We're Passing Through a Paradise. (2024)

1

"Why would you leave me now?" Alice said, speaking fromher mental bomb crater, completely unrevulcanized by the shocktreatments, which as I understood them were supposed to make a victimhappy about her situation, or at least not as concerned. "I am soscared," she said.

Henry and I had to help her get dressed in the morning and thenwe wheeled her out in her grandfather's old wicker wheelchair toHenry's back dock patio and sat looking out across the canal at theswamp and drank coffee together. "Do I know you boys?" shesaid and grinned. Did I say unchanged? She wasn't happified, youcouldn't say that, but she had moments now of fleeting ebullience.Waking, she looked at her face, the beautiful square, chafed, Saxonetteface I had loved all my life, and it surprised and delighted her. Justfor a second. I saw it in her eyes, the delight, the monkey look ofwonder and appeal, the old primitive entrancement, Eve catching aglimpse of her looks in the stream, some lost humanoid way back inAfrica gazing at the reflection that would haunt all the rest of us fortime to come.

She looked, grinned, yes, and fell back into the welter oflostness that had overtaken her. A troubled expression came over her andthis was what she carried into the day. In the kitchen she'd ask usto stop the chair so she could look around. She was fascinated by theedges of things, by counters, tabletops, and shelves. Drop-offs, shecalled them. "My mind's like an orange that's rolled offa table," she said. She looked at me and her eyes were yellow withforsakenness. "I've been squished by the fall," shesaid.

I half-regretted not letting her stay in the hospital, whichwould have made the doctors happy, but I wasn't going to let themwhack her another time with their treatments. I never could stopfiddling with her, with the situation, and this time, scared stiff bythe look of dumbfounded desolation in her face, I had to act. Yet now,concussed, bewildered, reaching for a modus, for a mango, she seemedhalf-formed, or half-unformed, something being driven, like atherianthrope, back to its womb. No Mrs. Lazarus, but inchoate Baby Nellinstead, half-teased into the light, besotted and oddly vain, offeringsmall presents to us such as pins and buttons she'd picked up onher journey in from outer space.

"Where will you go?" she said, looking at me from hercocoon of blankets.

"I'll be back in two days."

"But from where?"

"You see this canal?" Henry said. "This water outhere?"

She looked at it.

"Billy's going to follow it down a ways to check onsomething. Then after a while he'll be back. All you have to do iswatch the water and you'll stay connected to him. He's down onit, just a few miles away."

She co*cked her head at Henry. "Do you think I'm anidiot? I would simply rather Billy stay here."

"Me too," I said. "But I have to go for ajob."

No longer myself, but a reflection of the same misalignment,underdone, too, interstitial and without issue, something dribbling outof me, some soul evacuation going on despite everything I tried, I gazedat her, filled with longing. I didn't have what it took to takecare of her--that's what the doctor said.

For various placatory and benumbing drugs they had given herscripts, which I had filled. I tried each one; some did nothing and someslammed me against the bulkhead, picked me up and sat me down to apleasant mental repast. These I split with her, but she at first wantednone of them. "I would stay off drugs myself," Henry said."But that's just me."

"I don't know how to advise you," I said.

"Just leave them there on the table," she said."And we'll see what happens."

There was a lot of screaming and crying on Rando. My part was toget this on paper, to listen and write a story about how it took youwhen your sixteen-year-old daughter was torn to pieces by a fish. Theold bridge, the one replaced after the hurricane but still used on thesly, had given way under some local cocochitas who were using it for aparty, sending half a dozen automobiles into the channel. This reallydidn't at first raze most of the fallen, except for the ones hurtin the tumble, but it became a horror when they were attacked by sharks.Six died and nine others were ripped up by teeth. Ike wanted me to godown and interview the relatives of the dead and mutilated for thepaper. Since he was the one who got Alice released from the hospital Icouldn't say no. There were quite a few crazed folks on hand. Somesat mute, staring into the back of the chair across the room. Othersjoked and cracked out an irrepressible and frightening laughter. Someargued about it as if they might come up with a line of reasoning thatwould reverse everything. Others raged. A few wept in darkened rooms,refusing food or comfort. Some huddled with lawyers. Others got busy,Florence Nightingale style, rushing from bed to bed. Still others werephilosophical. A few were religious. A couple appeared unfazed. One man,a finish carpenter, seemed not to mind at all, right up until the momenthe whipped out a case knife and slashed himself across the forearm.

The survivors I was most interested in were the ones who remindedme of Alice. A wild and murderous-tongued mother whose child had beeneaten down to rib cage and pelvis, who screamed at the police and theminister, who with a hammer smashed the windshield of the patrol car andcalled the minister's wife a lying c*nt--her I was drawn to. Andthe snappish, keen, rancorous father of another victim, who stood up atthe memorial service and cursed everyone whose children were stillliving. I got in a brief, choppy fistfight with a man who stopped me inthe street to berate me for feeding off corpses (human shark). Hedidn't mean anything by the punches, I could see that; I myself hadno animosity toward him. I say I had none, but for a few seconds--thefight was interrupted by the photographer accompanying me--I was caughtin it, half-transformed by the physicality, by its proximateness to whatI experienced with Alice. As I loomed above him, my fist drawn back, Iwanted to drive my knuckles through his skull. I called her immediatelyafterwards and told her about it, but she was still snowed in by herordeal.

"Have you taken any of the drugs?" I said.

She said she didn't know. "Maybe I have, but how can Ibe sure? Do you notice an effect?"

Unable to remember much she had begun to make things up. Herstepmother was trying to make amends, she said. "I wouldn'tlet her in the house." I knew this would never happen, andconfirmed it with Henry. She told me she was about to take a trip. Shewanted to see the blue waterfalls of Virginia, as she put it. "Ifeel as if a hurricane has soaked me," she said. "I'mlooking for the bright spot." Even as she made things up, devisedcomplicated, impossible scenarios that took her mind down twisting roadsthrough a wildwood of importunity and confusion, she was troubled, likesomeone from an archaic country, by thoughts of the simple lifeshe'd lost. The Land of Wooden Heads, she called the old world."I haunt the borders of it," she said.

I pictured her halloing across the marshes of her degradation,all that.

"You've got to do something about this," shesaid.

I called Ike and told him I was getting nowhere.

"You're doing fine," he said. "The materialis just great. The stuff from the morgue is so ghoulish and sensitiveyou'll probably win a prize."

"They're going to charge me for breaking and entering.I wasn't even looking for that trap."

"The part about being able to see all the way through thegirl's chest, see her heart--what did you say?--still as a russetpotato, yeah--that was striking. And the piece about the men going outin a boat hunting sharks with Uzis--I loved that. Murdering fish, yousaid, extracting revenge from sea trout and mackerel, blasting thejellyfish--you got a touch, my friend."

"Touched--yeah. I'm lonesome, Ike."

"How can you be lonesome--you hadn't even left thestate. Why didn't you bring Allie with you? How's she doing bythe way?"

I hung up. When I turned around the fellow who'd cut himselfwith a knife was waiting for me, the carpenter.

He flashed his sling and said, "What's this about themorgue?"

"That was my editor. He wants some more hard news."

"You feed off this, don't you. People likeyou."

I was the complaint department, I knew that. One of them."You want to get a drink?" I said.

"Yeah, sure."

We went over to Blinky's, a small fishing camp and barroomon the Gulf side, and drank a few. In the blue and red lights of thebar, composed by alcohol, the whole thing seemed to have a deep andfamiliar meaning, a meaning I could almost but not quite put my fingeron. Beyond the big plate-glass back window the lights of channel buoysswayed in the tide. A breeze skidded over the surface, turning upwhitecaps as if it were sowing them. The moon was out, a scoured, flimsything. It was a crisp, cold night in the Keys, weather you wouldremember in the way one remembered things that only happened once,incisively, long ago. A way of being I had forgotten came back to me. Iknew I fit in this set of circ*mstances, this weather and place, andeven the situation, among these grieving folk and their sundered dead,knew it in the sad and confidential manner you knew someone you lovednever really loved you the way she said she did, just something youbrush against once in a while without engaging, but never quite get usedto.

"Yeah," the carpenter said (I mentioned this). "Metoo. I don't know why I feel that way--and it scares me."

"Why'd you cut yourself?"

"There's a long explanation and a short one."

"Give me them both."

"I couldn't prevent it--that's the shortone."

"What's the long one."

"Solace."

"That's shorter."

"What's behind it's not."

"Yeah?"

He tried to tell me, but he couldn't. There were a hundredreasons, motives, cul-de-sacs of the spirit stuffed with argumentia, sadinsights, and truths like carcasses beside the road, and every one fit,every little notion about how it took his mind off things, or even theone about how his daughter was a cutter, too, or his wife, her look, theway she stared at him as if he was an idiot, but none of them put thecap on anything. Even here, down among the caskets, things weren'tclear. As we talked people came and went, townspeople with their brainshalf-murdered, mothers and fathers, close relatives, homefolk alreadystriking at the snakeheads of bitterness, already set up now for alifetime of the willies, inductees into the fraternity of those whoslept with the light on, the midnight shiverers, tremblers, the chokersand those who yelled at the dark, the execrators and the cowed, theindifferent and the falsely gay, each with his or her take on thetragedy, each with some expressed or unexpressed conclusion orperception, some at-last-realized design scrawled on a napkin andstuffed into back pocket or purse, a meaning to pull out later in theprivacy of one's own dereliction, to read over, like a poemcomposed under the influence of heavy drugs, a missive to truth andhope, perused in the yellow of bedside lamplight or sitting on thetoilet at 3 a.m., the purity of it blurring even as the words stoppedmaking sense. Just local folk, that is, wandering by, and strangers, andtourists caught in the wild fancy of frost in the Keys.

Tears, yes, the carpenter mentioned those, the noncatharticstrain. Sweats. Shameful thoughts. Alice had showed up for apsychiatrist appointment, late in the workday, intake variety, and twohours later the doctor himself had driven her to the hospital. Thecarpenter's name was Burl, but he asked me to call him Allen. Alicehad attempted to check in under a false name, but this not being the1800s it didn't work. The doctor said aside from that she was verydocile. Abashed was the word he used, a word Alice and I sometimesemployed. I could picture her, which I hated doing, false witnesser thatI was, striding along, down a busy corridor, jaw trimly set, like asail, fingers lightly poking at her own flesh, not quite stopping theleaks, the seeps of terror and chagrin, each step an erasure of hope andpersonality, each breath an irremedial loss, eyes snagging on nothingthat could save her, one more fool confounded by a turn of phrase, ayes, a phone call, a spaz in the blood that made her wonder aboutsomething or recall it, a spot of discharge on her nightgown, a scent atthe window, bird in the poinciana squeaking out her name, youcouldn't tell, always something, a mistake made, unavoidable--Ididn't want to talk about what was bugging her, which had causedanother fight--now this hospital, redemption through diminishment, arebushing of the spirit, restack, hope recused and replaced by asimplitude of affect, disaster converted into change for a co*ke, a newdesign applied to the old matrix now so worn and crumbling, thoughtslike smoke drifting in a stairwell, something else you can'tremember, of no moment now, that was once so germane. In my mind,talking to the carpenter, I watched her stop and turn to ask forsomething, and give up on it.

"Exhausted--sad--calm," the fellow said, Burl, comingto the end of his story, "like what you get when you seewhat's really going on."

"What is that?"

"What's going on?"

"Yeah."

"There's no help for it."

"For what?"

"That's what's going on. This"--he lifted hiscut arm in a vague, birdlike way--"all this. Dead children.There's no help for it." "That's because you neverfound drugs," I said.

I ordered a plate of scrambled eggs, got up and went to therestroom, put a dollar's worth of quarters in the condom machine,pulled a random handle, and pocketed what came out without looking atit. In the mirror a man with a haggard, alarmed face looked back at me."Buck up, Buster," he said. I opened the window and climbedout onto the deck--how many times in my life had I done this--went tothe rail and looked down the channel. The bridge, the remains of it, apulpy section of undigested roadway, slanted down, held by steel rodsthat looked like veins, shreds, a mass dark and without form, the wholeconfabulation nothing but the sea's upchuck. A chill sank in at mythroat, the dead, cold hand of a loved one--somebody's lovedone--pressing against me. I shuddered and worked my fists, staringdown-channel, not really looking for anything, letting whatever was outthere poke its head up if it wanted to, a little drama I tried to keepgoing at moments like this, as if to give the incident meaning. Asalways, once again, nothing appeared.

From the pay phone at a corner of the dock--skittering over toit--I called Henry for an Alice update. "She's maintaining thepace," he said.

"Ike's got me on a series," I said. "Which iswhy I'm still here."

"She has this tremor that comes and goes."

"That's because they whanged her in the head."

"She says it gives her style."

"I like tremors well enough. But what if it'spermanent?"

"She wonders about that, too."

"Where is she right now?"

"Out on the dock."

"In this cold?"

"She likes it. She's wrapped in blankets sitting in abeach chair with her feet propped on the rail. She wants to see if thecanal will freeze."

"Now we're talking about her in this ridiculous,proprietary fashion."

"Pretty soon you'll be asking about her bowelmovements."

"How're they holding, by the way?"

"Steady."

Off through the slant of plate glass the carpenter dipped a forkinto my scrambled eggs and took a bite.

"What do you thinks going on in her head?"

"She's piecing things together."

"What things?"

"I expect most of it."

"I wake up brooding on the situation, in mid-brood. Itinfuriates me."

"She'll be all right I think."

She liked to sit in the shed while he worked on a sculpture, hesaid. She liked being in the stone dust and the sound of hammering. Sheliked the chisel work, the fine scraping, the whole process. "Shefalls asleep sometimes. She curls up in the big wheelbarrow and nodsright off."

"She looks tormented when she sleeps."

"She always has."

"Really? I didn't notice it when we werechildren."

The carpenter finished the eggs and began working on the side oftoast, in long strokes elaborately buttering a slice. Choose life, theBible said, in Deuteronomy. I didn't guess it really mattered howyou did that. In a minute the carpenter, Burl or Allen, looked up andsaw me and then, convivially, he motioned for me to come in, like ahost, indicating the tattered breakfast. I gave him a little wave, thecopy of a wave Alice had used once, hand right up beside her head, froma ship railing, and left the premises.

Willie J. and his wife, Munch, and the baby came up from Key Westto keep me company and then Munch and the baby drove up to Miami to staywith Alice. Willie walked around with me, telling people to be calm."I never saw so many folks so upset," he said, though to me,on the outside at least, it wasn't so much they were upset as thetragedy had thrown the rhythm off in some harsh yet strangely subtleway. It made people leave a conversation a little early, or starttalking too soon, or mention something they wouldn't usually, orforget what they intended to say and have to come back for it, or theywould buy things they didn't really want, or refuse a courtesy andthen over-apologize, or someone would sit in his car in a parking spacejust a few minutes too long so whoever was in the shop opposite mightbegin to wonder what was wrong, though truth was he already knew and hadhimself for a moment forgotten, and even policemen would lose theirplaces temporarily in the tickets they were writing, or employees go alittle slower, or a little faster, women might stumble and catchthemselves against their husbands' sleeves, husbands who for thefirst time in their lives had begun to daydream about vacations in aforeign country, and children catch themselves yelling, or runningfaster than they were used to, small things usually, as if the invaderswho'd taken over their bodies had nothing so much in mind as slightadjustments, little tinkering bits that only a native, returning maybefrom a coma or a long-distance trip, might notice. Otherwise life rolledon, it seemed. "God bless you," Willie said over and over, asif this were a password he had figured out and used to make a way forhimself. "It's going to be all right," he'd tell awaiter or grocery clerk or passerby, patting his hand if he could reachit, putting an arm around the fellow's shoulder.

"I'm just acting like this to keep from going topieces," he said when I asked him about it.

I was in a vague area, pondering things, attempting to make up mymind about something that kept eluding me, and was unable to give himany useful suggestions.

"It's the way you put it that matters," he saidwhen I tried to explain this, "not what you say."

I thought my state was a sympathetic reaction to Alice'spredicament. Maybe to life's, Willie said.

When I called Ike again he said he had expected me back at theend of last week. I couldn't remember. I was staying in a hotelabove a restaurant off Main Street--a yellow building that caught thedawn light full in the face---and time had slipped away from me. Irolled out of bed--some morning: the next morning--and retired to achair where I spent a few minutes gazing out to sea, watching a tankercrawl up the globe. A couple of slim boats skittered along, probablyferrying refugees up from Haiti or Cuba. The ocean was bright palepolished turquoise and untroubled by anything it had ever done. In theother bed Willie J. snored away, riding the fumes of alcohol anddisappointment. The couple next door, two women driven down from Detroitfor the heat, began their early grousing. The cold had lingered, initself an odd development. Cold down here usually evaporated like thedew and was lost to memory. It took a genius of empathy to get whatpeople were talking about when they mentioned snow or ice or chilly,gray days, even if you had only come from the blustery north lastweek.

I got out of the chair eventually, hungry and tired enough toneed a little exercise, concerned about the noise of the surf rattlingpebbles on the beach, about my soul, or something like that, touching myface as I descended the stairs, adjusting it, tapping my temple lightlyto give warning to the rats inside, something terribly sad about thecustomers this morning, the battered wives and unctuous husbands, theproprietress, Maureen, yawning to reveal her blackened back teeth; Iwanted some pancakes. There were none to be had so I ate something else,eggs or bacon, that I lost track of while I was still at the table.Maybe my mind was going. This didn't bother me at the moment, but Iknew soon enough it'd scare me to death. I called again to thepaper and Ike said I had turned a story in last night, flown like pixiedust over the wire. "What was it?"

"A feature about those guys who shot the fish."

I barely remembered it. "I think I'm coming down withsomething."

He told me to come home and I said I would, but first Willie andI took a taxi out to see friends and buy some oranges for Alice. Whywould I buy oranges to take to Florida? Because it was only down herethat you could get the special, tiny Key orange, a compact nugget ofsweetness that grew only in a small grove owned by Havermier Hughes, afellow who had been a friend of my grandfather in the old days when theyboth conspired to make a killing from the new entrepreneurial paradiseof South Florida. They were of course hornswaggled by much quicker andbrighter men. Havermier had retreated to the Keys to take over the grovethat had belonged to an old West Indian couple who had shepherded it outof the mists of time and he and his wife now sold the oranges as well asa few Key limes from a stand out in front of their house on PittenceRoad.

They were both sitting out on the porch when we got out of thetaxi. I had forgotten my car, or for the moment forgotten I had one.They were wearing several layers of clothing as the vv said to do incold weather, all of it summery: a pile of Aloha shirts and pairs ofchinos for Mr. H. and flowery frocks stacked one on another for Mrs. H.,that sort of thing. They looked like people gone to fat or actorswearing fat suits. The oranges were ruined, they said, since twonights--nights I didn't exactly recall--when the thermometer, H.said, had dipped into the freezing range just long enough to searthrough the delicate skins of the famous fruit.

"They are already turning black on the trees,"Havermier said. His wife, Mrs. Hughes, glared at me as if it were myfault, a squinty, black-eyed look that carried with it the outrage ofher people--as Havermier put it--ex-slaves from Trinidad. I felt as ifit were my fault and suddenly, without intending to, began to weep. Ipassed this off as something in my eye, but Mrs. H. caught it."Sniveler," she said, got up, and went back in the house.

"Don't worry about her," Havermier said." Shedoesn't take setbacks well."

"What setbacks?" Willie said. He had missed the firstexchange and was staring nervously down the road as if he had leftsomething in the taxi. "How are we going to get back?"

"Who is this?" H. said, knocking his chest with bothsets of knuckles. He was skinny and crusty-fleshed and had looselyshaped white hair hanging off his skull in long, disturbed comb-overremnants; he grinned straight at me.

"Jailbird," Mrs. H. said from inside the house.

"How's your wife," H. said.

"Another jailbird," came the ghostly interiorvoice.

"She's doing fine," I said loudly. "She maytake a job playing piano."

"That's wonderful," H. said, scratching at himselfthrough his outfit. "I can barely move around in thisregalia," he added.

"That some kind of bee suit?" Willie said.

"Bees? Not in this weather, son."

"Idiots," came the voice from inside.

H. cast a glance back that way. "Would you shut up?" Heslapped his hands together. "Let's go for a ride."

The door flung open and Mrs. H. bounded out. "Don't youlet him get in a car."

"Now, Mother. These boys don't even have acar."

"It's too cold to be out in the wilderness," Mrs.H. said. She glanced around suspiciously, as if the cold lurked, someicier confederate of it, somewhere nearby.

"I need exercise," H. said.

"Me too," Willie said and took off running down theroad. He ran to the intersection--about a block away--and sprinted backwhile we watched. He came up huffing, coughing, and stumbling."Whoo, that was good."

"He's as crazy as you are," Mrs. H. said.

In the meantime, Mr. H. had given me a look, a conspiratoriallook, and begun to edge out into the yard. "Let's walk,"he said.

So we did, prying ourselves away from Mrs. H., who loudlycomplained and then stamped her foot and banged back into the house. Wewalked down to the intersection, the crossing of two blank and emptyroads, beyond which on all sides, except for the grove, a scrubland ofmyrtle bushes, sea grape, cactus, and pinchweed stretched away pastmilky rain ponds and mounds of pocked gray coral; military land, all ofit, of no use to anyone but developers and the Air Force. Off to theright the road angled down through scrub pines to the beach.

We walked down the road toward the ocean, walked until we wereout of sight of the house. H. pulled himself up and stopped."Let's have a smoke," he said. None of us smoked, but westayed there anyway.

"We're not one mile from million dollar homes,"Willie said, "and look at this. The true Keys."

The beach was strewn with rusty seaweed and the gritty, scatteredmash of tossed-up sea life. Up ahead, a hundred yards down, it fadedout, slipped under like a socked foot into the clear, trickily surf.

I walked down the strand and looked out to sea. The water wasshallow, shallow for a mile until the dropoff where the blue--the darkblue like a tribal color, like the regime's deep and unalterablesymbolic monochromasia--picked up the effort and carried it the rest ofthe way. Except for a couple of Cubanos working a throw net half a mileback, the world was empty. Yet not empty enough, 'ay cowboy? I wasin my solitary voyager, my lonely traveler mode. I'd written astory about the little boy who didn't cry, a brother of one of thevictims. Why not? I'd asked him. Why don't you cry? He'dlooked at me as if I was a fool. And then I'd written a story aboutone of the men on the county road gang, a black man with a sweet facewhom I saw get knocked down by another convict. These men--thesejailbirds--didn't even know about the tragedy. What are you doing?Ike said. I couldn't get it straight myself. I was embarrassed,humiliated, even enraged by all the pain around this little sea haven.Was that it? Everybody's got pain, my black convict said, a man whowas hardly more than a boy. You can't help but suffer it. I triedto get the composition people to put this quote in italics, but theywouldn't.

Right now, at this minute in time, I focused on the emptinessbefore my eyes. It was easy to take like this, from this location, safeon a beach. Yet no matter where I stood, the creep began, creep ofinsufferable thoughts, the serial blank spaces and shameful insights,the broken resolutions, all that. I sensed Alice slipping away and itwas remarkable how this sensation opened a scary gap in my philosophy oflife. Under my big poncho I was chilled. I imagined living on a cold,bleak coast. Maybe we should try Maine or the Maritime provinces, getinto weather, climate, let it take our minds off the spookiness of beingalive. She'd been trying to read a biography of Charlotte Bronte,the same book she was reading before she was hospitalized. A cold andstony life on the north Yorkshire moors. Bleakness addressed by way ofart, which did nothing to change the circ*mstances. Under thesecirc*mstances, she had asked me, is there anything that might help?Alice would hate this place, this shabby keyscape. The cold would offendher, and these people would have to be corrected. Yet now, slappedaround by modern medicine, there wasn't much she hated. The wayout, for her, apparently was not through. This adage was something wequoted to each other, in bed. We believed it the way people who hadnever done a thing with their lives believed that soon they were goingto get down to it. Shock treatment--that was just like her. I was glad Ihadn't been in the car she drove through the flower shop window.They would have caught me too. The medical police were on the lookoutfor cutups like us. Yet ours was a common story, small-time miscreants,refusniks of the minor variety, furtive delinquents slipping off thereservation, but only to the party store next door.

2

When I got back home, after driving up with Willie J. sick in thebackseat, stopping regularly for him to almost but never quite throw up,after we sat for two hours at a picnic table outside Spurleen'sEmporium in Key Largo while he took a nap and I began a story in mynotebook about the day Alice and the other walkabout patients weretransported in a van to the Celestial Lanes in Miami, a bowling alley wehad gone to pieces in years ago and been tossed out of--Stupid kids,they said--where after she'd drifted through a game in which onlythe paid attendants kept score, I found her--tipped off by anorderly--and intending to gather her into my arms found myself hangingback, transfixed by her aplomb, by the serenity in her face, a serenityI'd not seen before, but was happy now to see, I thought, and thenrealized I wasn't because what would come next: Flight? Divorce?What if now she decided to abandon our little composition at the Ducat,and how dispiriting this was, this thought, that I would be prey to sucha huge and rapscallionly poverty--sick need, as the doctors might putit--and as I walked past her, unsure how to approach, and she glanced atme with recognition but no acclaim, her eyes assessing me, registeringme--the disputatious husband and lover--without craving, needing nothingin particular from me, fixed now, if that was what I sensed among thelitter of panic and outrage, the scurrying about, of--what?--somealternate or maybe even more factual and deeply embedded self, the onewho was desperately trying, even as I passed into the refreshment area,to figure how to invoke the old clutch and grab; this was so cripplingthat after beginning the story and purposely miring it in details aboutRaisinettes and Pepsi without ice, about the light gleaming on thesurface of the lanes, all that, all to stave off panic and shame, Iclosed the notebook and got down on my knees and embraced Willie--whowas nothing like me--on the grass, hoping that some of his steadfastnessand honesty, and love, I guess you'd call it, would enter me, andit didn't, and I thought, man, it's not going to stop until Isuffer all of it, and this thought was like a dark message delivered tome despite everything I'd done not to receive it--what was there todo now?--I got up and we drove on deeper into traffic and into modernlife that was only--it was clear--a puppy trying to lick somebody'shand--just like me, I thought--after getting something to eat--wafflesfor Willie J., pancakes with sugar syrup for me--and then back on theroad where eventually we passed the big white cruise ships moored likeartificial dreams at the commercial docks, and crossed onto the islandwhere I turned left and, six blocks up, rattled despite the heavy food,came to our viney and flower-bestrewn house, and remembered weweren't living there anymore, that this had been part of theargument--what has happened to us?--that precipitated Alice'sflight and her wreck (her detour through the flower shop on 48thStreet), and for a moment, for a second, which if I hadn't shoutedout would have opened a gap that allowed all the ghoulishness of life topour through, I was completely lost, until I remembered we were livingnow at the Ducat, or had been before her hospitalization, and still wereif that was what Henry had in fact told me, or Alice was, in our oldroom still paid for by funds from her nearly depleted trust account, anddrove there and discovered she'd checked out--a (new) woman--not tobe found in South Beach, or in the Glades at Henry's, or at hersister Senegol's house on Key Biscayne, or even at herstepmother's in the Gables--just gone.

"Well--gone where, Henry?" I said.

"I don't know. She just eased away from the curb. Juststarted rolling."

Goggles up on his forehead, a streak of white dust on hischeek--he looked as if he had been caught in something.

"Yeah?"

"I think--don't take this the wrong way--I think sheleft with some fellow."

I let this information drift on the air a moment. "Wherewere you?"

"I was inside--we were at Joe's--Stone Crab--and shestepped out for a smoke."

"She doesn't smoke."

"Isn't that odd?" he said.

"A fellow?"

"From the ward."

"Somebody she knew?"

"I'm not clear on it."

A chisel of light, of pain, struck my head. I started across thestudio, aimed somewhere specific, for a second sure of something, myhand raised--in my mind raised--to strike, but when I reached the door Istopped. Everywhere beyond the room, beyond the dustiness and the claymodels draped in plastic sheeting, the stones stacked in the corner andthe tools laid out on the long green bench, beyond this place,everything was formless and impossible to know. I stopped. An amazement,a wild, tearing sensation took me. Holes opened, gaps. Maybe this was aturning point. Maybe there were such, moments, crossroads, where it madea difference which way you went. I had never believed in these notions,not much, but maybe now, maybe then, as I looked out at the canal wherea fish had just swirled back into the depths, leaving its mark, therehad come a moment when I could choose another road. Maybe, but Idon't think so. And how could I know?

"Which way did she go?"

Henry, despite himself, laughed. "Which way did shego?" he said, accenting each word evenly. "Man, we are acouple of sad sacks."

I caught it, the joke, turned all the way around, and as ifreaching up through a hole filled with seeds, with husks, tried tolaugh, too. Partly I did. The western-falling sunlight streamed throughthe panes of the big French doors. It reached to Henry's feet, cladin dusty sneakers. He was sitting in his blue wicker chair, wearing hiswhite coveralls, holding the bit of a power chisel, turning it in hishands and looking at it, raising it to sight along.

"What is it?" I said.

"She wanted to be by herself, for a while."

"Then what's the guy for?"

It wasn't registering. The information had no substance.This was the only reason, I thought, why I wasn't screaming.

"I don't know--a chauffeur, a chaperone."

"Which guy was he?"

"I couldn't tell--a tall guy, black. I never saw himbefore." Someone from the ward, a sufferer, someone for whom lifehad become too unyielding, too momentous or speedy, someone who'dneeded a rest. Someone they'd gottten a rope on, for a while.

"Did you know she was going to do it?"

"No. She called."

"From where?"

"Downtown, the Rudnick Pharmacy--where we used togo."

"To say what?"

"Adios."

Now a reappropriation began taking place. The continent, thecountry, the floodplain of me began to be eaten up, eroded, subsumed.The woods gone swampy, the rivers over their banks, the fieldssubmerged, the populace poling around in flat-bottomed boats. I swayed,hung up in the tree of myself like a raccoon, confounded by the deluge.This occurred almost immediately after, after I stepped outside onto thegallery, into the sunshine, the coolish remnants of it, winter day, apellucidity in the air that was rainswept and fresh, a chilliness unlikeanything you would think of, a displacement that promised in theseenvirons not desolation or an icy, lonely death but rejuvenation,alertness, a fresh awareness--how to put it, I thought, leaning over therail, looking at the far bank that was tousled with reeds and beyond thebank through the sawgrass and the little hammocks of pines and palms tothe swamp, where the old life, unable to resist the encroach ofprogress, went on as if it didn't matter--how to say it was far toopossible--probable--to see too much to get the facts straight. My mindalways claimed to know what was up, but it was wrong.

"What's up?" I said. This later, at supper, afterHenry had mentioned she told him she was off seeking inspiration, a lieI knew because the escapade had something to do not only with her butwith me, with all of us, some gap she sought, some ex-croachment, somewarning like a hankie left in a tree to inform the tracker it was toolate, the pursued was not leaving a trail, but discarding, jettisoningwhatever might slow her down, I was sure of this, ready to embracedespair--such a small step, you'd think it was panting on thedoorstep, a dog, dog of despair, ready to lick your hand--and said this,too.

Willie J., at the table out on the screen porch, eating crabmeatsalad, looked at me with pity and love. "This always happens,"he said. He held the baby on his lap. "I think he likesseafood." He grinned into the child's squinched-up, rapaciousface.

"Where were you, Munch?"

Munch, she said, was off with the baby.

"Did you have anything to do with this?"

"I hate to say it"--she extended her hand to me, palmheld flat, facing down--"but I'm afraid I did."

The hand was nothing--she'd never thought much of me. Herlook now, of tolerance, not compassion, of forbearance--it was an oldlook, worked up in grade school--was the best I could expect fromher.

"How were you in on it?"

"Wait, Billy," Henry said. "I don't think itwas like that."

"What do you know? What did you do, Munch?"

"She got sad about the baby."

"Because she doesn't have a baby? She doesn't wanta baby, Munch."

"That's why she was sad. She said she couldn'tthink of anything she wanted. She said she'd discovered that shewas lazy and indifferent, and what bothered her about it was that shedidn't mind."

"Everybody in South Florida's like that," Willieput in.

"Come on, J.," Henry said.

"How could you let her out of your sight, Munch?"

"You did, Billy."

Heat flashed in my face, in my body. Munch was making it up,every word. Or not that: she'd heard it this way, in somerubricious translation effected by light and longing, heard what Alicehad said as these words, this ridiculous passage that had nothing to dowith what was spoken or what was going on. I'm dying, Alice hadsaid. I'm feeling a little low, is what Munch heard. I'mdrowning in a sea of corpses, she'd said--I need a little vacation,is how it sounded. Get out of my way before I kill you, she said. Seeyou later, is how Munch heard it.

I jumped up and ran out onto the dock. Stars were out all over,blurred and crinkly, little ragged white mishaps. The dock was like achute: I ran to the end of it and plunged into the canal.

The black water closed over me with a snap, it was like that, andI was in the underworld, all alone. My breath went out of me, right out,as if vacuumed. A panic--the one I usually kept drugged--gripped me. Nowaters of the deep hid me from it.

I thrashed to the surface and broke through gasping, crying outlike a man in a dream. Henry, who had followed, who had jumped in rightbehind me, was close; he grabbed me. "Wait," I cried."f*cking wait."

He stroked back. "It's just a passing thing," hesaid.

I swam away, a rickety crawl, at first nowhere and then down thecanal. The water was bitter, tasting of root matter and desuetude. Henryfollowed, swimming along beside me. We kept our heads out of the waterjust as in the old photo from childhood, the two of us breaking thesurface out in the swamp, heads waterswept, eyes still closed, likecreatures barely formed, just invented, unspent, flailing.

"It's really too cold to go swimming," hesaid.

"It's all right if you keep moving."

We swam around the long bend, staying with it, going on steadilywithout talking, making water time, until we got down among the canefields. The cane rose up on both sides, tangled and pale in thestarlight. The fields went on like this for miles. In the fall the smokefrom their burning changed the world into a blue-swept, ocherouslandscape; in the old days it did. After a while we hove to at the bank,crawled up, and sat in the grass at the edge of the field. Across thecanal a dark place looked like a gator hole, something, a cave entrance,solid shape of black you could hide or lose your life in, these were mythoughts sitting there chilled almost immediately but not giving in toit, as if the cold were a form of death or loss it was possible to deny,to simply go on without surrendering to. I said, "There's moreto it, isn't there?"

"Well, sure."

He pushed his long, dark hair back with both hands. His wristswere fine, slender as a girl's, not the wrists you'd expect ona sculptor. Sure. He meant there was always more to it. But Ididn't want to hear it. I preferred the clamors and stage fright ofmy own imagination. Real life, exposure, fact--receipts, pictures,mementos, charred camp fires, and gum wrappers--the evidence: Ipreferred making it up. But they wouldn't let you do that, not forlong. They would come to your house with their notebooks and legalpapers and they would make you look. They'd pull back the sheet: Isthis her? Rather picture her in a diner outside Bakersfield, dipping herfinger into a cafe con leche, licking the coffee off, whiling away alost afternoon. So what the leathery companion beside her, grimacing athis reflection in the back mirror. So what? Such moments could go onforever, unchanged.

"No," I said, "don't tell me aboutit."

In this way my travels began.

3

Three years later, as famous as I was ever going to get, I wasback in Miami. Alice'd been back for a year, but we hadn'tspoken to each other, not once. Henry called me when she got in, oneafternoon in spring when all the poincianas in South Beach were bloomingwith fire in their hair; he called me at my house in Greenwich Villageand told me he saw her, sitting in a red Cadillac convertible on CollinsAvenue. He had gone up to her and she had gotten out of the car--leaptout of it, he said, like a gymnast--and grabbed him in her arms to hughim. "She's as strong as ever," he said.

"Unlike you and me," I said, and he laughed.

Just talking about her--the real-life Alice--flooded me withelectricity, but I didn't do anything about it. "She'sliving with somebody," he said, "and she's got a littlechild."

He said that--child--and there was a click click click inside myskull, with no accompanying commentary, as if that were the naturalnoise your head made when this information appeared. But on questioning,Henry admitted that the child wasn't really hers, only a common-lawstepchild. I knew Henry would have been going out to see her, to seeAlice and the child and her lawyer boyfriend and her new life, and Iunderstood I wouldn't be allowed to do that; this was the curiousway life worked: The world was filled with friends and acquaintances,passersby even whom I could see whenever I wanted to more or less, butshe was not one of them; she was done with, gone, off the list. Since Iwas a little boy I had understood the world was set up this way, but Istill couldn't believe it. No, I could believe it.

I was famous in my way because of another book I had writtenabout her that had been made into a movie. When the movie came outpeople I hadn't heard from since high school called me up. Theywanted to get together for a drink when they came to New York andsometimes I would go though I didn't drink (or do drugs) anymore.Sometimes they asked about Alice, but I didn't have anything totell them. I could have found out something about her, maybe I couldhave, but I didn't try to. The divorce papers came from Californiaand I signed, but not where indicated, I signed somewhere else. So shewas in California.

I moved into the Spenser Hotel in South Beach and spent mymornings writing and my afternoons at the beach. I bought a bicycle andpedaled it around town with my shirt off, getting tan and going slightlyto fat from so much time spent at the desk, that and the caramelizedflan I ate for breakfast every morning. I felt okay about life. Ididn't see people much and I didn't want to. Henry I saw, butthat was about all. I'd go out to the studio and sit with him whilehe worked. He'd branched out from funeral sculpture to the regularkind and now supplied galleries in several cities with his pieces. Hehad assistants now and a big stone yard I liked to sit out in whereblocks of marble and granite and sandstone were piled up like theremains of old, dismantled civilizations. The sun baked the blocks and Iwould climb up on one of them, some piece of red granite or a bluemarble slab from Italy, and lie on it, getting what I saw as a treatmentfrom the warmth and the mellow firmness of the stone.

Henry was living with Oscar Berman, an older man he had metthrough friends of his parents. Oscar was a former literary agent fromNew York, but not someone I knew. He was still a reader, however, andsaid he liked my books. We would sit out on the dock in the lateafternoon waiting for Henry to finish up, Oscar drinking sidecars and mesipping a seltzer, and he would tell stories about his youth in theIsraeli army when he fought against the Arabs in the Six-Day War. I toohad stories of war and gun battles, but they were not like his. Then hedrove drunk into a telephone pole on Biscayne Boulevard and wound up inthe emergency room at Miami Dade. He was badly hurt, and though his bodywould heal they said his mind probably wouldn't. He lay in bedjabbering about his wife who had been dead for twenty years. He said hekilled her. This was the kind of craziness that came after head blowslike this. Henry and I staggered out of the hospital weeping, Henrystaggering and weeping, me red in the face with emotion I was trying tokeep in check. Oscar's state was only the catalyst for my emotions,which weren't related to his situation.

"The crazy thing," Henry said, "is he really didkill her."

"Not really."

"Yeah. He killed her with a shovel, carried her out into theAtlantic Ocean, and dumped her body over the side of his Boston Whaler.Nobody found out."

"How could nobody find out?"

"I don't know. Probably he did it under cover ofdarkness."

"People are out in the dark, too."

"Well, maybe he'll explain it when he'sraving--Jesus, I don't care."

I liked accompanying Henry to the hospital. I hung aroundOscar's room hoping he would go into the facts of his murder. Buthe didn't. "What did you do to her?" I asked him, but hewas on his own track. I was through for the time being with alcohol anddrugs, but I wasn't through running. Chemicals aren't the onlyform of anesthesiology. Here is another. One of his nurses was a youngwoman who was sister to a woman I had gone to school with and she saidshe remembered me. She had pale red, almost blonde hair and very fairskin she told me she could never let out in the sunlight--she said itlike this: never let it out, like it was a special kind of pet--and Ifell in love with her in a day. We had an affair that took me down tothe Keys where her brother lived. Her brother was involved in schemesfor getting refugees out of Cuba and Haiti and wherever in the Caribbeanrefugees needed to get out of. He showed me something about thebusiness. "You can write about it if you like," he said."I know you know how to change the names and settings, and allthat, so go ahead." He was a big, burly man, also too fair to tan,but he looked nothing like his sister.

I said, "I don't think I'll write about it, butI'd like to find out more."

He said, "Okay, you can come with me some time." Thenurse, whose name was Emily, didn't care for her brother'sbusiness, but she liked me. We would drive out to little marshycum-de-sacs, little inlets in the Keys, and make love in the car. Shehad a place and so did I, but we both liked being out in the car likethat. She hated oral sex--going and coming--but I didn't mind thatso much and she was tender and had a way about her that made everythingshe did seem familiar. She was not ambitious and not angry at anything.One day we were out at a little cut between the main island and one ofthe other small Keys when she said, "This is one of the loadingplaces."

"You mean for your brother?"

And she said, "Yes. He brings people in heresometimes."

We made love then in the fast, furious, obliterative way we likedand afterwards I lay in the back seat with her, sweaty and feeling good,and then it came to me this was probably a drug, too. I didn'tmind, but I wanted to talk to someone about it. I thought of Alice.

Whenever Henry mentioned her, something tremorous and electricaltunneled into me. I asked him not to speak of her, but then I asked himabout her. We'd brought Oscar home in a wheelchair, but he wasgone, distracted like someone with Alzheimer's, and Henry was soforlorn about it he could hardly drag himself out of bed. He was torn upabout Oscar and about his own future which he saw stretching away fromhim into dreary homecare endlessness. I said, "It bugs me,too."

"Why you?"

"Because I'm depending on you to run this hospice forme, too, when I get old and incapacitated."

"Ha ha," he said. "You'll be cleaning upafter me first."

I had to call before I went out there to make sure I didn'trun into Alice. It made sense not to run into her. The electricity, thehollowness--these sensations were familiar to me, the old sickadrenaline charge. Connie, my temporary sponsor in NA, told me to stayaway from whatever caused the adrenaline to surge. "I'll bedull as a toad," I said, and he said, "That'll do yougood."

"What do you think?" I asked Emily. "Are you and Ijust getting a fix from each other?"

She didn't think so, but then they never do.

"I haven't even had an org*sm," she said. "Ifit were some kind of drug I would have had one, don't youthink?"

"You haven't come?"

"No. I never have."

"You mean never, ever?"

"No."

It made me feel left out. I thought I ought to be angry about it,but I wasn't really. "Does not coming give you a relentlessdesire for sex?" I asked.

She looked at me with her small, green eyes. Everything about herface was small, neatly and prettily arranged. "I get satisfactionjust from doing it," she said.

"That's good."

But then it did start bothering me. It made me lonely, I thoughtit was that. I wondered if something was going on with her, somethingsecret and unfathomable to anyone but therapists. I questioned her aboutthis and she said she didn't know.

"You've never had an org*sm, at all?"

"Not that I know of. But tell me what they are like soI'll be sure."

I tried to do that, but she said what I described didn'tsound familiar.

Then I found out she was married. Her husband was a painterliving in the Grove, a man of some importance locally whom she never sawbut had also never divorced. "You're divorced, aren'tyou?" she said.

"Pretty much all the time," I said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just every day I wake up andI'm still by myself."

"Like I'm married."

"Why didn't you mention it?"

"I didn't care to. I don't even like to thinkabout it, much less talk about it."

Then I found out she did see him. Sometimes when I thought shewas working she was actually at his house. "We never makelove," she said when I confronted her with this. "Or not thatoften."

"It doesn't really bother me," I said.

"Why not?" she said, scowling.

"I don't know. I feel pretty easy about it."

"I don't think I want to be with somebody whodoesn't get upset about me sleeping with another man. If youdon't get upset, you don't really love me."

"That's probably right," I said.

She would have put me out of the car then except we were out inthe Keys. Her brother was coming in with his boat. When he got in shemade me ride with him. He was bringing in a couple of radicals fromBarbados, that's what he said. They weren't anyone Irecognized, but one was a rough customer who took offense at someone hedidn't know being in the car.

"Look," her brother, whose name was Menile, said to me,"I'm going to have to put you out."

"Here?"

"I'll drop you off at Mile 28. The bus'll stop foryou."

It was one of those things that couldn't be helped, Iunderstood that, but still it made me angry. I walked up the highway toa burger stand and used the pay phone to call Henry.

Then I met a woman at a buffet downtown and went home with her.We made love out on her sun porch with her kittens running around mewingand climbing in the bougainvillea. Her name was Merit and she was alawyer. She was Jewish and told me upfront she was really onlyinterested in Jewish men, but something about me had caused her to makean exception. "What was it?" I said. "You have monkeyeyes," she said. I told her about my early preaching days and shesaid she was fascinated by this though she never asked me about them. Wesaw each other regularly for about a month, then one night I simplycouldn't get it up. "That's okay," she said,"I'll just rub myself against you."

There was something about it I didn't like. "I feellike a tool," I said. "An implement."

"Not you," she said. "Never."

But I did. When I left her house that night I decided not to goback. Then I met the wife of the publisher of a local magazine, a writerherself and an editor, and we had an affair that lasted six months. Wemet at a Christmas party where I was taut with caffeine and talkingninety miles an hour. "You're not even making sense," shesaid, "but you just keep going." She had a plain, sensual facethat completely changed when she smiled. "Weren't you marriedto Alice Stephens?" she said.

"Boy, was I."

This flippancy was instantly followed by internal squirts ofempty, groping material I couldn't express. "Your face justturned white," she said.

"Okay," I said.

She liked it that Alice still had such an effect on me. "Youhave a lot of feeling in you," she said. "Most men I know areso blank."

She wrote all the time, all the time she wasn't working atthe magazine. I'd wake up in the morning to the sound of hertypewriter clattering, running at a tremendous pace, words pouring outof her. Her husband found out about the affair and canceled an article Ihad agreed to do for him. "I wish he hadn't done that," Isaid.

"What did you expect," she said. "You'ref*cking his wife."

"But you don't even live together."

"That's not what it's about."

One night I went home with a woman I met at a gallery, a youngblonde painter with a sad face and an apologetic manner. Ariane foundout about it immediately, divined it, I thought.

"I smelled it on you," she said. "You are such ascamp."

"I couldn't help myself," I said.

"I know," she said. "I can tell."

I wasn't sure what she meant by this, but it was true theescapade didn't seem to bother her, not in any way I could figure.We liked to take night walks on the backsides of the South Beachneighborhoods, strolling alleys where old bougainvillea hedges drapedover concrete walls and little roselike flowers poked out of cracks. Wewould admire the flowers and the light shining upon the sandy alleys,snagging in the leaves of loquat bushes and climbing halfway up thetrunks of coconut palms. The light was yellow almost to orange and layon everything like butter. Out there in the alley I'd feel safebetween the houses, out in the back where people exposed their garbageand flowers got out of control; something would stir in me, some halforder of feelings I couldn't quite grasp. It was then I would thinkof Alice, wondering what she was doing just now, if she was doinganything, if she was angry or feeling hopeless or drifting along to somemusic, and I'd think maybe soon nothing about her would disturb meanymore. "I can tell when you're thinking about yourex-wife," Ariane said.

"You mean Alice."

"It's okay. I don't mind."

I continued sleeping with the painter, with Mona, who lived in aramshackle house in south Miami, a house stuffed with refuse and old,unsalvageable furniture. Everything in the place looked misused,derelict, even the pots in the kitchen. Glass jars containing dead sweetpotatoes were lined up on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. She hadcleared a space in the living room where she kept her easel and thefinished paintings she stored in a rack she had built out of old lumber.Even her bed looked like something dredged up from the depths. We neverspoke about any of this. Her mournfulness never left her; I asked herabout it, but she acted as if she didn't know what I was talkingabout. "I'm sorry," she said in her distracted way andlooked out the window. She reminded me of Alice after her treatments,but it was not that, it was something else. I started getting afraid oneday she was going to go though a sudden personality change and pick up aknife, as if what she was in now was the chrysalis stage. Then I metanother woman, an editor at the paper, a friend of my cousin Ike's,and I began sleeping with her. We hooked up after a party at her houseat which she asked me to stay and help clean up. She was just lonely,she said afterwards, that's why she went to bed with me.

"It's okay," I said. "I don'tmind."

She wanted me to come around regularly, but I felt nervous aboutit.

"It's all right," she said. "I wouldn'tdepend on it."

I asked Connie whether he thought I was in trouble.

"You mean with the women?"

"I'm sleeping with several at once."

"At the same time--in the same bed?"

"No--serially--it's a serial thing.

"Then don't worry about it."

But then I picked up a newcomer in NA, a woman sober only a fewweeks, and Connie got upset. His wife, also a junkie, invited her overto swim in their pool and I came, too. We horsed around in the water andI could tell it was probably the first time in a long while she'dbeen able to loosen up without a drug. That was what drugs were goodfor, one thing, taking that relentless tension out of you and lettingyou step down into normal life. She started grinning and couldn'tstop. Afterwards I drove her home and then went in and listened to tapesof her singing with her band. Her voice on the tapes was slightly flat,and she didn't seem to notice, but there was something gallant andtender about it, and something sad, too; it made me think of everythingwe had to face up to in our lives and be good sports about. She asked meto stay over and I did, putting on the pajamas she gave me and gettinginto the big sofa bed with her. She was not as relaxed as a lover, butshe was enthusiastic. When I told Connie about it he was angry."You got to stop that," he said. "You know why? It'slike shooting fish in a barrel. These puppies can't protectthemselves."

I agreed. "Now do you see what I mean?"

"About what?"

"About using women--sex, whatever you want to say--as adrug."

"Well, cut it out."

"Okay," I said.

I went over to tell Stacy I couldn't come around any more,but we went to bed again. Afterwards she said she understood. "Ihave trouble in this area," she said.

It's not you, I told her.

"Who else could it be?"

"Me. I'm using it for a drug."

"But what's wrong with that?"

"The same thing as any other drug, I guess. After theeuphoria comes enslavement, degradation, and despair."

"That's a pretty small price to pay."

Henry said more or less the same thing as Connie. "You knowwhere I stand on all that," he said.

"I remember how you used to jump anything inpants."

"That was a long time ago. I've changed."

"Yes, you have."

Oscar in the sun room drooled over his breakfast, keeping up arunning conversation with his dead wife.

"What are you going to do?" I said.

Henry gave Oscar a long across the room look. "He'sstill a charmer."

"Probably not all the time."

"Sometimes I want to strangle him and dump him in thecanal."

"So, why don't you?"

"I'd miss him."

Meanwhile Ariane was typing away. "I smell her on you,"she said when I came in carrying a bag of grapefruit.

"No you don't."

"Where'd you get the fruit?"

"Emilio's."

"Let's take a walk."

We cruised up Pennsylvania and then over to Washington and wentby the Cuban market where fruit was piled in heaps in big bins and thelights had that tallowy lubricity of the tropics at night and everyoneworking there spoke another language. The fruit was cheap and it was allof the tropical variety. Something about the setup was homey and exoticat the same time, the kind of arrangement that made me think life couldbe strange and colorful and completely familiar all at once. When I wasgetting off drugs I'd listen to Caribbean music and daydream ofLittle Havana, this mix comforting me. We walked around touching starapples and mangoes and big, speckled papayas. Emilio's wife smiledat us and gave us a couple of tiny coconut cupcakes.

Back out on the street Ariane said, "I think you'regoing to have to run along."

"You mean right now?"

"Yes. I thought it wouldn't bother me how you live, butit does."

"It bothers me, too."

"That's what they all say."

"But I want to stop."

"Men just think they can josh us along, throwing in anI'm sorry every once in a while, and we won't mind whatthey're up to."

"We're not all up to something."

"Yes you are--every one of you."

She sounded like Alice--there she was again. I wondered if thiswas the revelation of a pattern. Everything different on the surface,but underneath the same old ruckabuck. I might as well go over and lookher up. But this was just a thought. Alice was living in the Grove in abig old tabby house that had a garden wall with red bougainvilleaspilling over it like bloody teardrops and a Mercedes convertible parkedin the drive and a maid in a black and white uniform who got off the busevery morning and walked up the drive carrying her lunch in a littlebrown wicker basket. That is to say on the second day I was back inMiami, I had driven over there at dawn and sat in the car across thestreet from her house, tense with the crazy idea of settling up on ourpast, and then, so rattled and buzzing with interiority and desire,suddenly scared to death I would crash through the floor of my life, Idrove away and hadn't been back. It had taken weeks to calmdown.

Now I drove by Ariane's house. I could see her sitting inthe window typing away, popping tangerine segments into her mouth. I satout in front of her house two or three times and thought of going in,too, of trying to argue her out of her decision, but I didn't. Onenight a woman walked by leading a three-legged dog. I got out of the carand talked to her, probably everybody did. The dog was a large,long-haired, speckled setter and she had owned him since he was a pup.His leg she said--front right--had been cut off in a sawmill accident. Ididn't believe this for a minute, but I went along with it.

"A country dog, I guess."

"I'm from Louisiana," she said.

"I had some dark nights over there once, inLouisiana."

"We all have."

I walked her home or at least to the corner. She wouldn'tlet me walk her all the way.

"I wouldn't be comfortable with that," shesaid.

But it would be all right, she said, to meet the next day for adrink. I didn't go into an explanation of how I didn't drinkfor now because going for a drink was how you had to put it in normallife. Nobody said let's go get some hard drugs, let's go shootup, let's drop the spike, none of that in polite life, they allwent on as if they never even thought of total immersion, and if youmentioned it they looked at you as if you were crazy, but they stillwanted to go for a drink. "Is Forget's all right?" Isaid.

"That's spelled F-O-R-G-E-T, isn't it?"

"Yeah. They soften the 'g,' like inFrance."

I went home and sat out on my seaside balcony watching the lightsof the tankers move slowly across the dark. Then Mona called and I droveout to her house and spent the night. We ate beans and ham hocks fromthe pot and sat out on the porch watching the moths flutter and bangagainst the screen door. She always seemed confused by life, Mona did,but I didn't press her about it. She would stare off into space,thinking about something. She had been married twice and hadn'tkept up with her ex-husbands. She didn't even know if they werestill alive. It wasn't that she hated them or wasn'tinterested, it was that she couldn't sustain the effort of lookinginto things.

"I'm surprised you remember me," I said.

"Oh, I like you," she said. "You're easy toremember."

I enjoyed the quiet of the life we shared, the numbness of it. Iliked how we stumbled around in the morning, confused about where wewere and what was going on, smiling at each other in a sleepy andtrusting way. She'd stand at the back door looking out at the weedyyard with a look on her face of someone who didn't know where shewas, but didn't really mind, either. We were both going along withthe gag as best we could, with life that is, but neither of us reallybelieved in anything.

"You put my mind on things," Mona said, "which Ilike."

"Some things," I said.

A skittish breeze slipped along through the lemon trees in herbackyard. The moon was out, a small, capsized moon, a tiny tear in thenight wall, and I leaned out to look at it. She put her hand on my backand for a second the weight of it took me into a place where everythingwas strange. I didn't know who I was or where I was. Or who wastouching me. The only life I ever believed in was the life with Alice, Iknew this, and knew it had always been that way. And then the feeling orthe knowledge of this, whatever it was, passed, and I came back into theordinary world we were in. Mona never asked me about my life.

"You can if you want," I told her, but she said shedidn't like to intrude.

"I don't think of it as intruding."

"It's not good to pry into people," she said, herblonde brows furrowing.

"I know what you mean. You might find out somethingscary."

"It's pretty much all scary to me."

The dog-owning woman, Karen, told me she'd walked out of hermarriage barefooted, carrying a dollar bill in her hand.

I loved the sound of that, the picture of it.

"What else?" I asked.

"My ex-husband killed himself by drinking pine airfreshener."

"When did that happen?"

"Four years ago."

"Do you mind if I write about it?" I said.

"What for?"

"That's what I like to do--make books about thingswomen get into."

"Books to sell?"

"Yes."

She hadn't read anything I'd written and/or seen oreven heard of the movie.

"Is it on tape?"

"No. Not yet."

She wanted to hold back on permission to use her in a story.

"I went to work at Burger King," she said. "I wasso stunned and crazy that was all I could think to do."

Now she was a history instructor at Miami-Dade CommunityCollege.

At Forget's, where this conversation took place, she wasdrinking scotch and I was drinking coffee, both of us slightly buzzed."You don't drink alcohol because you are an alcoholic,"she said, "is that right?"

"That's close enough to it," I said.

"My father was an alcoholic. He didn't call it that,but that's what it was."

"What did he do?"

"He was a horse trainer."

"Race horses?"

"For forty years."

She grimaced and looked away. "Pardon me," she said,"for asking so directly about the alcohol. It's not mybusiness."

"It's okay. I'm not at ease with talking about it.But I would probably have to tell you anyway."

"Is that one of the rules--I'm sorry."

"Being honest, yeah."

"I fall short there."

"I hit it about once every ten tries."

We were out beyond ourselves a little, I could see that.

At her house, once again I couldn't sexually perform. I wentinto the bathroom and tried to get something going, tried to imagine astirring scenario, but it didn't work. It was the second time insix months, but this was different from the time before. "I reallywant to," I told her.

"I don't mind about it," she said with a sweetnessin her voice. She said it in a believable way. The next night, after awalk through her neighborhood, I made it to the end, though it wasdifficult. "I'm scared," I said. "That's whatit is."

"I'm scared, too. But I like what we'redoing."

"It's almost too real for me."

"Do you want to go slower?"

"Yes. I think I do."

"I'd like to snug up next to you. Do you mindthat?"

"I don't know. Let me think about it."

We lay in the dark waiting. Soft rain blew in through the openwindow above our heads, but neither of us did anything about it."What are you thinking about?" she said after a while.

"I was thinking about James Agee and then I started thinkingabout my ex-wife."

"I teach Agee's book in my class."

"I was thinking about his life. He was married four times Ithink."

"I like to think about the private lives of historicalpersonages."

"That's probably all we would do if they letus."

"Good for me they don't."

We were silent again. The curtain soughed into the room, in slowmotion, fluttering slightly as if trying to get itself to do somethingmore but it couldn't.

"Your ex-wife?" she said.

"I think about her a lot."

"Sure. I would, too."

"Sometimes I have to restrain myself from going out andwaylaying her."

"To do what?"

"I don't know--bash her or beg her to come back--one ofthose."

"I used to follow my ex-husband around. Before we made thefinal break. I'd follow him to work and sneak up to his office andjump him."

"That would scare me to death."

"It did him, too. I hated myself for doing it, but for awhile I couldn't stop. I'd follow him after work, too, eventhough he was only going from the office to the house."

"What were you after?"

"I wanted to surprise him, shake something in himloose."

"Was he seeing another woman?"

"No. I don't know. But it wasn't even that. Itwasn't specific. It could have been that, but what it was reallywas some other lost, missing thing. Some component that would explainwhat was happening. There had to be something there I didn't knowabout. I thought I could catch it if I jumped him."

"Could you?"

"In a way."

"What was it?"

"It wasn't what I thought. I don't know what itwas. While I was doing that I suddenly got tired of looking at the backof his head."

"And that did it?"

"Yes. It was so blank. The back of his head was flat and thehair was brown, lighter than mine, and it lay on his head in this smoothway, like paint. There wasn't anything wrong with him really, withhis head, it was fine, but I started to think of it as a blank. In bedI'd raise up and stare at his head. He always slept turned awayfrom me and I'd stare at the back of his head. It was so distantand strange, like a basketball in a tree. I know I was crazy, but thatwas what was happening. I'd look at him, at his head, and I'dfeel so lost, like love was never going to find me again. One morning Igot up at dawn, pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt, took a dollar offthe dresser, and left."

"Barefooted."

"That's right."

"I love that story."

"What happened with your ex-wife?"

"She drifted off, too. It was probably like with you, in hermind."

"That's funny, isn't it? Maybe she set off lookingfor my ex-husband."

"Is he a lawyer?"

"No. He's not anything now."

We went quiet then; we lay there thinking about our lives and thestrange turns they had taken. At that moment I felt immune to AliceStephens. As if she could walk in the room right then and nothing in mewould stir. I thought I knew this feeling for what it was; it was one ofthe main things I talked to Connie about. "These women drugme," I told him, "And I don't care about anythinganymore."

"They don't give you any substances?"

"No, I don't mean that. Or maybe I do. Brainchemicals--they give me those. Endorphins and all that. A sexual rush inthe head and body. I become a fair-weather friend to man."

"It's not their fault. You know that, right?"

"Yes. I don't mean it's their fault. They'renot forcing anything on me."

"You sure you see it that way?"

"I wish I didn't."

But how did I see it? Sometimes I lay in the sun, out on the lawnbehind the Spenser, and the light and the heat pouring onto me--I feltas if I were lying at the bottom of a bowl of melted gold. I wishedthere were a hundred hours in a day, all of them lit. And when I spentmoney something clamorous inside me calmed down for a minute. And,conversely, when I went without things, didn't eat or walked aroundwith my pockets empty, I felt admirable then. Some nights I'd eatall the ice cream in the refrigerator and then sit there, a slug on hisbalcony, stuporous and content. If I didn't do these things, if Ididn't inject my brain with whatever was in these practices, somedark business would try to crawl into bed with me. Bed being whereverthe hell I was. I wanted to cast blame for this. Clerks, ice-creamimpresarios, cash machines, America, girls--something.

"Well," Connie said. "You got to try to beoptimistic. You're not the subject of the universe, youknow."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I am."

It was a laugh line so I gave him one.

I thought things would be different with Karen. She rented theupstairs of a house in the Brightwood district. A young, entrepreneurialwoman owned the house and lived downstairs. The woman bought propertiesin the district, renovated them, and resold them for a profit. Youngprofessionals were moving into what had formerly been a neighborhood ofderelict old residences and boarding houses for winos and others livingon the margins. It was a district I had thought I was headed to myself.But now the lawns were rich with watered grass and plantings and thehouses wore fresh paint and there were expensive cars parked in thedrives. I liked all this activity, but I also liked the old shabbyhouses and shabby people. For now there was still a mix, young couplesgetting out of a convertible as some bent fellow in a stained tuxedojacket attempted to stay on his feet. The babies lolled in theircarriages, casting wide-eyed looks at the winos conducting a wheelchairrace down the middle of the street. Karen and I lay out in a hammock onthe front porch, putting our hands on each other and laughing. I said,"I feel fulsome and content," and this was the truth.

I drove out to Mona's and told her I had to stop seeing her.We were out on the back steps and as she leaned out over her knees twotears dropped onto the concrete walk, leaving large, round splashes."I'm sorry," I said.

"You don't have to be," she said.

"These things are a mystery to me."

"You don't have to try to explain it. I didn'tthink you would stay."

"I never know what I'm going to do."

"You probably had better go," she said.

Lemon leaves lay scattered on the back walk, some face up, someface down; you couldn't tell how things would fall. I drove out ofher neighborhood thinking, this is the last time you will see thesehouses, you son of a bitch, but then a week later I met a woman outsidemy lawyer's office, an art teacher, and went home with her anddrank tea in the living room of her apartment a block behindMona's. After a while the woman started crying about life'srough ways and her ex-husband's part in the disaster, and we wentinto the bedroom. I had no trouble with the sex. I figured her being astranger, this being only an afternoon's dalliance, had somethingto do with it.

"I think I have solved the mystery," I told Karen.

"What mystery?" she said.

"The one about where I can't get it up," Isaid.

"You seem to be doing pretty well lately."

"But I think it happens because when someone I like--likevery much--begins to get close, I get really nervous."

"I'm glad you've solved it, slugger," shesaid.

This conversation took place at her desk. She was very firm aboutme not disturbing her when she was working or disturbing her things whenshe wasn't there. Once she caught me looking at some photographsand without saying one word she took them out of my hand, put them backin the folder I had taken them from, and put the folder in a drawer.When I asked her about it, she said, "Don't touch mythings." It was as if she was working something out, setting a markfor herself she wanted to adhere to. I liked this fine, actually, andhoped it would rub off on me.

But Mona, Mona in her neighborhood. When I came out of the artteacher's house I saw Mona passing in her car. She glanced at meand the expression on her face--the familiar expression soaked in--wasof such sadness I felt ashamed. I walked over to her house and met hergetting out of the car. She was carrying groceries, too. "Let mehelp you," I said.

"It's all right."

"No, let me."

But it wasn't the thing to do, I could see that. There wasstrain in her face, in her body, and she pulled away from me, leaningaway as if I was holding her on a fine chain, the sadness in her eyesfraying into desperation. I wanted to say I had felt like that foryears, but there was no way to. I had just to go. "I'm anidiot," I said and got in the car.

I drove to a phone and called Karen and she said I don'thave to be in class until seven so why don't you come by, which iswhat I did, but then just before we got undressed I got angry aboutsomething, about her lack of attention, some form of this, and a fightswelled up and spilled out onto the porch where her landlady was readinga real-estate document out loud to a couple about to purchase somereconstituted property, and it was clear the landlady thoroughlydisapproved of us, but we were in flight by then and rolled out onto thesidewalk and into the street itself, me shouting and waving my arms,hammering my point home, which I continued with maniacally until Inoticed I was the only one doing the actual shouting and gesturing, infact Karen wasn't really saying anything at all beyond anoccasional yes or no, in fact she was simply standing there, hanging herhead as I rained down imprecations and calumny upon her.

"Jesus Christ, what is the matter with you?" I yelledat her, a question actually better directed at me.

She looked at me out of eyes filled with pain. Pain and fear--Isaw them both.

"Ah f*ck this," I said and walked off.

The sun going down was blocked from view behind some mango trees,but I could tell it was a beautiful sunset. It made me think of theGlades, of the sun sinking into the grass prairies, turning them goldand red and pulling shadows up out of the woods like a dark,rediscovered treasure. In my head the argument churned and slipped, andthe argument--Mona and Karen and some thoughts of Alice in which she wasexplaining how she wanted to calm herself--I realized it wasn't anargument. We had headed in opposite directions around the block. But Ididn't run into her. I thought I would see her on the back street,but she must have cut through one of the yards. I told myself this bitwas nothing, nothing to what had already happened to me. I had been muchworse than this and I probably would be much worse again. My body feltas if it were made out of wire, as if I were an outline of a person andwind was blowing through me. I remembered this feeling from the drugtime, the pre-spike feeling, but I didn't want any drugs.

Down the street someone, a neighbor, was speaking from his frontporch to people assembled in his yard. It was some kind of prayerservice or business meeting, fellow workers or parishioners gathered foran evening cookout. I went over and joined them; it turned out they weresalespeople for a door-to-door cosmetics outfit enjoying themselves at acompany picnic. I knew a couple of them from my newspaper days. One, aphotographer, remembered me, too, and I pulled him aside and tried totell him what was going on. "Do you mind if I go over this?" Isaid.

He said, "Sure, okay."

I caught his signal to his wife.

I began to tell him about Mona and Karen and some about Alice aswell and as I spoke I seemed foolish to myself, some ridiculous personyou wouldn't want to listen to, but I couldn't stop even as Ibecame more distant from the words coming out of my mouth. Hisexpression of concentration faded and he began to glance away across theyard. He was giving out awards of some sort, the man on the porch was.The photographer cleared his throat and began to rub his wrist. He hadbig scars on his wrist, burn scars they looked like, and then Iremembered he had left the paper because he was burned in a fire. Abakery fire he had gone to take pictures of. "Are you sure you wantto tell me this?" he said.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm pretty muchoff my rocker at the moment."

"Why don't you come get something to eat?"

"I think I need a whole lot more than food, but thank youanyway.

"Well, I guess I better go back to my wife."

As he trudged across the yard I saw below his shorts that hislegs were burned, too.

After that I went back to the house. The landlady had abandonedthe porch and the place was dark and looked locked up, forlorn like oneof the derelict houses she renovated, but it was open. I climbed thestairs and found Karen in the living room with the television on. Shegot off the couch and came into my arms crying. "I can'tunderstand," she said, "how you could look at me with suchhatred in your eyes." The early news was on the television. TheCoast Guard was removing bales of marijuana from a rusty freighter. Thedrug agents were happy and the drug runners were sad. I watched the newsover her shoulder as I comforted her.

Henry said, "Yeah, it's true we have long talks on thephone."

"What do you talk about?" I said.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that."

"Give me the gist."

"Sadness, love, fear, enthusiasm."

"How's Oscar?"

"He suggested I dye my hair."

"It's good he's taking an interest, huh?"

"He wants me to remind him of his wife."

"Listen," I said. "How am I going to get herback?"

"I don't think you're going to do that,Billy."

"I don't think I can do anything else."

"Both of you have gone on past each other."

"I can't really believe that's true."

"She's got the little child."

"Bret, yeah, I know about him. But you said he's nother natural child, he belongs to the other guy. There's a world ofdifference between them, between her and Bret. Magellanic distances.Bret. That's pretty close to Brent, don't you think."

"Bret Brent--I don't believe that would work. And Ithink she really likes this fellow she's with."

"sh*t. That doesn't matter."

"Bravado won't change it either."

"Let's go to the swamp."

"I haven't got time to do that. I got thesecommissions."

"Let's go out to the swamp and get Alice tocome."

"None of us has any business at this time in our lives goingout to the Everglades."

"Listen, I am making a mess of things up here."

"It'll be worse if you try to hook up withAlice."

"No, it'll be worse anyway."

People who know nothing about drugs think when you quit takingthem you can then pull yourself together and go on with your life, likethey are doing. But when you quit, everything you were taking them tokeep buried comes to the surface. The everything is not some bank jobyou pulled that you didn't want to think about or some baby youslapped or some lover you betrayed, it's not so easy as that,though sometimes it seems these occurrences have something to do withit, and there is certainly plenty of work to do to correct the f*ckupsyou have gotten yourself and others into during the lowdown time. Butwhat it really is, is a deep, faceless creature of terrible power andhatred that has been idling along down at the bottom of your being; itis this monster that begins to rise to the surface. It eats everythingin its way and it is going to eat you. You're sad, desperate,ashamed, scared, full of rage and everything is futile, just like youknew it was. You can go off into blame--which is a whole career--if youlike, but it doesn't change anything. You can start up a relay ofsubstitute practices--money and religion and sex and power anddeprivation and food and letters to the editor--but these are just moresubterfuge. The monster stays the same. Almost everyone who gets free ofdrugs will tell you, to save yourself you have to get onto somethinglarger than you are. Some idea or belief or practice, some involvementthat sustains you, but doesn't have the downside of degradation andshame you found in the drugs. Many people come up with some kind of god,something they can call a god or use like a god; pray to and depend onand hang out with and serve. The monster, the rapacious relentlessnessof it, the huge undeniability of it, the mean insistence of it, makesthem. But then, sometimes, the thing they've found, the god, beginsto wobble. It gets creaky and slow, but the monster hasn't lost astep. It begins to climb up over their back. What do you do then? Inever found but two things: You either sit on the bed and take it, oryou go into wildness.

When I put the gun on her she laughed at me, but when I put thegun on the baby she stopped.

"You little sh*t," she said.

I had come around the side of the house a minute before. A breezelifted the grapefruit leaves, turning their white undersides over. Thebaby sat in a small chair at a picnic table eating pieces of mango shefed to him.

She had looked up without saying a word to me. Her face showed nosurprise at all. It was a blank, she was that quick. I said, "Ihave come on a special errand."

I took the gun out of the little net grocery sack I was carrying.She still didn't say anything and her expression didn'tchange. I held the gun on her. And then she laughed.

Now I said, "Let's go in the house."

We went in and I made her pack a bag and get all her babyparaphernalia and then we went out to the car and drove off toward theEverglades. I made her drive. She said, "You could have just calledme."

"And you would have said what?"

We passed my father's first church. It was rebricked now,and belonged to another denomination. When I broke away from preaching Ihad returned intending to shout curses at the congregation, to revileand reproach them, but I was unable to. Mrs. Telfilio had come up to meand put her arms around me and I collapsed into tears. My father hadcalled that afternoon to tell me how brave he thought I was. He wasburied out back--God bless you, Daddy--under a eucalyptus tree.

She glanced at the baby asleep in the back seat. "I wouldhave met you anywhere. Any time you wanted."

"How could I have known that?"

"How could you know anything else."

She looked out the window. "There's your house." Agray stucco edifice, half hidden behind oleanders and japonica bushes."Do you ever see Frances?"

"Mother?"

"No, you don't, do you?" She adjusted herself inthe seat, half turning to look at me. "Do you know how I know youdon't go see her?"

I didn't answer.

"Because I go. I visit her every week. I take her cupcakes.She has an old lady's sweet tooth so I take her vanilla cupcakeswith strawberry swirls on the top. Her mind is going. She makes upstories about you. Nutty little pathetic stories about what you aredoing."

"Oh shut up, Alice."

I made her swing a right and we passed under the big mango treeslining her old street. "We're going on the tour?" shesaid.

"The brief one. Slow down."

The car slowed, slowed so much we were barely moving. Her housethen: yellow with green shutters, the green bushes cropped up close toit under the windows like a fringe, a skirt bunched against a waistThrough the archway between the house and the garage, light poured and Iremembered everything.

"You married me the second time," she said,"--after the bigamy business--under that grapefruit tree."

"You wore a strange blue dress like a tablecloth."

"That's what it was."

"And you couldn't stop kissing me."

"I haven't stopped yet."

She stopped the car a moment, in the middle of the street. Welooked at the houses, the blank and unhelpful houses, the dumb trees. Ifelt just as I did all those years ago, just as I did yesterday, that Iwas in the middle of something I couldn't see the beginning or theend of.

"Nothing's ever over," she said, a sad and bitternote in her voice, but only a quiet note, no crescendo.

"Some parts're more over than others, Iguess."

"Don't be philosophical, Billy."

We eased on along. I turned around and looked out the backwindow. There was a poinciana out front that I could always see from twoblocks away, two limbs of it reaching into the street like a wing. I hadforgotten that. "I just think how deep I was into it. How I was socommitted to every part of it, even the bad parts."

"That sounds nostalgic."

"Then you're not getting what I'msaying."

"I thought you would come driving up. Some days I sit out inmy yard waiting for you. I did yesterday."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I couldn't do that, Billy."

"I'm kidnapping you now--you and the baby."

"Is that what you want to do?"

"Yeah." The noise of my voice was a hollow noise, as ifI were speaking from the belly of the whale. "It's a kind oftestimonial."

"No, it's not."

"I'm just saying that."

"Preparing for the trial."

"Har har."

"He's not really a baby," she said, looking intothe back seat where the tyke snored in his bundle of light wraps."He's more a child."

We headed west, into the sun. The world had been built up sinceour childhood and youth. Now people lived out here, snugged into theswamp as if this country were really habitable. But you could get outpast them. The highway curved south, angling in deeper toward the swamp,which was a huge grassy field, unflooded at this time, a place that froma slight distance looked inviting, but when you got up close you saw wasunderlain with black mud pocked with little air holes, stinking in hotsun.

"They have dumped every kind of refuse into thiswonderland," she said.

"We'll find a clear spot."

The child started crying. He was thick bodied and had a big wadof carroty hair on top of his head, like a wig. She pulled over, reachedback, and fiddled with him, spoke kindly words to him, kissed him acouple of times and gave him a bottle with some yellow liquid in it.

Mango juice, she said when she righted herself.

I felt the sting of jealousy, just a prick, a pinch of it."I know," she said, smiling at me. "I know--he'sanother man getting next to the woman. I know."

"You think I could try that routine, when hefinishes?"

I thought this might be a good time to reveal to her that mypistol was a fake, a replica, but I decided not to, not yet. We drovedown through the public areas of the swamp, along the road past thegator wallows and all that, past the tourist business and the canoerental shops, on past where the road gave out into a lane and then intoa track and there was a sign and a barrier. Beyond this, as I knew, theroad kept going until you reached the old-time camps the originalsettlers were still allowed to maintain deep in the swamp. We swungaround the barrier, almost getting stuck on the incline down into thewatery, lily pad-filled ditch, but made it, and continued on souththrough the grass. "Bret," she said, "honey, look at thateagle."

The bird swung in the west drifting up high in a derelictous wayas if it was tired and didn't know what else to do. "Do youremember that time," she said, "when we saw the whole tree ofthem?"

"Let's don't go down memory lane. It makes myheart hurt."

"You'd rather speculate on the future."

"And, uh, delve into the present."

"Okay. Are you going to shoot one of us if we don't dowhat you want?"

"You aren't going to start criticizing me, areyou?"

"No, I don't want to do that. I'm glad to seeyou."

"I've been putting it off--seeing you."

"You would. I was dying to get a look at you, but you wereworking on something."

"Well, I like to think things through. And besides,you're the one who got the divorce. That always makes the other oneuneasy."

"There wasn't anything else for me to do."

"Well, of course not if you don't speak to me aboutit."

"If I could have spoken to you about it I wouldn't havegotten a divorce."

"You say that now."

She didn't mean it the way I was taking it, I saw that. ButI couldn't change myself. A list, a tendency, something like a drugI took a bite of, was already entering my system, too late tocountermand it, the byways and alleys all clogged with it, the desperateand fatal humors, all that, saturating me; I harshly grinned. She smiledback, without sweetness, but with her full self in the smile. I sawthat, too. Her large, even teeth were yellower than they used to be andthere were lines in her face, vertical and cut for life, strange to me,something she'd put together on her own time and applied toherself. There were things I'd missed, I saw that. And the childwas crying again, a stranger in the car, this sporting character,related to someone I didn't know at all, a boy who was sucking allthis subliminally in, the violence and the dusty car ride and the swamplike a grand earthly coadunation, all its bugs fraternally singing,sprawling away just out the window. The whole world keeping up the pace.Cypress domes, like little kingdoms of the lost, rose from the grass inthe blue distance.

We passed a couple of camps and then came to the Terrel placewhere I had her drive in and park. Out back in a big shed they kept theair boat. "Is this where we were headed?" she said.

"Not particularly."

"It's pretty here. This is whose place?"

"Jimmy Terrel. We knew him in high school."

She put shoes onto the boy, tiny soft-blue sneakers with picturesof a funny rat on the sides. She kissed each shoe as she worked it ontohis foot. "You can do that for me when you finish with him," Isaid.

"That's how it would be, I know."

"If we wanted peace."

"Which is why we are no longer married. It's why weshould never have married in the first place."

"How can you say that?"

"There you are, sweetie pie," she said to the child andthen looked up at me, smiling. "We could never keep the peace,Billy."

"That fact never really stopped us."

"But it slowed us down so much we were hardlymoving."

"You don't know how it was for me."

"You're right. I thought I did, but I didn't.Still, people who live together have to be able to find a way topeaceableness between them. They can't always be snatching atthings and throwing each other against the wall. We wouldn't facethat. We needed to find a way to calm down. Both of us did." Sheshook a small blanket out of her bag. "I'm so glad you'vestarted straightening yourself out."

I didn't like being approved of by her, not in this way."I could get peace just by putting my hand on you."

"Not for long."

"I didn't bring you out here to convince you ofanything."

"It's okay." She smiled again. "I'malready convinced."

"What about if we get in the Terrel's air boat and goover to Cypress City and get on a ship and head off to NewOrleans?"

"I would love to do that if it were possible. But it'snot."

"Why? We were headed that way when we got married the firsttime. That's what we were going to do when I came and rescuedyou."

"You didn't rescue me. We rescued each other. Andanyway, we have traveled so far from that time."

"I haven't. I haven't traveled anywhere. I amright here where I always have been. sh*t."

"Don't curse in front of Bret."

"He can't understand curse words."

"He can hear them. They penetrate."

"All right. But look--" I stopped. Even here, even now,even holding a (fake) gun you only got so much time. There was a limitand you couldn't go over it. This was one of the rules of theuniverse, I knew that. "Ah, Alice."

She had spread the blanket out on the ground and set the child onit. From her bag she took an array of small toys. The boy, aconnoisseur, picked up first one, then the other, setting eachcarefully--it looked like an act of care--back on the ground. The air,the February air of the swamp, was clean and bug free. There was a faintyellowing in the western sky. Around the unpainted board-and-battenhouse several trees had been cut back to stumps. Cabbage palms stood upin an isolated way, tousle headed on their skinny poles.

She said, "When I first got back I would take trips on thebus--the city buses--by myself. I wanted to see the city that way.I've always loved how jumbled up Miami is. I rode all over it.Through all the neighborhoods and downtown and across to the beach andup to Hialeah--everywhere. I did it for weeks, one or two days aweek."

"Did you ever think you would see me?"

"Yes, always. Once or twice I thought I did see you, butthen I knew it wasn't you. You were always keeping out ofsight."

"Not really."

"But I wasn't riding to find you. I knew Icouldn't do that. I was just riding to look. I wanted to be apassenger. I wanted life, pictures, people--to see them, you know: awoman painting on a board or a barber sweeping off his sidewalk or a.junkie shaking a radio; I wanted to see all the life tumbling around.And I wanted--I can't explain it--I wanted to see how one thingkept replacing another. One thing coming after another--as if there wasno end to it. I'd been so afraid there was an end. Everything thelast thing. I got so tired waiting for it. That's why I had to goin the hospital--here and out in California."

"You were in the hospital in--"

"Let me say." She looked off at the prairie, at theflooded field of it and the grasses, gold, green, and moving slightly, abreeze flowing across them like a calming touch. "Thingsdidn't even have to be connected. They just had to come one afteranother. I wanted to be sure there would be one more."

"I know what you mean."

"Yes. You do. But me, I only figured it out later. Thosedays I just looked. One afternoon about sunset we were riding throughone of the rough parts, down below Calle Ocho where it's so grubbyand defeated and the buildings have weeds growing in the cracks in thewalls. The sun was going down--it was right near your father's oldmission--and everybody on the bus was either sleeping or daydreamingabout something--nobody was looking out the window but me, and thethought came to me, this one thought, that we are passing through aparadise. It was the ugliest neighborhood in town, I guess, but justthen it looked like a paradise. It didn't just look like it, it wasa paradise. Everything was."

"That's fine, Allie," I said. It was clear shebelieved every word.

I got up and walked to the boathouse, went in and looked at theairboat. Spidery and delicate, backed by a rocket, like something from adream, this boat, ready to go. The Terrels kept it gassed up and I knewwhere they hid the keys. I reached around behind the little panel andthere they were. I took them out and went over and got in the boat. Itrocked slightly, and I felt the press of its flat bottom against thewater, the tension, the resiliency of it. There were two keys, one forthe lockup chain and one for the engine. I climbed up on the seat. Outthe front doors open water stretched away a hundred yards to the darkchannel cutting through the prairie.

Here's what happens: You cross the open water and enter thechannel and you follow it as it winds through the grass past thehammocks and woodland domes, the swampy islands upon which variousanimals live their animal lives; you go on though the buggy days and thelong, buzzing nights and you don't let mischance or false pathwaysdeter you, you keep right on with your goodwill about life and yourstubbornness, leaving each lived day behind you, the husk of it driftingin the shallows of the past; you stay with the trail, pushing on andriding the slow current of boggy water draining down the sleeve of thecontinent--keep on no matter what--until one day, some sunny day, youcome to the blue, blue waters of the Gulf.

Six days after this day, in a little town on the eastern shore ofVirginia, Henry, who'd driven up, he said, crying most of the way,collected the child and took him back to his father.