Babu's folder

Gabriella.

Hello. My name is Gabriella Kapplan. Call me Gabe--long a--not Gabby. I am here today . . . excuse me. I'm new at this. Let me start again.

Welcome. We are here today as guests and by invitation. It appears not all who received an invitation chose to come.

My role is a kind of advocate, standing in for a benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous.

First, just to go over things we probably already know. This is the invitation delivered by personal courier. You have each have received a copy and signed for it.

You are hereby invited to spend the weekend of June 10 and 11 at J.K. Place, a boutique hotel on the island of Capri, Italy, all expenses paid except travel to and from.

There is no obligation whatsoever. No one will try to sell you anything, nor will you be presented with anything to buy. Think of it as a random act of kindness for which you are the beneficiary. Perhaps you need just a short break from your usual routine.

On Saturday morning at ten, there will be a short meeting (this one) in the Globe Conference Room (here) to present an offer. The offer involves a monetary gift and the minimum requirements for its receipt.

You may attend this meeting or not. You may accept the offer or not. Perhaps you will think of it as a second act of kindness, or just plain good fortune. Perhaps you will think it is lunacy, and that I am not serious. You would be wrong in this.

A reservation has been made in your name. No other guests will be staying at J.K. Place this weekend. You and other invited guests will have the place to yourselves. Relax and enjoy.

Well, that is it, and here we are. I think everyone is present who registered with the hotel. So we are all on square one, as they say.

She paused for a moment and then said,

The second item on my agenda is to present the above mentioned offer in detail. This is it, all of it. You all received a copy as you entered the room.

A year from now you will be given one million euros as a gift if you adhere to the following conditions.

1. No sleuthing around.
Do not try to discover who I am or why I am doing this.

2. Ssh!
Keep this offer a secret--from everyone.

3. Renounce your culture for one year.
Think of it as a coat you are wearing and just take it off.

Short and sweet? As promised.

You have this offer in writing in the form of a "promissory note," which if you agree, you must sign and date. Like begets like. You keep your promise; you get what has been promised to you.

Oh, quoting exactly from my presentation notes, and on behalf of our benefactor, "Please sign the attached note and give it to my advocate. Then return here next year to receive your deserved gift."

One final information item. Here is an affidavit and account statement for a certificate of deposit showing 100 million euros, the interest it's accruing, and the date all moneys can be withdrawn without penalty. That date is one year from the twentieth of last month, allowing sufficient time next year to distribute the promised amounts. Naturally, certain information has been blocked out.

You may examine this affidavit and statement yourself, if you like. Come to the table here and have a look in this folder I have made to hold the relevant documents. This statement, I assume, is provided to show that this offer is backed sufficiently for, shall we call them, random acts of kindness?

That is all I have.

After you have had time to consider this offer and perhaps meet other beneficiaries, I mean prospective beneficiaries, we can meet and try to answer questions. You can retract any promise you make today, if you like. Not a long but a sufficient waiting period for such an extraordinary offer, I think. Shall we say tomorrow, same time, same place? before your departure? Checkout time is noon. Nine in the morning sharp, then.

As she said these last words, Gabe looked as if she was getting ready to leave. She picked up her pen and dropped it into her briefcase. She shuffled her notes and tapped the stack to even the papers. As she did this, the conference room erupted in a low buzz and it was growing louder when one voice rose above the rest. The loud voice asked, What do you mean by culture? Another asked, how will you know if we meet these conditions?

Gabe looked up and appeared surprised there was any question.

Babu.

Hello. My name is Babu. I am sorry. Miss Kapplan cannot join you today. You met her last year. She sent her best wishes. I am here to keep your benefactor's promise. I am here to confirm you have received your money.

You promised not to question the person who is your benefactor. Promises of a personal and business nature worth so much material gain deserve respect and discretion.

I believe I put that incorrectly. We make promises because of mutual care and honor. I trust you agree, and that you were able to honor your part.

Finally, you set your culture aside for almost a year. I assure you no malice was intended by this, only goodness and joy. Your experience should establish the truth of this.

During this past year you wrote Miss Kapplan the details of your bank account to receive your gift should you fulfill your obligations. As of this moment, the money has been transferred to you.

Thank you for coming today. It is a day of celebration. Don't you agree? I have asked that the hotel place a banquet before you on the terrace overlooking the sea. It is a beautiful day. Let's enjoy it together. You may relax. You may be yourself. There are no more rules or conditions.

Babu left the room, and on the dias there were two folders. He returned a few minutes later to retrieve them. He found just one.

Mercy's shadow

[I suppose this piece somehow wells up from my dark side. I also know an angry crazy person, impossible to live with, and I have experienced first hand having been driven to extreme frustration, although I have never gone this far unimaginatively. And it puts out an imagined but no less palpable reality, a thing to be witnessed and at some level understood. Good only exists, I'd pontificate, because evil does . . . such is the dualism of every thing.

From the view of imaginative variations to come at what is, this piece offers some interesting possibilities based in part on intentional ambiguities. For example, where would this question lead one: Grounded in what is said and only that, what is the relationship between the speaker and you (mentioned twice)? and the man she lived with for eight (or more) years? Ask further questions like these, and you will get additional tentative realities, I imagine. Leading to . . . an open and comprehensive (integral?) conclusion to bank for future decision/action.]

I've told this before, but I can tell it again if you like. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. If I had it to do over, I would. Even if things was worse than now. This is nothing compared to living with him. I didn't actually live with him. I lived at his mercy. And that finally got me. I mean I realized it. I only lived because he let me. He watched. I was under his thumb. Every minute of every day. My only safe place was the bathroom. He wouldn't come in there, trained he was, like that. But he would bang on the door if I was in there too long, longer than I should, "to take care of normal business," he said. He was like a dog, and angry. Oh, the anger. Anger and meanness. I took it for as long as I could. I think eight years is long enough. After I moved back into the house, it started. I should have left him then when it began to get bad, before even that. My sister warned me. I don't remember the first time, but early on. She finally said, "Bash the bastard in the head. The world'll be better without him." I finally got the message, but bashing seemed so brutal, or something. The word. Cruel, I guess. She said, "Show no mercy." Like him when it comes right down to it. But in the end, I got pretty angry, pretty desperate. Bash. Yes, that is what I did. Skull caved right in. I guess almost anything does with a with a hammer. "Lucky hit for a girl," he'd have said. He always said stuff like that. But this time he didn't. He can't. At that point I didn't care about nothing. Not me, not him, not my sister, not mom, not what would happen, not if he lived like a vegetable from then on or just died right there and then. Nothing. And I'm happy now. I was pretty shocked at first, but now I'm OK. At least sort of peaceful. This place is heaven compared to our old dump. Plus there's heat and TV, and it's clean. I couldn't even tidy up, he had me so scared. Like a mouse or something I was. No, he was this big cat and I felt like this tiny helpless thing. Yes, maybe a mouse. I just wanted to get away from him. Hide in the corner. But I couldn't after I decided to come back. He was always there. Always. Watched me. Talking. Never let up. My sister warned me. I guess I lost days, months. Probably most of those years. I had nothing else but to do what he said and try to avoid those hands when he got riled about something. He'd hold his arms straight down and his hands would begin to make those fists. I'd freeze up, stop whatever I was doing. Something silly. Nothing, really. I lost years, and I don't even remember stuff. It is like a blur to me. I remember when it started and when it ended, but in between? It's all fuzzy. Like his head. Like it was. He deserved it. The judge didn't think so, and his friends, those people who'd come around now and again. But I know. Yes, I know. And my sister. No one would believe me about her. They said she didn't even exist. Imagine. Well, check it out. Check my family tree, or whatever you do. I am sure to this day I know where she is, but no one cares. No one even asked. "Bash," he said. She said, "Bash away," and he did. Took her out the back door and didn't come back for a long time. Told me to stay right there. Last thing I heard for a long time was that screen door bang. I still hear it if I think about it, which I don't. Well, after seeing that, I was so scared. Like frozen I was. I know where she is. In a better place. "But sometimes when you open your mouth, that's what happens." He said life was like that. "No freedom of speech 'round here," he said. I didn't know what he was talking about. But now I do. I can say whatever I want to here. Even talk to you. I don't have to be quiet. I am not a mouse. It is better than living like that. And my sister. I am sure she knows. She is in a better place. I am sorry she's not here, but this place--she wouldn't like it. She with the short happy life. Me, I hope I have a long life. Mostly not happy so far, even before his nap--I couldn't even move, he'd get so angry. Said I was always disturbing him, makin' noise and such. But I was very quiet. Maybe I'll be OK, if this is what I got comin'. Who knows? They're gone and I'm here. And it ain't so bad. Only sometimes, when the others get to yelling and making noise, like they are crazy or angry or something. Or when those friends of his come round. But all the doors keep them away. I am safe. And he's not here to bother me. Mercy. Mercy. That's what there is sometimes in this world. But the good kind, the kind where nobody really bothers you much. Yep, him and my sister gone. Just me. I wonder what Mom thinks of all this. She probably saw it all, and she saw it all comin'. I think in some way she can rest in peace now. In good mercy, I guess you could say.

Still-born

I wouldn't say I can't write one of these stories--a novel, for lack of a more precise term--but it seems after three tries, I should think about my desire to do so. Here is the deal.

The first was about a guy who had a recurrent nightmare of being watched from behind a curtain or darkened doorway. He would have the experience of this in, shall we say, real life, and that would be his last. The voyeur was one who just wanted to study, no kinky or scary or violent stuff involved.

I got to the point that it seemed to me the plot would be boring for anyone to read. Plus, my excursions into the character of the watched teetered--more than teetered--on philosophical exposition, Jungian archetypes, etc., not necessarily interesting for anyone except me, plus it was fun to have the plot turn upon itself. What would it be like to watch? What is it like to be watched? And these would be the central genre of questions that occupied the professional interests of the main character . . . who dies of his own nightmare made concrete by the voyeur.

The story started like this.

As my father instructed from behind me, I held the mirror at arm's length.

"Now," he said, "look at yourself. You at a distance. Can you see yourself as I see you from here, over your shoulder?"

I confessed I could and followed his every word despite not seeing the point.

"Tilt the mirror so you can see me. There. Now you see me. I am a different image. Because I am me, of course. But also because I am not you. Now, move it back so you can see you. It is not you in the mirror. But it looks like you. It is the image of you, but it is something or someone other. Here now, then gone. Get it?"

I confessed I didn't. And so it went like that. He had infinite patience. But I didn't have his gifts, his way of looking at the world out there as some kind of object that he could focus on, or not, and understand, by his way of seeing, that there was both sameness, unity. And there was difference. Other. And that, he contended, helped him in his personal life, which he said was all we had, our personal lives. The roles of father, businessman, friend, all of them, they were just different views of him but not him. It was this divorce from everything that helped his sanity, particularly in the final years when he became less, I would say, acute. And he said it had helped him since his mid-twenties when death, he was certain, stalked him. To keep that specter at bay or in perspective, my father returned to the mirror or some other method he had and the reminders of who he was and was not. He was able to categorize the images and the identities that went with them, he said, and he found peace, mostly, throughout his life. It was a quiet, distant, and sometimes lonely existence, from the outside anyway.

I am afraid the lessons didn't take all that well. But now and again I look out there as if in a mirror to see what it is that is there, or appears to be there. I try to see it separately, distantly, and not as a part of me. But I have not had the peaceful moments my father said he had. I look over my shoulder now, and I know he is there even though I cannot see him in detail anymore. I know he is there. And clinging to that, I suppose, has led me to try and try again to get it, that elusive subject or object or image lesson.

But so what? I stopped about half way through. I called it Followed.

The next project was called Vanishing.

"Don't leave blood, semen, or menstrual discharge behind you as you run."

That's how it started, about a privileged guy who just decided one day to disappear.

Or perhaps this would have been the start. I couldn't decide before I left this one withering in the incubator.

Aside from Percy Ignatius Weasley, who after all is a fictional character, it is inconceivable that just twenty-eight years ago anyone's real parents could have named their son Percival Franklyn and then gone off and died. But happen it did, and therein lies one reason for this someone's disappearance. Who wouldn't want to with a name like Percy? But that is perhaps too simplistic an explanation.

PF's adventures take him around the western US and then on to Europe, finally ending in a new friendship, or relationship, and the revelation of his truer self, not the same as the one from the life that he had been living. Other characters were involved, mostly to try to find him, and they too had their own revelations, including dropping out of the game of hide and seek involving PF. Search of self by self and others, as others discover themselves too, or something like that.

The problem with writing this one was, after less than a third of the way into it, I got bored. Now how is that? My main and other characters bored me! My readers could not have that, I mused, and so the project foundered.

The latest--A Serious Affair, for lack of a better working title--goes like this (ignore the numbers in parentheses):

Hal, charismatic and enigmatic in the prime of life, (1) falls from his horse leaving his wife, Lillith, and his mistress, Jeanne, to carry on. Memories of him and the preparations he made help them with their grief and more.

Each feels her loss differently, but Jeanne's commitment to personal, especially spiritual, development, plus the separate bequests from Hal, show that the women will cope and thrive better by cooperating to achieve what (2) Hal would have wanted.

With Hal's loving guidance, (3) Lillith is already more aware of her power to attract, yet her personal development is still held back by a life of near celibacy and distancing others. Lillith would give up this her private way to wholeness with Hal in favor of avoiding the pain of grief and just living a comfortable life, but for a crush on Jeanne and the money and emotional support Jeanne needs to realize Hal's vision, a small conference center to support leading edge thinking and action.

(4) Jeanne realizes that she has not only received important lessons but also a mandate from Hal when she recalls her memories of their times together. Having to deal with the real property he has left her helps her step beyond her troubled business and up to a higher calling. Although she feels she should Lillith alone and give her space for grieving and not focusing on her husband's other woman, she can't. Her own grief compels her to share intimacies with Lillith. And she needs Lillith's financial help. Jeanne faces new challenges in acting in Hal's stead as model for Lillith and the point person for a near-complete vision.

The eventual opening of Hal's conference center signals a change in Lillith and Jeanne's relationship as it has evolved since Hal's death. They discover a new beginning out of allowing destiny's (title?) passion to work its magic.

It doesn't sound bad, but isn't this also boring? Grieving women find renewal out of a dead loved one's ashes, or some such thing, plus there is this do-good, personal development center now up and operational as conclusion. The triumph of the human spirit--yuck! End of story? What if I spiced it up a bit by taking away the progress. Not everyone progresses, some regress, some have dark sides that sabotage others along the way, etc. Naw, still not worth writing, and not worth reading.

Where does this leave me? Well it is clear I have these three stillborn scribblings. I feel I need better plots, or as a writer friend has told me, "just tell a good story." Well, I like the stories and their possible development as a result of going further with them, but I can't get beyond the outlines and first partial drafts.

John Irving in a recent interview said that if you are not up to revision, you are not a serious writer. Well, what about not having anything to speak of to revise? What am I missing? I mean, what am I missing that these stories do not have enough in them for me to stick with them longer? to get to the point of making revisions?

Recently I have written exercises, each about a thousand words or so, and these have been immensely rewarding to do, to revise, to re-read and find there my own genius, perhaps something only I can appreciate. And I have put out some pretty good, if obscure, poems. They too have satisfied the urge to write, to get what's inside out. But these longer fictional works--conceived in my own head and not based on any biographical reality except perhaps my own knowledge and values, not things that happened to me or somebody I know--they have eluded me.

I have thought of going back to the longer works and writing in thousand-word chunks--dialogues, descriptions, scenes, background materials, streams of consciousness, whatever. Then I could piece them together, either by just dumping them into what I might call a new (for me) form of long fiction, or craft them together somehow during revision. Rather than start with the big picture/story and working it down from beginning to end in a long string of text, properly ordered and complete, I could start from the pieces and work my way up to the magnus opum.

The first work was one which discovered itself as I wrote it. That writing was satisfying until I asked if a reader would ever want to slog through all of that just to have a guy die and another crawl back into his obsequious life. The second had this discovery aspect plus a physical journey to organize the story, mostly the western states. But I sort of got stuck in Reno in a casino in the middle of the night of the first day. The third project never got beyond the core summary, although I had an idea of the first three or so scenes. And I had a sketch of the attractive 29-year-old almost-celibate, as told by a unisexual friend. Yeah, a little weird, but I had a promising draft, rich enough to qualify as a kind of literature, or so I think (this fragment I have posted).

I think I am still back with the problem of story or plot. My characters are interesting, to me. But they don't do anything interesting. Perhaps I am really attempting a character study or two, or should be in order to continue. But is a character study what I want to do?

To qualify what I said above, Followed had a lot of me in it. The two main characters had identifiable aspects of me. PF in Vanishing had less of me, although it could be argued that I have been vanishing, or erasing self in some sense, for years. A Serious Affair has as its main characters two women. I can't say either as currently conceived shares much of me. The progress, if that is what it is from novel ideas one through three, is increasing distance from the autobiographical. Each, however, is imagined, created through a process of thinking and developing as it, each writing project, progressed. Is this a kind of maturation, leading to something? and what?

What did each singularly lack? What made me think they were boring, or would be? First, each character I created was honest and true. They were who they were, and they were not bad, as in evil. In fact, one could say that each was true to him- or herself, and in that sense good, without tragic or lesser flaw. In the Affair project, the two women come off as goody-good! Cooperating on a project to save others, after and as they saved themselves. What is missing? Conflict. A villain. A character tic, or two, or more. Some spite, or maliciousness, an unhappy ending.

For example, what if Lillith caused her husband's death in some way, or she just watched him die instead of going for help? And the revelation of this sometime later in the story would have an effect upon her friend/competitor Jeanne, such as to put the project in jeopardy, or arrest Jeanne's will to complete it, or so forth. Well, this complication would be a development of the story, but for what purpose? To keep the reader from being bored? As the would-be author, this is boring for me. The story becomes like just any other psychological drama or soap. And if it did, that does not seem to be what I want to do. There is nothing wrong with that, but for me to do it, all the writing, organizing, and more, I have to have some stake. Money and fame are not attractive, nor are they realistic outcomes.

Which leads me to think that it is non-fiction that is my interest, rather than fiction. And it is this deep interest in bare and reasoned truths rather than entertainment or stories that try to disguise or cleverly teach bare and reasoned truths that has me writing, or trying to.

In the process of self-effacement, I have come to a point where I do not tell stories. Not about me. And I do not see them or remember them as I go through my days. It could be that the absence of an adequate story for a novel has something to do with my own arrested or blindered development, my own alienation.

I would have to say that it is not the hackneyed problem, writer's block, that I am talking about. I have the story, the plot, the characters, locations, points of view, and all the rest. I just get to a point where writing and completing the plan seems without justification, intrinsic reward. I could go on, but I choose, based on considered reasons, not to proceed down the corridor to the reception room at the end, or whatever the metaphor.

Now for the obligatory turn. It is possible to add additional "reasons" here, but these too are on a never ending path. That path must not be avoidance but punctuated by a stopping point or two along a way toward, toward the next. To pick one of these projects up again, to create a new one having learned the key--I need to be hooked, compelled--I cannot say.

The overall effort here has been putting understandings out there to look at, and for the reader--this writer being one--to take to any next step. This piece does just that; admittedly it does not resolve itself, nor does it report on the fates of the three incomplete stories. These are all stillborn; would that they and this reflection lead to being born again, born still--or just allow us to rest in a fuller sense of what is, what should suffice, for now.

Un-i-sex

She stopped by the other day and told me the latest. I have become the listener now in our relationship. It was different before, but now it is this way. And I don't mind. In fact I like it. Listening is a way of relaxing in a conversation, isn't it? And even one's silence and patience have an effect. Or if it is just acknowledgement that you have understood, if you understand that way of listening, that can help too. I mean understand the other person. So I am fine with it. But this is not about me.

She said that Brad had stopped by her desk at the office and shuffled about. She didn't get--until he had to come right out with it that he wanted to buy her a coffee--that he was really doing that, trying to invite her. She said that she was so dense. I didn't agree. But maybe she is. Anyway, she met Brad, maybe it was Starbuck's. She was all out of sorts. It had been raining by then and she had forgotten her umbrella. She was all wet with her briefcase from the office and some packages she had picked up from Lacey's. They were holding them for her. And she wanted to take them home. New things she said she needed. Some even sexy, although I know she wasn't going to show them to anyone. There was no one in mind, no one current. In fact, there had never been to my knowledge. We have known each other for a long time, and I think I would know. No, there is no one. But this Brad. She said he was nice. They talked about work. And then she left. Just like that. I asked if there was anything else. Something he did or said. She said no, nothing. I asked about whether they would be meeting again, and she said that was a curious question. Of course they would see each other at the office. It was like that with her. She never seemed to wonder about things. I mean men and how they might be interested. She didn't even talk about being attractive for guys, although I know she takes care of herself. She really does. She always looks great. But who am I to talk like this? It's really none of my business. But in a sense I guess it is. I am listening. She tells me these things. Sort of makes it my business. But I don't think it is my place to ask questions. Not questions like that.

So Brad came and went, I guess. Just like so many others. And no word from her about anything more, anything juicy. Anything romantic. Maybe she just doesn't have it in her. No, that is not it. I think she just doesn't pay attention.

I remember John. He was a looker. I saw him once. They shook hands when they parted, although to me he looked a bit awkward about it. She extended her hand first, and he hesitated a moment then took her hand. They shook as business people do. I guessed that that was how she wanted it. I didn't think all these things at the time, just an impression. But now that I am telling you, that is how it seems. When we talked about him, and I said he seemed nice, she said he was, and that was that. Off she went on some other subject. I think it was about a weekend she was planning, a spa weekend, to get away from work "and everything." I never knew what "everything" was. Her life seemed to be work, a bit of shopping, exercising at an aerobics center. Her social life was a kind of mystery. I only heard about stuff when she wanted to talk. And her need to talk--can I call it that?--came and went. So I don't know about everything.

I tried to put together when she needed an ear and when she didn't. My life, after all, was not all that exciting. But hers, well, hers could be, or could have been. Sometimes she was stunningly beautiful in a natural sort of way. She dressed very well. You'd expect that of a businesswoman today. Well, she is not so much a businesswoman as a career girl. Administrative assistant, I think they call it. But she dressed the part and more. Perhaps it was the firm she was with. I mean a dress code, maybe unspoken. I don't know. Anyway she didn't even have to dress that way to look fabulous. So she got lots of attention just because, because she looked the way she does. Her beauty is physical, yes. But there is something else. I guess it is what people mean when they say it comes from the inside. She is definitely beautiful from the inside, and out.

She smiles a lot. She is friendly. She is talkative, but also a listener. And the way she listens, she draws you right in. You become special. But when you act, I mean men, they act on that special feeling they get when they are around her, off she goes, literally. Or changes the subject, about the weather or sports or, you know, she avoids getting personal. It is conscious. But I think sometimes it is not. More like something she's learned, from her childhood or something. She just isn't interested in getting personal, except with me, I guess, and I am sure with members of her family, especially her brother. Her brother seems to be important in this way. Anyway, she is beautiful. And if she feels she has flaws or is in any way less than what she is, she doesn't talk about it, not with me.

Thom was someone she talked a lot about for a while. Then one day she stopped. We were having lunch, and I asked about him. I joked that a Thom could sound like a T or a Th. I preferred the latter, and I asked her which she preferred. We laughed a bit, said the Th sounded better. She said he was interesting but that she would not be seeing him again soon. I asked if he was married. She said no, but that he would be out of town a lot, and "he said he was very busy." This way of saying it caught my attention, but I let it go, for at that point she looked out the window and commented on the approaching clouds. She said she thought it would rain, although the weather-cast had not said so. There was a brief silence. I tried to prolong it by not saying anything. Like making a space for her to say something more, something she really wanted to say. And then she began talking about her brother.

He seems to be in the picture, but I know he lives quite far away. I guess they talk on the phone. No, they do talk now that I remember. I haven't paid much attention, but come to think of it, she mentions him a lot. He is younger and apparently has had some terrible experiences with women. They seem to have dumped him, always dumping him. She never went into details, but it seemed that frequently she was counseling him by phone on how to cope, how to understand what happened, what women were like, all that sort of stuff. I guess he pretty much relies on her and she, from her distance, takes care of him.

One time I asked her what she said to him. What was the advice and stuff. She began by saying you know how women are. And I said I didn't. No one is allowed to generalize in my world, and I think whether man or woman, neither can say how it is with the general other. So I won't venture a comment or opinion even where my own sex is concerned. She said that was interesting, "very intriguing," she put it. And then she gave a couple of examples of what she said to her brother. She said that women were people too and that because one did not choose to continue in a relationship with him did not mean that he caused it, a break that is. Each person has her own issues, like expectations. I liked that. Each person has her own issues. And then she said something like maybe you were doing something that somehow turned the girl off. I thought this interesting also, because it is this awareness of what she does that I don't think she has, I mean in relation particularly with men. But I could be wrong. Obviously I must be, if she is giving that advice to others. Especially to a man, if a brother counts as a man, which I think he must, right?

Well, all this is for nothing. She is a wonderful person with a lot going for her. She is kind of old not to have had a serious relationship, particularly for a person as attractive as she is. Twenty-nine and never been kissed. I don't actually know that, but about the virginity I'm pretty sure.

One time the subject came up. Our conversations are not as freewheeling as I would like, otherwise we would have been clear on this subject long ago. She certainly knows my story on that score, for sure. I guess she holds herself back with me, too. Anyway, she said she just didn't feel like other women she knew. She felt kind of a-sexual, or that she didn't really didn't know what sexy was. She said she had felt something funny, and scary, once with someone she liked a lot. I asked it this person was male or female. She gave me a strange look and didn't answer but continued talking about how she thought she did not fit in that world. When it came to parties, she said she found herself by herself or talking to different people. Sometimes a man would come up and say something cute, but she always brushed it off. She said these lines, she called them "lines," were curious but basically not credible. That was it, she focused on the line as if from another planet and not in any way related to what the other person really was trying to say. I said that was very interesting, what did she think they wanted to say. She said they were probably not going to say, whatever it was. And because of that, she didn't need to respond, except politely and briefly. She said they were hiding themselves, and if that is what they wanted to do, she would respect that. I said that was also interesting, but maybe a man and a woman did not have to spell it all out to each other. At that she said that if the whole business of flirting and sex and anything more was based on this deception, she would prefer not to play. At that I asked her whether or not she had ever kissed a man. She said she hadn't and fell silent. So I put it another way. Had a man ever kissed her? She said yes, and fell silent again. I said "Well?" She said, "That's it. That's all there is to say. I have never had sex with a man."

I take her at her word. And I feel I got pretty close to the truth then. I am no threat to her, and so disclosing to me is pretty safe. She has said as much. And so I don't go off and speculate about what really happened. I think if she wants me to know, she will tell me. And I don't need to know. It is she not me who is, like, leading this relationship, our friendship.

My next question was about other women, because she sometimes talked of people she knew who were, she said, pretty or attractive. I think she used the word pretty. So often did she use this word to describe someone that I had a small voice inside me that said that there was something there. Why would she say someone was pretty and then go on to describe what she looked like, what she was wearing, and so forth. It was like that with Melanie. She talked about Melanie several times over the course of several months. I think it was last year. By Christmas, however, the name disappeared. I asked about her once or twice, like with Thom, but she said something like Melanie no longer had the time of day for her. Same story, I guess. I wondered what that meant, especially when she said that Melanie had a different life and friends and was always busy when she called. Well, I just thought that explained enough. But there was one thing. I think Melanie held a special if temporary place in her life. There was a kind of sadness or bittersweet quality to how she said she no longer had time for her. It was the faintest suggestion, but I thought I saw it in her eyes before they averted mine. Sometimes I stare while listening. I think I must appear pretty intense, or interested. Maybe I unnerved her.

From time to time she would comment ever so briefly about some woman passing by or sitting over there in the coffee shop. We often met there, the one near my work, not hers. She seemed to notice. Not so much clothes as the face, the lips, or her figure. I don't know. It is just a feeling. Don't women talk more about what other women are wearing, not so much about how fit they are or how sensuous their lips are? You tell me.

Anyway, I have nothing much to go on in this department. But my point is that there is a singular lack of any relationship she talks about. It is all about surfaces and he is nice, or pleasant. It never seems to go deeper. She does not seem to be hiding but then again it seems she is. And why would she from me?

From time to time, especially lately, I have thought I should just stop being the listener. Maybe I should talk about me and my sexual fantasies and such. Maybe my problems. But I have yet to change the way we meet and enjoy each other's company. I guess it is more about her, but I enjoy being with her and hearing about how things are going.

Often it is about some thing. Something she is currently interested in. And she has a wide range of interests that have nothing to do with relationships, men and all of that. For example, lions. She went through a lion stage. She researched them, downloaded documentaries, borrowed books from the library about African predators and such. She went on and on sometimes about those lions. The mating also. Sometimes when she talked about that and the role of the lioness, it was like she got some kind of energy. Pent up sexual frustration, my shrink would say. I don't know. But what she had to say was interesting. Then she went off on how big our galaxy is. She sounded like some kind of star-struck kid, one that just could not get enough of how damn big the universe is. She measured stuff in millions and millions of light years and all of that. It was like she was in a constant state of wonder. Sometimes she would catch herself and stop and ask if she was being too adolescent or something. I would say she was, and she would stop. It was like these worlds of things, or animals, were a kind of strong attractor drawing her in by some force greater than herself, maybe outside herself. I don't know. It just seems like a big thing for her sometimes. And I guess she goes off on these subjects with men who strike up conversations with her. I wonder what effect that has. Maybe they would rather have the conversation center around the nothingness of getting eventually into each other's pants or something.

Is she frustrated? Not at all, I guess. Me? That's another story. I hope I haven't said something here I shouldn't have.

Theresienstadt visitor*

Part I

CARLOS: No one, not the guards or the commandant can take that from me.

INTERLOCUTOR: But they can torture you, make you do things you would never dream of doing, like killing. With stones, with your own hands. Or raping your own daughter.

CARLOS: They try to break me by doing nothing. By letting me rot here. By neglect, not giving me food. By not seeing my sores or hearing the sounds of my sickness.

INTERLOCUTOR: Yes. And still you say they cannot take your freedom. You have no freedom here. In any sense.

CARLOS: They cannot take my words.

INTERLOCUTOR: They can rip your tongue out. Have you thought of that?

CARLOS: Yes, they can hurt me, deprive me, command me. But they can't take my choice, my own words from me. They can't even take what I have said to you. You will go out of here with my words engraved in your heart, if you have one.

INTERLOCUTOR: Whether I do or not, you will be here. A prisoner in your incommunicable words. Your choices, which I dare say place you in the most horrible of states. Look at yourself.

CARLOS: Is communicating so important? There are worse prisons than living confined in one's own words. Even those words that do not travel from these lips.

INTERLOCUTOR: This place then.

CARLOS: Yes, this place. And others. There are other jails with invisible bars and guards with keys they keep out of reach. They will never give them up, let you just borrow them for a moment to set yourself, shall I say it, free. Oh, there are guards and bars. And despair. Hopelessness.

INTERLOCUTOR: A prisoner then of words, and longing for what others have and you don't.

CARLOS: There is nothing that others have that I can't do without. Look at me. I am proof of that. I am still here. I am talking with you.

INTERLOCUTOR: And when visiting hours are over?

CARLOS: I have these silent words, the ones in here. The ones no one hears or can hear. In them there is no prison but total freedom. No one takes that from me, as long as I am sane enough to utter them, to manage with them, to imagine with them. As long as I am alive, my body not so dead that I cannot any longer.

INTERLOCUTOR: Grim. Very grim.

CARLOS: Ultimate salvation. The only one from here.

INTERLOCUTOR: Would your God could hear that.

CARLOS: I suspect he does.

INTERLOCUTOR: Then it is prayer, these words, this corner of your dim, residual life that is this freedom. You communicate with your God.

CARLOS: No. I just communicate. It is not important that anyone is there to listen, to hear me.

INTERLOCUTOR: And what do you say? Other than what you have said here today to me.

CARLOS: I am still here. I am me. Separate from you. Separate from all that is that I can see and feel in this place. Even the hopelessness. In that simple declaration, there is immense comfort and power. No one can touch or tamper with that.

INTERLOCUTOR: Except if you die, or they break your body. Is that what you call spirit?

CARLOS: A word. There are others.

INTERLOCUTOR: Have you confessed?

CARLOS: I have told them what they wanted to hear.

INTERLOCUTOR: Was it the truth?

CARLOS: Truth is what they wanted to hear.

INTERLOCUTOR: You are equivocating.

CARLOS: I need at least some amusement.

INTERLOCUTOR: At my expense. I don't understand this freedom of yours. I am wasting my time. There is nothing to tell those on the outside who are waiting for word from you.

CARLOS: I have told you what you can say. I have told you the essence. Freedom is precious. And nothing except total, thoroughgoing incapacity can snuff it out.

INTERLOCUTOR: I wonder if they will take hope from that.

CARLOS: They have their own prisons, their own jailers. They just need to recognize them for what they are. Tell them to look for the the guards, the commandants, the interlocutors. They are all around. And once you see them, declare for yourself and, through that, against them.

INTERLOCUTOR: People like me. I am one of them. A keeper. Someone who would take freedom from you.

CARLOS: Yes. You see that now.

INTERLOCUTOR: The one who questions would have you as he wants you. As without your freedom but submission to me, my words.

CARLOS: There are worse prisons than your words.

INTERLOCUTOR: I suspect there are.

[CARLOS is silent.]

INTERLOCUTOR: You are a different sort. Good bye. I suppose it is useless to say I hope to see you in better spirits.

CARLOS: Yes, but I could use some clean water and warm food.

INTERLOCUTOR: I am afraid I have no influence over such things.

CARLOS: My points exactly. Think positive thoughts. For me, if you like.

(Interlocutor falls silent.)

Part II

(Two armed guards in the yard ordered the inmates standing nearby to kill the two who had failed in their escape attempt. Carlos was one of those given a direct order to begin the execution. He refused and just stood there. Others took up stones and the horror ensued. The guards walked away when the two were dead and when those who had participated had hung their heads.)

INTERLOCUTOR: You could have been killed on the spot.

CARLOS: I know that. I wasn't. It was just chance.

INTERLOCUTOR: What made you refuse?

CARLOS: Killing is not in me, even for self preservation.

INTERLOCUTOR: But you knew what the alternatives were. Kill or be killed.

CARLOS: You forget. Chance saved me, gave me a reprieve. Till I don't know when, but a reprieve still.

INTERLOCUTOR: You know you will not leave here alive. No one does.

CARLOS: I know.

INTERLOCUTOR: You can be certain. And?

CARLOS: And knowing that, it was going to be then or anytime. Maybe even today. That certainty gave me a choice. I chose by not throwing a stone that the cause of my death might come right then from someone's heart, or some impulse in that moment of chaos and shock. But it didn't. I don't have control over others.

INTERLOCUTOR: So that's what your freedom is about. About knowledge that you accept about a fate now or later and choosing to accept that fate now or when it will be.

CARLOS: Yes, death's certainty. There is also no escape from here, where I know it will take place. I just don't know when. And if I accept that knowledge and that one unknown, my own unavoidable death every minute here, I gain a kind of dispassion, can I call it? I think of it as freedom.

Killing those inmates would have been horror for me. Choosing not to kill them and not suffer every minute since was the only possibility for me. And now that it turned out this way for however long it will, there is no change in my essential condition. I am here. I am alive, still. Death awaits me--still. I have a small range of choices, but the one about killing someone else, or killing myself, that is not one of them.

INTERLOCUTOR: But by refusing you might as well have asked them to kill you.

CARLOS: They didn't. They didn't maybe because they know I know. Waiting to die, anticipation and fear, is harder than dying. They think my waiting is worse than death itself. The guards are not so stupid. Or if they are, they didn't know what to do in the moment, and on that one day, they did what they did, spared me. The irony is no one is spared, ever. Maybe they knew that deep down somewhere. Or maybe they are so evil that my living under a death sentence that can be carried out by anyone at any time is a greater cruelty that they can inflict.

INTERLOCUTOR: So that leaves you where?

CARLOS: Here, of course. They put me here, now isolated from the others.

INTERLOCUTOR: Maybe they think this will increase your fear about what they will do to you.

CARLOS: I know there is no escape. We all wait till the end. And in that condition, I am free not to wait. Death will find me, or I will find death when the time comes. I have a freedom from the imprisonment of my own soul, or spirit if you prefer.

INTERLOCUTOR: Yes. You are a different sort.

CARLOS: You said that before.

INTERLOCUTOR: Did I?

CARLOS: You are wrong. I am no different. I have weak moments. But I've merely seen and accepted. I understand. And where there is understanding, or death, there is liberation from whatever is. And most days I can attend to other matters. You see, they cannot really control everything, appearances not to the contrary.

INTERLOCUTOR: This is my last visit.

CARLOS: Every moment is the last.

INTERLOCUTOR: Spare me your philosophy. Save yourself. At least try to.

CARLOS: Spare me your illusions. I prefer your questions.

(Carlos gets up from the corner and stands by the door as if he had just entered the cell. He takes a deep breath, and this time silently begins mouthing words no one can hear.)

__________
* Inspired by a visit to Terezín in the fall of 2009 and reading the novel, _The Shadow of the Wind_, by C. R. Zafon.

Clinical trial failure

GIRL: No, that was nice, really.

BOY: I am so sorry.

GIRL: It's OK. Some guys just can't.

BOY: Oh?

GIRL: Yeah, sometimes it's like that.

BOY: How do you know?

GIRL: Well, I just know.

BOY: You just know? This is something you just know?

GIRL: Yeah. And we talk.

BOY: Who's we?

GIRL: You know, girls.

BOY: You mean girls talk about this stuff? between each other?

GIRL: Yes. It's OK. We can try again sometime. Soon.

BOY: [silence]

GIRL: So?

BOY: So what?

GIRL: So what do you think? about trying again, I mean.

BOY: Seems a bit clinical to me.

GIRL: What do you mean?

BOY: Well, you seem to know all about it. And you even know people and talk with your girlfriends and . . .

GIRL: Yes, we need to know. I mean we need to be prepared.

BOY: Prepared for what?

GIRL: For . . . for aborted attempts.

BOY: Now it really sounds clinical. Pretty cold.

GIRL: We could try again right now.

BOY: Jeese. I don't like talking about this. It is like school or going over the steps before bungee jumping or something. You--I really got to get up the nerve for something like this.

[prolonged silence]

GIRL: I think it's time to cut you off.

BOY: Cut me off? Off what?

GIRL: All this. I don't think you are mature enough to handle it.

BOY: Handle it? I can handle anything. I can prove it.

GIRL: Well, not just, er, recently . . .

BOY: I don't want to talk about it.

GIRL: OK. See you later then.

BOY: Just like that?

GIRL: Yep. You're not up to it, or can't . . .

BOY: That's a bit harsh.

GIRL: OK. If you say so.

BOY: I do. I do say so.

GIRL: Well, see ya.

BOY: Doubt it.

GIRL: Don't be a spoiled sport.

BOY: I'm not. I just . . . I just thought . . .

GIRL: Thought what?

BOY: That it would be more . . . soft or romantic or something.

GIRL: Maybe I didn't use the right words.

BOY: Yeah, maybe.

GIRL: See ya!

BOY: Hmm. Charlie said it would be like this with you. I didn't believe him, but now I do.

GIRL: Charlie? Charlie! What did he say?

BOY: I think it's time to cut you off. I'll spread the word.

GIRL: What did you say?

Behold the lamb of God**

Father Rumi hung up the phone after having promised to stop by the farm and have a look late that afternoon. He promised, after Colin told him of the eerie way all except one eye looked at him. Father Rumi readily admitted to himself that he was more curious to see the abnormal lamb for himself than to minister to Conlin's apprehensions about how they--the other six eyes--stared at him. Father Rumi thought he should reassure his parishioner that at least and in this case a most unusual creature also bore the stamp of God's flock. And after all, Colin was one of Rumi's flock too, who called in need. It was Father Rumi's _raison d'etre_, to respond compassionately and unreservedly to any call for help.

_Seven eyes. There's a curiosity. And one on top of its head that stared just up in a vacant or knowing gaze. That image brings new meaning to adoration and contemplating the divine. Silly thought. But what did that eye see?_

To be stared at with six eyes, six pairs, that was almost normal, Father Rumi thought.

_But for animal or human to have seven eyes, well that was a wonder, not to mention that six gave Colin the creeps. Colin was probably just unnerved or amazed that they were staring at him, following his every move about the barn. Maybe the lamb was just hungry and Colin held the promise of salvation from hunger? Or was it just the fact of a lamb born on Christmas eve with seven eyes?_

Superstitions abound still in this land, he dismissed.

_No awe or omen need necessarily be our response. Colin was probably just a bit taken aback by one of nature's mistakes. I'll go and visit him and bless his lamb. The church's complicity averts duplicity._

Father Rumi, proud again for his clever rationalizations, went about tidying up after this special day's rituals and celebration, and he settled into his reading chair and was soon in a kind of waking dream reminiscent of images conjured up by Coleridges' Xanadu and its gardens sprinkled with colorful koans.

Colin was not easily agitated, but this event and that being in his barn were enough to stir up and hold valid Jungian archetypes made manifest and then some. Colin was odd but not a fool and not unschooled. His offbeat readings as well as his interest in the esoteric practices of the ancients who once lived on his land made perfect sense to him as a modern if modest small farmer, and bachelor with not too much time on his hands. The seven-eyed lamb born coincidentally(?) last night on Christmas eve took on an auspiciousness and importance beyond the mere vicissitudes of nature that one sees, or hears about after five beers in the pub, or reads about in the sensationalist press. One eye in the position of the seventh chakra contemplating the heavens--well, that was just too much to ignore, that is if one could ignore the silent other eyes that just watched his every move.

Colin wondered whether he had done the right thing, calling Father Rumi. Well, at least he could give witness, especially since he didn't know if there would be any more surprises involving the lamb, or anything else. Village folk, once they got hold of this news, would be asking to see it or would just show up, like from last Christmas until after Twelfth Night when that light, UFO they said, had appeared in his horse pasture that bordered the state highway to the north.

__________
** Page 181: A shepherd calls the local priest when one of his sheep gives birth to a lamb with seven eyes. _The Writer's Book of Matches_.

Recommended reading***

Manager: Let me get this straight. You recommend to every customer the same book? We can't keep it in stock.
Clerk: Yes, that's right.
Manager: Let's see. _The Satanic Verses_. To everyone?
Clerk: Yes.
Manager: Why, for God's sake?
Clerk: It's a good book.
Manager: Have you read it yourself?
Clerk: No.
Manager: How can you possibly recommend it if you haven't read it? Not to mention that it is sort of politically incorrect for me to even stock it.
Clerk: It says it all.
Manager: But you haven't read it.
Clerk: Don't have to. It is all in there.
Manager: How do you know?
Clerk: Well, if you must know, here is the deal. If you read anything, anything of some substantial minimum length, doesn't matter, fiction or non-fiction, in there you will find the answers to all life's mysteries.
Manager: Interesting thesis. But I doubt _The Satanic Verses_ is going to help you bake a cake or prevent a souffle from deflating. Otherwise we could put it with the other cookbooks. What am I talking about? This is crazy. You have got to stop it.
Clerk: Well, think of all the sales and no complaints ever lodged against me, or dissatisfaction with my recommendations, what I have said, I mean . . .
Manager: You don't make recommendations. You make only one.
Clerk: You seem to be the only one complaining. Have you read the book?
Manager: Well, no. But that's beside the point. We can't be recommending just one book. We have others to sell.
Clerk: People buy other books. I don't prevent that.
Manager: But they go out with their book and either a copy of that damn book or they have reserved a copy for when the backorders arrive. And I only order and re-order _The Satanic Verses_. Nothing else.
Clerk: I guess our customers' experience reading this book stands as a testament to what I have said. I mean my opinion that one book is as good as another, if you read it carefully.
Manager: I don't think that follows. But why this book?
Clerk: There is enough there, they tell me, to keep them entertained and enlightened for a lifetime. When they come back to get a copy as a gift, that is. Seems like pretty often.
Manager: Pretty strong recommendation.
Clerk: Yes.
Manager: What do you say to customers? Do you reveal your opinion about reading or this philosophy of yours?
Clerk: It depends.
Manager: On what?
Clerk: On the customer.
Manager: Now you are a psychoanalyst. I don't believe this.
Clerk: Is there anything else?
Manager: Hmm. Could you just recommend something else once in a while or something.
Clerk: Sales'll drop.
Manager: I'll take that . . .
Clerk: Chance?
Manager: Yes. I mean, no.
Clerk: I think you will find the right answer to your questions after you read _The Satanic Verses_ and consider this chance business of yours. At least it might help you with your indecisiveness.
Manager: Don't start with me. I am not the one on trial here.
Clerk: I'm on trial?
Manager: Go back to work.
Clerk: Yes, sir.
Manager: I suggest you read that book before recommending it to another customer. You might change your mind, or your philosophy or whatever.
Clerk: I have another one to recommend if _The Satanic Verses_ ceases to please and instruct.
Manager: And what is that?
Clerk: Oh, it will come to me. The dust jackets and any illustrations figure into an important decision like that.
Manager: For Christ's sake!
Clerk: Sounds like a lesson from _The Satanic Verses_.
Manager: I haven't read it. And besides, half the world hates him for writing it. There is, or was, a contract out on his life for writing it and defaming the prophet.
Clerk: Which prophet?
Manager: See, you should read the book.
Clerk: Why?
Manager: To see what it says and why all these people are so up in arms.
Clerk: Brilliant. I can use that with some our customers--like you--teetering on the edge. Thanks.

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*** Page 126: A bookstore clerk decides to recommend the same book to all customers, regardless of what they ask her. _The Writer's Book of Matches_.

Unimagined life worth living?****

Gary sat on his bed and thought about retiring. He decided to just have a brief nap and get up later and take care of toilet, teeth, and tea, a ritual before falling deeply asleep for the day.

Gary had a night job, so it was his routine to get to bed about nine or nine thirty in the morning, get a good eight to twelve hours sleep, eat, do house chores and return to work, six days, that is nights, per week. Sometimes he lost track of the day and date, but this didn't much matter. The guys at work always told him during the last shift before the seventh night off.

Gary's naps were filled, as was his sleep, with vivid and colorful adventures. Naps often brought blonds and panoramic parts, like giant breasts gently hovering above him, begging to be touched and tasted. It was when he could bury his whole head in the soft fleshy parts around the imaginably large and tumescent nipples that he enjoyed the most. Yes, naps were short, wet and pleasurable.

Longer periods of sleep had him doing the daily things most people do. Shopping for food, going to the cinema, meeting friends for beer. These dreams were mostly predictable, not particularly exciting, comfortable. Gary had all he needed, including reading material, philosophy mostly. And he read, or reviewed word for word what he had read, while asleep sometimes, if that isn't too strange, or too much of a stretch for the imagination. Gary felt content and fulfilled in most parts of his life.

Work was not much different from his immaterial imaginings during sleep. There he had set duties that he did and did well. There were colleagues to chat with and girls to watch and fantasize about. Life was good. No nightmares waking or sleeping, and no dramatic turns or challenges to contend with, until this.

As he lay back and put his head on the pillow this morning, Gary felt something he had never felt before. Or rather, he didn't feel it and didn't remember having felt it before. Although his head lay cradled in something soft, there was no pillow, no bed, no shades to draw, no sound of morning traffic outside his window. In fact, if it is not stretching the truth too much, there was no apparent window where during his nights and days there had been one before. Gary looked down towards where the foot of his bed should be. He saw nothing. There was nothing there.

"Now, what the?"

Gary immediately recognized it. He had fallen asleep and this was one of his lucid dreams, but definitely a dream. He relaxed and waited for what would happen next. He thought about a particular pair of recurrent big breasts, but not one materialized. He considered having beer with some friends, but could not remember or visualize where the sports bar was, or who his friends were.

"Funny."

He decided to stop this non-starter nap, get up and have a snack or bit more. Now, was it to be breakfast or dinner? He couldn't remember the last time he ate, or what he ate. He wasn't particularly hungry, but eating sometimes helped him doze off when he had a difficult time getting to sleep.

"I have no body!"

Gary was slipping away, from himself. No nap, no dreams, no breasts or shopping, no sleep, not even his own body.

"Time to get up."

Gary sensed that he was now awake. But nothing was any different except the suspicion that it was all in his mind, his imagination. That existed but nothing else.

"Now, who was it who wrote about everything is mind, that we construct our realities?"

Gary couldn't remember, and he couldn't find his bookshelves where he thought the answer was, some writers whose last name began with H? It would surely be there, but where, if it is not stretching the truth too much.

"Ah, I get it. It must be my night off, my day, er, night of rest. I don't have to work or sleep. So, what can I conjure up now to do?"

__________
**** Page 192: A philosopher comes to the realization that all known existence is a product of his imagination. _The Writer's Book of Matches_.

Exit PF

[Would writing "literature" constitute doing phenomenology? Would it be evidence of careful description of a what of what-is? Would writing of this sort be a legitimate object that another could experience in the same way, or close to the same way? A kind of truth as foundation for or variation of experience? Such is this proposed "immaterial artifact" from last year's archive. A test case.]

CHAPTER ONE, Exit PF

Aside from Percy Ignatius Weasley, who after all is a fictional character, it is inconceivable that just twenty-eight years ago anyone's real parents could have named their son Percival Franklyn and then gone off and died. But happen it did, and therein lies one reason for this someone's disappearance. Who wouldn't want to with a name like Percy? But that is perhaps too simplistic an explanation, and in fact it is not true.

Percival was not Percy nor was he Frank or Franklyn. From an early age, under his uncle's tutelage and with his blessings, Percival Franklyn Donner, the son of Johannes Christian and Winefred Rachel King Donner, was PF. PF Donner. Nothing else. Although this was not his given name, all forms and applications, except birth certificate, were completed with first name PF, surname Donner.

There was a small problem with the department of motor vehicles when PF turned sixteen when they threatened to put his full given name on his driver's license, but that and subsequent documents soon conformed to the only name PF answered to, engineered via a quick trip to the UK and a little paper called a deed poll. Joe King, the only father PF knew, readily approved and apologized for not having taken care of this detail earlier, but he said to PF, "Lad, it really was your decision, and now it's time to make it official." His uncle had left a door open for PF should he decide sometime in his life to choose Percy over PF.

A jaunt back to the old country did them good. PF became official, although the person by that name now had an infection both caused and cured by international travel, and Joe found again that the only international travel he wanted was the trip back to his adopted country. The mother country was nothing he missed.

***

The windy two-lane highway from Williams to Clear Lake in the late afternoon, mid-week, is a lonely road. On his way home PF's car died suddenly and it rolled slowly onto a dirt turnout on a sharp curve.

"What the?"

He looked at the dashboard for a sign, and then he turned the key and tried to start the motor. Nothing. He got out of the car and walked around looking at it, then jumped back in. He found the hood latch and popped it open. He got out and stared at the motor. There was nothing obvious he could see, perhaps because there was nothing recognizable, just a beautifully machined and symmetrically-shaped metal sculpture that could have been something other than a motor to the untrained eye. He left the hood open and went back and sat in the car, turned the key again to try to start it. Nothing wrong with the starter; the engine just did not catch the spark and ease quickly into its usual quiet rhythm. PF finally saw the gas gauge was resting past empty at the bottom of the reserve tank indicator. He hadn't noticed any warning light. Was the gas gauge even alive? As a matter of fact, was this gauge for measuring something or there to balance some Bavarian design imperative? Hadn't they said they had fixed everything and took the car for a test drive this morning when it was serviced? He turned the lights on and off and turned the key to different positions. The headlights came one, but the instrument panel was lifeless. PF got out of the car again and shut the hood. He went round to the gas tank and stared at it. He got back into the car and opened the gas-cap access panel. He put two fingers in, stretching them way down. He was quite nonchalant about it, maybe hoping for a sign, some fumes perhaps, to confirm what he now thought one problem was. Not the first semi-rational move today, and like some others yet to come, when he removed his fingers, the lip of the mouth of the fill hole caught the knuckle of his middle finger and tore a centimeter of skin right off the top.

"Yeow!"

He grabbed his finger and pressed it to his chest. Blood was going everywhere. And it hurt like the dickens. PF danced around about three turns like a Sufi dervish and came to a stop. PF looked up to the sky as if there were someone there to talk with about this stupidity. Silently he stood there for a moment, and then dropped his head as if in a sullen funk. He guessed that stupid questions didn't deserve answers. He walked back to the driver's side of the car. Wasn't there a first aid tin under the seat somewhere, or on the floor in the back seat? These new European cars are supposed to come with everything, aren't they? But there was nothing obvious in easy reach.

PF leaned onto the steering wheel with his bad hand and reached for the keys. He got out, went round to the back of the car and opened the trunk. Traces of blood now seemed to map his movements--on the seat, the keys, now the trunk. He found the first-aid pillow, as it turned out, unzipped it, and fumbled for cotton pads to hold against his finger to stop the bleeding.

"Unbelievable."

PF found three pads and some gauze wrapping. He managed to unwrap the pads and bind his finger. It looked like something out of a cartoon when a character bangs his finger with a hammer and it swells to three times normal size. Only in this case, the gauze and cotton pads accounted for the bulk. Blood was slowly being absorbed by the pads, and after having closed the trunk, PF sat on the driver's seat, this time facing outwards, his legs on the ground. He grabbed a bottle of Calistoga and poured some mineral water over his good hand and the un-bandaged areas of his wounded one and let the bloody, bubbly mixture drip to the ground. He had nothing to dry his hands with and so he just sat there letting his hands air dry, thinking what was next--less really about what to do than what would happen, not so much in passive surrender as not yet ready to take control and remedy the predicament.

He reached for his cell phone and searched the display for a signal.

"Of course."

He tossed the phone onto the passenger-side seat. It bounced and fell on the floor out of view.

"Great."

All this while no cars passed going to or coming from the lake and where he was headed, Glenhaven, a small but exclusive subdivision of second homes. It was getting late in the day. It would be dark soon.

"That's the way it's going to be."

PF decided to lock up and start walking. He grabbed his Brooks Brothers sports jacket and his briefcase, gently pushed the car door shut. He clicked the door lock button on the key fob. The car failed to answer with a short beep, and PF was off in the opposite direction the car was headed, toward Williams. He gave little thought to Glenhaven and his uncle's house where he and his girlfriend were caretaking for the winter. Although civilization was not closer in this direction than towards home, something just seemed to take hold and directed him that way.

After about a mile, it was noticeably darker, especially in the tree-shaded sections of the country road that everyone called a highway. The January winter in this part of California was not harsh, but it did get dark early. The two-lane road was narrow with not much of a shoulder, and PF thought that at any time a car could come round the bend and smack him.

That vague something grabbed him again, and he turned to return to his car to wait--it would be safer, he told himself--or he would flag the first car he saw going in either direction and hitch a lift to the nearest gas station.

A CalTrans maintenance vehicle, something like a dump truck with other equipment attached to it, came along shortly, and PF thought it was going to hit him. It was big and orange and took up most of the road and shoulder on PF's side. PF scrambled off the pavement and partially up an embankment. The behemoth presented no real danger. It was proceeding slowly and came to a stop a few yards beyond where PF found himself slipping down the embankment, the eroded rocks and gravel quickly becoming like spilled ball bearings. Before falling down, PF caught his slide and trotted up to the passenger side of the vehicle and heard out the open window, "Gave you a bit of a scare. I wouldn't hit you."

PF stood on his toes and called to the driver. "Can you give me a lift?"

"Not s'posed to, but hop in. Next stop's the maintenance yard about a mile this side of Winters."

"That'll do," PF replied absently.

As he mounted the beast and grabbed the opening door he asked, "A gas station between here and there?"

"Not exactly. Couple of 'em this side of town, though. What's the matter? Broke down?"

"No, I think just out of gas."

"Was it parked under some oaks on that turnout a ways back?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Dark green. Mercedes?"

"Blue. BMW."

"Diesel?"

"No. Regular. It's got the economy engine. I don't know much about cars."

"I don't know much about foreign ones. You got triple A or something?"

"No. Insurance, but no roadside service except you. No cell signal around here."

"Want me to radio ahead? Four Corners Gas monitors patrol and road crews. Maybe they can send someone out."

"No, that sounds a bit, um, complicated. But I will need a ride back, I suppose. I'm sure I can hitch a ride from town, right?"

"Sure. Lots of people coming and going in Winters. But I'm not sure they are coming up here. Friday afternoons and evenings usually a sure bet. Lots a people goin' to the lake for the weekend."

"Well, the best way to look at this is it's an adventure."

"Looks like you had some adventure, with your hand."

"Cut it on the car. Gas tank actually. Nothing much, but it bled a lot. I think it'll be okay."

"You live around here?"

"Yep. At the lake. Glenhaven. My girlfriend and I are taking care of my uncle's summer home."

"Sounds nice. What do you do all the time? Pretty quiet up there this time of year."

"I've just asked myself the same question recently. Oh, I have chores and there are people coming and going. Workmen. Gardener and so forth. I make sure they do what my uncle wants done. But actually the work is all finished now, as of yesterday."

"Sounds like a big place."

"It is. But it is quiet most of the time. It'll be even more quiet now there's no more work on the house. After winter."

His words trailed off. PF was getting a little uncomfortable with the grilling. He decided to not be so informative. He didn't know this guy. Maybe he was just in that kind of job, one where you don't get to talk to people a lot. The miles passed.

"Got a job?"

"No. Don't really need one right now."

"So, you're not from around here."

"Not really."

Fortunately, Winters was just up ahead.

"Here's the yard. I gotta pull in."

He stopped the truck at the yard gate.

"Four Corners is just down that way, couple a hundred yards. See that stoplight in the middle of the intersection there. That's it. On your left. Can't miss it."

"Thanks for picking me up. I really appreciate it. Oh, do you think my car is safe up there?"

"No one around. Nobody'll notice it. Come tomorrow, though . . . "

"Thanks."

The driver began to say something like, "What's your . . . ?" But before he could get an answer, PF had hopped off the truck, threw the door shut and was walking away. He was off in the direction of Four Corners. At that, the CalTrans truck pulled into the yard and the driver didn't look back.

***

As PF walked towards the gas station, he looked around and didn't see anyone or any cars. On the right just before the gas station, there was a bus stop. Light lime green January grass was announcing a Northern California spring. And there were papers and some empty beer bottles under the bus stop bench. Black graffiti symbols were painted on the wooden posts holding up the metal shed roof, and the back side had rust brown boards, most of them missing. You could see through the bus stop to the grassy field and eucalyptus trees in the distance.

What happened next is a little hard to explain.

PF thought first that it might have been that his purpose at his uncle's house was concocted. Gus, the Italian gardener, always took care of everything when Joe was not there. PF was there to be in the house, to just enjoy it. He had nothing else on his agenda. Society in the city had become routine but not especially boring. He did not miss it much and apparently it did not miss him.

PF mentally backed up and saw the bus stop and the two lane road between him and it and the field and trees in the background as a black and white photo in his mind. He stood there studying the framed image and wondering if the photo could be mounted on a large white wall in a gallery, or in a large estate house in the wine country. He experimented with different sizes for the photo. He imagined an apartment in an architectural magazine showing a minimalist living room with a life-sized photo of the bus stop. Then he saw it as a miniature framed object on a powder room wall at the Pacific Union Club atop Nob Hill. Then he just pictured a glossy print in his hands as he stared, as if examining the details.

A bus honked and broke this reverie. The driver slowed and signaled PF if he was waiting for the bus. PF waved him off, and the bus accelerated towards the traffic light some hundred yards ahead. PF continued on his way to the gas station and wondered where the bus was going. Would it turn left, right, or head straight on. He never saw as he dropped his gaze to the road and carefully placed each footstep in the bull's eye of imaginary stepping-stone sized targets on the ground. The asphalt and dust and gravel captured his attention like some mandala, and he just slowly proceeded, lost in thought and the smell of new grass and a feint one of eucalyptus.

Some things happen and we know why. Other things happen for no reason. Still others happen and it is in retrospect we think we understand by piecing together as much of what came before as possible. Which of these obtains in what PF did next is unclear, but it is probably of the genus things-just-happen.

The Four Corners Gas Station was at the junction of 12 and 29. It was old, built of wood with one island and three pumps. It was painted green with gold trim on the outside, with white and cobwebs above the underside of the drive-through area. Two large eucalyptus trees shed bark, branches, leaves, and seeds all over the building and paved areas. One farm truck was filling up with regular as PF looked out from inside the station where you pay and can get a candy bar or bottle of cold pop from an ancient cooler that stood like a horizontal sentinel, not vertical like newer vending machines. Was it like a red coffin? A man who should have retired from everything sat behind the counter near the cash register reading a newspaper. He looked up and asked PF, "Can I help you?"

"Where does that bus go that just went by here?"

"This time of day, it is going back to the city. San Francisco by way of Oakland. In the mornings it comes from there and dead ends in Redding, I think."

"That the only bus that comes through?"

"No, once a day there's a bus to Sacramento. I don't know where it comes from, probably up I-5, Red Bluff, but it never stops. Supposed to, but there is no one these days from here who gets on or off. So they usually just cruise on through. Bus stop is back a ways on the side of that road there, Highway 29. Should be coming by here in about ten minutes. If you want it, you'll have to flag."

PF said thanks, turned, and left. He walked out to the corner of the intersection and looked in each direction. It was getting dark. He saw no headlights or tail lights either direction. He felt alone and at peace. He looked at his finger. The blood now was a rusty brown on the bandage. The bleeding had stopped. He turned and walked back to the bus stop. He dusted off the bench with an old newspaper that had been left at the top of the trash heap in the oil barrel that sufficed as trash can. He sat down, placed his blazer on the bench next to him, and looked straight ahead.

The Sacramento bus pulled up beside the stop and the driver opened the door.

"You waiting for me?"

"Sort of. You go to Sacramento?"

"Yep, Interstate 5 then up 80."

"Okay."

"You gonna get in?"

PF did and asked how much was it to Sacramento. The driver told him as he pulled away. PF paid the exact fare and walked to the middle of the bus and sat down next to a window on the left side. He looked at the Four Corners Gas Station as the bus pulled away and turned down the country road on its way to a real highway. PF would never see his coat again.

***

Joe King's place was about three acres fenced on three sides and the house was set back from the road. It was about fifty feet from the lake's edge and built on wooden stilts. It was a comfortable home and Joe used it only occasionally now. He was not making weekend trips as much now from his home in the Berkeley hills to Lake County and his private refuge. And summers? Well, it was pretty hot at the lake. Age was catching up with him and he didn't have the energy he once had for the trek and all the work he liked to do on his little parcel of paradise. He had hired Gus 6 years ago to help out, and Gus pretty much did it all with his grandson, Tony, in the summer and on infrequent winter weekends. The fruit trees and 66 grape vines got the best of care, and Gus ate well during the harvest and drank well the next. Joe didn't mind. Gus had become more than a gardener, in fact a trusted property man anger.

Joe suggested Connie and PF spend some time at the lake and enjoy what would eventually become PF's property. Get to know it, he said. Not like a visitor but as a kind of proprietor. Learn what needs to be done.

"Take the winter. I will join you in spring. What do you have better to do except hang around and go to cocktail parties and lunch with the sons and daughters of the old money? You can be the caretaker. There's some work I've arranged and you can look after that for me."

Connie sat in the straight backed chair looking out towards the driveway. Not her usual place. It was darker than dark outside at eight in the evening. And she had not heard from PF. She expected him at four or five at the latest. She had tried his cell but no one answered. Where could he be? He is hours late. She phoned Joe.

"Have you heard from PF?"

"No, he's with you, right?"

"Well, he was supposed to be here hours ago. He went somewhere to have the car worked on and pick up some things. I haven't heard from him."

"Maybe he stopped for dinner or a movie. Would that be possible?"

The conversation went on for a few minutes like this, but in the end, neither had a clue. But Joe said, "He's a big boy. Can't be far away." To Connie Joe seemed unhelpful and unconcerned.

"Open a bottle of wine from the cellar. Pick one several years old. They are the best. He will be along. Maybe he had more car trouble and his cell died. Could happen."

By noon on Thursday, after having called Joe again first thing in the morning, Connie decided PF was missing. She called the sheriff. Two officers came to the house, and she gave them a report. Their visit began with, "Do you have any idea where he might be?" To which she answered, "Would I have called you if I did?" It ended with, "We'll keep in touch." Connie was left unsatisfied. So she got on the phone and started calling all her friends and a few of PF's. No one had heard from him and couldn't think of where he might be.

By Thursday evening, Connie was talked out. She walked into Glenhaven settlement and went into Gracie's, a bar and restaurant. She found herself in a crowd and decided to lose herself there in company, drink a little too much, and have dinner. She returned home about ten and the phone was ringing. She missed picking up the receiver in time and cursed herself. It was probably PF, she thought.

He usually used that phone because cell reception at the lake was spotty. She decided to call his number again.

A voice answered.

"Who is this?"

"Who is this?"

"God damn you PF."

"No, this is the Lake County Sheriff's office. I am deputy Hill. Who is this?"

"Oh, deputy. This is Connie, Connie Smart. I reported my boyfriend missing to one of your officers this morning. No, last evening."

"Yes, I know. We have been trying to reach you. The phone number you gave us has been busy all afternoon. We have your boyfriend's car and we are towing it to Upper Lake Garage. We'd like to ask you some more questions."

"Do you know where PF is?"

"Not yet. That is what we wanted to talk with you about. Have you heard from him?"

"No. Is there something wrong?"

"We don't know. Can we come by and talk with you?"

The patrol car showed up in the driveway about 11. A rather round deputy got out and Connie was waiting in the open doorway. He introduced himself as Deputy Banks. Could he come in?

"Could I have a glass of water?"

"Sure. Sit down. I will get it."

Deputy Banks seemed a bit nervous. Connie likewise grew in apprehension. She brought the deputy his glass of water and sat down.

"Well, we found the car. Kerry Hill told you that, I think. The car is now at our impound yard in Upper Lake. We found it on Highway 29 about ten miles from Glenhaven. It appears it ran out of gas."

"Wait, wait. How did you people get PF's cell phone?"

"It was in the car. When we were examining the car for signs of why it was left on the road, the cell rang, we thought we should answer it. It was on the floor of the front seat."

"Yes."

"Well, we looked at where the car had been left and we found some things we can't quite figure out. For one, the car was unlocked. Does your boyfriend usually leave his car unlocked?"

"No, he takes pretty good care of that car. It is expensive and he kind of babies it, you know. He locks it whenever he leaves it. But why would he leave it on the road?"

"As I said, it was probably out of gas. But we can't tell just yet. We haven't found the keys. We assume your boyfriend, Mr. Donner, still has them. You still don't know where he is?"

"No, I have called all his friends and his uncle. No one knows. And this is totally unlike him. It has been over twenty-four hours."

"You don't sound too concerned."

"I am concerned. I am damn concerned. Why are you attacking me?"

"We found some things we can't quite explain yet. We are checking them out."

"Like what?" she asked more seriously.

"The gas cap was hanging from the gas tank with the access panel open. Funny place to fill up with gas. Maybe someone left it open from just filling up. We don't know. But there was some blood on it, not much. In the car and on the trunk also. Could be something or could be nothing. We don't know yet."

"Blood? What do you mean it could be nothing?"

"Well, we found some bandage wrappers on the ground near the car. It could be he was injured somehow and got a lift to the hospital to get help."

"Did you check the area hospitals?"

"Yes."

Officer Banks seemed to be waiting for Connie to fill the empty spaces with information of her own.

"Well?"

"Nothing. No one has seen anyone by the name of PF Donner or the description you gave us earlier today. By the way, do you have a picture of him here?"

"No, we don't really live here."

And so the conversation went. Officer Banks said he got off duty at six in the morning, and tomorrow Officer Hill would be on the case, so to speak. They would call as soon as they had more information. Officer Banks asked Connie if she would do the same. She promised she would.

It was late and Connie was feeling weary from the ordeal and her one-too-many at Gracie's. She threw herself on her bed and closed her eyes. As she did so, she realized she wanted to look for PF herself, but she didn't know where to start. And she was stuck in a place where she knew no one, and a house with decor she would not have chosen. And she had no car! She began thinking of _Gone with the Wind_, but arrested that idea as the comparison was too insensitive to think of further.

***

The downtown bus terminal in Sacramento has never been seemly, just seedy. All manner of humankind. The large-plastic-bag lady in the corner counting something she had drawn from her Levis, picking one piece at a time from her left hand and keeping it in her right as she carefully chose the next item. Probably change. The tall thin man with the shopping cart in the middle of the waiting area staring up at the ceiling and turning slowly around. He had a knit cap on and a black down jacket with mud stains on it. The line of people at door seven, ten or so people deep. They seemed to know what they were waiting for, although there was no bus outside in the loading bay. PF was out of place. Briefcase, Italian shoes. He knew it but no one else seemed to notice. All benches were full. And more people were standing around. Buses were coming and going. There was one ticket window open, and the clock above it said a little before eleven.

"Where are these people going at this time of night?"

PF exited onto L Street and walked to the corner of 7th. He looked around. But the streets and sidewalks were deserted. Traffic was not heavy but the air was, and it was dark. He looked back towards the bus station entry.

On the corner there was a convenience store. Sodas, sandwiches, newspapers. Perhaps, PF thought, they would have some band aids. His bandaged middle finger was sure to have stopped bleeding at this point. He could change the dressing for something less noticeable. He was in luck. He bought a box of band aids and a package of Corn Nuts and package of cupcakes. He walked outside again and changed his bandage while standing on the corner. There was a trash container across the street next to a bench. He crossed, threw away the old bandage, applied the new one, and concluded he would live. He sat on the bench and started with the cupcakes.

He thought he should call Connie. He was sure he would be missed by this time, and he looked for his coat and his cell phone. He recalled finally that the last time he had seen the phone was in the car. He remembered not getting a signal. Would it have been different had he gotten one, been rescued so to speak and proceeded home? Yes, it would have been different.

In fact, he felt different now, very different. Not only was he in downtown Sacramento in the middle of the night but also he was somewhere where no one knew where he was. He was alone in a new place of strangers not like him. The thought exhilarated him. And the black greasy cupcake with the plastic filling tasted good and sinful. PF sensed he was devilish doing something he had never done before and that it was in some way forbidden, or at least against implicit and explicit promises he had accepted between himself and those he was in daily if not weekly contact. It was rather easy to have broken away for this lark. And it felt as if he shouldn't be doing it, but he liked the feeling.

PF finished the cupcakes but was now thirsty. He crossed the street again and bought an iced tea and began drinking it as soon as he was out on the corner again. He looked back towards the bus terminal. There was a sandwich board on the sidewalk. He walked back and looked at both sides. Each message was the same. Gamblers special, Reno, Biggest Little City in the World and back, one night two days of fun and fortune. Free drinks from midnight till 6 AM each day. Roll of quarters and meal coupon included, discounts in the lounge and showroom of the El Dorado. PF noticed that the last departure each day was at eleven fifteen.

"And how did they calculate the two days?"

He looked through the class of one of the swinging entry doors and saw the line still at gate 7. Reno is not that far away, and he could be back home by tomorrow.

"I have come this far."

Having bought a ticket at the last minute, PF boarded the bus with what appeared to be older people and a few Asians. Each seemed to be traveling alone. No one looked like a high stakes gambler. And no one talked. The bus was about half full, and soon they were on highway 80 headed east. In a few hours they would be awakened by the bright lights of downtown Reno. Meanwhile, lights in the bus went out and passengers dozed off.

About Donner Summit PF woke up. He felt a shortness of breath. And he began reflecting again. This time he began thinking of the metaphors and coincidences. Donner summit. He was on top of something quite unlike the self that he knew. Gambling. He was also a low stakes gambler. What he was doing had few to no risks except irritating Connie. His car? It would be towed maybe. He could call and have it fixed and ready for his return. Money protected one from inconveniences. Did he have money to gamble? He had lots of plastic and some cash. He could play for a few hours and his bank account or credit balance would not feel it. The thrill of taking time off or time out?

Well, the thrill of that did not seem to figure into his feelings right now. He was tired and dozed off again as the bus pulled in and out of Truckee. PF knew there was a train that went to Reno and it stopped in Truckee. He wondered why he had not taken the train, and then thought again of where he started and how spontaneous his unpremeditated action to get on the bus was yesterday. He heard a distant train whistle and thought for a moment about the last moments his parents had, gone in a blink when the locomotive slammed into their car. His thoughts trailed off as the bus descended into Reno.

The bus pulled into the terminal of the Biggest Little City in the World and everyone slowly awoke and got off. PF felt refreshed and without thinking about it threw his leather briefcase over his shoulder and sauntered toward the bright lights. He didn't know where his sports coat was and he didn't care. If what had happened so far had been fate--his out-of-gas car--and serendipity--getting on a bus in Winters. Then the atmosphere or mood propelled him forward and through the glass door of the El Dorado Hotel and Casino. After he got in the door, he looked at the promotional packet he had been given when he bought his ticket in Sacramento. Nothing from the El Dorado Hotel and Casino. Something though from the Eldorado Sports Club. Without that invitation to start gambling at the Casino, PF headed where everyone else does sometime or later, the bar. The bar looked interesting with a live band and a few people standing, lined up for drinks.

Strangers all. Where is home for these people? Where is mine? Where is my jacket? This latter caught his attention now for a few minutes, but he could not remember where he had seen it last.

PF saw two empty stools. On the left was a man in a cowboy business suit complete with hat. On the right an experienced patron with cocktail dress with and somewhat shrunken posture. PF felt the risk of the cowboy's company less, if he had to talk with either of them.

"Martini on the rocks," he ordered quietly to the bar tender.

"Comin' right up."

PF sat there and focused on the great and surprising variety of stimuli at hand late at night in the casino. The music was something between muzak and 70's polyester. The ringing of machines receiving plastic money and paying out dribs and drabs of quarters was all around with an occasional clanging, presumably the signal of a jackpot. But even though PF looked in the direction of these jackpots, he could never spot them. And the bar was stocked with what seemed like hundreds of bottles of booze, a number he had never seen or heard of before. The clientele was a mix, but mostly white, over 50, and not well dressed except for the cowboy and the cocktail dress to his right. In the mirror behind the bar, PF caught sight of the cowboy looking at him. He turned slightly to his left and acknowledged the cowboy who also turned.

"You from around here?"

PF immediately thought he was in a western movie.

"No, not really. Just here for a night or two."

That was the end of it. The cold gin had begun to course through PF's veins. He had not eaten since lunch. And in spite of the lights and glitter and bells and commotion, he felt weary. He finished his drink and looked for the hotel desk. He found it and quickly checked in. The room was a bit gaudy with golds and reds, but the bed mattered most. He flopped onto it and began to fall asleep. After about a half hour, he realized he was not going to fall asleep actually. He just lay there half in and half out of sleep, a supremely pleasurable and relaxed state, his mind blank, vacuous stare upwards toward a mirror where he saw an image he didn't recognize as himself.