didn't know," he elucidated, "it's not a recognized country-we just think it seems like one, like it ought to be."

We walked past a bunch of soldiers in Canadian uniforms who looked really upset. They weren't armed as far as I could see, so I didn't bother to ask why, maybe nobody would really know what was eating them, anyway.

Chapter 57
The Meeting

The auroral glimmering of after-images danced semi-circles of muted tones into the narrow contours of soft, luminous haze that slipped beneath my weary, quivering eyelids. First came the long défilé of broken images and patterns that form the nameless shapes of which dreams are composed. Then the geometric arrays of recognition ordered these foamy globules into meaningful but nonsensical sculptures resembling true experiences. The flow of soothing fluids into the dry and irritated patches of my somehow-disconnected and fatigued orbs of sight flushed burning messages into my nerve endings.

The nerves slept too. They chose to ignore the sensation that seemed to be a relentless pounding of rubber mallets on a railroad track, miles away. The pulsing signals in the tolling steel rails sang a song to the tune of the heart's throb, a pumping that gained distance from the sleeping eyes and ears. With each beat, the sloshing slowed and faded from the consciousness of knowing and understanding.

All physical sensibilities drifted into a sea of consolation. My racked psyche embarked on a voyage across this sea, in search of resolution and comfort. A slaked-lime sandman mixed a sugary syrup in his mortar until the lashes glued to my cheek were the awning ties of a short vacation. The last remnants of light painted a pearly cleanliness in my dimming lanterns of vision. I was now in that region where the darting eyes flash the last, distorted remembrances of everyday life on the screen of an other-worldly sky. I was asleep.

I was asleep, but I was thinking. I was knowing that I was asleep. Coming to this realization nearly awakened me, but I was much too engrossed in the luxury of sleep; as the Russians say, Son Slashchye Myoda: Sleep is sweeter than honey. This sleep was especially sweet. It was a healing retreat, an escape from the grief I had felt. In that period, sleep was at a premium. It was a rare remedy to be obtained with difficulty.

In this retreat, the agonizing pictures of a harsh reality meandered off into a waning world, soon to be unseen. Having left the worries for another day, I rocked rhythmically on an ideal vessel, a ship that would carry me to an ideal world. I slept, and for a time there was nothing.

A warm vibration came through my body, carrying with it the feeling of wakefulness. I seemed to hover in the air. As consciousness slowly swelled around me, I noted a rough texture under my back, like wooden planking. There was the smell of damp oak and some sort of vegetable matter. I inhaled. The smell was that of something decaying, perhaps. It was mixed with the aroma of pine, a subtle odor that seemed almost resinous. I thought of celery. I opened my mouth and tasted iodized salt. Then a cold rush of water washed over me. I was still rocking, and I could hear rumblings and creakings.

At that instant a tremendous crack seemed to awaken me. I sat up and was thrown back down by a great invisible force. My head made a dull thud on the platform beneath me. I opened my eyes. Above me was the sky. It was dark. It was cold. Chills charged throughout my body. A murky blackness squirted into the sky, like ink into water. There was a rumbling noise below me, though I didn't know where. A brilliant flash of light blinded me and I saw indiscrete objects flung all about me. Almost simultaneous with the flash was a thunderous roar. I was hurled upward violently.

"Nightmare," I thought and fell again into a sound sleep.

The next thing I knew, warm sunlight shone on my back. I worried about burning, as I burn quite easily. I imagined inexplicably that I shouldn't worry about it. I thought no more of nightmares.

I had the impression that I was floating, gently bobbing up and down. There was a certain uneasiness connected to the undulation. My stomach was in quite a state of unrest. I had a headache. Then I realized the true reason for my discomfort: I wasn't myself. If I weren't myself, who was I? I thought of Alice in Wonderland and started to laugh. Before the laugh emerged, I sucked something gritty into my mouth. I spat. I opened my eyes again. White.

White and granular. Little green pouches of wet plastic were wrapped around my head and my right arm. The light was blinding and my forearms stung with the coarseness of blisters in burlap. Little pebbles seemed to stick in my skin, a natural pulverized glass. The plastic didn't fit the pattern, "What the hell!" I reached up to pull off the plastic. It clung to a vine that would not release me. I was rolling in a white sand that embedded itself in my coal-black pants in a salt-and-pepper pattern. I stood erect. I was dizzy. I stumbled along for a moment. The idea that this was not me once again invaded my pacific mental climate. I couldn't believe where I was.

"Seaweed," I cleared my throat, "Seaweed!-Not green plastic!" I gazed up and down the stretch of sand that surrounded me. Directly in front of me, beyond all that sand, was a deep-green undergrowth. Still farther, rising above the dense verdure, was a mountain-peak bandaged in clouds.

I turned around. Behind me was a calm sea that embraced the beach and met the sky. "No use walking that way," I spread my arms to speak to the sun and dropped them again, slapping my hips. I knew where I was going. I didn't know why, but I knew where. It didn't matter. This couldn't be me.

I looked at my body. It must be me. But how? I gave up on questioning the impossible circumstances. I walked toward the mountain. Looking down at my legs as I pushed my feet through the sand, I saw tiny yellow spots all over my pants. "Brrr! Lyekh!" I shuddered, "Bugs!" I tried to start brushing them off, but when I did, they only stuck to my hands. I became frantic. I beat my legs and waved my limbs in a bootless attempt to rid myself of these pests. My clothing was drying out, and the more it dried, the more bugs fell from my clothes. They were coated with a glutinous substance, which, once dry, ceased to be an effective adhesive, causing them to fall to the ground. I thought a moment. The bugs had not once moved. I picked one from my clothing and examined it. It was a seed, evidently from the seaweed. I fell onto the dry sand and laughed at myself. The guffaws echoed down to the shore and back to the forest.

I arose. Periodically I remembered the seeds and snickered. The soft sand was gradually becoming hard ground. Walking almost seemed effortless. As I entered the greenery, I saw wild canaries, or some such birds, fluttering and chirping. I gasped. This forest was like none I had ever seen. Spread upon the dense green was every color imaginable. Huge flowers blossomed from each tree, and blooms ranging in size from that of a pea to proportions that made sunflowers seem cousins to violets, in the most outstanding shapes and of every hue, texture and tone adorned a path that extended deep into the undergrowth. The birds flying around the flowers yielded a kaleidoscopic effect.

I followed the path, but the black, mucky soil still clung to me from everything I touched. I heard water swimming nearby and decided to join it. I trudged through the deep mire and thick vines to a river. Or a stream. It was cool and clear. The bottom was covered with smooth rocks of all colors. They were mostly a smoky green. I bathed in the water and it transformed my black clothes into a deep-blue. Heavens, they must've been dirty! I decided. This would have been a field trip for a geologist. The stones sparkled like gems, and in the sunlight, the river bed was a million twinkling stars.

I walked in the water to the point where it was but a trickle issuing from a series of precisely-drilled holes where smooth paths had been eroded from a block of brick-red marble. I put my hands atop the stone and pulled myself onto it. It was slippery and I fell. At the top I had caught a glimpse of a stairway. I tried again. I made it. I sat on the edge of the giant slab and looked into the water.

Droplets of red and black plopped into the stream. I expected them to disperse like the inky clouds, but instead they remained an integrated whole and turned into little red and black fish. Behind them followed slightly larger brown fishes and orange fishes, darting from behind rocks. This continued for quite some time until I saw a big, albino catfish. The littler fish swam away, pursued by those bigger fishes. The big fishes began to eat the little fish, systematically: the brown ate the black; the orange, the red; other fish, not involved in this process swam uninhibited through the same water. The result of the routine was most miraculous: All the fish, save the great albino cat, began to swell as if infected and jaundiced. They turned yellow.

Then the catfish ate the sick fish. He swam to the shallow water, gazed up at me sadly, and blew a bubble. Then he turned and swam downstream again....

------------------------------------------------------------

I neared the top I heard cries of torment. The sky turned red and released a shower of putrid blood. When a drop struck the steps it changed into the clearest water, while a veritable deluge of blood ran down the mountain. I saw fragments of corpses scattered over the mountain, but the steps remained stainless.

Then, for a time, it was silent. I reached a broad plateau. There were shimmering craters on both sides of a long variegated obsidian path, which led to another flight of stairs. I heard another cry; it was a man. He was crawling from the crater. He was blotched with festered blisters. He reached out his hand and I pulled him up from the depths of the acrid vapors....

He entered a small, smooth pyramid in front of the structure through a set of triangular double-doors.... As I went to look, a deep-purple light came from the channel through which he had entered. I tried the door. It seemed to be one solid mass and would not open.

I resumed the journey toward the steps. An old hag came up to me from an unknown entry and gave me a cup, "Drink!"

"Take this cup from me!" I told her.

She [...insisted], "Drink!"

I noticed that the cup was becoming hotter. I threw it on the ground, where it began to hiss and spit, eroding the rocks as its contents poured over them. I watched in awe as snakes of increasing size crawled from the container and disappeared into the crater. When I looked up, the old witch was gone.

My pain faded. The last few steps were no problem. I came to the top, where three trees grew. They were fruit trees. I was hungry, but I thought of the cup and picked none. A little farther and there was a vineyard. The rich, full-looking grapes tempted me, but I was afraid. The grapes [...started] falling from the vine and dissolving into the soil. After the last grape had fallen, the vines began to wither into nothingness. They caught fire... spitting little tongues of flame.

I continued across a barren plain, when I caught sight of what seemed to be a city. My feet pounded harder and faster, but I grew stronger and stronger.

Finally, I reached a street of alabaster.

"What light!" I shouted in astonishment.

A man approached me. I recognized him. I backed away.

"So good to see you, Renny!" he said in surprisingly polished English. It was Tri Gnoc Van, a Vietnamese Brigadier whose friendship I cultivated when I volunteered to tutor English in a community assistance program in my first year of High School. His loss had been especially traumatic to me at that tender age.

"They told me you were dead," I whispered dumbfoundedly....

I was taken to a small room with a single bed. I was asked to wait there. It was beginning to be difficult to remember anything. I ran over my recollections of Van to see whether I had correctly remembered about the shooting. I remembered how he had been so eager for me to listen to a certain song. It was in Vietnamese, so he had to translate in order for me to understand:

I cannot sleep because I know.
I cannot sleep because I shall dream
That Death awaits you on the field.
Don't go, my husband whom
I cannot see.
Don't go, you will never come back.
You are far away
And jealous Death will not let you
Come back to me.


And then the news had come. I thought for a moment I had confused Calpurnia's dream about the assassination of Julius Cæsar with details of Van's shooting, but no, I had not been wrong. He was shot. His wife was in Stockholm, delivering a report. By the time she arrived in Saigon, he was dead. I thought of his words outside the little room where I had been led, "Here I am only a Corporal."

A small man entered the room. He smiled, "I expected you sooner."

Not really understanding what he said, I told him, "I encountered quite a bit of difficulty."

He smiled again, "Feel free to roam about our city as you wish. I am called Supelikesh. We will have our chat tonight."

Boy! What I had said! quite a bit of difficulty. It was hell.

I took a walk. I found a reflecting pond. In it I saw the reflection of The Washington Monument, but when I looked up, there was a tremendous ivory fortress. I looked into the pond again and saw the Taj Mahal. A group of young girls passed behind me, giggling. I felt embarrassed. Then some jugglers came by. I stopped them and asked, "What's the scoop on this pond? Why is it different every time I look into it?"

Their spokesperson grinned, "The dreaming pond. It bears the images of your dreams."

He was right. I waited and saw a row of brightly-colored doors, The Eiffel Tower, The Kremlin, and finally, a big picture of Faye. I wasn't as moved here as I would have been in my habitual environment. I felt an eerie loss of emotion. It worried me....

--------------------------------------------------------

We went to a room filled with bright sunlight. It made me squint. Supelikesh handed me a goblet, "Drink this. It's good!"

I couldn't tell whether the goblet was made of glass or gold. It hadn't the weight of either. The light was so bright that I couldn't see anything except the rainbow that it emitted. The fluid in the container resembled hot chocolate, but it had the taste of mead and the smell of roses. I drank it.

I fell backwards. The bright light followed me into my sleep. I was once again floating and rocking, spinning and plummeting downwards. I slowed to a near stop. I hovered and vibrated in a warm jelly-like medium. I remembered having a similar sensation one time when I fell asleep on one of those vibrating beds that you find in motels: In the motel room, the vibration turned into an absence of feeling everywhere my body came into contact with the bed-making it seem as though there were nothing beneath me to support me.

This was different in several respects, though. I was held nearly motionless as though I were surrounded by something of substance, but I felt nothing covering my skin. Usually the temperature of the air is either a few degrees above or below body temperature, and one or the other is usually uncomfortably warm or cold. During this experience, there was no discomfort in having all my skin exposed to this medium: While it was jelly-like in that it didn't hold me in a rigid position, it didn't feel moist like a gelatinous substance. I was enveloped in air, yet I was completely supported. Suddenly I awoke....

Chapter 70
Columbia Road
Rain Revisited

In loneliness and lack, disappointment and disbelief, I went back to sleep. Brush strokes of mild phosphors smeared the melted crayon likenesses of life in my soporific tears. Tears like rain, rain like the incessant drizzle that characterizes a Washington, DC Winter. The pain of losses returned. Faye's face drifted across the waves of thought that plagued my well of sleep. That painting from Normandy returned. There was a confusion of feelings that I experienced with a certain detachment and time of day no longer had any meaning. Whatever was happening, I thought of Faye and the six-o'clock-in-the-morning skies over the three-o'clock-in-the-afternoon after-breakfast stroll down Columbia Road.

The first night. The first day late. Faye and I were prancing merrily across the intersection of Columbia Road and Connecticut Avenue, away from The Hilton and our first night together. The sounds were muffled and the colors grayed and blued by a kind of fish-bowl effect that yielded a Confederate Uniformity to the lights and noises, while we avoided being hit by the streams of lazy traffic that navigated through the wing-clipped clouds. We walked at an altitude of approximately thirty-thousand feet, stepping high occasionally to reassure ourselves that our feet had not vanished into the coffee-creamer fog that rolled along the street above the grates.

That afternoon-become-morning sniffled me out of a warm bed and into the sneezing rain, my first cigarette rudely awakening my swollen, irritated sinuses. The raindrops were tiny bullets that perforated my skin like a harsh after-shave. The icy needles drove a chill into that achy, closed-in mode of mental and emotional consciousness, making every wind sharp. The sky had the appearance of not many, but one, enormous cloud, the underside shredded here and there like an old cheesecloth. The mentholated gauze bandages that engulfed buildings accentuated the curious absence of foliage. All smells were subdued, frozen in motion, a still frame in a long movie; now and again, a bus roared to a stop, deposited a few passengers and a puff of poisonous fumes, grinding its gears and dopplering into the distance.

I looked at Faye. She was different. I was different. We were changed. She returned my look, through her different eyes and I shivered. The nature of her embrace had altered, she held me more tightly; maybe it was the cold, but she wrapped herself about my side as if she were smuggling an icon around in the streets of Florence. She hanged now on every word I spoke, just as she clung to me, she grasped each fact as if it came from an intensely interesting adventure story of which I was the hero. Faye no longer looked at me in the way she did as she helped me from the steps of the theatre, she didn't joke as much, either. It was as though she had begun to see my life as a book, or a ballad, with that sort of scrutiny that comes from an unknown source deep beneath the retina.

This brought about a change in me. I was uncomfortable cast in this role, and expected at any moment to execute one of those pratfalls that typify loss of dignity in slapstick. What made me even more uncomfortable was that I didn't. I established direct eye contact less and less, wishing for something to break this ungodly tension. It was like an endless opera without a leitmotif. I couldn't let this go on, never letting her know what a bumbler I was at times, but at the same time, I was ill at ease trying to be myself. I didn't know who I was anymore.

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Index

Footnotes:



1Warner Brothers, © 1943

2Paul Henreid

3Ingrid Bergman

4Humphrey Bogart

5When I got someone to read the manuscript for me, the professor whose course I'd taken said, "Nice Paragraph, much better than anything in  [The first assignment, the opening paragraphs of the book]"

6The professor's final comment was "Very good prose throughout-I couldn't edit. I need to know more about the content [handwritten: Or is it context] to approach it that way. Start at the beginning (of the story) next time-don't pay any attention to the course outline-I wrote it!"

File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.30.
On 26 Jan 2003, 21:32.