THE
HEDONIST

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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29

Chapter 1:

"Every man is a hedonist," she said to me from nowhere. We stood together at an intersection, waiting for the light to let us cross. We had never met before. She smiled and looked across the street into the peppermint hurricane spinning in front of the barber shop.

"Every man is a hedonist and philosophy but his path to pleasure," and she stepped over the threshold of the road just as the signal changed. I stopped, unable to follow her, restrained by cowardice from jumping into the philosophic foxhole, and she did not look back. She went down the street toward the drugstore, a heavy-set building with chubby brickwork and a double-chin overhang. I awoke from my wonder to find the signal flashing red and the woman almost out of sight. So I started across the street - to the great annoyance of the newspaper van then passing - and joined her at the drugstore's window. We stood silent for a time, looking at a collection of watches which was on display.

"I am a hedonist," and she turned her face to mine.

Silence was my only answer.

"You are as well."

Finally, my wit returned, albeit weakly, "Though I despise clothing, I am no nudist."

Her teeth showed themselves in a smile.

We stood for a moment, then, "You are Edwin O'Donne?"

"I am."

"As I thought; I cannot but respect a master hedonist," and she turned into the wind, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. Then she disappeared around the corner. I did not follow her.

For a moment, I watched with day-dreaming eyes; then my mind returned to the world about me. I stood in downtown Hiram on a sandy-eyed Sunday morning. Old brick buildings lined the street, crowned with age and toiling under the same. Still, they were well-kept and loaned an academic legitimacy to the college town; the loan, however, which was not without its interest. After I had escaped from my thoughts, I turned my feet toward the college, to which I had been headed. I passed the church. It was a castle church - a bastion of religion - made of roughly hewn gray stone with two sentry towers as doors and a parking lot moat. The service would not begin for half an hour. The pastor greeted me with a shaking hand as I came in, his hibernating eyes strolling the landscape in search for ears. He was slightly short, bald, and possessed with the quality of confidentiality.

"Edwin," he said, his voice a sigh. "Edwin, at least you are not among those who would avoid a man for philosophy's sake."

He fell silent and I could not answer, thinking of the mysterious woman I had just left and afraid lest I release his passions upon myself. This time, however, he did not indulge his confessional fetish.

"Have you seen that woman?" he asked me after a moment, "She said nothing as she passed, but her eyes insulted me. And I do not doubt it was the barber's doing, spreading his seeds beneath my soil. May the birds of the air take them up again."

"The barber? He is not in today. The pole is broken."

"I did not mean he had done it today, but he is the type of man who disrespects religion." His eyes squinted and he leaned forward until his forehead caught my nose. "After all, a man does not go bald without the curse of a barber."

He winked, then turned aside to the parishioners, who were now beginning to arrive. I left him there on the steps and went my way. I did not attend church for religious reasons, but had lunch sometimes with the pastor over discussions of theology, which was the closest thing to philosophy one can discuss with a minister. I could think of nothing except the hedonistic woman. I left him and went to my dwelling place. I use that heartless term because to me it was nothing more. I lived in a dormitory for men, for students of the college, because in my social poverty I could do no better.

I had a name to some, perhaps, but everyone has at least that much. I was young and knew nothing. Yet I did not enjoy the things of youth. I made my living by traveling, though in mind and not in body: I was a reader and a writer, a man who connected with other spirits through the medium of the written word and distilled my own spirit for others to convene with. Leaving the real, I migrated to the imagination; and, while it was the purest form of life, my true life was diluted with each journey into my mind. To some I was a fool, to others a recluse. Only to the blank page was I man, and to men only a blank page.

I climbed to the top floor of the dormitory - which held my room - and opened my door still clouded by my encounter with the mysterious and enchanting woman. I looked in but saw nothing through the darkness.

"From hence forth, I am a celibate," came a voice from the floor.

The room was dark, the curtains closed, and the only light came from a gas lantern which hung from the ceiling. In the far corner Jacques, my roommate, laid on the floor with his blanket pulled over his body and his eyes wallowing in repentance. He was tall, with a symmetric build and a long, flat nose that spread over his face. His eyes were gray, his hair rusted red and somewhat senile, his lips lily pads. My mind crawled out of my imagination at the sound of his voice. Without turning, he continued to speak:

"I abandon any thoughts of love or lust and am now an eunuch. By tomorrow the deed will have been done."

Some men are not enough of anything to be liked or disliked and some too much of others to be men at all. But Jacques possessed no pretensions of peculiarity. Thus, he was a man singular unto himself. If he was not a male, he was a still man; and, perhaps, to the celibate, they are the same. I turned on the lights, the room was overrun by a sticky brightness, and Jacques turned to me.

"I have suffered enough for love that I cannot suffer love to come again. What I do is done for the love of woman, that the battle might be surrendered. No longer am I a lover: now I am but a connoisseur."

I said nothing in return, but sat on my bed, the lone piece of furniture in the room. The rest Jacques had thrown aside in a passion and now our things were piled in a circle around the lantern's shadow. He stood and shut off the light as I stepped away from the switch, drowning the place in a religious haze.

"My love can never again be given," and silence came upon us.

At length, I said, "If the tide does not go out, it cannot come in."

"Yet either way it leaves one in the same place. If I must swim with despair, let me make it my home. To swim against the tide takes too much strength."

"The choice is your own: we are all hedonists, they say. Thus, follow your philosophy to whatever pleasure you will."

"So we are. But philosophy is my only pleasure. What I can no longer bear is this unbearable contrast: when I am struck with love all else diminishes. Let love leave and the pleasure will return elsewhere. My love is the electric lights, but I can see well enough by the lantern."

"Then let it be," I sighed, and I thought of the woman I had met earlier.

I did not think of what fled my thoughtless lips, but he took his feet and went to the door.

"Then let it be!" and he took a parcel from the floor, leaving me alone in thought and silence.

For a moment I stared at the dancing lantern, confused and emotionally inebriated. But then, with a surge of blood, I thought of Jacques: only then did I think of the proceeding conversation. Jacques was a day-sailer before the winds of philosophy: when one gust of insight struck him, it either beached him on one side or capsized him on the other. I leapt to my feet and fled the room to stop him. I knew no one else in the dormitory - as I am a mental hermit - and so did not stop to ask where Jacques had gone. In a moment I came out into the street, into the wooded veranda which covered the campus. Few others were out on that Sunday afternoon. Nothing could be heard but the blowing of my windstorm and the crashing of my feet.

The college was, on the whole, a square, with four circular divisions within. Each division contained a school or department of the institution and, in the four corners of the larger square, the dormitories lived their solitary lives. Throughout the whole was a cover of trees, spaced twenty feet apart with a mowed meadow beneath. Only the top stories of the department buildings rose above the trees. In the tallest towers the professors kept their rooms, of dwelling and of office. If it was anything, the College of Hiram was an institution of liberal education. Yet its manifestation of the humanistic standard stood out like a sore thumb on a limbless man: it was divided into four schools: of the Past, of the Present, of the Future, and of the Nihilists.

As I passed the School of the Past, a resounding crash came from far above - the sound of breaking glass - followed by a short, intense hail. I stopped, doubled over, and covered my head as the debris snowed around me. Yet as soon as it had started it had stopped. After a moment of hesitation, I raised my head to see what was about. There, laying shattered on the ground before me, was a life-size portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. Its wooden frame - of the cheapest variety, although the picture itself was costly - was broken in two and the pieces lay mingled on the ground with the broken glass that had once served as its facade. Silence came. I did not have the strength to break through.

But I did not have to. From the tower above the trees - which blocked its origin from view - a shrill, smoke-dried voice bombarded through the air and fell like broken glass upon my ears.

"You are defeated, my enemy Napoleon, destroyed by my superior strength," and it was a woman's voice, though not feminine. "The curse of man is broken! For no man, be he god or general, can stand against Debora Whaner. Depart, oh men, and be men no more." The sentence ended in a laugh and continued for a paragraph before it was silenced by the thud of a closing window.

I could not move, but stood staring at the battle scarred Napoleon. A wrinkle warped the canvas about his nose and mouth, giving his countenance a sorrowful sneer - the distress of defeat which he had so little known. As I stood, a waltzing footstep came from behind, striking heavily at each step with the flat of the foot. I stood until it came closer, then turned slowly to face its source: a corn-stalk man, with fleeing wheat field hair and a mustache that peaked warily out of his nose. He wore glasses, perfectly round, and an academic bow tie.

"Tut-tut," as he gnawed his lower lip, "A distressing, distressing occurrence," and he continued on, stepping deftly over the portrait. His voice paused - though not his steps - and only as he walked away did he finish, "Foggy with a chance of tyrant."

A window ran along the outside of the School of the Past, in which I saw his reflection winking at me. He sighed as he turned the corner and the faint wind carried his words to my ear: "Such is life: foggy with a chance of tyrant."

Chapter 2:

When he was gone, I turned to the east, toward the outside edge of the square and toward the town beyond. The architecture remained uniform between town and college, a seamless transition that spoke of a rich history and had cost millions to achieve. Halfway down main street I came to a low wall, with a shop above and, below, a narrow stair leading to a pub. I descended, exiting into a wooden-walled parlor with a bar counter along the far wall and two tables on either side. The room was dim, but not dark, and the floor creaked as I crossed to the bar. A red man stood there, with a red beard, red lips, and a red freckle on the end of his red nose. His eyes were clams that closed to a bare crack as I came up, looking me over.

"Edwin, what will you have?"

"A tyrant," my thoughts were elsewhere.

"Coming right up," and he winked, turned to the kitchen, and called, "One O'Donne fillet, aye?"

A grunt came back. He turned to collect my customary meal-time accouterments: a cherry cola and a bowl of Spanish olives.

"Your fish in a moment. We have perch from the river today."

Only then did I look up: "Patrick, thank you."

"Make no mention; the fried flipper is made for you."

"A constant among variables, at least. A roving mind must have its comfort food."

"I hear you and I know it," he said.

"I should buy a pub."

"Or work for me; the Brick will always keep a place for you when others don't. But that is the way with a man of alphabets."

"Of letters, you mean?" I asked.

"Whichever."

I sighed, thinking of nothing worth remembering.

"Here we go," after a moment, and he handed me a plate with a deep-fried perch sandwiched between Patrick's famous sourdough. I smiled.

"Have you ever seen the ocean?" I asked.

"Never."

"The mountains?"

"Nor that."

"The prairie?"

"I've seen no such things, Edwin. Why do you ask?"

"Only to ask," and I returned to my meal. After a moment of his scrutiny, I added, "My feet can't sleep."

He only smiled; I continued:

"The road calls, says it is lonely without me. The wind cries its greetings and the silence chases my mind into the shadows."

"Then go."

"I would if I could, but I am only a persecuted novelist."

Patrick laughed.

"I do not jest," I insisted. "I am a novelist no one reads and no one cares to know. There is no worse fate for a novelist than to be a dust pan."

"Then do what you must."

"Duty," I moaned, and nothing more passed between us but three dollars for the meal.

Chapter 3:

Daylight was retreating as I came out. I passed no one on my way to the dormitory except a drunk townie. As I came in the front door and into the small lobby, Steve - who ran the place - stood up. He was locked away behind his desk, a rectangle counter set against the wall with a mass of mail holes behind it. In their center stood a door that led to his room. On the left was a television silently showing an old-time movie.

"Edwin," his voice was eager. "Edwin, you have some letters."

"Thank you, Steve," as I walked to the counter.

He pulled two envelopes from box number 610 and carefully slid them across the counter, his eyes stuck on me. The first was business size, with the return address preprinted on the outside. It was from my literary agent. Steve whistled and I smiled, reading it aloud to him before I had read it to myself. Only a few lines covered the otherwise empty page, with the signature enlarged to fill the void.

Edwin,

The economy is down again, and you cannot expect people to forfeit food to buy books. But don't despair: things will get better. I look forward to your next manuscript.

That was all, except for the brief report of sales and royalties. My poverty continued, and, what was worse, there was no next manuscript. I exhaled turbulence. Steve turned diplomatically to the television. The second envelope was also on preprinted stationary, with a blue clock tower in the upper left corner and "College of Hiram" printed in an intelligent font. I ruthlessly tore it open, discarding the envelope and wearily carrying the enclosed schedule card up the stairs to my lonely, dormitory purgatory.

The classes were all those I had requested, with the addition of an experimental course for which they used those with full scholarships as training ground: A History of Wo(man), with Dr. D. Whaner.

By this time I had reached the sixth floor and the door to my corner room. It was completely dark: not even the lantern was awake. Yet a relaxed breathing came from the far wall, beating softly in a two-three rhythm. A thought hit me across the face. Only then did I remember the reason I had been about: Jacques.

"Jacques, you are here?" I inquired of the darkness.

"I am," it returned.

Silence, and I closed the door, stumbled to my bed, and sat down in the darkness.

"And I am well, Edwin. I have seen the light."

"Then you are not hurt?"

"Can a gentle caress hurt a man?"

"I would not call it gentle, myself," I said.

"But you are a man of letters, and thus know nothing of it."

"Not by experience, but I have read."

"If reading is knowing then I am God," he said.

"And are you?"

"I hope not."

"I thought as much. Jacques, where did you go?" I asked.

"For a walk."

"Yes, but where did your," I paused, "Healing take place."

"Ten miles to the south, in the Amish fields."

"And it was sanitary?"

"Such things rarely are. Yet the Amish woo by strength."

"So they do; I knew one in my youth. Listen, Jacques, in spite of your pain I must use the electric lights for a moment, to file my royalties." I felt Amish myself, referring to electric lights in a way no real man had done for years. But I could not change my roommate.

I stood once more, tripping on something on the floor before reaching the light switch. They came on like the sun, burning my eyes until I could not see. Yet when my sight returned, I could not speak: there, lying in the middle of the floor, was an Amish woman. Jacques was beside her.

"You did not do it here?" and my stomach wrenched.

"Where else, in the barn?" he paused. "There as well, but I have no shame in this place."

"You have done it twice?" I cried, confused, "Must you be so obsessive in everything?"

"I enjoyed it the first time, as did she. What was once good is twice better. You would do the same, if you could."

"I stand to file my royalties; but, by God, I could not stand to file my royalties."

He laughed. "What do you mean?"

"You are a eunuch?"

"An eunuch?" the Amish woman looked him over.

"An eunuch?" he returned her look with a wink. "No, why so?"

"By God, indeed; I cannot stand your bastardism, Jacques," and I took my blanket in hand, dashed from the room, and made my bed in the hallway. Disgust was my mantra, wonder my mantel. But then, you can never know a man from the School of Nihilism.

Chapter 4:

I awoke the next morning to a swarm of swarthy, scarlet-faced pedestrians: the collegiate occupants of that unfortunate dormitory. I had never before seen some of them - nor they me - but they paid attention to neither me nor to the two vagrants who had found sleep at my side. I saw them when I woke, two hairy and dirty men of the kind who often found their rest in the dormitory halls.

"Good morning," said the man to the left. His beard came to his chest, his hair to his beard, and both were pine trees. His eyes were chestnuts, his nose a pine cone. "Good morning: to you and it is."

"The same," I returned

"I have not seen you here before: I am Caleb."

"And I Edwin."

"Very well, Edwin: shall we be to breakfast?"

"Where do you take it?"

"In the President's Hall," he said.

"How is that? Even most professors are not extended an invitation to that elite club," and I was surprised.

"Yet I am no mere professor. The college inducted me into the President's Hall some time ago, and, with its lifetime membership, that is the end and the beginning of it."

"Still, it is a rare privilege."

"Am I not rare? I am Caleb Clifford."

"Mr. Clifford, in person?" I ironed my lips. "The economy truly is bad."

He sighed and shook his head in assent. "And more than that. But come, let us be off."

Caleb Clifford took to his feet, putting his overcoat blanket on his shoulders as he went. He had nothing more. I followed him as he fled down the stairs to the ground floor, where he quickly exited to the bathtub air outside: the fog came in so heavy it turned to water when it came against our skin. The President's Hall was the basement of Central Hall, the palatial building in the center of campus. Its walls were mahogany, its floors marble, its ceiling a cathedral. Membership was extended only to past and present presidents and a few of the academic elite associated with the college; friends could attend with members. A dining table stood to the side, catered to the wealthiest of tastes, and as we came in President Ames sat alone, eating a king's breakfast. He was a king himself, with the poise of a statue and the warmth of an icebox. He wore his usual tuxedo and cowboy tie - though he was no cowboy - and looked up as we came in, a smile stretched over his facial facade.

"Mr. Clifford, the pleasure is mine. And Mr. O'Donne; I did not realize you were acquainted with our eminent bard."

"We slept together," and Caleb took his chair at Ames's side.

"Invigorating; a literary recreation."

"You have heard as much?" Caleb smiled and Ames returned it.

As he spoke, the waiter tread silently to the table and asked, "What will you have?"

"Flapjacks, sausage, and a glass of bourbon."

"I will have what Mr. Ames has," I said, and the waiter left us.

"Your friendship is literary as well?" Ames asked.

"I did not know it, but if you say it, I take it as canonical," Caleb smiled.

"Then you do not know of Mr. O'Donne's literary," pausing, "Excursions."

"Not in the least; I slept with him and know nothing more. I did not know he was in the college at all."

"He is, in the School of the Past," Ames looked me over.

"I was there, myself," and Caleb did the same.

"Pastites," Ames's voice was ambiguous. "Edwin is a neophyte novelist."

"Is not everyone?"

"In mind, at least, but he has more genius than many."

I was uncomfortable with the third-person conversation and remained a silent spectator.

"And what does he write?"

"Science fiction and fantasy, albeit literary."

"Literary science fiction? Yes, and softcore sin and Catholic porno; to hell with them all. Why ruin a good thing by making it literary? I thought he was a vagrant; I did not think him of such humble character."

I weakly tried to smile, but it seemed a snarl.

"So it seems at first, but there is genius if the eye is open. Not genius, though, to those of the college: he is a lonely man on campus."

"As is wit," Caleb retorted, taking a swig of the bourbon. "To be shunned by the gnashers of teeth is to me a compliment; and to live as a vagrant while not being one is doubly so. I thought I liked your smell, Edwin, and now I know I like your all."

"Alas, but that you were a woman," Ames smiled weakly, as one abused.

Caleb was a lion, "Women are the truth of homosexuality. But have you not read Genesis? To go in unto a woman is to the almighty the same as to go in unto a room."

"The past is a harlot's house; I, myself, am a Futurist. I care nothing for Genesis or any other beginning," Ames said. He smiled at me in a knowing way as he finished.

"A whore to progress, Ames: lift ye your legs to toast the maybe-so," Caleb said.

"A whore, perhaps, but I do not do my duties with your anal pretensions. And thus I am not shafted by my own curiosities."

Ames looked to himself, satisfied, and Caleb leapt to his feet, dousing the man with the bourbon remaining in his glass.

"If I did not want to, I would not," he cried, throwing his fist into the table. "And if you knew the pleasures of escape and enlightenment, which surpass even those literary, you would not be long in following. To desire is not to sin outright; to have is not to hold. Above all, if a man can die for his country and be thought a hero, cannot he not die for himself and be the same? Every man is a hedonist. I have found the narrow road," and Caleb raised himself upon his heels, swiveled around, and marched from the room. I followed.

When we were outside, on the lawn that stretched within the square, Caleb turned to me.

"You are novelist enough for me; I will seek out your books and the pleasure will be mine. Until then, I have rather urgent business to attend. Farewell," and he turned and was gone before I could respond.

Chapter 5:

I opened my mouth to call out my good-bye, but the air was taken by the tolling bell of the college clock tower: it was eight o'clock and time for my first class: the History of Wo(man). I turned my steps to the School of the Past. The class had already begun when I arrived. The professor stood before the room - the class in which consisted entirely of females - wearing a suit. Her hair was cut short and combed at the side like a man's and she wore no make-up.

"O'Donne," she said, forsaking the title "mister," and her voice was sawdust to my ears.

"The same," and I took a seat in the center of the first row.

"And let this be an example of men: that they put themselves first," she lectured.

"Yet if I had taken a seat in the back, what would you have said?" I had not shaved or showered and thus was left a caveman, much to her delight.

"That yours was an impotent mind," she smiled, and even with her carriage she was beautiful, perhaps because of it. Hers was an intellectual dominatrix, mine a mental masochism.

"So I am justified from my inescapable guilt," I said. "I am only late because I was involved in a fight with President Ames, in which the futurist pig was left a bourbon sponge. Of that I do not repent." If it was an untruth, it was made to order for Dr. Whaner, and she drank it with pleasure.

"Then I allow it, though I do not care for your style." Yet her words were at war with her mannerisms; for as she spoke, she walked to my side and playfully bit my ear. Her hair was blood and her lips night crawlers and as she continued to seduce me - in the midst of the classroom - I could not prevent myself from becoming enlivened.

She turned to the class and smiled, "If there is one truth this class is meant to convey, it is this," and she grabbed my shirt and forced me to stand beside her. My intemperance was revealed to the young women in the class in the person of my erect penis: I was cursed, as always, by its inhuman size, which left my weakness visible to all. I felt a Neanderthal. "Men are sexual animals, nothing more."

Blood overran my face and my wit stumbled off my lips, falling into stupidity. A trickling giggle ran through the room. I was only saved by the sound of footsteps approaching from the rear of the room. They came from the midnight beauty who had enchanted me by the barber shop - the hedonistic woman whose name I did not know - and when I saw her again, her beauty only increased. Her countenance was the contrast between the moon and the sky about it, her eyes a marble mixture of green and blue, her nose a nimble dancer with a thousand angels praying on its tip. She was short, but her poise made her seem a giant. She walked to my side, with a slow and unusually dramatic gait, and gave Whaner the eye of the rebutter. Nothing came from her lips, however. Rather, her lips came onto mine: she kissed me deeply like a drought of water. I thought never to thirst again.

"If all men are hedonists, all women are no different," and, winking, she returned to her seat.

I sat as well and Dr. Whaner continued her lecture, albeit tempered by the scene. My mind was enchanted, however: I do not remember what the lecture was on. Until this point in my life I had felt no pleasures above the literary: I had not made love, to woman or wine; I had not taken the open road with liberated feet; I had not woken to find the sleeping stars beside me; I had not known the power of authority; and, above all, I had never truly sinned. And that, I have seen, is the only pleasure left us in this purgatory. Still, at the time, my only thought was love, and my only sensation mystery as to what that truly was.

After the lecture I was free for the day. I left the Pastite building in a cloud of confusion. I was only brought to life again by the sound of footsteps beside me and a sweet whisper in my ear.

"Thus is the fruit of hedonism," and it was the woman.

"Then I would not repent of it. I am taking a walk now; would you join me?"

"I generally do not associate myself with ape men," she said.

"We have been associated already, I should think."

"Perhaps; either way I have a class."

"And in an hour?"

"I am free, then."

"Very well: I will return to civilization while you return to class." I paused. "What is your name? You know mine, it seems, but I can only call you woman."

Laughing, "Call me that, if you must. My name, however, is Tamara."

"In an hour then, Tamara, where we now stand."

"In an hour, then."

Chapter 6:

With that we parted ways: I to the dormitory and Tamara to her class. The walk to the dormitory, to the brick bastion of stupidity, ran away with my mind. The first five floors passed wearily away beneath my feet and in a moment I was at my door. I knocked three times, lest I interrupt my roommate in the midst of his immoral hobby; but, hearing nothing, I went in. That does not mean, however, that he was not within the room. He stood in the far corner, the curtains open and the lantern blazing and he standing in their combined light. Jacques wore no clothing and he had not shaved in many days.

"You are back, but from where?" as he turned to face me.

"From class - which is, after all, the purpose of college," I said.

"Purpose! Nothing has purpose; and even if it did, purpose has nothing," he said.

"Then why did you come to college?"

"Because I did, and therefore I am here unless I remove myself."

"I would think so," and I began to shave with the free-style razor blade Jacques kept. It was too sharp to need anything more than a splash of water, which we had in a small basin on a bronze tripod, kept for that purpose.

"Yet I cannot leave now, for I have found it; and this time it is without doubt," he continued.

"Indeed?" for I had heard the same passion everyday since we had met.

"In deed and in theory! I have found love, Edwin."

"A bachelor's love, you mean? But wait, Jacques: are you admitting that love exists, that anything exists?"

"No, but if it did this would be it."

"Then you are not in love, but in love's imagination," I laughed.

"Pedantic semantics! I am no longer concerned with philosophy, so ring circles about me if you must; but I will not give heed to the doldrums of the tongue and the trade winds of speech. For I am possessed by the demon of love; and, by God, the demon is my love."

"I, myself, never cared to seduce evil spirits."

"Evil? If it exists, it is not her. My love grinds unto me, and I bow down upon her; and it is good," he said.

"As are many things."

"Not like this, my friend."

"Perhaps, will you shave or should I put it away?"

"I have given up shaving," he said.

"As you have given up many other things."

"I have, I confess, made vows in a passion which temperance overturned," Jacques said. "But now, I possess passion and temperance at once; and in their mingling blood my blood mingles with another. My face will never again be naked."

"So I see, for you will leave that honor to your other members," and I left the room, going down the hall to the communal bath.

The students has posted a guard at the door some days before, to prevent the invading vagrants from besieging the holy citadel, the floor bathroom. So, at the door, I was forced to show my identity card, as they did not know me. I cannot hide what I am, and I was unknown because of my nature as an unsocial satirist.

Chapter 7:

In an hour, I was cleansed and smartly dressed and on my way to my rendezvous with the siren Tamara. We met in silence, beneath the shade of a gnarly oak, its trunk wide with age.

"Here we are, then," I ventured.

"It would seem as much; but where will we be going?"

"To brunch, and I thought Cal's Restaurant would do."

"It is all the same to me."

"Is it? If it is all the same then it can be no different," I said.

She smiled, "I thought you to be a literary man."

"I am, at times."

"Then it must come with work, and be more labor than genius."

"To the contrary, it is easy when the time comes. I was born with literary nipples; but I must suck them myself."

" Now you sound like a man of letters; yet which do you imply, the fetal nature or the sexual?"

"If I were truly a man of letters, I would say both, that it may draw a contrast with itself. But I am a man of honesty instead, and meant only the fetal. I do not hold myself a bosom connoisseur."

"A rarity, indeed," she said.

"A commonality among feminists."

"As is rarity, itself. But come, you are not a romantic?" she asked.

"I am too much of a realist, really. Besides, I am not made of the stuff of women," I answered.

"Which is?"

"Arrogance and intemperance, it seems. I meant beauty, though, for I am not handsome; nor am I interesting, without humor or charm. I am dry and thus make no one wet," I said, for some reason saying just what came into my head without subjecting it to the filter of correctness, that filter which usually left me silent.

"Then you are but 'a walker, wooing the wind with wilderness eyes'?"

"To quote a poor writer, yes. My thought when I wrote that was wooing of a different kind. You ask if I am romantic and inwardly I am, though my obsessive mind prevents my manifesting it: I fear my words to be foolish, thus I keep silent. But I am lonely. When I write my pen howls to the stars, soliciting the goddess of love. She does not answer," I said.

"Such is the way of the wind," Tamara said.

"Precisely: I have only the road to love, only its winding curves to caress me."

"Yet you forsake it for college, for formal education which you do not need," she looked at me closely.

"Everyone can learn something."

"And rarely from a college. When I read you, I thought you were a man of the road," and she smiled slightly.

"The man's mind is not the man. My mind is weak, powerless to break away from civilization and take the narrow road. So I remain here and am proved, as you say, a fool."

She did not answer, but kissed me with her eyes. And it was better than before.

We walked as we spoke, reaching the restaurant soon after. It took the corner spot in a small square of commercial buildings: a grocery store, a dollar shop, and a hair salon (not to be confused with the barber). The walls were aging brick and the roof came over the sidewalk, which faced the city with the college rising in the fore. Behind the restaurant grazed several wooded fields, having somehow lost their way among the suburban graveyard. The insides of the restaurant formed a single room, tables on one side and a partially hidden kitchen on the other; as we entered we were sunk into the past, which was worshiped by the round wooden tables and the round wooden chairs. Two old farmers ate near the door and a young man sat with an elder by the side window; but otherwise it was empty. A wall and a counter made a corridor of the entrance. We were met at its end by the waitress: a blond girl with a cute, flat face.

"How many?" she asked for the thousandth time; but she said it like the first.

"Two," Tamara smiled with her eyes, with which she did many such things.

The waitress was either blind or hardened. "Right this way," and we were off to the center of the room, to a table for four.

"What will you have to drink?"

"Cherry cola, and could I have a bowl of Spanish olives before the meal?"

"You can; and you, ma'am?"

"A creme soda."

"Will you order now?"

"I'll have the fish fry," I answered.

"And I the fish bake," Tamara said.

"In a moment," and the waitress was off, leaving us alone.

"You are young," Tamara began.

"Patience; I am working on that as we speak."

"I did not mean it as an insult, but as a compliment."

"How so?" I asked.

"That you can write like an old man."

"Perhaps I am an old man," I said, "Trapped in a young man's body."

"Humility is pride with a pinch of wit," she smiled.

"By God, I'll never write again," and I laughed at the quote.

She said nothing, staring at me instead with the intensity of a question.

"The tides carry in and the tides carry out; if I have it, I have not earned it," I said. "But I have heard it said that the mind works faster than the pen, and to write is to shoot the partridge before it can fly away. If that is so, my genius comes precisely because I am slow and thus have more time to aim. Once, when I was in a feverish, literary orgasm, I came to an abrupt stop at the thought of how I appeared to others: unsocial, distant, seemingly morose and surely stupid. It is strange, but I was more pained that others thought me lonely than that I was lonely in truth. Perhaps I never was before that."

She continued to stare so I continued to speak the words which floated to the top of my mind like oil above the water:

"Yet once, as I ate alone in the cafeteria, a young lady came to sit beside me, with thoughts of comforting me, of easing my loneliness. Her eyes were moon shadows and solar eclipses, and it was only when she sat beside me that I felt alone, only when she tried to rouse me to conversation as one rouses an impotent lover that my heart failed to beat on account of my pathetic nature. I, and no one else, was that friendless lump of salted sugar that sat alone in the cafeteria, like a schoolboy shunned by his peers. So I resolved to display my fine wit, to play my tongue upon her ears like Cicero upon the square. But it was stopped and would not come. 'My wit, my wit, why have you forsaken me?' I moaned as she lowered herself to my subhuman verbal purgatory. She said hello; I could not croak my name. Then a voice flew through my head on a broom stick, laughing in derision: 'Depart from me; I know you not.' And so it was, and so it will be; and that thought makes me write, that without paper I am an utter fool, to whom no one listens long enough to know the difference between inability and self-control."

I fell silent for a moment, yet still she stared and her eyes dared me on, to speak further than I already had. I could not but obey:

"And, what is strange, though my tongue stops and my lips take up arms against my words, I still think myself eloquent, entertaining, and - I fain admit it - beautiful. Thus am I a fool, a social dunce; and though every time I see a woman I think that she must think that I am artwork to the eyes, I must know myself that the only smiles they give are the smiles one gives to a dog, to a dirty young boy too pathetic to be hated. But I am no dog and I am not a boy, though I am yet young. I am only dirty, pathetic, and hated. And if I do speak, as I am now, it will haunt me for a week: I will wake in the dripping, dreary night and think myself a fool, that I said this and not that. I gave up facial expressions long ago, after one such night of self-criticism. Soon I will give up speech altogether. By now I have ruined my nights for a week to come and when we part the doubt will once more begin to crawl up my limbs, into my ears, and have an orgy in my brain with its dismal comrades."

Like an undead zombie coming after my mind, her eyes continued to stare. I went on:

"These are the fruits of perfection, of the constant search for the perfect word. And I have always been this way: I could face the devil without fear, but I could never breath beside a woman, even though with all my hermit heart I wanted to speak with her. The present time is surreal, a fog of weariness which for the moment tears down my intellectual firewall. For all my acting as an absent-minded writer, I am only absent emotionally; and I will die as I have lived: alone."

At last she was satisfied. Whatever thing she had leaned her eyes forward to hear, she had heard. What she thought of it, her face did not reveal. The mark of a novelist, I thought, was the ability to rant and horde the words of a conversation in the name of eloquence. I was, as I predicted, disgusted at myself. By then the food had come. We began to eat. The fish fry was superb, the type which drives my tongue to lust, and which the college cafeteria was so loathe to present. For the next several minutes, therefore, I only opened my mouth to take more of it in. When we were done, she ate the silence for dessert.

"Would I be wrong to love you; or rather, could you love me?" she asked.

"I have never loved before, but I am ready to forget myself; I am ready to break free from my mind and find the pleasures of the world. I will be your hedonist."

"You are more a romantic than you will admit," she said.

"So it is with everyone," I said.

"So it is, indeed," and we fell into a reverie. The waitress brought the bill and we parted at the door without a word. As a man of letters, I know the worths of spaces.

Chapter 8:

I returned to campus on foot while Tamara was bound for downtown. I made fiction in my head along the way, a romantic story of abandoned lovers, faked suicides and feigned insanities, and ended it all with a piece of bigamy. It was a story I would keep to myself and not propagate in a novel, since I would be thought insane if anyone happened to read it. I am a man of imagination over speech, but even my imaginations I keep private: only those presentable do I condense into novels. To some it may seem foolish, to hide behind written words as well as spoken, yet they have not been into the cryptic catacomb that is my head; and if they had, they must have crept in between the lines.

I was thinking these things as I came into campus and was only brought to life by an approaching woman. She wore a tight suit and, as a result, walked by rotating her hips and not by swinging her legs. It was evident she was coming to me, to bring word of something, so I stopped and walked the other way as far as I politely could, in order to watch her for a longer time. At last, she came up with a feminist smile; that is to say, she had sourdough lips and atomic bomb eyes.

"Edwin O'Donne?" as a question.

"I am the same."

"You are similar to him, or you are him?"

"Either or; what do you need?"

"I have a message from Dr. Whaner."

"Which is?"

"To see her in her office as soon as you can."

"It is urgent?"

"No, but she does not like to be bothered."

"I have not asked to see her, though."

"Indeed, but she wants to see you."

"Can she be bothered by an appointment she makes herself? Yet I forget: she is a woman." To offend a feminist is the greatest fun, especially on issues of sex. Her face knotted together and her lips were pushed out from her face in the oddest way.

"Her room is at the top, floor 15," was all she could hiss before turning and rotating down the path. I stopped to watch her go, laughing audibly - to my shame, I will admit. She heard and hurricaned her hips to hasten herself, which only provoked my further laughter.

When she had disappeared, I turned to the School of the Past, which tore up from the ground before me like a dark tower. A smile covered my face as I went, but a shadow my heart. Despite my laughter, I fear nothing more than feminists. Nothing, I should say, than women. After a long climb, I came to the fifteenth floor, on which hers was the only door. The tower came to a round point and the stairway led directly into the center of her office, its walls flanked with windows and its ceiling open to the sky. A sun dial was painted on the floor, ingeniously crafted into a mural of esoteric goddesses.

"You have come," and she could not be seen over the back of the throne she sat in, facing away from me but hearing my footsteps clamor as I echoed up the stairs.

"I have," as she slowly spun around.

"Then you know what this is concerning?" she asked.

"In fact, I do not," I answered.

"He does not know," and she looked to a spot on the wall behind me, several feet from the floor. At first I kept myself from looking, but she looked at it as if she looked at a lover, so I could not but turn to see what it was. There, hanging on the wall beyond the stairway, was a portrait of Napoleon: the same which had come down on me the day before.

"He does not know, Napoleon," she repeated, "For he is a man, and they are not known for knowing." She began to caress her bosom as she spoke.

Then, turning to me, "What is the purpose of life, O'Donne?"

I opened my mouth to reply but she leapt from her seat and slammed her fists against the desk, "Wrong!" She was a lioness and I fell back a step. "The purpose of life is silence, which cannot be propagated by the tongue," she said.

I smiled and bowed slightly to show my consent. This appeased her. She fell back into the throne with precipitate lips.

"Silence, that is the way of life." A long pause, though informal, then, "Who is Napoleon?"

"A great general, a mighty man," I said.

"That is what he was, but what is he now?" she asked.

"A dead man."

"And a forgotten one." She paused. "Historians are the doctors of the dead. Only we can give them life again. Once, Napoleon himself ordered the genitals and abused the brains; but now, it is I who gives him life or death, who makes his fate reborn. The genitals worshiped him once, but now they will worship only if I allow it. I am the ultimate dictator, the tyrant of tyrants."

"I do not follow you, exactly," I said.

"It is simple enough. Yet I suppose you do not use progressive pronouns, and thus do not follow my reasoning through them. I have long ago given up he and she as words, since they are sexist and unenlightened. Rather, I use genitals for the male pronoun and brains for the female, since that is - respectively - where their thoughts are formed."

"Respective, indeed, and not in the least sexist."

"See, friends, he is not so much one of the genitals as one of us." She faced me again, "Come, take a seat beside Alexander," and she gestured to a seat beside her throne, beneath a portrait of Alexander the Great. "I summoned you because I have long desired to speak with you, since reading your novel, The Forgotten King. Though you disguise it with your prominent genitals, you are truly a woman."

"Some things cannot be changed. My prominent genitals are perhaps among them. It puts me in an odd way with women, though, that I cannot love most of them though I desperately would. I am a male lesbian," I said.

"I thought as much," and she leaned nearer to me.

"I am young."

"I am not old, not as Alexander."

"True. But your historic friends would be jealous. They would haunt me," I said.

"They would, most likely. Yet I did not call you here to make love to you; only a man would have enough whore in his brain to think so," she said. Then, after a pause of reflection, Dr. Whaner said, "Have you ever made love?"

"My mind has done many things."

"In reality, I mean," she said.

"So do I: for there is no reality for a writer, no truth for a novelist. I can, using my imagination, put myself onto an ocean shore, alone and bathing in the sand. I can feel it and it is no less real than if I were truly there. I hold dialogs in my mind that are more truthful than those I hold with my lips and, to me, they are as keen as reality. So, yes, I have loved with a whimpering heart and saltwater eyes, though I have never known a woman of the flesh."

"I envy you, as must any sane person," she smiled into the distance.

"Envy? Then you are a fool, for though I am transported into the thoughts of the authors I read, I return each time with fewer thoughts of my own. The more clearly I see with my imagination, the duller become my eyes. I am decaying, from my mind out, into obsession, into insanity, into paranoia. And I cannot stop it," I said. My face fell back in disarray.

"What is sanity but citizenship in mass delusion?" she said. "You, instead, are the man without a country: you are free."

"Freedom is damnation; it is loneliness," I sighed.

"Yet you can imagine that you are not lonely, that you are loved, and it will be."

"Indeed. But by doing so I can no longer decide which of my conversations are in deed and which in thought," I said. "When I do not care I am not lonely."

"You are a living man as few others are. Do not fear mere loneliness," she said.

"Tell that to the girl in the cafeteria."

"Damn the girl in the cafeteria!" and she pounded the desk. "Damn all girls, if you like; but do not think for their sake."

"It is not so easy, when within the cacophonous cafeteria, with its will-o-wisp whispers and elephant ears. When the girls come and talk with miniature tongues, foolishness is felt. For even within the imagination, one can know when one is despised. I was once approached by a young woman who happily hailed me, speaking to me with zeal as if she knew me or my work, or was so inspired by my looks or poise to approach me. Yet after a moment, she revealed that I was but a random person and our conversation only fuel for her socialism. A random person: that is even the word she used. Random. Politeness to all and respect given regardless of merit makes us all monsters, makes us all random. I did not say a word the next three days, in shame."

"In shame at what?" Whaner asked.

"At being the social monster: the random. There is nothing worse than that word, in conversation. Is a word random? They do not grasp its meaning. Is a sentence random? They cannot connect two thoughts together. Is a man random? They cannot understand him, because he is more than televised clichés and his mind more than their frothing vaginas. They cannot understand him because he is alive and they are all dead."

"Does it matter if they understand?" she smiled, pleasantly. "If you know it is enough, and we both know your genius. Look about you: Napoleon reveres your wit."

"He does not exist, and you could as easily be air. Perhaps I am in the cafeteria even now, as we speak, staring at my food as I eat alone; and perhaps this dialog is only written in some novel, and that novel only in my head. I have thought it possible. Thus I can never know beyond a doubt."

"You cannot know," she purred, "Yet that is the Holy Graal of the intellectual, to have surrounded himself with such doubt that he no longer has need for the truth. Truth is a bastard Edwin: it is a man."

"You are an historian, to be sure," I smiled.

"Perhaps; I like to think myself as much a novelist as you. The best histories are those with the flare of the novelist, you know. But the question remains: am I real or am I only in your mind?"

"I cannot tell," I whimpered.

"There is a way: pull out your penis and make love to me, on this very desk, under the eyes of Napoleon. Come, do it now." Her eyes followed me with a rabid intensity.

I hesitated, mumbled, blushed, and then said, "I cannot."

"Then know that I am real: you possess courage only in your mind. If I was not real you would have speared me through. Now go, I have work to do! I have no time for an impotent mind."

I was beginning to feel a novelist, with my removed and pedantic face. It was a long walk down from the tower of the Pastites, and a long walk up to my room in the citadel of depression. By now it was growing late, the day having slipped between the cracks in my mind - of which there are many - and descended to the lands of the dead. The dormitory was empty of its student residents, most of whom were kissing the bottle, and full of its vagrant residents, whose bottle kissing had already been accomplished. Caleb Clifford, however, could not be seen among them. I continued to my cell without mingling.

I opened the door to a hairy mass of men. Jacques sat nearest the door, surrounded by a circle of ten Amish men, fully endowed with beards and engaged in an earnest discussion.

"I must question whether the dew is brought up from beneath the ground, or sent down from above it," one was saying. "If the first, then that is all there was before the flood, and you cannot grow crops with mere dew."

"But you forget that it was infallible dew," another said, "Perfect before the corruption of creation."

"Granting that, it would still not be enough: only the roots would be watered. The leaves would receive no nourishment. They would wither in a week," said the first.

"Yet who is to say that dew does not spray up a certain distance from the ground? We find, if we walk in the fields after a dry night, that the top parts are as wet as the bottom. The dew must shoot up, like a geyser, and water everything within a few feet of the ground."

An old man sat beside Jacques, taking the width of two, with a cataract in his right eye that left it closed and his other eye yawning. Since Jacques sat to his right, he was all the old man could see, and the man's eye popped out to greet him as he spoke. "The flood waters came up from the ground and came down from the heavens. What can we think, but that God broke the dew and sent up the deluge from the waters beneath the earth? We all know, of course, that the earth - like man - is made of water, and the crust merely floats above it. The dew floats up through tiny spit holes in the ground."

The first man responded, "But father, why does it come up only in the nighttime?"

"Because that is when God sends it, nephew," the second man answered.

The cyclops reared his head at Jacques and opened his gaping mouth to speak. But, turning his head, he caught sight of me and changed his thought, "Hello there, young man. Have you come to learn from the wisdom of age as well?"

"I came to sleep, actually," I said. "Why have you gathered?"

"To initiate Jacques in the ways of the Amish, to prepare him for marriage."

"For marriage? We will see, for Jacques has pledged himself to marry many things before, and has broken an equal number."

"This is different, Edwin," Jacques said. "This time, I am besieged and send out for a truce."

"Yet you've already had her," I said.

"Her body, but it is her soul I want."

"You have had her body?" a man across the room cried out, "You have had my daughter? What do you mean by that?"

"She is an enchantress; can I be expected to stand strong against a spell?"

The situation seemed precarious, and, either way, I had come to sleep and not to witness eccentricities. So, taking my bed clothes, I went out to the hall, to spend another night among the vagrants. The noise of the Amish disappeared as the door closed and silence rained down, wetting my shirt and drying my eyes. It was a short silence, however, for at that moment a voice called out from the lounge down the hall.

"We meet again," it called, and it was pleased. It was Caleb Clifford.

"You escaped the wrath of Ames?"

"His wrath is nothing to be feared; in any academic institution, the president is only the wallet. And the wallet is closest to the ass."

"What is your place at the institution?"

"I am tenured, though I no longer am allowed to teach," he said. "Public relations, both."

"Explain."

"When I was young - your age - and wallowing in genius, they tenured me as I came in, to promenade me about the place. Then, when I fell into non-literary enlightenments, they feared the image of a drug school, an opium den."

"Images!" I cried, "What would men do, without the perception of others to rule them?"

"Nothing, vagrants the whole of us," and, as he spoke, he stood. "Come, there is a gathering tonight at Dudley's."

"A gathering of who? The tenured?"

"No, they are all absorbed with quests to rule the world. The we I speak of only wishes to enjoy it, to witness it. It is a gathering of the vagrants, the tramps, the hobos, the bums."

"But at a restaurant?"

"Of course not - why would we? It is at Dudley's," and he paused. Then, "Forgive me: you do not know who or where that is. Come, words cannot explain such things, even among the literary."

"You call me literary? There is no need, for friendship's sake."

"I don't give a blessing for friendship. When I call you literary, it is for literature's sake, not your own. You can take your bedding if you wish, but you would not be the only one without. I, myself, bring only my beard to cover me."

"It is covering enough."

"So it is, come, the moonlight burns and the owl croons."

With that, we set off empty-handed down the stairway, with a growing crowd behind as the other drifters fell into step. The darkness ate us as we emerged from the dormitory's sinister shadow. There were twenty of us in the line, two abreast and walking silently down the college quad. Hiram was small, both the town and the college. But the vagrants came, drawn, attracted by some unseen force. Our army grew as we went and I grew curious of the mysterious Dudley, which I assumed to be the centrifugal force behind the mass movement, behind the gathering. Who or what he was, I could not say.

Ten minutes left the college in our wake and fifteen the town. The streets were deserted as we passed through. Those townies who were out of doors scattered as our shadows advanced, an ever growing number and an ever growing crash of waves on shore and feet on ground. The gathering had begun. We were now in the darkness of the country, no lights to guide us but the moon and that dim behind a cloud. On either side the trees were mountains and the air saturated with the cricket's call. Of a sudden, the mountains parted, revealing a clearing in which a great bonfire lit the far side. As we came up, each of us took a sturdy stick - a torch - and lit it in the fire before taking a seat on the ground, forming a crowd before the bonfire.

Ten minutes passed and no more came; fifty of us sat there around the fire. The gathering was opened by an old man, advancing to the fireside and sitting on a wooden stool between it and us. Caleb and myself sat in the first row, three feet from the man. His face was a goat skin, hairy and rough, his eyes old grapes, loose and wilting, his eyebrows weeping willows, his glasses eyeballs in themselves.

"I summon you to the gathering," he said to the whisperless silence. It returned its attention, and he continued. "I summon you to the council of the knowing. Hear and you will know, know and you will do, do and you will be saved."

"Save our minds from the man!" Caleb cried.

"That I will do, be still and listen. We are oppressed by the greed-mongers of moral whoredom, but we shall be delivered."

The crowd roared in agreement.

"When the rights of property supersede the rights of man, there is no morality. When the laws of economy form the laws of conduct, there is no justice. And what can we think? In this country, a man can starve to death because his neighbor owns all the food; and a man can bleed to death because he cannot pay for bandages. Is money more important than the man? Then let money vote, and let money run for office, and let money rule this country." He paused for a moment. "By God, it already does."

The crowd rejoiced.

"A man can walk all day and never rest his feet and he can tread warily along with no place to rest though on every side there is open land. Because the land is owned by other men, who despise the traveler and do not let him rest. But can land be owned? He who starves the poor man can do so because he first made the food; if he wishes, he can burn it to prevent a lack of famine. And the man who murders the wounded can do so because he first made the bandages and only he knows how to apply them; if he wishes, he can let the man die to prevent a healthy populace. But who has made the land? Let him come forward if he is here. Who has formed the fields to sell them in the first place? And who has laid the mountains in their place to make a profit from them?"

The crowd shouted their approval.

"What can we think? For money masters man and man masters morality. And so we have gathered here, to band together against those who oppress us. I have heard rumors on the wind, and the breeze was foul. But come, I am not the one for news: Caleb, come forward!"

As Dudley finished, Caleb Clifford stood and faced the crowd, which stood silent to catch his words in their hairy, vagrant ears.

"My friends, the struggle continues. They build a bastion of greed and we cannot stand against it. The grocery store chain - which one you surely know, whose mission, they say, is to feed the hungry - will not let us enter. They horde the food and though men starve they cannot eat unless they have that mind-controlling thing called money. It makes devils out of men, even devils that think themselves justified. We will war against them, forming our ranks in their very courtyard. I have found, my friends, that, because of the zoning laws the grocery store by-passed to build downtown, their parking lot is considered public property. Thus, it is free from private loitering regulations. We can no longer let them forget or deny what their actions lead to, no longer deceive themselves that they do not kill innocent men with their private property. So we will strike in front of the grocery store and we will not eat until they see our agony and give us food from their storehouse. It is a famine and they have plenty. Let them be damned."

It was a hurricane of noise. After several minutes, silence came again, and the crowd began to stir. They collected themselves around the fire, swaying to a chorus that rose from their ranks. I, myself, could not join in at first, but as I picked up the song I did. It was simplicity, it was joy. When one thought of a song, he began to sing while the others followed him. The night grew old, however, and soon the lights began to show themselves. I had classes at my accursed college and so could not stay to enjoy the festivities without losing my mind to academics. So I left, walking alone on the dark, dirt road to town.

My feet were liberated. The air was heavy with dew and silence covered the ground. The road stretched on before me, teasing me with its length, and I followed it. Soon - my mind was wandering as my feet kept to the path - I found myself in the lane, in the tree-lined courtyard around which the buildings of the college were built. Tree trunk pillars came up on all sides, spaced evenly twenty feet apart. The canopy above bequeathed a wild chill to the air. Still, it was dawn: the sun was rising and at its acute angle came directly through the trees. As I came up the walk, a voice from behind me broke the spell of silence.

Chapter 9:

"Edwin, have you had breakfast?" It was Tamara, and I was surprised that my appetite for food was not the only appetite aroused by the question.

"My God," I thought to myself, "Is this love? I must watch myself, lest I fall into the passions that cloud philosophy. I should not allow myself to indulge the Romantic wanderings of my mind."

Aloud, I said, "I have not; I've only just come from the gathering."

"I see: you are a caveman again. Your body shuns society as much as your mind."

"So it does. Where are you eating?"

"The cafeteria."

"I'll be there in a bit; let me clean up, first."

"Of course."

With that I was off again, this time with a bounding step toward my dormitory. It rose up against the growing light a frightening silhouette. Few buildings can muster the same inhuman, nihilistic face as the college dormitory. Steve, the director of the place, was already at his post, the rectangle desk that walled off his room. He was yet wearing his robe and had not showered: he had only come out for the paper, when I came by.

"A late night, Edwin?" he asked.

"Yes, but a short one. One finds many things by sleeping in the hallway."

"Caleb Clifford? I let him in every night, along with his friends. It gives the residents a sense of comradarie to ward off the transients. Jacques was leading a group of them in, himself, yesterday. I haven't seen them leave."

"The Amish men, no doubt, but not quite transients. Thanks for the warning."

"Of course. You are up for lunch at the Brick, Edwin? It is Wednesday again."

"Of course: at noon, as always. Until then," and I nodded my head good-bye, then turned and dashed up the stairs to the upper floors. I passed no one along the way, as the collegians thought the morning to be a bit below them and contemptuously avoided it. Rather than go to my room first, I set my steps to the bathroom. The night guard, a freshman with a cotton ball beard on the end of his chin, stopped me.

"Ho, there! No transients inside. Not for free, anyway."

"How much?" I asked, curious. "Transients have no money."

"It doesn't cost money, man," he said with a sexual gleam in his eyes. "The only currency we take here is sex. You have to let us bang you if you want in."

"Where do they find such feminine freshmen?" I asked.

"Feminine?" he roared through his tin can, "We are too manly for women!"

"Indeed? I thought as much. Either way, here is my card: I'm a student."

"Fine," and he stepped aside to let me in. I quickly showered and, since I had not thought to bring the necessary accessories, I helped myself to those left by others, thrown randomly about the place. Still, I had no towel, and I was not brave enough to use one of the refugee linens on the floor. So I carried my clothes in my hand and went bare bottom out the door.

Three of the residents were now standing outside the door. They laughed as I came out. They laughed, that is, until they saw my member, which I had forgotten to cover. I had forgotten how zealous men seem to be in the worship of their penises, judging each other's worths by their girth and length. Usually I am cautious to hide myself, that I not be thought greater because of mere nature: such things mean little to those who can bring orgasms with their words. Indeed, I have been more aroused by poetry than by most women. But, to the point, they were greatly impressed, bowing their eyes as I came as if in fealty. I laughed at their manliness. Their respect brought fear and that silence. I was pleased.

I was thinking about the amusing situation as I entered my room and not, as I should have been, about what was inside. I was awoken from my thoughts with a start.

"Yet there were only a few generations between Noah and Terah, Abraham's father," one of the Amish men was saying, the one with the gaping eye and overflowing stomach. "And still there were nations in Ur, and nations in Sodom, and nations in Egypt. What can we think? The spirit of the Lord must have led them to procreate in great numbers, to have such a large population in such a small time."

"We know, I think, that it must have been that way," another said. "The Bible says the flood covered the whole world, killing everyone. Thus, God must have made special organs to allow quicker reproduction."

"Indeed, I thought so myself," another added.

At this point I was seen.

"Sodom and Gomorrah," an old gnome cried. "I think I share your opinion in the matter."

All eyes were on me. I was struck by the humorous ways in which they showed their wealth and status. The Bible, they thought, forbid jewelery and adornments, as objects meant to alter perception and elevate one's standing. But over the years they had adopted alternate methods of doing that exact thing without disobeying the precise wording of the Bible. I was surprised, first, that pedantry was not the sole property of the educated, and, second, that the pursuit of wealth makes people endure ugly and uncomfortable things, whether they be suffocating Amish beards or strangulating suits and ties. And Amish women, I thought, though unadorned, spend as much time making themselves ugly as other women do making themselves beautiful.

"Good morning, Jacques," and, saying nothing else, I shaved, dressed, and left. They watched intently the entire time, enchanted by something. I can only guess that Amish men are, above all, merely men.

I left for my rendezvous with Tamara. As I entered the cafeteria, I was thrown aside by a tide of offensive smells. Fortunately, few students were about, as it was early, and I was able to pass through the assembly line without a wait. I am amazed by the eclectic collection of stale pastries the College of Hiram was able to collect. Indeed, I think a stale pastry would better represent them than a clock tower, since that was the spirit that abounded in the place. The cold-hearted faculty surprised me at first, especially since I was a genius, a gifted student. To shun an idiot is an intellectual's right, but the professors and administration of the place seemed to give me an extra dose of inhumanity in every conversation. It was, perhaps, that every academic is at heart a failed novelist, and, as a true novelist, they were jealous of me. To inform is a mediocre talent; to entertain while doing it is a genius few possess. It is the novelist's power, used correctly, to manipulate the reader, to put certain thoughts into his mind and make him think they are his own original thoughts. The greatest genius is to make others feel geniuses themselves. I perused the breakfast line, finally taking a plate of scrambled eggs, some cubed potatoes, and a light pastry wrap with an apple filling. I have always been fond of breakfast pastries, even those as stale as a professor's wit.

"Edwin, here," Tamara's breakfast-pastry voice called across the cafeteria. It was not stale, however.

I turned my tray her way, upsetting a cute freshman girl as I went, who was greatly offended when I did not stop to clean up the spill, which gave me the suspicion she had bumped into me for sinister reasons, which suspicion I always held about women and freshmen in particular.

"No mercy to the freshman?" Tamara smiled. "She was beautiful, if young."

"Most women are beautiful. It takes more than mere beauty to entice me."

Her only answer was a razor-blade smile.

"I do not follow the whims of beauty," I continued, "Because such things are so changing, so meaningless. If I fall in love, I must know she is firm. I must know she truly loves me."

"But how can you know? What of the Law of Uncertainty, that to observe the thing you must inevitably alter it with your presence?" she asked. "You must have faith that what you see is what is real, and only through that faith will have enough trust to truly love."

"Yes, but that is really too philosophical and not enough practical. I am a novelist, not an English professor, so I care more for particulars than for interpretations. Still, I cannot love: I am too cynical, too disbelieving."

"Are you indeed?" and she looked past my face at something beyond. I do not know what.

We were interrupted at this moment by the freshman who had bumped into me before. She was blond, her hair short and boyish, and her face was a constant battle between three great forces: her nose, a graceful flourish of the flesh, her eyes, of a dark green, and her lips, the most marvelous feature, a purple buttercup above her chin. She sat down at the table beside me.

"Yes?" Tamara remained polite. I kept my eyes on her as she spoke, almost ignoring the poor freshman entirely, but that was not the point: Tamara was angered and that is a perfect moment in which to observe.

"Yes?" Tamara repeated, "Do I know you?"

"No, but I know Edwin," she smiled at me.

I hesitated.

"Dorine!" she cried out her name in a burst of enthusiasm. "I say hello to you almost everyday."

"Oh," and my face colored a bit, thinking that she thought I was a pathetic man, always eating and walking alone. But who is better company than self? "Dorine, I remember now: we had lunch once, in the cafeteria. I was the random man. That disturbed me more than I care to admit."

"It did?" It was her turn to color. She mumbled something incoherent, then dashed off in confusion, disappearing out the doors and walking with that curious movement tears bring.

"This is really too much," I sighed, "I am tired of such games, such amusements. It is the same thing every time: first, they pretend to love you, to be infatuated; then, when you give love in return, they take their victory and wield you like a slave. If I told her I loved her and put myself behind it, I would soon find myself on the far side of some freshman joke. One must be careful in these things, proceeding slowly, testing the ground as one walks the ways of love. She, however, is a farce."

Tamara, at first visibly happy at my disgust, soon became disgusted herself. Or rather, both of us were suspicious. I of love and she of my sanity, since the girl had not actually suggested anything suggestive, only said hello. To say hello is not to flirt but to the greatest cock on earth. She looked me over closely, to see if my words were really my own, then smiled absently and gave heed to her food.

"Perhaps men are bastards in love," she said faintly. Then, "You, at least."

Silence came like a hotel maid: we could neither acknowledge nor ignore it gracefully. So we ate; which was, after all, the purpose of the place. We finished at last and stood to go our ways. But she stopped me and whispered in my ear: "Have faith in me. I will not abuse it."

I stopped, my mind struck dead, and watched her cha-cha walk as she also left the cafeteria. Her dark hair snaked around her back, its slight curls little shoots of prairie on a windy day. Her feet were perfectly placed at every step, falling squarely on the floor every time. And her rhythm was perfect.

I was only awoken from this trance by the presence of an old man standing beside me. He was the mysterious professor I had passed beneath the School of the Past, when Napoleon had descended from the heavens. His nose still sprouted a rye grass mustache, his head its corn stalk hair. He was a little scarecrow, however handsome, and his stuffing, though white with age, was little more than straw. He smiled widely as I looked at him, his round glasses pushed up slightly by the wrinkling of his nose.

"A perilous, perilous thing, love is."

"Who said love?"

"A perilous, perilous thing," and, winking, he walked away.

It was now nearing eight o'clock, when I was to have my class with Dr. Whaner. I was neither late nor untidy this time, and as I walked into the filling classroom I took a seat, as before, directly front and center. She - Whaner, I mean, though Tamara was also in the room - came in precisely five minutes after the class began and began to teach as she walked through the threshold of the door.

"To give women equal rights with men is not quite enough, for they must be compensated politically for all the years of their repression," she said in a hurry. "Political reparations must be given: I suggest that, for the next thousand years, only women be eligible for public office. It is only fair, considering the last thousand years."

The lecture continued for an hour, though I have summed its contents up enough that the reader can see what the whole was saying. Wordiness, for academics, is second only to godlessness. As the lecture ended, though, Dr. Whaner spoke to me: "Mr. O'Donne, would you care for lunch this afternoon? I wanted to tell you about Napoleon."

"I cannot, unfortunately: I have plans. I always eat on Wednesdays with Steve, from the citadel of stupidity. That is, the director of my dormitory."

"So it is. We - Bonaparte, Alexander, and I - will be having dessert under the trees. You are welcome should you catch the end."

"Of course, I have always enjoyed a tea-party."

"A what?" and her eyes jumped open. "I am a wo-man, not a female."

"Of course," I smiled. "So I have heard."

"Do not take me lightly, O'Donne, for I hold the tyrants of history in my grip. Without my powers, they have no power, no immortality. I am the only god, and mine the only eternal life: fame!"

I left as she laughed, as I had another class to attend. They continued, one after another in a mind-dumbing array, leaving me wondering why I was even in college, when I could learn as well on my own, following my feet to freedom. But then they came to a stop, dying with a final gasp with a quantitative logic course given by a shaggy professor from the math department who, more than being absent-minded, had forgotten his mind entirely in his mother's womb and never quite got beyond that. I took it because I was told my writing was adroit and entertaining and polished, but that it also was mere prose and failed to persuade, which was, after all, the point of rhetoric. Either way, I was left a free man, since I always put my time in before noon in order to avoid the cultural zombies - the collegians - who did the opposite.

The time had come for lunch at the Brick. I walked downtown, through the familiar rows of chubby-faced brick buildings, each with its own eccentric countenance. Then, halfway down main street, a stairway led down from the sidewalk to a humble, unadorned wooden door ten feet below. I walked through and passed into the Brick, a small town pub ran by an Irish Canadian who lived in America for political reasons. It was decorated with the quaint but clean trappings one would expect in such a place. The floors were cedar and creaked unceasingly, the tables were raised with benches five feet from the floor with little stairs running into each cubicle. No doubt an awkward place at first, but it lent an unbelievable privacy to the tables. I, however, always ate at the bar, at the counter that covered the wall opposite the door. A double door in the back led into the kitchen, and, since it was always open, the cook took orders directly from the customers, although the proprietor - the Irish Canadian - insisted on calling the orders back anyway, to make his place in the world.

"Aloha, Edwin," Patrick, the proprietor, said as I came in. "What do you want?"

"A faithful woman," I sighed.

"One O'Donne fillet, there," he called back into the kitchen. The chef grunted. Patrick brought me a cherry cola and a bowl of Spanish olives.

"Take it from an old man, Edwin," Patrick said, "If you want love, you have to trust. There is no other way. Is Steve coming?"

"Yes. Have you seen the mountains before, Patrick?"

"I haven't," and he smiled. I lowered my head for a moment of thought, interrupted only when Steve came in to join me.

"Edwin," he smiled in his polite way, and though it seemed superficial at first, like something he did from habit, I believe he meant it in his simple way. "Edwin, you got a post from New York, so I brought it along," and he handed me an envelope. It was preprinted, from my literary agent. Steve was always careful to deliver such things by hand, in order to hear the news himself.

I opened it and read aloud: "Edwin, the economy is crashing in around our heads; the publishing industry is taking a beating, and success is not a masochist. No one reads anymore, you know, it is all movies and video games. Perhaps you should write a script. But, since you are a literary man, I know how we can spruce your sales up in a flash: you must release your gay half. Gay is in now, Edwin: everyone is doing it. If you gave it a try, your sales would jump over the moon. When I was young in the 60's, we were Hippies and Communists to rebel against our parents and make a political statement. We knew nothing and cared little for the actual merits of our passions. Youth today go gay where we went Hippy." The rest of the page was blank, the void filled by an exaggerated signature.

"I need to walk," I moaned, "To loose my feet upon the earth and make my way a hermit."

"Then do it, aye? You are a man of the alphabet," Patrick said, bringing my usual fish sandwich.

The rest of the meal was spent in trivial amusements which I will not relate. When we were finished, Steve stayed downtown to do his shopping, while I turned my feet back to the college. Whenever I walk my mind wanders, it frolics about in the pasture, enjoying the sunshine. So it was then. My thoughts are freer when I walk than even when I write. The time I walked back to college passed away like Christmas morning, and when I awoke to reality I found myself, once again, walking down the lane, down the artificial forest in the center of the college. I was aroused by the sounds of familiar voices, voices which I had never thought to hear together. It was Jacques and Dr. Whaner laughing on the ground while having a picnic. I stopped by to join them for dessert.

"Edwin, hooray!" Jacques called out as I came, laughing in his zealous fashion. His face was naked: he had shaved his beard.

"Hello," I said as I sat down beside the painting of Napoleon. "No beard, Jacques?"

"Beard?" and he felt his face. "I suppose not, why?"

"And your eternal and undying love for the Amish woman?"

"She was not what she appeared, Edwin," he sighed and lowered his head. "You have to trust a woman to love her, but you will most often find later that your trust was wrongly placed. Not that they are unfaithful, of course, but that they play with your perception - with their beauty and their grace - to make themselves seem different than they are, more refined and more perfect. But few on this world are perfect, my friend." He lowered his head in sorrow, then, looking at Dr. Whaner, smiled again in his playboy manner.

"Nihilism," I laughed.

"Yes, and your charms are as fruitless as your philosophy, on this bitch at least," Dr. Whaner smiled. "Napoleon is very jealous of my attention, you see. He says I must write a book on him, a thick, wordy volume that will displace all the masculine riff-raff on his life."

We were joined at that moment by Caleb Clifford. Dr. Whaner, as beautiful as she was removed, sat up slightly as he came.

"Caleb," she smiled. She did not seem, at that moment, a feminist. "I heard of your baptizing of President Ames."

"It was nothing," and he bowed lowly. "To those given special access, special deeds are required. I see you are still going about, Edwin, my literary friend."

"I am."

"Yet you seem troubled. Does the situation with the grocery store have your mind tangled? Their acts will be avenged, fear not for that. We will take care of them soon enough."

"We?" I asked.

"The Gathering, yes. More are coming to help us. Perhaps a hundred, perhaps a thousand. We will see. Still, you are bothered even now: what is it?" he asked.

"Love," Dr. Whaner said, "He thinks to play the game of love with a certain lady in his class, the foolish little boy." She smiled. I blushed.

"Love? I am surprised at you, Edwin. I have read your books, you know, since we met, and you are quite a writer. Who could have guessed that Atilta is Daem?" Caleb said. "But writers are not lovers. Look to me, for instance: I avoid women with a passion. For I am without competition the greatest writer of the 21^st century. While I do not mean to be arrogant, I cannot foolishly deny the truth. The only threat to my crown comes from my own loins: were I to reproduce, my own genius genes would threaten my power. I would have to destroy them. Thus, it is best they are never made. So I do not love. And neither can you, Edwin, for though you do not fight the heavyweights - you write genre, after all, not literary, and what great writers wrote genre? - there is still the lesser crowns to be considered. Do not plant the seeds for your own destruction. Rather, harness your romantic nature into your writing. Make love only to your pen."

"You are undeniably eloquent, Caleb," Whaner smiled. "I am ghostwriting a book for Napoleon, about his life, and there is never too much eloquence in a book. You need not fear to help me, since it is purely an historical work."

Caleb looked at her for a moment. Her hair was short and unfeminine. But somehow her figure stirred the loins of a man, her sharp eyes and her fierce lips. They were powerful and beautiful: even Jacques and I felt the waves of heat she meant for Caleb. And he, as literary as he was, was also a fallen star. "I will come," he said. "It has been too long since I have written."

Chapter 10:

I would have stayed to eat with them - it was a tempting cheesecake Alexander the Great had brought - but at that moment I saw Tamara passing by on the far sidewalk, near Central Hall. Something stirred within me, defying the advice I had been given and even my own disbelief in the human nature, something that made me stand without a thought and bid the others good-bye while I set off through the trees to catch her. At first I walked. But a strange sense of urgency overcame me: the thought that she was almost lost to me pounded itself into my head and I soon began to run wildly after her, to have her and to hold her. It made no sense that I should run when walking would do, but it made more sense than walking when love was at risk.

Tamara was lovely as she walked. I came up behind her, a smile controlling my face, and she heard me coming. She turned. When she saw it was me, she also smiled. Her lips parted to speak but I silenced them. I took her in my arms, coiled her up like a snake, and kissed her. For a moment we were in love. Then, as we stopped to breathe, Tamara's eyes made their way into my heart.

"Trust?" she asked.

I hesitated, then, "Yes, I must. I cannot keep myself from it."

"You are a man and I a woman," she smiled and we kissed again.

The storm stopped, if only in a calm.

"Walk with me," I said.

"Where?"

"Anywhere, Tamara. It is the act of walking that enchants, not the destination."

"So it is with love," and she took my hand in hers. My arm burned.

With that, we began to walk. To walk and to love: I have never been more happy. We passed the downtown buildings by in a second, it seemed. I neither knew nor cared. Yet it was not a sunny day. The sun had come home drunk from the southern hemisphere and puked out haze all over the sky. A warm wind blew across the streets, moving the falling leaves around our feet. Cars passed us, bushes grew over the sidewalk and made us walk around. But we, in our bliss, did not see them, did not recognize them. The old downtown, with its old brick buildings, faded away and left us in the sprawl, where buildings came up like weeds, and the weeds came up in neat little rows along the cracks in the sidewalk. We walked until we could walk no further, until the sidewalk ended in the parking lot of an old motel, with a purple sign and purple trim around the windows. The rest of the building was white, fading, and the parking lot was empty.

"Let us take a walk," she laughed, "Where we go does not matter."

"I did not turn my feet this way, you know it as well as I."

"Perhaps I did?" Her lips were all I saw, nimble tight rope walkers, agile belly dancers meant only to arouse me. "Let's get a room."

"Sure," I forgot to be romantic.

We went inside the office, Tamara hanging on my arm like a short-order whore. But I did not think that because I loved her somehow. An old lady stood behind the desk. She took my money without a word - that was her job - and gave us a key, Room 14. Tamara smiled as we turned to leave, cutting me with her rapier eyes. It had started to rain while we were within the office. Now the puke sky was pissing on us. But we didn't care. I held her arm as we walked, leaning in on each other, toward the room. They opened to the outside and ours was on the far side, hidden from the road and overlooking a meadow behind the strip-mine shopping mall that had been transplanted onto the scene. Yet, across the short meadow, was the grocery store, the chain store that had been put in recently. Their mission, the ads told us, was to feed the hungry. But we didn't care.

The door opened with a creak. Inside the room was dark, even with the overhead light turned on. A bed sat parallel to the large window beside the door, with a table next to it holding the television. Then, around a short break in the wall, was a coat rack and the bathroom. Nothing else. I walked in several feet and Tamara closed the door behind her as she came in, bolting and locking it tightly. She left the curtains closed.

"Three days," she whispered, and I felt her finger running lightly down my back.

I turned to face her. As I came around she kissed me and pushed me back onto the bed.

"I have loved you forever, a literary love," she smiled, and she fell forward, straddling me and leaning over my face, pressing her nose against mine as she whispered. "But in three days I made you love me. Destiny."

If she was not experienced, bodily, she had thought about it enough. Still, this was real. She pulled off her shirt in a way that was not entirely romantic. But it was sexy; and her breasts, large enough to bounce and small enough to stay in one place, were pushed into my face in a way that was not romantic either. Sex itself is an animal occupation. It is not a product of reason, but of appetite. And I was a wolf.

I took her with my eyes and rolled over, holding myself above her. I finished the act of undressing her with a swift relish, playing little along the way, until her naked form made necessary the removal of my own clothing. She laughed at my discomfort - it was comic - and unzipped my pants. Then she took my penis in her hands, one fist upon the other, and made love to my head.

We were young. She let go and laid back on the bed, opening her legs in a mechanical way, like an act done a thousand times before. Was it in her mind, I thought, or was it more than that? She seemed like she had loved a hundred men before. At that moment, the werewolf did not care.

I am well-endowed, I will not disguise the fact, and I felt like a porno actor for a moment, holding my penis in my hand and slowly helping it along. She did not throw her head back to fake her pleasure, though she seemed to enjoy it. Yet how could I know if she did? Trust; but that is an elusive emotion.

It was time: she was prepared. I fell forward on her and we entangled together in a jungle fever. The bed squeaked annoyingly as I humped her, but it did not bother me so much that it caused me to slow down in order to silence it. It came like a flood to the end of my penis, washing me over with a wave of sexual fluids, which, while disgusting to the reason, baptized me into the kingdom of God. My testicles slapped up against her buttocks, but, to my surprise, it did not hurt like it would to be slapped there at any other time. I felt it, of course, yet the slight pain increased the pleasure, made it fiercer. I bit my tongue, and hers on accident. She only laughed and bit back. Animals, I thought, to bite in love.

The moment soon passed. The tempo grew faster and faster until the band could no longer play the gig and fell apart in one last hooray, going down in a mess of noise and flesh. I rolled off her body, laying beside her as we both heaved and hawed. My member, however, did not know the war was over and remained prepared for battle. That is, without being literary, I still had an erection. So Tamara straddle me again and, helping my penis with her hand, began to bob upon me, spearing herself in the vagina in a way that somehow felt good, felt pleasurable. To the reason it would seem painful. Reason, however, had not come into the room with us.

Again, the creaking of the bed and the slapping, this time of her thighs against mine. Slowly we began, pushing together with a slight flourish at the end of each hump. Then it came faster - the rhythm was natural somehow, the way all things hump: the universal tune. Soon we were battling again, fighting to the death, though it was sex not murder, and we were making love not war. Her breasts were above me this time, seeming larger under the effects of gravity as they banged together like the cymbals of a marching drummer, each collision accompanied by a slight slap of flesh on flesh. Faster, faster, towards chaos, the air ringing in confusion until, in a sharp stab of silence, it stopped. We rolled over once more and breathed the air with relish. Sweet relish more than dill, I thought.

But the tide had not gone down and my penis was still erect. I looked over at her, at her pretty face red and sweating, made more beautiful by its exertion and by the sweat that massaged her cheeks. As I did my penis jumped, pulling forward with a sudden jerk and then, because of its length, rocking back and forth like a throttling engine. She smiled. Her velvet curtain lips parted to show her teeth beyond: white pearls, as the poetic cliché goes. Then she was up on her knees in a moment, leaning over and running her tongue down my penis in a naughty way. She turned around and bent her behind toward me, slapping it with her hand in a silly manner. Somehow the stupidity of the act made me horny.

I was up in an instant, on my knees and holding my cock in my hand like a porn star - their movements were my only guide - and I stroked it a few times for good measure, though it did not need the encouragement, and guided it slowly into her body. "How can a woman be so beautiful?" I wondered. Her face was turned my way, her nose more perfect from the side. Her shoulders were strong but narrow and her back tapered as it neared her waist - her spine curved with an enchanting half-moon line down its center - until it blossomed into her butt. Only while sexually aroused could one think a butt to be a flower. But it was, and more. There was an undeniable symmetry to it. Either cheek had a firm cushion, the flesh of the bent thigh, that brought me to a stop as I pushed myself inside of her. And the slapping of my thighs against her behind was only silenced by the creaking of the bed.

My hands were placed across the small of her back, one on either side where the stomach is skinniest. My fingers almost reached around, it seemed, though it was not true. I pulled her toward me as I pushed myself forward, growing more frantic at every hump. Then I felt that I must touch her with more than my penis, so I leaned forward until my stomach and chest were against her back. We kissed. She began to rock with me, to aid my humping, which had slowed but grown more potent. Now our entire bodies collided with each burst of lust, with each hump. The sound of flesh on flesh grew stronger, faster, crazier, until, again, it exploded with a burst of fireworks.

We fell forward onto the bed, lying beside other with our feet on the pillows. Finally my penis was released enough to grow limp. How quickly moods and desires can change. I was only hungry and sleepy now. There was no desire for a woman. Not for her body, anyway, but Tamara's face still captured me. We squirreled beneath the blankets and I took her in my arms. Again we were entangled but this time the feeling was different. It was safety, of a warm fire on a cold night. She was a burrito held in my arms, its filling warm and attractive, or a loaf of bread that melted my tongue. Not a romantic image, perhaps, but we no longer felt romantic. It was hunger and weariness that came over us, now. My eyes closed and I fell away into the lands of sleep.

Chapter 11:

When I woke a faint light still came in through the window, but, as the clock said 9 o'clock, I had slept all night. My first emotion was pure heaven, rejoicing: I had at last found love. But my second, after I realized the bed beside me was empty, was pure hell: I had been abandoned. My doubts returned in full force, armed now with the weapons of disappointment. I stood, still naked, and walked about the room. There was a note on the table: "Edwin, I am pained to leave before you wake, but I have classes. I will be back by noon. Love, Tamara."

I fell back on the bed, sitting naked in the darkness. She had left me; the reasons themselves meant nothing. For school or for work or for money or for another man - it mattered only that she left me. How could I know if she truly loved me with that type of love which I think of every night as I fall asleep or if she only played with me, like a freshman with a burning pussy or a queer sense of humor? If she played with me, I could not live. But how could I know?

There was enough light in the room, through the curtains, to see with, so I did not turn on the lights. I went to the bathroom, though, and took a long, steaming shower. It was a lonely shower, one which I had thought to share with a lovely woman. To shower alone is the symbol of a loveless man. The things done to oneself are trivial, customary: the washing, the rubbing, the scrubbing. But, with a lover, to wash each other: that is something more. To stroke oneself, to masturbate, that is a duty, done only to relieve the sexual pressures, to satisfy the animal within. But to make love to a lover is something more, something that gives meaning to life. I had always thought that to love was to live, though I myself had never loved to know the truth in that. I was a romantic only at heart. I wrote about it and shared my passions with my readers, but it was only to give, never to receive; only to inspire love in others, never to be inflamed myself. In short, I lied.

Tamara, when I first saw her only a few days before this, enchanted me with her mysterious walk and her philosophically suggestive speech. Perhaps she had transferred to Hiram only to seduce me, only to have me. To possess me. Was that not her purpose? To drain me of my love and move on, some druggie whose only fix is to sap the spirit from others? If not, could I know, truly? Could I trust?

My shower accomplished, I returned to the bed and turned on the television, the solace of all in distress. It does not answer questions, perhaps, but it numbs the mind, anesthesia for the heart. The station had been left on a porno channel, but I was in no mood to watch that. Such scripted love did not move me, since it was only the companionship I desired. Still, I will admit it made my loins stir. I changed it to the local news station, to see what was happening, even though nothing ever did in Hiram. But that day it was different. I was a fool not to have seen it coming, but it happened without my knowing, though I had seen its roots and its formings. I had been too much in love, too much blinded or deceived by Tamara's facade - in my sorrow I could not call it love - to have seen it coming.

A thousand homeless men, transients, were encamped outside of the chain grocery store that had recently been built in town. Because of zoning regulations, the parking lot was considered a public park: the corporation had been eager to bend the rules like a bowstring and save a quick buck. But now, with a thousand hairy, smelly, homeless men - and several hundred women, lest I seem sexist, for they only seem to all be men from afar - sitting around the store like a besieging army, the corporation thought something different.

"They show no signs of moving," the news reporter was saying, "And they claim to be here for the long haul, to protest the power of the monied few in today's economy. If their numbers do not bring them public attention, they have a celebrity - the richest of transients - as their spokesman. Here is Caleb Clifford himself to explain the reasons and the methods of this apparent madness. Caleb?"

"I am here, sir," and my friend stepped forward into the view of the camera. Behind him the mass of transients could clearly be seen. "Private property tells us that men can own things with the power to do with them what they will, regardless of the needs of other men. Thus, because they have a certain amount of paper and we do not, this national chain of grocery stores keeps food from us. Inside these walls, but twenty feet away, is enough food to feed all these homeless people for months. But this store, even while their claimed purpose is to feed the hungry, will not give us anything to eat. We are protesting, therefore: we will starve here in front of their store unless the food which is wasting away within will be given to those without."

"There it is, folks," the news reporter came on again. "They simply do not trust the powerful any longer, feeling that those who have the power to oppress will, in fact, oppress. So they are here to learn trust, or to learn disappointment."

That was the end of the segment. The news channel returned to the national morning program, which was covering the same story with a national reporter. I turned off the television and walked to the window. A rope hanging from the curtain controlled the blinds; giving it a tug, I blinded myself with the light of the morning outside. For a moment I could see nothing through the light. When my eyes adjusted, I was face to face with a woman who had been passing by when I opened the curtains. I was still naked, my mighty member standing before her in plain view. Behind her, across the meadow, I could see the crowd surrounding the grocery store.

But my thoughts were no longer with Caleb Clifford. The sight of the woman had instilled sexual thoughts into my mind. My penis quickly responded by growing erect, larger even than it had been. The woman stayed, entranced, it seemed. She was beautiful, I thought to myself. She was somewhere past thirty, her breasts large and loosened enough to become incredibly attractive. Her hair was short and brown, her nose long and squeezed into a feminine point at the end that was strangely beautiful.

All this took a second's time. I looked down at the table beside me, at Tamara's note, and my previous love mutated into a bitter desire for revenge. Tamara disgusted me, and the woman, as Tamara's natural enemy - all women are naturally at war for the love of men - pleased me. I am ashamed to admit that it did not take a second for me to reach a decision. There was no struggle, no battle to subdue my flesh. My flesh was up and I did not try to put it down. Rather, I walked to the door and opened it wide, looking out at her.

"Hello, ma'am," I said, "Is something the matter? You can come in to talk about it if you would like."

In retrospect, it was the most absurd thing I could have said. As a writer, a novelist, I am ashamed at my own dialog. But that is what I said.

"I would," she answered, walking into the room. I stood in the doorway, turned to the side, and my extended penis blocked her entrance like a subway turnstile. She took it in her hand and lifted it up, stroking it as she did. I entered the room behind her, closed the door and the curtains, and walked toward the bathroom. She followed.

In the small antechamber before the bathroom - it was more a turn space, but antechamber sounds grander - I turned to face her. She smiled naughtily and began to lift her shirt. To my own surprise, and to hers, I stopped her.

"Wait," I sighed, and I lowered my head to the floor, where my heart was already resting. My penis followed suit. "I am in love. I am lost in love for another woman. I only invited you in to spite her, because she was not here when I woke, to revenge her for the loneliness she threw upon me. But this revenge will hurt more than I care to hurt."

Silence came. The woman was at first surprised, defeated in the game of seduction by a woman who was not present. Her first thought, I suppose, was on the power of my mysterious seducer. The second was a sigh for the romantic, or at least honest, about-face I had taken.

"I understand," she smiled, and she left without saying anything more.

I returned to the bed, still naked and still in darkness. "I am in love," I moaned, "But I cannot know if I can trust." I had to test her, to know without a doubt that she was mine. I leapt to my feet and quickly dressed. Then I flipped on the lights, stood on a chair, and untied the rope from the curtains. It was, when fully extended, ten feet long and an inch thick. One end of the rope I quickly tied into a noose. The other end I secured to the handle of the bathroom door, on the inside, and ran it over the top of the door, leaving a noose dangling five feet from the ground.

The test was prepared; I had only to do it. But that was the tricky part: I did not want to fully kill myself, since then I would be beyond the grasp of her love, whether it was true or not. I must only put myself as close to death as possible, while giving her the opportunity to save my life. Only then would the test begin. As I thought I put a chair beside the curtain, lifting the corner over the back of the chair so that a small glimpse of the sidewalk beyond would be visible, thus allowing me to see Tamara as she came up. Then up I would hang myself, running out of oxygen just as she came and fainting in the first stages of death - convincing her and all others that I had truly attempted suicide. Of course, if I hung myself upon the approach of someone else, I had only to stand up and loosen the noose.

I positioned myself against the bathroom door, ready to throw my feet out at a moment's notice and begin the hanging. The time was now noon. I prepared myself with a beating heart for the right moment. Then, like a blind man with heightened hearing, I heard approaching footsteps: a woman's heel with the peculiar rhythm of Tamara. As I listened a leg passed the turned curtain. I threw my legs forward in front of myself and allowed my weight to dangle on the rope, which began to fiercely choke me.

The noose dug into my throat with a burning pain, which was increased by the sudden lack of oxygen. By the time Tamara's key could be heard entering the keyhole, I was already beginning to grow faint. Then, as the door swung open to reveal her beautiful form standing there, my vision left altogether. It was not too late, however, to see that she was naked. That is, she was wearing a large overcoat with nothing underneath, and the extra time she had spent opening the door was spent in opening the front of the coat so as to enter to room naked.

I heard a scream, then, "My God!" and her footsteps rushed toward me. My head whirled in pain, my body seemed to ready to give up the ghost. I was becoming a shadow with the setting sun, at first at one with my body, but drifting away from it rapidly, violently pulled apart from it like the ungluing of a book's binding. Then, as I felt her hands tugging on the rope and heard her wails, I fell into darkness, completely unconscious.

Chapter 12:

The next instant I awoke in a hospitable bed, separated by a curtain from some larger room. It seemed a moment, perhaps, but it was dark outside, so at least twelve hours had run by. My neck was still in pain, but I did not raise my hands to feel it, as that would render the test incomplete. Success could come only if I was perfectly composed and did not lose myself to any situation. I had only to pretend complete insanity. As a writer I was experienced in mind control: on myself, that is. I could sit for hours and pretend to be in another place, an inhabitant of another reality. And it was as real as anything else. Now I had to put myself in a place where I could tell the reality of the real situation.

Mind control would be essential. If I were to laugh or to smile at a joke, I would be known as a fake. If I were to cry at some sad revelation or become aroused, I would be known as a man who only pretended to be comatose. But if I was not thought comatose, I would never know if Tamara had the faithfulness to stay with me regardless of my outward circumstance. How long it would take, I did not know.

My first test was soon to come. The curtain was pulled aside by two men, dressed as police officers, who had been sitting in the room when I woke.

"I think it is suspicious, anyway," the first was saying.

"An attempted suicide, nothing else," the second man said.

"But what of the evidence? He is a strong man, able to protect himself and keep himself from harm," the first said, "Yet he was hung within the reach of his legs. They were thrown out before him like someone had knocked him out first and thrown him there, or something of the sort. If he had been hanging of his own accord, he would surely have stopped himself before he passed out. I have heard many officers say that suicides try to stop their deaths after they begin, which is why so many fail, and why those who succeed kill themselves in such a way that it cannot be stopped after it has begun. This man would have to possess far too much self-discipline to kill himself with the ability to at any moment stop it. Too much self-discipline, I say, because that represents sanity and suicide is not a creature of reason."

"Yet he is a novelist, a man of strange passions. Many writers have killed themselves before, it is the easiest way for a creative man to die. We would need more evidence before we could say there was foul play involved."

I smiled inwardly as the second man rebutted the first man's point. But, outwardly, I gave no sign of life. The first man continued:

"If that was the only oddity, then it would mean little, but what of the naked woman? One does not go about naked like that on any ordinary occasion."

"How do you know? Either way, it does not denote foul play."

"No, but it it raises the question. Here, though, is another point: someone else had been in the room. There were brown hairs found on the floor, belonging neither to the woman, who has black hair, nor to the man, who, as you can see, has a reddish-blond coloring. And it had to have fallen from someone after the man had taken occupation of the room, since it fell on top of the sperm that had fallen on the carpet after the sexual encounter the naked woman claimed to have had with him."

The second man hesitated. "That is the beginning of a case. But alone they are nothing: there must be an important piece of evidence to connect everything together."

This investigative chase into the occurrences in the hotel room amused me. Still, I remained outwardly comatose.

"He was connected to the protesters at the grocery store," the first man continued, nodding his head in my direction. "He visited the Gathering - a fact confirmed by the inside men that were sent to see what was up. Caleb Clifford, their ringleader, was a friend of this man, who was also present during the incident with President Ames. You see, he becomes involved in the hunger strike, and that is the biggest thing - crime or not, depending on your sympathies - since Hiram was founded in 1802, with the exception, perhaps, of the Mormon occupation. But the point is, he is involved at a deep level, then suddenly he commits suicide in a cheap hotel within sight of the protest. There is something deeper here, James, something they don't want us to uncover."

"Watch yourself, if you go off into a crazy theory on a simple attempted suicide like this you will never make detective. It's like they say, Pete, find out less and get by; find out more and get screwed."

"Who said that?" Pete, the first man, said.

"They, and let's leave it at that."

"If you must. But it is not a matter of promotion, James: it is a matter of knowing the truth. Something big is going down in Hiram, and there is no way in hell I am going to sit by and let it float away. The FBI can come here and snoop around all they want, but it will be a local cop that breaks this one. They aren't even looking at this guy. To them, it is only attempted suicide."

"Only because that is all it is. Look, it's midnight already: our shift is over. Go get the nurses to take over."

"Of course, I will be back in a minute," and with that the first man's footsteps could be heard leaving the room and fading away down the hall. The second man paced the room in his absence. After a moment, Pete returned with a nurse.

"We're heading out, ma'am," the second man, James, said.

"I know the drill: twelve hour watch for attempted suicides. Your time is over; you're free men now."

"Keep an eye out for suspicious figures," Pete warned the nurse. "This looks like more than just a suicide to me."

"It does?" The nurse was frightened.

"Ignore him, he is a clown," James said.

With that, the three left the room, their voices fading down the hall as they went. The door was left open behind them. Even in their absence I did not break character: it would be too much of a risk. I had to know if Tamara was faithful, even if it led to conspiracy theories about my suicide. That would only make the game worth playing.

Shortly after this I fell asleep. Sleeping would be the most difficult part of my endeavor, since I could possibly betray myself in my dreams. So I did not allow myself to sleep fully, keeping myself in a state of semi-consciousness all through the night. The irony would be if I put myself into a state of insanity by not sleeping, causing them to drug me, from which I might never return. It was certainly a dangerous game: if they put me under the control of their psychotic drugs, I would without a doubt never regain my sanity.

I had opened my eyes slightly while the officers spoke, and, since they had not been looking at me, I was not found out. But now, on second thought, I resolved never to open my eyes, regardless of who was near-by. So I could not tell when the light came, though I could judge the beginning of the morning by the steady increase of footsteps and voices. At last the footsteps did not pass by the room but also entered it. I recognized the sound of the second pair as belonging to Tamara, with the quirky half-beat on every third step. How long she had trained herself to enchant men with an off-beat footstep I do not know. Perhaps it came natural to her, as so many things seemed to. The leading pair of footsteps turned and left the room after a moment of whispers which I could not hear and Tamara's came near to the bed and sat down on something to my left.

Chapter 13:

"Edwin," her voice wavered, "Can you hear me?"

I could, of course, but I did not answer. She wept quietly.

"I love you," and she grabbed my hand from the side of the bed and squeezed it affectionately. I was careful to give no reaction, though I wanted nothing else, for the squeeze sent warmth through my whole arm. I certainly loved her back.

"I wish I had never left you, foolish bitch that I am. What happened while I was gone? Someone - a woman probably: the hair was longish and had been washed with a woman's shampoo, they said - came in when I had gone, then you tried to kill yourself. But why? You left no note, no explanation. My note remained where I had placed it, untouched, and, perhaps, unread. To wake alone is painful, even more so after a night of lovemaking. But I had classes, Edwin, classes that could not be missed."

She stopped speaking and sniffled. Then, "My God, I am such a fool! I have loved you, with a passion, ever since I read The Revolutions of Time. It was not a particularly good book - too many adverbs and adjectives - but it was interesting, intriguing. It seduced me. Then, with The Forgotten King, the seduction was complete. I was yours heart and mind. They always told me I would have a special feeling, that I would know without a doubt when I had found the one. And when I read your writing, I knew." She paused for a moment, in reflection, then said, "I have heard that words can masturbate the mind. So it was when I read O'Donne: each chapter began with a fingering and ended with a fucking. Yet I did not touch myself, Edwin: your words, alone, made me orgasm, in a physical and a literary way. How? It is insane. But so is love."

I was moved but not convinced. I was impressed, though, that my writing could bring such intense pleasure, the way other's had brought me pleasure. I, myself, had lost my virginity to Don Quixote. It made no sense - love was not even involved - but that was when I had first found the pleasures of the flesh: during the episode of the reunited lovers, when by chance the old kook came across the lady in the forest. Such plotting, I had thought, such plotting and executed with such skill. But I was not gay and I did not love Cervantes. Perhaps Tamara had confused a love of literature with a love of the writer.

She continued: "I was surprised, pleasantly, that it had taken only three days to bring you to love me as much as I loved you. You were in a passion: you even ran to me across the artificial forest. I thought at that moment that the deed was done, that the fate which had made us lovers had finally been fulfilled. I steered our steps toward the hotel, to fasten our love in a knot that would not be undone, to make love to you like I had so long fantasized of doing. And it was more than I had dared to dream," and she sighed and, probably, smiled.

"But this is the result. I pushed you faster down the road of love than you could handle. Where I had been years in realizing my love for you, I tried to open your eyes to our love in but three days. There was no time to adjust: the frog boiled. Still, who was that mysterious woman? Who could have known you were there and found you in the few short hours I was away? Some former lover? The police suspect foul play," her voice trembled, "That somehow you are connected with the protesters." She squeezed my hand again. "I'll find out the truth, Edwin. I love you," and with that she stood and left the room with her usual rhythmic walk. I was enchanted by its noise as much as I had been by its sight.

Silence came and I drifted off into a state of near sleep once more. After some time, another pair of footsteps entered the room, followed by the voice of Jacques.

Chapter 14:

"Love is a dangerous weapon, Edwin: it is best to deliver oneself from its grasp altogether. You should have neutered, not killed, yourself." He sat down heavily, sighing. "I hold myself responsible, Edwin, for having never given you the talk. You see, woman is a strange beast. This I know from experience. She requires that a man cut out his heart and present it to her with all the accouterments of love - kisses, poems, praises - and then, when the poor man is captured, she leaves him there without a heart. Some say women are fickle, but it is really much more than that. To be fickle, changing, mutable, is to change opinions with the change of weather, to go after one thing, be it man or material wealth, with a superficial zeal. That is not woman. For she goes after man in a systematic way, in a cold and reasoning plot to bring him under her grasps and then, when she has him where he cannot flee, she throws him away. She does not break his heart, she keeps it away from him altogether."

"Woman must not be trusted, Edwin. If you had only asked me, instead of that ambiguous Clifford or the historian-warrior Whaner, you would have found the truth. Or rather, you would have found it an easier way. For you know it now - that is why you tried to kill yourself, no doubt, the police are too pedantic to be investigators and too fat to be boxers, so they are police - but either way, you found out. Yet you did not know what to do with that knowledge. You have inspired me, though, to do what I have always thought to do but have never possessed the moral fiber to do: I will neuter myself, Edwin, on your example that even a man of reason such as yourself can be overtaken by the vile beast that is woman. That is their temptation, after all, not of lust or love, but of reason, of philosophy. They are not the instinctive evil-doers, who do it without thought, and neither are they the morally weak, who do it from emotion. No, they are those who plot with full possession of their faculties and thus are twice or thrice as dangerous as any other criminal mastermind. I should have told you this long before now. It is I who has caused your despair. I will right the wrong now, Edwin: I will no longer have the feelings of a man for a woman. Farewell."

I heard him standing resolutely and begin to leave the room. But before he could a nurse entered the room: by her voice a young and extremely beautiful nurse. Jacques stopped still as she came.

"Can I help you, sir," she asked innocently.

I could hear nothing, but, knowing Jacques, I knew he smiled at her, his powerful weapon with which he hunted the beast that is woman.

"It is I who must help you," he said at last. "You have done such selfless service to the down and depressed, that I must do my best to lift you up: I can see, of course, that you are down yourself, today, and that you feel alone. Come, take a coffee break and I will take you to breakfast. There is so much joy in the world that, working in this necessary evil, you must easily forget what you labor for. Come with me, then, and I will revive your spirits."

While he does not seem particularly eloquent on paper, Jacques had a verbal style that, when heard, could not be denied. He was also beautiful, for a man. The nurse laughed at him, hesitated, but at last took up his offer. And there is no doubt that she knew precisely which offer she was accepting. She was a woman, as Jacques said, and woman cannot resist a heart when offered. Jacques, however, was also an evil mastermind in love.

They began to leave the room, but Jacques paused at the doorway and turned back to me, walking quickly to my bedside. He bent down and whispered in my ear:

"Hold strong, Edwin, against the forces of love. As for myself, I will take on my invincibility to woman at first light tomorrow. Today, however, there are too many things to be done. I see the enemy and I will not retreat. Onward, friend, to the victory."

I could feel his smile as he walked away, whispering love things to the nurse, who felt the power of her beauty to be invincible and thus did not fear Jacques. He was, if nothing else, man's last weapon against the horde. But, as their footsteps faded away into the hall, my mind turned to other thoughts than my fickle roommate. He thought women to be fickle, perhaps, but he was just as much a weather vane. Jacques, I thought, was not a man. Rather, he was a male woman, even as Whaner was a female man.

Not long after they faded into the silence, another set of footsteps entered the room, hurried and disturbed, but not necessarily angry. They were heavy-set footsteps, powerful and confidently placed. They were also alone.

Chapter 15:

"Edwin!" It was Caleb Clifford. He sat beside beside the bed with a hurried sigh. "Edwin, you fool, what have you done? You are a literary man, you cannot just kill yourself. Men of letters are by nature depressed, yes, because it is their nature to inquire into things and the answers they find are always of a depressing nature. Their life is one of reflection, but the inner places of man are evil. Still, you cannot simply kill yourself. We all want to at one time or another, and usually quite often. Yet we do not do it, for it is not dramatic. For Hemingway, perhaps, since he had long been fading. He, however, had tried to die heroically many times, and it was only after it became evident that he was meant to live that he took his own life. We will all die around the grocery store - they would not dare relent, you know - and you had only to join us and slowly fade away. It would be more prolonged, more painful, yes, but that is precisely what makes it more dramatic. I have long been crafting my own suicide, for a cause, and I will be a martyr. But you will be nothing more than a depressed maniac, too cowardly to do anything evil before you died. People read martyrs, Edwin, they pity them; but no one cares for suicides, not even Dante."

He leaned back in his chair after this flew from his mouth in one long-winded sentence. I have only added punctuation to replace the inflections of his voice. I remained comatose, not revealing in the least that I heard or understood him. His speech was entirely for his own benefit. I was beginning to feel like God, to whom people open their thoughts in prayer although, if he were truly God, they would have no need to speak to him. He would already know. So I was God and people were praying to me so that in speaking they might understand. It was strangely amusing.

"They have not answered us as yet," he went on, "Which is not an altogether foolish thing to do. On the one hand, they could have fed us right away, just some little meal that was entirely symbolic, and, having won, we could not really ask for more. The public has no sympathy for unsatisfied beggars. Yet that would have given us precedent: they would have to feed us later, one by one. Or they could wait for several days to see if we are in earnest. If we fall away after a day or two - when the pain begins - we will be shown to be pampered transients: after a meal, not survival. Yet we will not fall away, of that I am sure, and the question will be, do they, after several days, spare our lives? Or will they simply let us drop dead around the building, a mass grave to capitalism? I am not only after suicide, Edwin, for I earnestly desire to know what is in their hearts, their minds. They are only people, after all, before they are business people.

"It is rather like I would want to see a human being cloned, to know once and for all if he has a soul. If the same man is produced, with the same personality and the same patterns, then we should know that men have no individual souls. I think that at times, after observing men closely. That is, you know, the reason I became a transient. For we are invisible, allowing me to watch without interrupting, whereas, with the Law of Uncertainty, I could never otherwise know if I saw men as they were or as they wanted to be in the eyes of a master novelist. I say master from honesty not arrogance, of course, but you certainly know that. Why deny my own talents? I did not give birth to myself, so I am not praising myself but whatever force made me. But I wonder, if it is mere genetics, or if it is a soul, something from God. That is why I would like them to clone a man. Those who argue against cloning say it might possibly make a deformed or pained creature. But really, what can we think? There at this moment thousands of children dying of hunger and AIDS on the streets of African cities, and being murdered in their haven wombs by renegade, abortionist doctors, and being drugged by their parents with psychotic medicines to keep them from silent reflection. If we do not care for these millions of children and gladly sacrifice them to capitalism, why can we not sacrifice a few hundred to science? That is the woe of a man of letters, Edwin, that he cannot take those drugs, since reflection is his occupation. And that is why we all end in suicide - all the true ones, anyway."

He had leaned forward as he spoke and then, when he finished, he fell back again until I could no longer feel his breath against my face. Silence came for a moment, then he sighed and went on:

"You must watch for the drugs, yourself, Edwin. If once they put you on them, you may never crawl out of your mind again. That is the way of things, you know. If you miss too much sleep and go temporarily insane, they will take you as a schizophrenic and drug you until you are insane on your own merits. You must watch for the drugs, I say again, because they have a strange attraction, especially for literary men such as ourselves. No doubt you heard President Ames's taunting during our breakfast, but, if you did not understand, then I will tell you: I was once a great and productive novelist. I could write 10,000 words a day - and they were of exceptional quality - without any particular labor. I had my discipline and my methods and I produced consistently. But then I decided to research for a novel, when I had earned enough to keep the tax man away - from giving handouts, I mean - and, as a fool, I decided it would be on drugs, on hardcore druggies. So I went out to the street, tried LSD, and thought to write about it. I became a homeless man, a transient, siphoning my royalties to buy drugs, all the while under the excuse of research. But it had become more than that. I, myself, had become a druggie. That was when I was relieved of teaching duties - not a devastating blow, in practice, although my pride still stings about it. Worse than that, though, is the weakness in my mind. I have not written since: not the drug novel, nor anything else, not so much as a letter. I have tried, but it was blocked by something. And I cannot discipline myself, for every time I try to the drugs call and I give way. I am ruined, Edwin, and my only redemption can be a heroic death that will give my past works an idolized example, like Socrates or Jesus, to inspire those who read them with my brave death."

He leaned back again, letting silence fall upon us, as I certainly was not going to speak.

"You must beware of letting them drug you," he leaned forward once more. "I say that, Edwin, because I am fully aware that your suicide was faked, that even at this very moment you are alive and well inside your head, that your comatose state is merely a game, a charade. What its purpose is, I can only guess. To see our reaction perhaps, or for some greater drama. You are a novelist; I know how you think." He paused. As much as my heart tried to beat, I forced it down, keeping my thoughts under control and my body perfectly subdued to my mind. He was watching the heart meter and if my pulse were to quicken or a surge of passion - however limited - was to come over me, he would know that I was, indeed, faking my state. But I was triumphant and gave no signs of being perfectly alive and well.

"Perhaps I was wrong," he sighed. "I had thought about doing that very thing, myself, in a moment of dramatic zeal. To have the pity and the sorrow of suicide and insanity, while still possessing life and reason to understand and relish it: a novelist's dream. It was mine, anyway. But you, though I tested you, did not betray your life, if it still beats on inside of you. Do men have souls? I would like to know, if only they would clone a man to find out. Are you even there anymore, or is O'Donne the literary man already dead? I am at a loss, Edwin."

He stood, paced the room several times while breathing heavily, then returned to my side.

"I must be off: the protest cannot be stopped. May we die with drama, friend," and his voice, like his footsteps, faded into the silence.

Soon, however, another person came into the room, whose footsteps I did not recognize: measured, consistent, and rather slow. The mysterious person sat down hard on the chair beside me, which squeaked under the pressure, and breathed a long, hot blast of smelly air onto my face. The silence lasted for several moments until, at last, the person spoke.

Chapter 16:

"This is a foolish thing you have done, Edwin," and it was President Ames. I was at first surprised that he cared enough to see me, until he continued. "The college must keep at least one genius always associated with it, or it will fall into a mere liberal arts school. Clifford, I thought, would do: but look what he has done now. And you, who should have replaced his dimming star, have shown yourself to be a supernova."

He sighed, then continued, "It is my duty - I despise that word as much as anyone, Edwin, but it is the soul of mankind - to keep the college going, to make the money coming in greater than the money going out. There is nothing noble about it, I suppose, but that is life, and you cannot live under a different reality than the one that is. If you do, you will eventually kill yourself. No offense, of course. I try to save money by spending less. I try, I say, because college is meant to be a place of overspending. Students, especially those like you, can learn well enough on their own, if not better, as can the professors. The arts inculcated at a college are only those that cannot stand on their own because they are not entertaining enough. It is all a dream, a denial that the world is no longer where it was two or three hundred years ago - if it was, in fact, ever there at all. By that I mean that we play pretend with our fine arts and our orchestras and our paintings and our poetry, but I doubt anyone really cares for them. It is like a great staring contest with ourselves, to see who will blink first and admit that art is only to make one feel intellectual. Shakespeare was not high-class, nor Dante. What literary minds have made it, on account of collegiate funding, is something that simply is not pleasurable, a hive of pedantry."

"I am made president because I am a miser. I do not like to admit it, of course, but that is what I am. You know, I have always been riddled with a fear of losing all my wealth - I have more than just money from the college, of course. I have devised a solution, Edwin, though I never tell anyone about it, lest they think me crazy. You see, I keep a portion of my wealth entirely in quarters. There is a room in my basement, in fact, it is much of my basement, that has no windows to the outside and can only be entered through a door from the master bedroom. The first owner of the house built it in order to satisfy his sexual perversions in absolute secret. It is the desire room, I suppose. I keep my quarters in that room, my wealth collected in little pieces of metal that cannot be stolen and cannot burn and cannot rot away," and he laughed. "My quarters are safe even from my wife, though she knows they are there, for she cannot spend more than a few hundred dollars' worth without a great inconvenience: there are no covert purchases. Which is humorous, of course, because she married me entirely for my money. That is a foolish thing to do, Edwin, since those who are wealthy are usually such because they do not spend the damn wealth. Foolish woman, but a beautiful one. I think I will go home early today and fuck her, Edwin. For I am a miser and I must have my money's worth."

I felt like a priest in the confessional, for as everyone came to see me, they prayed to me as if I were God; and I served the same purpose. President Ames was a romantic miser, at least; or, rather, those two characteristics wandered hand-in-hand in his mind. As he left another pair of footsteps came into the room.

"Dr. Whaner," Ames said, "He is well, it seems; but he is comatose."

"I know, I have heard the same speech you have heard, given by the doctor: he may never wake again, some nervous disruption or breakdown or some such thing."

"Yes; what are you carrying?"

"A portrait of Napoleon, if you had either eyes or sense."

"I see clearly and yet I do not understand. You need not hate me though, Dr. Whaner, for I am the necessary evil of a college, even as you are. We need misers, financial and intellectual. Good day."

I was impressed with President Ames's rebuttal, thinking he was perhaps not as much a rum ball as I had thought. Dr. Whaner could be heard dragging another chair over to the bed side, then she sat down and placed Napoleon on the chair beside her. She began to speak to Napoleon, explaining to him the tragedy of mental illness, when more footsteps came into the room.

"Hello, I am Steve, a friend of Edwin's, and this is Patrick. Is he well?"

"Enough, it seems. Have a seat," and the two men pulled chairs over and sat down.

"Why the painting?" Patrick asked.

"Painting?" Whaner wailed, "This is a real man! He was great in his time, ruler of the world, commander of the genitals and seducer of the brains. And see how far he has fallen, that the uneducated masses of today know nothing of his exploits. I will change that; I, the giver of immortal life, will make him known again."

She was cut short by another pair of footsteps entering the room, an official footstep, followed by a doctor's voice, "Good morning, everyone. You are here to hear about Mr. O'Donne's condition, I assume?"

"We are."

"Very well, then. I will not cushion you with hopeful thoughts: I have had cases like this before and there is little hope. Edwin attempted to commit suicide while in a deep depression, caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. The rope suffocated him to the point that, while still alive, the chemicals were spread to the upper lobes of his brain, where they will remain for the remainder of his life. The general effect of these chemicals is to make a man tired, thoughtless, passionless, to make him, as we term it, depressed. When forced into the upper lobes in these quantities, the chemicals cause an increased and sustained effect similar to depression: a vegetable state. He is physically fine, but there is a deep disconnect now between his healthy body and his unhealthy mind. He is comatose. It is possible that his mind is still present, that he can still hear us or have some sense of the outside world; however, in my experience it is extremely unlikely that he will ever make those abilities known, even if they do exist. Since he is physically healthy, though, he cannot be kept here. He will be transferred to the Hiram Mental Hospital, under the care of Dr. Aksenov."

"Does that woman know of his condition?" Whaner's opinions, for once, were kept concealed.

"Tamara? Yes, I told her earlier, before she came to visit him. We will transfer him this afternoon. One of Mr. O'Donne's companions, a Dr. Clifford, requested we refrain from giving him any medication, claiming it would ruin his chance of recovery. That request will have to be taken up with Dr. Aksenov. That is all, thank you," and the doctor walked out of the room to continue his rounds.

"Then that is that," Whaner sighed to herself, "He had the capability to be genius, once. If only that woman had not sent him down; if only he had been a woman himself. But that is speculation, and Napoleon is easily annoyed by speculation. Come, Bonaparte, there is writing to be done." With that, Whaner stood and left the room with the painting in her arms. The other two were silent as she went.

"Perhaps we should leave as well, Patrick," Steve hesitated.

"Leave? He is our friend."

"He was, you mean. He is only a vegetable now, the doctor says. And I've never cared for vegetables, Patrick."

"Yet what of all the good times, aye? He was a good man, regardless of all the academics who want to make him merely great. A fish sandwich - deep fried - with a cherry cola and a bowl of Spanish olives, every time he came in," Patrick's voice broke like a dam and the tears followed. "But look at him now, after he gave in to love, poor man: he is a shell. That is not the Edwin O'Donne I loved, it is but his body. I am a weak man, Steve, and perhaps you are right, perhaps we should leave. For I cannot bear the sight of him; it is an open casket funeral that will never end. The poor soul, but I, for one, cannot bear it; and I do not think he would mind our leaving, when it only brings us pain to see him in such a state."

"Yes, he would not want to cause us pain."

The two stood slowly and solemnly and began to leave the room. "If you can hear, Edwin, you are in my prayers," Patrick said as they left. They came to visit no more.

Chapter 17:

A tear threatened to escape me, to break my comatose shell, but I did not allow it. The fight was terrible, though, to see the pain my test caused and would continue to cause. But I still wondered about Tamara, and after this I wondered even more. Would she, like my other friends, slip away and forget about me, after such a short time? If she was playing with me, she would not take the game this far, surely. But she was a shrewd woman, and, insane and foolish as it may sound, I thought it a necessary ruse to test her love: would she continue to see me? How long would her undying devotion really last?

I floated into sleep and did not wake until I felt my arms and legs being strapped down to the stretcher, a precaution they took even though I was comatose. Nothing was said. The breathings of several people could be heard, but how many and who I could not tell. I stretched my ears across the room, listening for the one breathing pattern I longed to hear, for the footsteps that enchanted me. Yet the footsteps crowded together, a mass that could not be taken individually, and so it was not possible to hear the off-beat third step. At length, the doctor spoke:

"Tamara, you must leave now. It is hospital policy: I am sorry. Mr. O'Donne is now under the care of the mental hospital. You must take leave now and take up your visiting on their hours."

"Yes, sir," and Tamara's dejected voice left the room. Only when she was separated from the others could I hear her beautiful footsteps.

I wondered at that moment how long it would take. She had come when the others had given up; perhaps that was enough to pass my test. Yet it had been only two days since we made love. Passion will linger for a time in even the most callous of souls, and the drama of a dying or ailing lover can capture into the wings of romance even the most unromantic. Later, however, when the drama has passed, when no one stops by to visit, when I would be forgotten by the world, only then would I see her true colors. For, I thought, only the most loving women will stay by a bedside indefinitely, denying their lives for their loves. That is the devotion I desired and required: a standard even the gods cannot meet, perhaps, but I did not want to love any mere god.

Still pretending perfect absence from my body, I was taken down the hallway, into the elevator, and from there into an ambulance waiting to receive me. The doctor left us there, as did several of the nurses, leaving only myself, the driver, and a single nurse in the ambulance.

"A pity he is put up like this," the nurse said to the driver. "I've read his works, you know, his novels. He has always fascinated me: I thought I was in love with him once, before my reason returned to convince me otherwise. Still, it is a shame he is knocked over like this. Foul play is involved either way, whether in love by that woman Tamara, or in hate by some other villain. I hope the police find the truth: James and Pete are searching for it like a sinner for the devil."

"Which means they will find it, when it is all too late to matter. If only we did not have to take him to Aksenov so soon: I've seen recoveries in the hospital, but once they've gone to Aksenov they are forever insane. Perhaps because only the worst are sent to him, but look at Edwin here: he has not been in the hospital more than two days. He has no insurance."

Their conversation drifted, as they always do, into pets and in-laws and sexual preferences. Leave a man and woman alone in the company of a comatose body and they will inevitably begin with the patient and successively touch on each of the following three. After half an hour we slowed and the sound of gravel came from under the ambulance. Another fifteen minutes passed, then we stopped and the driver got out to open the back door. When the two rolled the stretcher out of the ambulance, the air was cold and the sound of crickets came through: we were outside. The way beneath us was paved, however, and only a moment passed as they rolled me to the door. Three knocks followed, then the creaking of a large wooden door and a disturbing silence.

"Dr. Aksenov, sir," the driver said at last, "This is the man you are expecting."

Silence came again and the soft breathing of the man, who was either rather tall or standing on a raised stair. His hand passed over my face briefly, followed by the sound of papers as he looked over the records and notes from the hospital doctor.

"Take him in," at last, and, "Put him on the top floor." This latter bit was spoken to the nurses within the building. Aksenov withdrew into the mental hospital, his nurses signed the releases, and I was taken within while those who had driven me returned to the ambulance. The top floor contained a single room: a circular tower with a view of all the surrounding countryside, as I later discovered. The mental hospital was itself an old mansion, the home of a man who had made a tremendous fortune in linens. But, when he went insane, his wealth was placed in a mental hospital, in which he was kept. The tower of the mansion was his private room, in which he was kept during the rest of his insane life. After he died it was left for the use of special patients, whom the doctor thought worthy of special testing or observation.

I was taken to the top - there were five floors - by an old elevator which was open in the front but for a steel cage that could be pulled out, though the nurses never did, and which clicked aggressively as the cables passed through the pulleys. In a moment we reached the fourth floor, from which only a stairway led into the tower above. The stretcher wheeled up the stairs, jostling me around but not revealing my sanity. I was placed in the center of the room and the nurses withdrew, shutting the door behind them and leaving me in silence, alone.

Still, though I was curious to see the room in which I was placed, I did not open my eyes or otherwise betray that I was not comatose. I had resolved to pretend insanity and I would not risk my test on a moment of curiosity. Indeed, if Tamara was to find out that I had been playing with her, it would suddenly be my own devotion that was doubted. I only then thought about what should happen if, finding her truly mine, I revealed myself. If I pretended to regain my senses, keeping up the ruse that I had truly been comatose, then I would be doomed to lie to my love for the rest of our lives, and, with every continuing falsehood, put myself more in line for a damning revelation. On the other hand, if I told her straight up that I had only pretended to kill myself, that I had pretended to be a vegetable while her heart was broken anew every time she saw my poor face, which she had thought to have broken by her own foolish actions, what, then, would she think of me? Hardly better than I would think of myself. Only then, at the moment I was left alone in the tower, did I think of the hard place in which I had put myself.

Yet I was not as alone as I had thought. A long time had passed while I reflected on these things, forgetting, for the time, where I was, when, without warning, a footstep appeared directly beside me. It must have come up with the nurses, masked by the noise of the stretcher and their feet, and then remained silently beside me while I was lost in thought - perhaps the space of an hour. Now, however, it moved and the soft breathing of a tall man could be heard, standing over me in silence. At first, I was frightened.

"Mr. O'Donne, you need pretend no longer." The voice was that of Dr. Aksenov: deep, soft, and dexterous, a voice which captured the subtle intonations of the language and commanded them with masterful skill. His hand was on my wrist, feeling my pulse as he spoke, searching for some clue about my state.

"The doctors and the nurses are gone: it is only the two of us within the room. The girl Tamara is gone as well." He called her a girl where the others had all called her a woman. Silence came again for several minutes.

"An interesting case," he resumed at last, "And one perfectly executed. Yet I am not fooled by the faked suicide. It was too clean, too perfect. The police report indicated the curtain had been placed over the corner of the chair, but had drawn no conclusions, assuming it was an accidental occurrence left when the rope that pulled apart the rings which attached the curtain to the rod was removed. I, however, do not believe in accidental occurrences."

My pulse remained steady, my body perfectly under my control.

"Your discipline is admirable, but, as a novelist, it is not unusual: you must, if you want to finish a novel, constantly struggle against the weakness of the mind. Your motives, perhaps, are equally as admirable, but, as I do not know them, I cannot judge. I know you are conscious, of course, by purely physical means, and have known since you arrived. There are subtle indications of insanity which even doctors who are not specialized in the insane cannot notice. You, my friend, are not insane, not any more than any other novelist. Your life is a journey into the imagination, after all, a constant toil to transform that which is not real into that which can be believed. That is a form of insanity. Perhaps, if one forgets to control the powers of the magical imagination, he can become a vegetable. Speak, Edwin, and I will listen."

I remained silent and my pulse did not reveal the extreme interest I had in his speech. How much did he know and how much did he merely guess? I wondered if he tried every new patient in this way, or if he really could tell. He used my first name to address me now, rather than my last, and no doubt the informal speech was purposed. Dr. Aksenov, even when only heard, was composed and in control. Every subtle emphasis or grammatical nuance was specially placed and had to be taken with its full meaning.

"I will not tell the state, of course, and they will continue to pay for your treatment. Neither will I tell the girl, if you wish to avoid her, or to test her devotion. Indeed, those are the only motives I can think of for such strange actions. You need not worry about anyone knowing your true condition but myself, and I already know it in part. If you must resist still, there is a final consideration: if you insist on continuing the charade, your body and mind will slowly devolve, from lack of exercise, and you will become, in a year or so, actually comatose. You see, if you continue to pretend insanity, especially a literary mind such as yours, it will not be long in following. On the other hand, this room is detached from the rest of the hospital and I have already arranged that no one enter your room but myself. If you had opened your eyes you would have seen that the walls of this room - those that are not held by windows - are lined with bookshelves. In all, ten thousand books are held within this room. If you must continue your charade with the outside world, then do so. The girl will not know, nor any other. But do not waste your genius while you do. Rather, give yourself to learning and living, in the literary sense. I hope my proposition is not wasted on foolish ears. Yet, having read your works, I know otherwise. Come, Edwin, think it over for a moment."

"Very well," and, smiling, I opened my eyes. "I am convinced."

Dr. Aksenov was indeed a tall man, though not enough to make him strangely so. He was thin and composed, his suit perfectly positioned and his bow-tie as pristine as if he had just put it on. His hair was brown, short, thinning, and uncombed. I sat up and took a chair next to Aksenov, who had also sat down. The chairs were leather recliners, facing each other at an angle with an end table between them, which held an old, glass-blown lamp with a dirty-white shade. The tower was circular, sixty feet across, with a glass dome on top and a large window at each of the four cardinal points. The other walls were lined with bookshelves that reached from the ground to the edge of the dome twenty feet above. There were, as he had said, at least ten thousand books in the room.

"A wise decision, Mr. O'Donne," he returned to a formal nature, which, with his precise use of the language, was meant to show our business-only relationship. The business, of course, was knowledge, or, more generally put, philosophy. "You will still derive whatever benefits you had hoped to from your mental masquerade, but without the trouble of pretending to be comatose all throughout the day. Whenever the girl comes by, I will give you warning. You can see the road from these windows, of course, though you cannot be seen through them, as they are mirrors to those outside. The lights will have to be extinguished as dark comes, to avoid suspicion, yet you will soon find, I believe, that the view of the heavens quickly displaces the need for artificial light at all."

"I am accustomed to reading by lamp light, actually," I said.

"A literary tool?" Aksenov asked. "I have heard of such things novelists use to create the atmosphere for themselves which they wish to create for the reader."

"Not at all: I, myself, need only my mind to travel. No, it is for my roommate, Jacques, who does not use furniture or electric lights."

"Not at all? I would not mind meeting him, if he comes to visit. It is a hobby, or pursuit, of mine to study to amount of insanity in average people and draw their madness to the surface for all to see."

"It is my occupation, as well as my hobby, Dr. Aksenov."

"Which is why I mentioned it. Why, then, did you fake a suicide and pretend insanity?"

"A subtle switch of the conversation," I laughed.

"No, but neither was subtlety intended. You agreed our lives were spent observing the insane and I would hazard to say that to fake insanity is as good as insanity itself. I should say, perhaps, to fake a comatose state, since your insanity is quite clearly real. You have found your home in the mental hospital in an ironic way, perhaps, but your stay is not necessarily one of pleasure."

"I do not disagree, to be literary and negate the negative rather than affirm the positive. Yet there is an amount of nuance to not doing the opposite that is not in doing the thing itself. By that digression I mean, of course, that it is a rather insane thing to have done. But I am a literary man, as you say: my whole life is devoted to realizing the unreal and that occupation leaves one in a vacuum of truth, in which no reality exists. I am present in so many stories, each playing out within my mind at once in a battle to emerge as the victor, as the story to be presented to the rest of humanity, that my presence in the grand story, the story of humanity, is sometimes abdicated for my fairy-tale mind. That is insanity, as the reverse of a sound and healthy mind - in the economical sense, I mean - one which does what is best for itself in reality."

"Why, then, did you fake a suicide and pretend insanity?"

"Trust," I muttered, "One cannot love without trust, and I, an academic and a man of letters, cannot trust unless I know, cannot judge the future actions of a thing unless I have seen its present actions. I believe I am in love with Tamara, but I cannot know until I see the extent of her faithfulness, her devotion: that she continues to love me though I am, to her at least, a vegetable."

"Insanity, indeed." He stood and walked to the door. "I have other things to attend to, Mr. O'Donne. As I said, you are free to do as you wish, although the lights of the room are turned off with those of the main hospital, which are extinguished precisely at midnight. You have an hour of your own, now. I will see you in the morning," and, turning toward the door, he disappeared into the stairwell and closed the door behind him.

For a moment I sat there and did nothing. Then, with a glance to the clock to see that it was indeed eleven o'clock, I turned to inspect the library. While no additions had been made after 1895, when, I suppose, the original owner had died, it held a complete snapshot of the world's learning previous to that point, with all of the best literature in every language, each present in its original language. Though I first found the catalog books - printed in a book's bindings with the greatest show of opulence - I still did my searching among the books themselves, each one perfectly bound and smelling still of the fresh mystery contained between its covers.

Then, in the middle of my search, the lights were shut off. Midnight came like pregnancy to a teenage lover: unexpected and uninvited. Yet still, it had come and I could not ward it off. So I made a stop in the water closet beside the stairway and returned to my stretcher, upon which I would spend the night. Only then did I realize the beauty of the sky above, the stars of which could be seen clearly through the glass dome atop the tower. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see more and more of their depth, for as I looked longer at any section of the sky, more stars magically appeared, dancing out from the darkness. Sometime that night, as I watched them tip-toeing across the sky, I fell into a deep sleep. I did not wake until the dawn was making its appearance through the glass dome.

My first thought was of the books, although my second thought was more for myself, and it was the one I heeded at first, going to the water closet to freshen myself and then back to the main part of the tower where my breakfast was waiting. I hurriedly threw it down my throat, then was up at once and at the books again, this time with the intent to study rather than to browse. Over the succeeding months I perfected my knowledge of Latin and Greek, and acquired, to perfection, the knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, French, Spanish, German, and Swahili. My mind seemed a regular well, into which the water could be thrown and stored until it needed to be drawn out once more. I also read in each of these languages, increasing my mastery of the written word until I thought myself, and not without reason, a master of the pen.

Chapter 18:

I was not roused from my studies until later that afternoon, by a bell that rang near the door. I looked up to see a car approaching down the long, winding road that ran through the forest in which the hospital, or mansion, had been built. Thinking it was Tamara, I carefully replaced the books upon the shelf and prepared the room to show no signs of my activity within in. Then, placing myself once more upon the stretcher, I resumed my comatose state. After a moment's meditation, my mind was safely stored within my body. Soon footsteps could be heard coming up the stairway, then the door opened and a gentle footstep approached, alone: a quirky tapping in which every third step was slightly off-beat. Tamara had come.

"Edwin," she moaned as she came near the stretcher, which now served as my bed, holding my hand and leaning over my face. She gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek.

I felt at first that I should throw off the veil to her, as I had done to Dr. Aksenov, and reveal that I was as much myself as ever, however sane that was. But I did not. First, because I still needed to know, in quantitative terms, how much she loved me, and that could be known only by the regularity of her visits. Second, because, with sudden access to such a library, I lusted after the chance to study without interruption. It was cruel and selfish, perhaps, but it was also, I thought, for the best.

"Edwin," she said, "What have I done, cruel woman that I am? Forgive me, I beg you: forgive me. I will not leave you now, not in this state in which I have left you."

I was pierced through the heart with her sorrow. My body, however, showed no signs of life. I would not allow it to.

"The semester has only just begun," she continued, "And I cannot leave my studies behind to spend all my time with you: I must learn, without which you would never love me. Only when I am thrown into my studies am I comforted, so I cannot leave them and retain my sanity. Still, I will come here everyday when I study, every afternoon and every evening, I will come and read aloud to you the things which I am reading. They say there is a chance you are yet alive inside your head, that you can hear without speaking and see without letting us see that you can. A small chance, but nonetheless a chance. So I will read to you, Edwin, to keep your mind from losing itself. It is the only way I can show my love for you."

She began to read and for the rest of the day her sweet, loving voice came into my ears the way a beautiful sight goes into the eyes or a wonderful taste into the mouth. My heart raced my pulse in a show of furious love, though only figuratively. For she held my hand in hers, that I might not forget her, and I was too ashamed of myself to reveal my presence, or, rather, the presence of my mind. But something floated in her voice, something loving that made me think it would not matter to her whether I was alive or not, whether I had faked it all or whether I was truly comatose. She loved me, it said, and to love it made no difference. I was humbled. My cynicism fell away before love and I found myself eagerly awaiting her arrival day after day, even though I did not dare reveal myself. She came as often as she said she would.

The next day Dr. Aksenov appeared with my breakfast, the only meal I was given.

"You have not told her, have you?" I began as soon as I saw him.

"I have not. I told you that much. I have my own purposes for you, testing and probing, even as you have for her. But whether your purposes succeed makes little difference to my own. I wish only to observe your madness, to watch your descent into the grips of your literary mind."

"As long as you do not tell her, I do not care," I was short with him. He was beginning to frighten me.

"Her?" he paused for a moment and smiled. "Ah, yes: the girl. So you truly think she is coming to you in flesh and not merely in your mind? How often have you thought such things in your head, played such stories in your imagination, Edwin? That a beautiful woman is intensely in love with you, that you are able to please her intellectually and sexually; indeed, that you are able to please all women sexually with the mere wave of your pen? Perhaps," he smiled, "This girl is as much a member of your own hermit-reality as Daem or Atilta, or any of the many characters in your novels? Perhaps she exists only to you? Good day," and, leaving my mind in a puddle on the floor, Aksenov left the room, his pace as strict and as manicured as ever.

I did not know anything whenever Aksenov would leave me. He was, quite literally, driving me insane. Or perhaps I already was. Tamara continued to come, every day, as punctual as the dawn. Her sweet voice continued to read aloud to me, which, in addition to my own studies, pushed me ever higher in my quest for knowledge. Yet, as I lay there in the stretcher, as if comatose, I wondered whether she were really there, a question which Dr. Aksenov had not planted in my head, but which he certainly watered. I did not see her; I only heard her when I closed my eyes and separated myself from my body: incidentally, the precise position I used to create my novels in my mind before committing them to writing, the same attitude I donned in order to create the thoughts which I would later translate into a medium that could be transferred to other human minds. Was Tamara, like so many of the good things I had loved, only a person in my mind? Was this whole adventure only something I had written in a novel? I could not tell.

Time passed, as it always does. Yet, in my dream state, it passed faster than it ever had before. Soon the forest outside the windows was drowned in snow. I, myself, kept from atrophy by rigorous exercise every morning; and my mind was as strong as ever because of my constant study. It was also weak, however, from my constant doubt. One day, after three months of such a life, things having continued much as they had from the first day of my capture by Dr. Aksenov - I say capture because I felt imprisoned, as if he had gotten into my head and driven me mad, or, I feared, made me see my own madness - he came to see me over breakfast, which we had grown accustomed to taking together.

"Mr. O'Donne," he said as he came up the stairs, "I see that you are well. In body, I mean. You will visit with the girl again today? And, again, without revealing your sanity to her?"

"Yes."

"How long will it last? If you cannot trust her by now, when will you be able to?"

"I will know, I suppose. More than that, I cannot say. Besides, the time is good for us now: we are both learning at a rabid pace. I have mastered more languages now than I had ever thought possible."

"Yes, you are doing well in that, at least. I am fascinated by your progress, that I will admit. Someone who is in some aspects entirely insane - mad, if you prefer the literary word - and yet whose mind is so genius in other aspects. If men were merely mad, though, I would not study them. It is the compartments of madness that drive me to study and observation. Some are perfectly social beings - those with Down Syndrome, for example - and yet have hardly a shred of intelligence. They are friendly and lovable, but cannot think like a dog. You, however, can think like a god, but are nothing socially, a fink whose only friends and lovers are in his own mind."

"You have seen her as well as I, Aksenov, you cannot fool me with your attempts to make me feel mad."

He nodded at me and smiled, the way a psychologist reassures a demented patient. I was pierced through, once again, the same way the girls in the cafeteria had made me think myself a mad novelist, consumed entirely by my own imaginations.

"I have never seen the girl you speak of, Mr. O'Donne."

"You are a fool, Aksenov. But you will not fool me. I have only to ask the nurses if they have seen her."

"Would you dare? They think you are comatose, a vegetable. If, on the one hand, they have seen her, they would bring down your game; and, conversely, if she is only in your mind, they will think you are mad - which, of course, you are."

"I am a novelist, yes, and I have imaginations. I live with my characters before I write them. But that does not make me mad! I love Tamara, and, desiring her love, I test her. But again, that does not make me mad!" I grew heated, but he only smiled with his calm and placid eyes.

"Of course, Edwin, I hear you," and he rose, leaving me alone once more until Tamara would come later in the evening. Yet what did he mean by calling me Edwin? He was a man who held language as his slave, following his commands to the simplest and obscurest point. What, then, did he mean by the informal remark?

For the following weeks, he did not once more call me Edwin; rather, it was always Mr. O'Donne. Perhaps, I thought, it was a part of his plan to make me mad. But through it all there was a faint something in his eyes which I, a romantic writer, thought must be an indication of good intentions. My mind was quickly coming to a boil. I loved Tamara more than I had before, yet now I doubted not only that she truly loved me, but that she existed at all. Whatever I had thought to achieve by pretending insanity, it was coming into place. The winter was now passing away, the forest no longer covered in snow. The semester had given way to Christmas long ago, and now the next was well under way. Still, Tamara had continued to come, even during the semester recess. That was evidence, to be sure, but of what: that she loved me and continued coming rather than return home, or that I was mad, and the phantom in my mind would not leave because it never really came? My mind came to a boil and I saw that, either way, more evidence would do no good. It had only to be interpreted now. I resolved to reveal myself that afternoon, to open my eyes to my love. What would come of it, I did not know.

Chapter 19:

Tamara came at her usual time, her off-beat footsteps coming happily up the stairs. Her steps were always joyful, somehow reflecting her pleasure at coming to see me. Her love pierced me through the heart: yet was it real? She loved me, she said, because of what I had written. But I had written lies, things which were, while real, not wholly true. I was in my stretcher, pretending once again to be comatose. She approached, as always, kissed me lightly on the lips, took my hand, and, sitting down, began to read. I allowed her to continue for a time, listening, not to her, but for sounds beyond the door.

Aksenov always came to listen at the door for a time, then slithered down the stairs again with his careful, pedantic stride, as perfectly manicured as his suit and as subtle as his speech. After a few moments he left: I could hear his soft footsteps fade away. A moment later, as Tamara read and I was sure we were alone, I suddenly opened my eyes and grabbed her.

Why I grabbed her I did not know at first: it certainly frightened her greatly. But that was the point, I suppose. I grabbed her and covered her mouth to keep her from alerting Dr. Aksenov who, by this time, thoroughly terrified me. I had not seen Tamara for months, since we had made love. I had only heard her. She was, however, as beautiful as she had ever been: her hair dark and long, her eyes strangely green. And her lips, little coils of love, played a dance with my heart which, seeing, my pulse could not hide. She looked into my eyes, my hand over her mouth no longer. She saw the silence I desired and obeyed.

"Silence," I said, "I will explain fully later."

Her eyes overflowed with joy, with love.

"Dr. Aksenov drives me to insanity, pushing me further every day. I must escape: you must save me. Tomorrow when you come bring a rope, a long and sturdy rope. I will tell you more then. For now, continue your reading."

She smiled and, perfectly calm, continued her reading. My eyes remained open, however, and from time to time she looked up and we made love as we once had: with our eyes alone. The day passed quickly. When the time came, she left. Aksenov was unaware of the move I had made.

I paced the tower that night, examining the forest beyond the windows with a new intensity, searching for a way to escape my prisoner master. He had grown from at first a frightening but friendly man to at last a man who was inside my mind, who, by a subtle twinge of his eyebrows or a nuanced grammatical flourish could plant thoughts within my head that even the greatest writer would have spent thousands of words creating.

The tower was atop four stories of the mansion; as each story was rather lofty, my prison was easily a hundred feet from the ground. On every side the forest stretched beyond sight, only broken by the winding gravel road that came in from the south. At first it had seemed a sanctuary, remote enough from the world to allow my mind free reign. But now, after many months, my hermitage was imprisonment.

The next day, Tamara came as usual. When Aksenov was gone, I leaned forward and kissed her.

"Have you brought the rope?" I asked.

She pulled her heavy overcoat aside, revealing a rope coiled around her body. "It is a hundred feet," she said. "You must escape?"

"I must; if Aksenov knows what I am about, I fear he will end us both at once."

"I begin to understand," she said, her eyes ablaze with thought. "You were forced to suicide, by someone who had visited you after I left, and now, imprisoned in the mental hospital, you cannot escape your captors. We will see, my love, and tomorrow will see you free."

"May it, indeed, though there is much to tell you that is hard to understand." I kissed her again, a slight worry growing like a tumor in the back of my mind: at some point I had to tell her the truth. "Tonight, sometime after midnight, I will escape from the tower. When I have reached the ground, I will flee down the road, where you will meet me, take me in your car, and flee from all of this."

"I will be there, Edwin, waiting for you. What if you do not come?"

"Call the police," I said, fearful of Aksenov. "No, on second thought that is foolish." I paused. "How is Caleb Clifford?"

"He survives: after many months, the transients still protest around the grocery store, kept alive by various charities. Thousands have joined them, coming in from all over the country."

"Good. If I do not meet you tonight, find Caleb and bring him this message: I am, before all else, a novelist. He will know what I mean."

With that I fell back to my stretcher and Tamara, hiding the rope beneath me, left me for the evening. With luck, we would reunite before the dawn. When she had gone, I rose, leaving the rope hidden beneath the blankets of the stretcher, and went to the bookshelf, unable to do anything but read. Many hours burned away until the clock struck eleven o'clock. In the silence, the chime burst through the air and echoed. I jumped. Shortly after it passed away, a soft, dexterous footstep came up from the bottom of the stairs. Dr. Aksenov was coming.

Chapter 20:

I began to sweat and shake, convulsing with fear. My head I buried in the book - the Arabian Nights in Arabic - to keep from looking at him. But, as the door squeaked open, my curiosity overcame my fear and, in spite of myself, I looked him straight in the face.

"You have a fever, Edwin?" He addressed me informally, for the first time in weeks.

"I do, but it is nothing," and I returned to the book.

"You have come along very well in your studies: it fascinates me that one with such strange imaginations - schizophrenia, you know - can yet retain such an amount of genius." Aksenov came forward and sat beside me. "Did the girl visit you today?"

"You know that she did, I heard you coming up with her."

"Did you? I do not remember that."

"You fool!" I cried, losing myself to something. I stood and walked away from him. "She is real and she loves me: do not play with my mind, tugging it to insanity. A mental hospital is to cure the mad, not to madden the sane."

"I cure, my friend, there is no need to fear for that. Your cure can only come when you realize the girl is nothing more than a phantom in your mind, nothing more than a character in one of your novels. She was in The Forgotten King, you know: I read it again after discussing these things with you and she is quite clearly Ivona. Less godly, perhaps, but you are a man, after all. No one is godly in dementia."

"She is real!" and, betraying myself, I looked toward the stretcher.

His eyes followed mine, his calm face, for a moment, flashing with some emotion. But it passed and once more he was the monster I had come to know: monstrous, in fact, because of his calm and systematic attempts to make a monster of me. What his purpose was, I did not dare to guess.

"Is she real?" and, standing, he walked slowly toward the stretcher, whose blankets were unusually puffed out from the rope hidden beneath them.

I did nothing at first, but watched, paralyzed, as he approached my means of escape. Part of me was glad that he would find the rope, that he would have before him the evidence that I was not mad - which he knew, of course, but which he would no longer be able to deceive me with. He threw off the covers of the stretcher as he reached it, the rope staring him in the face, daring him to see it, to admit defeat, to admit that I retained my sanity. But he did not see it. He turned to me and said, "There is nothing here, Mr. O'Donne."

Mr. O'Donne! I fell back from the chair I was on, threw the book toward him, striking him in the head, and came forward in a furry. As I came, he bent and took the book from the ground, as composed as ever in spite of my rage.

"A fever, you said?" and he smiled, revealing his coffee-stained teeth.

"I am not mad!" I cried. I grabbed the rope and struck him over the head with its heavy coils. He fell back. "Can you ignore it now, Aksenov?" I cried. "Tamara brought me this rope, to escape your prison, and, since it is real, she must be real as well. Can you deny it now?" and I hit him again and again.

At last he himself grew angry. "Fool of a man! You do not understand what love is, nor that trust is not a thing to be acquired by doubting! Have I not done this as a favor? Do I not know what is real and what is not? This is a mental hospital, Edwin, and it is my duty to cure of madness all those who seek respite here." He grabbed the rope from my hands, his head bleeding, and threw it on the ground behind him, directly in front of the southern window, a large pane of unpaneled glass that stretched from floor to ceiling.

"You cannot fool me, Aksenov, for I have seen your manipulations. She is real."

"It is not I who doubts that she is real, but you, the one who, ignoring her devotion, continues to test and to doubt. It is not I who doubts her love, but you, who have made her a mere phantom in your mind."

"Liar!" I cried, visibly enraged. Somehow, after my long period in the library, I was beginning to go mad.

Aksenov came forward to hold me down, his hands held before him as he came. He reached out his long, slender fingers toward my shoulders: as I saw it then, toward my neck to strangle me. As his hand came toward me, I bit him, taking his middle finger completely from his hand in the madness of the moment. He reared back in pain, shrieking. I swallowed the finger. As he fell, he tripped over the rope he had thrown behind him only a moment before. His foot fell into the center of the coil and became entangled: he could not take it out and his other foot slipped as he fell back to place his weight on it. Aksenov's tall body leaned and tumbled backward into the window, breaking through with a crash and falling back. He screamed loudly, like a woman, until his voice was extinguished with a thud as it struck the ground. At the same instant, the clock struck midnight and every light in the mansion was shut off. Darkness came, hand in hand with silence.

Chapter 21:

I stood for a moment in awe, in surprise. Then, seeing the situation, I fell back in fear. I had murdered Dr. Aksenov. Quickly I went to the water closet and washed my mouth of blood, drying myself and wiping my sweat until I looked like I ever did. I dashed back to the room, replaced the book on the bookshelf in the dark and jumped onto the stretcher. Yet my heart raced. For a moment I could not slow my pulse: it ran away and would not be captured.

Outside I could hear the nurses swarming the body of the fallen Aksenov. Then, their voices came and I could hear them looking up into the tower. They entered the building again and the metallic clicking of the elevator began a moment later, slowly coming up to the fourth floor. Suddenly, it stopped. Several footsteps left it, entering the stairway to the door. My pulse was slowing now: a moment longer and I would be once more comatose. The door to the room opened, the lights came on with a sudden flash. But I did not see them: I was, at last, a vegetable again.

One of the nurses advanced and put her hand on my wrist, feeling my pulse.

"He is comatose," she said, "His pulse is the same as when he came: 29. He is not conscious."

The nurses stood watch over the scene for half an hour, careful to keep the scene - possibly the crime scene, they did not know - pristine for the police. After a time the sound of an approaching car came up from below, through the broken window, followed by the slamming of a car door and the unintelligible voices of two males. One of the nurses said it was the police and went down to let them in. Several minutes were spent as they went over Dr. Aksenov's body and questioned the nurses. At last they came up to the tower and were left alone by the nurses. Only myself and the two officers remained in the room.

"Poor fellow, he is still here, comatose as before, Pete," said one of the officers, the same who had been assigned to my room after my faked suicide.

"Trouble follows him, it seems, James," the other officer, Pete answered. "But it is not his doing, no doubt: the poor man is, as you said, comatose. The nurses told me they checked his pulse directly after the incident and he was as much a vegetable as the day he came in. Nothing can wake him, not his lover, not a murder. Poor man."

"All men are poor, sorrowful beings. What of us, called into nowhere in the middle of the night?"

"Hush, James," Pete said. "This is our break: this whole thing reeks of conspiracy. You saw the doctor's body: he was not drunk, but he had been beaten over the head with something and his middle finger had been taken off completely. Yet it has disappeared: the nurses could not find it. What is that?" and Pete began walking across the room, to the bookshelf by which I had been reading earlier. "This book is placed upside down and out of order, Arabian Nights." He took it from the shelf and opened it. "In Arabic, nonetheless. Put that in your notes: did Aksenov know Arabic? Someone else was here, James. Someone besides the doctor and this shell of a man."

"What of the car that sped past us as we came in? An old Buick, though I did not catch the license number. It was driven by a single woman."

Tamara's car: my heart almost began to beat rapidly, but I kept it back to remain comatose.

"That must have been the girl who visits this man every day; but the nurses said she left today the same time she has left every day for the past several months. She is devoted, James. I did not know there were women who loved like that in this world. My wife would screw a man for a piece of praise or a good time. But this girl does not leave her man even when he tries to kill himself and turns his body into a vegetable. That is love, more love than I thought women capable of."

He was right of course. What had I done to Tamara? Things were no longer under my control and they had not been since the beginning. My test was more than I could administer.

"Enough philosophy, Pete. Do you see the connections? We have something big here."

"Sure do. Two suicides, one failed and one successful, in which abundant evidence exists that it was not, in fact, a suicide, but a murder. In each case some mysterious third person was involved. And in each case this man, Edwin O'Donne, is present. But he himself has not done it: that would not be possible."

"We should have the nurses take Mr. O'Donne down to the lower levels, where he can be kept away from this crime scene. This room is growing cold."

The nurses soon arrived, wheeling me down to the first floor, to a room on the far side of the mansion, nearest the corner. The room was empty and bleak, devoid of furniture and adornments. Yet there was no need for such things for a man who had no mind. The door was closed behind the nurses and locked from the outside, like a prison. The windows were barred. After several minutes passed I began to drift away into sleep, exhausted from the ordeal. I bumped my head into the dream lands, my vision faded, and I was asleep.

But only for an instant. For, just as I passed away, a slight knock came from the window. Startled, I leapt from the stretcher and looked out: there, standing on the other side of the window, was Caleb Clifford and a dozen transients. They each had files, which they rigorously applied to the bars. In a moment the window was cleared. Caleb climbed in and threw his arms around me.

"A literary man! I knew it, Edwin. But what has happened here? There is conspiracy in the air: no doubt the grocery store sends their minions to cloud your reputation and your sanity. We will not allow it!" He paused, holding his hand out to my chin. "The time has done you well, though: your beard makes you one of us."

My hair had not been cut or trimmed since I had been admitted. I did, indeed, look like a transient. Caleb's own hair was long, brownish red, and slightly curly. I was picked up and passed out the window in an instant, where the twelve transients took me. Clifford was on the other side with us in a moment and we set off into the forest at a mad dash. I kept up of my own strength. Nothing more was said as we rushed through the darkness. The winter had passed, but the air was still cold and the ground wet, the last of the melting snow dripping from all the trees. The forest was a pine tree palace, their heartless forms cut out against the night sky like sentinels of madness watching over the mental hospital. But the hospital was increasingly far behind us. After several hours of silent running, just as the sky was feeling the labor pains of a new day, we came out of the forest onto a country road, where two cars were waiting for us: one an old Buick, the other a full-size van with a clock tower painted on the side under the words "College of Hiram."

Tamara and Dr. Whaner were standing outside the cars. Tamara rushed forward and took me in her arms, kissing me to silence the words I tried to say, then helping me into the back seat of the car. She sat beside me while Caleb Clifford and Dr. Whaner took the front. The others piled into the van. The vehicles were started and we began to drive at once. Dr. Whaner was clearly pregnant, and, with her large stomach, the painting of Napoleon could hardly fit into the front seat. Yet, somehow, it was there.

I sighed and looked into Tamara's eyes. She loved me: that, at least could not be denied. I opened my mouth to speak, but before the first words could tumble out she put her finger to my lips to silence me.

"I do not need to know," she said.

"I think you do, though."

"Not at the moment, no, and perhaps not ever. We will see. For now, are you well?"

"I am."

With that, she took me in her arms like an infant, folding me in her bosom and putting me to sleep. I fell away instantly, to dream happy scenes of love and contentment. She was to be trusted, I thought at last: Tamara was mine.

Chapter 22:

When I woke it was mid-afternoon, the air suddenly warm, almost hot, under the direct attack of the sun. The sky was naked. I was lying on a coarse Army blanket laid over top a paved surface, with an innumerable host of men around me. At first I was confused. My first thought was that America had been invaded and I had somehow fallen in with an Army at camp. But, as I looked around and the insanity of sleep fell off me like scales from a snake, I saw that I was in the protest around the grocery store. The store itself stood about fifty yards from me, rising up from the ground with the all the majesty a pre-packaged chain store can have. The building was rectangular, the outside done in fake sandstone and the upper portions in painted plaster with a plastic veneer and a blue sign with the store's name. The army was made up of transients, completely encircling the store except for a twenty foot gap in the front center - a path to the gates - and a wider opening in the rear for supply trucks to dock and reload the mothership. At least, that is the language the transients used. No chanting came up from the ranks at this moment, although the men would erupt into song at times, to attract the attention of those going in or to put on a show for the television crews. While I had been isolated from the world, the protesters had gathered a great amount of attention across the nation, with several news programs running short, nightly updates. Transients are, on the whole, a well-educated, witty, and entertaining group of people: everything a journalist is not. The newsmen were quite satisfied to find interesting opinions among the massive army - now several thousand strong - that had converged on the small, mid-western town of Hiram.

They were fed, clothed, and housed by various charities, usually of a socialist or communist persuasion, although many Christian organizations also gave, as a merciful act. Several tents were set up in the center of their ranks, which became crowded when rain came. Yet, as a group, the protesters were inured to the climate: rain and cold did not bother them. As for hunger, they were probably better fed during the sit-in than in their previous lives. I was not given much time to survey the scene, however, since, when my movement was seen, Caleb Clifford came up to me.

"Edwin!" he called in a friendly voice, "You are well?"

"I am. We are outside the store?"

"Yes, indeed. Things have gone well here, though the store has not yet yielded. We will see their quarterly reports soon, though, to see how their business has fared. Our count shows the number of customers staying steady. It seems that as many more customers come from afar to protest us and our bad influence - as they call it - on society, as locals avoid the store on grounds of practicality. Still, we shall see. You are well?"

"Yes, I am."

"I ask twice, I know, but it has been such a perilous thing with you. I did not know what to think at first, Edwin."

"Why must you think something about everything? It is possible to have no opinions, you know."

"It is, I suppose; but it is not literary. You do not still want to kill yourself, do you?"

"I never did."

"You are mad nonetheless. I told you as much when I saw you. Do not think that I despise you for it, Edwin: as I told you then, I have had the same thoughts myself, since I became an addict. But I have a purpose, now. I have no more need for artificial drama. Why did you do it, though?"

"To test Tamara. She frightened me at first: that such a beautiful and perfect woman would love me, and, even more, would love me before we had met. She had read my novels, yes, but those are lies, the best that I can make myself. I need not explain to you, do I?"

"I am a man of letters also, Edwin. Go on."

"She frightened me, loving me so intensely that I myself came to love her within days of our meeting. I have read about love at first sight; but I have read about many other things, and I did not believe it could be. We made love that night, like young lovers in the stories: it was more than I had thought, more pleasure than even my mind had imagined. It was love. But it was also too fast. I thought it must be a game, a bet, or some such prank, like the college girls who are always fooling with me, playing with my mind. I thought I had to test her. So, in a wave of passion, I pretended to kill myself and to go into a coma. Now I know: she loves me."

He looked me over closely, like one looks over a sick but recovering child. "She does indeed love you. That much is clear."

"You are in love yourself, I see. I had not expected it from you."

"You know of it?" he asked.

"She is pregnant, Caleb. So much for your genius genes. They will pass on now, whether or not you are afraid for your place in literature. The enemy is coming, if you will."

"Yet I won't fear, not anymore. The young one may challenge me, but she is my daughter, and now that I have the paternal spark, I no longer seem to care. My past pursuits seem pointless. I have not even taken my drugs for many months. I no longer need them."

"Then that is good. Whaner, no doubt, is pleased to have a girl?"

"Yes, she will name the child after Napoleon, though I don't know how."

"And the book?"

"Ah, the book!" he smiled in the fashion of a writer who at last is writing again. "I am writing once more, Edwin. I feel reborn. I had forgotten the thrills it gave me, even as it pained me and wore my mind away. How have you fared, though? So many months of pretending to be comatose can ruin a man's mind."

"There was, however, no pretending. Dr. Aksenov put me in the tower: he knew I was faking, that I was only acting. I was locked, as Tamara no doubt told you, inside one of the finest libraries I have seen, separated from any distraction by fifty miles of forest and a veil of insanity. My actions were cruel to Tamara, yet even while she suffered I was born into the world of knowledge. I am now fluent in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, French, Spanish, German, and Swahili. It seems impossible, perhaps - and I myself would have said as much before - but my mind took them in amazingly well. I have impressed myself."

"And me. You must teach me, now."

"Of course."

"You speak of Aksenov as if he were your friend, Edwin. How can that be?"

"He was at first. Though he seemed strange and frightening, he allowed me free study and perfect solitude. We ate breakfast together every morning and spoke. He was an intelligent man."

"You killed him? The police do not know - they think you were comatose - but when they find you are well, they will be after you."

"Yes," I felt sick and turned away. "I know. I did not mean to kill him. He came at me, I bit him in what I thought to be defense, and he fell backwards out the window."

"You were at odds with him?"

"He made me think Tamara was not real." I shuddered. "He played with my mind as if with a marionette. He is dead now, though."

"Yes, he is. The police are searching for you now. We brought you here to hide you among the transients for a time, but it will not last forever. The officers have some idea of a vast conspiracy, that you were abducted from your room as a comatose man by those who first tried to kill you, and that they killed Aksenov somehow in a first attempt at taking you. It will throw them off for a while, anyway. We will find you some place to hide before you can flee. Don't worry."

"Should I not face justice for what I have done?"

"No," he smiled. "Time will show justice to be in your favor: an accident is an accident."

As he spoke, two men - clearly not transients by their well-kept appearances - approached us.

"Edwin!" the first said, "We've brought you lunch: an O'Donne fillet, Spanish olives, and a cherry cola."

"Patrick, Steve!" I laughed. "That is one thing I have dearly missed. No worries, friends: my open-casket funeral has come to an end at last."

The two looked away, shamed. "We did not know you were well, Edwin, aye? If we had, if we had any hope, we would not have let you go like that."

"Not at all," Steve added.

"No doubt, friends, and no hard-feelings. It is I who should be ashamed, for the pain I threw on you."

"Yes, now that you say so, I must agree," Patrick smiled. "But it is past. For now, we must hide you somewhere safe until we can clear things up with the police."

"You cannot stay here long, among the transients," Clifford said, "Even if they do not search you out, the cameras will find you by accident and broadcast your presence to the world. Yet I can think of nowhere safe, where they will not think to look - where they will not even know exists."

"I can, though," I said.

"Then tell us."

"President Ames. What day is it?"

"Sunday."

"Good: he will be at home. Come, take me to his mansion."

Caleb stirred up the sitting transients, to cover our movements with theirs, and led me to the edge of the ring, where the blue van waited, given by the College to the protesters. We got in, Clifford and myself, leaving Patrick and Steve to wander about on their own. Several moments passed in silence. Then, after the short drive, we came to Ames's mansion. It sat back two hundred yards from the road, the intervening space filled with pine trees and gardens and things which rich people keep to remind themselves they have sold their time for their wealth and can no longer enjoy life. The mansion itself was three stories, stretching out across the property, with three wings: one in the center with a truncated dome on top, and one on either side, tilted backward, away from the road. A gate blocked the drive, with a speaking device to call those within. Caleb pressed the button and, for several minutes, we waited. Then President Ames's voice came across the air to us, materializing in the wall beside the van window.

"Yes, who is it?"

"Dr. Clifford," Caleb could not keep himself from laughing at the supposed expression on Ames's face.

"Indeed? What do you want on a Sunday?"

I leaned forward across Caleb and spoke into the intercom. "It is Edwin. I need to take a vacation with your quarters. They are after me."

"My God!" Ames sounded surprised. Then, "Come in at once, Edwin. I will not turn you away. Come in at once!"

With that the gate opened, we drove the college van in, and it closed behind us again, triggered by a weight sensor embedded into the drive.

"I don't see why you think Ames's place is so safe, Edwin."

"Which is why it is. Do not ask; I would not tell if you did. I am sure to be safe with his quarters."

"You mean in his quarters, do you not?" he asked. "A poorly turned phrase annoys me."

"Of course; I do not have your literary genius, Caleb."

Chapter 23:

At that moment we arrived at the front gate. The servants were gone for the day, as it was Sunday. Dr. Ames came out to greet us, taking me into the house in a hurry, all the while flicking his eyes about as if avoiding some spy. Caleb was not invited in; but, considering the circumstances, it was the way to go. He left pleasantly.

"My wife is asleep," Ames said as we crept up the stairway to the third floor, to the master bedroom. "Yet to reach the hidden basement, you must go through the bedroom. Still, she is a heavy sleeper."

We came to the door, a ten foot mahogany sculpture, with an intricate border piece of fighting colonials that did not repeat. Ames opened it slowly, looked inside to see his wife was still sleeping, and pulled me in, all done in perfect silence. The room was round, implanting unpleasant memories in my mind. In fact, it was remarkably similar to the tower of the mental hospital. But I said nothing. The bed took the center of the room: emperor-sized with pillars as bed posts and a chest of drawers built into its tall sides which held the couple's clothing. To the right was an old wooden wardrobe built into the wall. Ames quietly opened its door and stepped in, pulling me with him. Then he closed the door behind us and breathed once more. I did as well.

Then, pulling away the back panel by means of some hidden switch, he opened an invisible door - by which I mean that the cracks could not be seen - that opened into a narrow, steep stairway. He waved to me and plunged into the darkness beneath. The stairway wound around in a narrow circle: it passed through a great column that came down through the whole house, so that it was not revealed to anyone. The stairs themselves were steep and short. Several times I found myself stumbling as I went down. After five minutes, we came out into a vast vault of a basement, filled from front to back with quarters.

"We have arrived!" Ames seemed please to reveal his wealth to someone besides his wife. At least sixteen million shiny quarters were stacked around the room, some on shelves and some in piles on the floor. "I keep them in piles of a hundred dollars, you see," he turned to me. "Every day I devote an hour to counting one of the piles, to be sure that it contains exactly the correct amount. If it does, I can breathe relief."

"And if it does not?"

"Then I search for the reason. I have never yet been wrong, though."

"Indeed? How much does a hundred dollars weigh?"

"Slightly over six pounds. I always speak of them in "pounds": first because it seems British and thus intellectual, and second because it disguises the true amount of my wealth. A hundred dollars weighs six pounds yet is worth a little over fifty pounds." Ames paused. "You are in trouble, Edwin? I heard on the news that Dr. Aksenov had killed himself, and you had been kidnapped. You are out of your coma?"

"I was never in a coma," I said.

"Indeed? Then that is how you knew of my quarters. I am relieved."

"Your wealth is safe on its own account, Dr. Ames."

"So it is. If you were not comatose, you know who killed Aksenov?"

"I did." I said this calmly. I was beginning to feel that I really had killed him on my own, but that it was something inevitable, something that would have been done with or without me.

"I see. Then you must flee."

"To where?"

"I do not know. But this place, while hidden, is not so safe. They will find you eventually."

"Perhaps. Dr. Ames, you are the only man I can trust. The others know I have sought refuge here, but they do not know of your secret room, or that your fortune is stored here in quarter dollars. They do not know because I cannot trust them. Tell no one I am here. Does you wife know of the secret room?"

"She does, but no one else. This, however, is not my entire fortune."

"Either way, forget that I am here," I said.

"That would be hard. There is a water-closet down here - though rarely used and rarely cleaned - and I can bring supplies later, when my wife is out. What will you do?"

"You have a library here, along with your wealth," and I pointed to the shelves, beside those containing quarters, that held volumes of dusty old books. "I will live among them."

"Good fortune, then: they belonged to the man who built the place. I, myself, have never looked them over in more than a cursory way. Until later. Good-bye!"

With that, President Ames returned up the narrow stairs to the wardrobe above, closing the secret door with a light click that echoed down through the stairs and then faded away into the silence I had grown accustomed to in the mental hospital. When he had gone, I wandered over the room to look at it closely. The quarters were grouped into stacks of a hundred dollars, as he said, but the groups were also arranged by year and location. So, in one particular pile, were four hundred quarters minted in Philadelphia in 1972. The piles were arranged in order of date, so that on the wall furthest from the door were those quarters minted the earliest, while congregated around the entrance were the newer, shinier coins. There have always been advocates of a coin based currency since the move to paper - not without reasons, of course, which are almost always present in such things - but few had taken their love for coins to the distance President Ames had. Or perhaps it was simply as he had told me before, that he was a miser.

The water closet was off to the side of the room, and was, as he had said, rarely used and rarely cleaned. My first task was to scare away the nefarious residents and clear the place of rubble, for my future use. That done, I returned to the main room and to the bookshelves. Fewer books graced the shelves than had in the tower. Those there, however, were all of exceptional, hand-picked quality. I fell into reading to forget my troubles, as some fall to the bottle. I had killed a man and deceived the woman I thought I loved; I was, or would soon be, a fugitive; and, above all, my feet were lusting for the road, for the wild. I had always longed to walk, and when I did walk, I always longed to walk further, to see what was beyond, to see everything. Driving was too disconnected for me, to remote and inhuman. But walking, a fundamentally human action, was a freedom from the mechanized life I otherwise lived. When my troubles came down on me, I went to the Brick and told Patrick I would love to walk. I asked him, everyday, whether he had seen the mountains or the sea. To walk, to love, to live. But, to me, the first was foremost.

An idea slithered out of the quarters where it was hidden - or perhaps out of the books, which is more likely - and bit me in the neck, implanting its poison deep within me. It spread out through my veins and soon was embedded deep enough into my body that I was caught, committed to it fully: I would flee on foot, disguised as a walking transient, and cover the whole world. They would not look on the roads; I would not be caught.

Yet what of Tamara? I had tested her and she had passed. Even in my madness she did not abandon me; after months of loving a vegetable, she loved me nonetheless. I had told President Ames to tell no one where I was, for I no longer trusted them, not Caleb or Whaner or Tamara or even Jacques. Patrick and Steve were not among them, perhaps, but only because they were too simple, too trusting. That was, in fact, why I trusted none of them: they did not care to know what had happened. If one of them had done what I had done - had faked a suicide and a coma to test my devotion - I would not let it go with merely a dramatic 'I do not need to know.' I would, on the contrary, demand to know, stab myself into their psyche until I could know for sure. Only Dr. Ames asked who had killed Aksenov. Only Dr. Ames did not care for selfish reasons: he was lonely, isolated by power from his colleagues and by money from his wife. His only escape was my own, that he would have someone of his own. He was an anal man, with no imagination. So, where I befriended myself, he made me his imagination. The others, however, did not care to know for selfless reasons, that for their love for me they did not need the truth. But I do not believe in love. I am too much of a romantic to believe my eyes and too much of a realist to deny them. Thus I could not trust the others precisely because they were too trusting. My greatest fear was to be naive, to be taken in by a scam of friendship or love and used.

Perhaps Tamara had known, even as Aksenov had, that I was faking my coma. Perhaps Aksenov himself had told her, yet had her continue her visits to persuade me she did not know, to rig the results of my test. She had to have known, I thought, or else she would have left me. Three days, however passionate, do not make a widow. No, it was a ruse, a game played against the gamer: no other explanation existed. Would Aksenov open the library to me - his own haunt before I came, no doubt - and allow me free stay simply for some idea of friendship? He was too professional to know the meaning of the word. Or would he allow me the tower simply as an experiment, as he said, into the mind of a madman faking his madness? The hospital was not a charity. Therefore, he must have been in leagues with the others, plotting to deceive me in my deception, to have a game with my mind as I had wanted to play with their minds. But why not? I deserved to be beaten at my own game. Still, I could not trust them, especially Tamara.

I had stopped reading to entertain these thoughts and, seeing they had come to spend at least the night, I put down the book entirely and began to pace the room, careful to avoid overturning the quarters. As I was pacing, Ames came down the stairs once more.

"My wife has gone out for a night of bridge with her friends, to be followed by a passionate and adulterous romp with a young professor from the School of the Past. That leaves the house empty for the night."

"Excellent. I will flee the town tonight, before your wife returns. Then, while you continue to smuggle food to this basement chamber and the others suspect I am still hidden somewhere within your mansion, I will put ground behind me and escape into the wild, where I shall not be found."

"Tonight? Then we had best begin!" Ames was zealous, for once, glad a spark of adventure had come into his fund-raising, hand-shaking life. "How will you travel?"

"On foot: as a backpacker."

"I have just the things. I have had to go one safaris with rich English bastards: you know, a sacrificial service to the college. But now, at least, my pains are rewarded, for I have a large collection of equipment I was forced, by good grace, to keep. Come, I will show you."

Leaving the book behind, I followed President Ames as he dashed up the narrow, circling stairway to the wardrobe above, whose trap door he closed securely and invisibly behind us. The room was in a twilight, with the curtains closed.

"I've kept it all here, since this room is, as you can see, as large as many a man's entire home. But that is the curse of wealth," and he winked, going to the door to the rest of the house, the giant mahogany blast-door, and locked it. "Come."

This time he turned to the closet to the left of the wardrobe, furthest from the door, and opened its double-hung doors. Another room, nearly as large as the bedroom, was revealed: a storehouse for all things miscellaneous, for all the expensive junk which wealth imparts. In the rear, some forty-feet into the closet, stood a great stuffed lion beside an oak chest. Ames pointed to the chest. The lid bared its fangs as we opened it - the weight required our combined strength - and it seemed to hold within it the contents of a small closet.

"You will need this, no doubt," he said, taking a semi-automatic shotgun and several twenty-round clips from the chest and setting them at my feet.

"My God! For what, Ames? I do not mean to fight an army."

"You can never be too prepared for the wild, Edwin. Besides, you may, indeed, have to fight an army, if you ever leave America. You cannot carry that out with you all the time, of course: it will have to stay in your backpack. That is why you will need this," and he dropped a frighteningly large handgun, along with an equal number of clips, at my feet.

"I am a pacifist, though."

"Well, be a pacifist as I am a Catholic: non-practicing. A college president must take loans at times and lie at others, just as a walker must shoot the evil out of men sometimes." He dropped a shoulder holster beside the handgun as he spoke. Next he pulled out a sturdy backpack, of the variety with an external frame, a sleeping bag, a hammock, a tarp or rain flap, and a long coil of rope.

"You can do well enough with this," he said, "Though it is by no means comprehensive. But here, I am reminded of something else the British gentleman gave me, a gift of sorts." He opened a secret compartment on the underside of the lid of the great chest and pulled out a small briefcase. Opening it with a wink, he laughed, "$50,000: a bit of pocket change for the road."

"How can I take that much from you? Before I tried to kill myself you never even cared for me."

"I did, Edwin, sure as hell. But I am a president: I cannot show such things. Besides, I do not want my whoring wife to find this cash, for then it is as good as gone, and wasted at that, whereas you will spend it in an efficient manner. It will not last forever, of course; but when it runs out, you need only wire me for more. Do not grimace there, Edwin: you must know my life is a waste of time. I am possessed by money so that the others, the professors and students, can pretend to interact without a thought about it, pretending each to be in debt to the man. By God, Edwin, everyone is in a pity club, damning all day the man - but I am the man! Take it and enjoy your life while you have it. You will lose it if you become a real novelist. Then your only concern will be the literary. Can't you see, Edwin? You will be Caleb Clifford!"

I was silent for a moment, then, "You must come with me, Dr. Ames. I cannot leave you behind in hell, to tarry forever in limbo."

"Dante left Virgil there."

"But Dante is a literary bastard. He is a chauffeur for the philosophers, not a spark for the imagination. Forget Dante."

"If I must. But still, if I disappear, the search will be on, whereas if I stay, I can keep them thinking I have you hidden here for at least a year, if not two. If I go, we will be caught and you put on trial for murder. No, Edwin, I must stay. But remember me, if you write again: make me a hero in some novel, and my soul will rest at peace. First make them pity me, then have me surprise us all with a selfless act, staying behind to die, and last, have me, if you can think of a way, save you again before the end, near the climax, of course. Do me that, and you will have done me well."

I embraced Ames, my last friend, the last man I could trust because he was the only one with the honesty to call his wife a whoring bitch and himself a miser. The others may have been better, but they were damned for knowing it more than they knew anything else. Ames, the miser, the luckless, the damned: he, at least, made no excuses. We packed the things into the backpack, which soon weighed nearly a hundred pounds, with the addition of lesser things which we thought necessary in addition to the others. The handgun, loaded but with the safety engaged, was placed in the holster beneath the trench coat I wore - a dark, expensive trench coat for the simple reason the Ames had nothing of a humbler nature and yet the nippy nights required something of the sort - and the shotgun and money stashed in the backpack with the other things. In all, the preparations were not comprehensive or faultless. But, with the money, the guns, and my wit - as Ames said - I would get along fine.

He did not drive me to edge of town. Rather, I left through a back way, creeping across his vast property to small, little used road, and walking into the night. As for Ames, I learned later that he became a man after I left. The police thought he harbored me within his mansion. His wife was employed by them, seduced by officer Pete to the task of finding me out, and Ames had the greatest joy in making them think he was stupid enough to leave a trail of evidence that he had me, when, in fact, I had long been gone.

Ames did not break when he saw his wife screwing other men in great numbers and regularity, for he had been neutered since he was a young man, a choice he made in order to pursue wealth and power with a greater passion. He saw his fellows brought down by love and deception, seduced by the beauty which women put upon themselves with their false grace and their face-paints, and which shrivels and dies when one, like some alien, is seen in her natural state as a human being. Then the mystery fades, usually with marriage, though sometimes a year or two after the dreaded knotting-tying entanglement. Ames put himself beyond the grasp of the leeches of society, those who think to get ahead by preying off the stronger species - that men and women are different animals is without doubt, I believe. He only kept a beautiful, nymph wife that she should seduce the men around him and bring them down. He kept a naive veneer to give them all guilt. Added to the lust for his wife, the guilt made them his, as well as their money. He took them in and dried them out, even as a woman would do.

Yet that is enough of Ames, a great man for all his strangities. I will add only this: he did, in fact, make love to his wife, by the ingenious use of a million dollar dildo. That he could easily afford the thing is plain enough, since he was worth billions of dollars, using the facade of a college presidency to cover his true assets. But, with his surprisingly large and life-like dildo - I have seen it: quite deceptive - he made love to his wife with a power and vitality the other men could not muster. Without true orgasms, he could go for hours without slowing. Once, I am told, his wife was riding him from above and he happened to fall asleep. She thought he had only closed his eyes, and, as the dildo remained erect, continued in the act, mistaking his snoring for an aroused moan. When he woke in the morning, she was still throwing herself upon him in an attempt to finish him off. He excused himself for work with a wink and she was none the wiser. Yet, once again, I digress. Ames needed my help not at all. He was a powerful man of his own accord.

A cold spell ran its finger down my back, tingling my nipples and icing my breath. Fortunately it was dark; if not, I would have felt a fool, in my dark trench coat, jeans, and white walking shoes. On the other hand, with a handgun at my side and a fortune on my back, I walked with a certain swagger, the firearm giving me more confidence than my fiery wit ever had. I took an off-hand road, cutting through the darkness with surprising speed. My feet made love with the road, my heart with the scenery, my mind with the freedom of the wild. Soon the town fell away altogether. The pine trees came, their military jaws outlined against the starry-eyed sky, and they walked with me as I went.

I was surprised at myself, that I had no fear. I was in the dark and in the wild, but it did not bother me in the least. After several hours the dawn was born. First its legs poke out, twigged their toes a bit, and then, seeing the world was not so bad, came out enough for the surroundings to be seen. The College of Hiram, and thus Hiram itself, sat in the northern section of Michigan, directly between two great lakes, in a miniature painting of the far north, with its burly trees that stayed the winter outside while all others fled indoors or to the south. I loved those trees, with their strength and their character, like old men: at once ugly and disfigured, but strangely attractive in their fortitude.

With the day came a certain amount of traffic on the roads, cars flashing past at sixty miles per hour. None of them looked closely at me, moving by as if I were not there. I had walked enough to ignore them, to ignore the pains which came into my feet and lower legs and fell down from my shoulders like sweat. Pains, yes, but I was, while walking, a masochist. It was the pains which drove me, pushing me on in the ecstasies of escape. I kept on, ever on. The forest rolled away from the road - it was a state highway, though rarely used among its peers - and went on as far as I could see. The forests held romance for me, more than Tamara had, more even than the books.

That day quickly passed. By night I had traveled thirty miles west. When the sun went down I turned into the trees, walking for fifteen minutes through the darkness until I came to a particularly large tree with bare-foot roots. I threw down my pack, laid my sleeping bag between two of the tree's exposed toes, and, after eating a brief meal Ames had given me, I fell into the night, to dance among the stars in my freedom.

In the morning, when the dawn was past, I awoke again, ate, and returned to the road. My journey continued. Every day I went thirty miles, stopped after dark in the forest, and slept with sweet dreams like I never had before. The food gave out soon - I had not thought I would eat so much: I usually ate only one meal a day, but on the road I found myself eating four at least - but, with the money, I was easily resupplied. I took the pack and the guns into the stores without a question. But the people had an aloof respect for transients, holding them holy: not to be touched, not to be talked to.

I thought while I was pretending a coma that I was god, prayed to and revered, feared. As a walker, a transient, I was still a god. Some pray to god, though he does not talk back, and tell him all their thoughts. Others do not talk to god, because he already must know if he exists, and if he does not then damn him anyway. To the first, I was a god, a man who did not know them and whom they would never see again. So they told me of their lives, their thoughts, their sins. The others, the atheists, avoided me, taking different aisles in the store, different sides in the streets, different tables in the restaurants. I had a growing thought, born in my pretend coma, that I was god, that god himself was only a thought. I do not capitalize the name when I speak of him like this, of course, because it is merely philosophizing. One only uses a capital letter - a symbol of the ability to damn - when one is moralizing.

My pace was consistent at thirty miles a day. While I listened to many, as I rested, I never talked. I came across average people in a way I never had before and it intrigued me. But the past was still too real for me to slow myself and enjoy the walk. I was still a fugitive, a murderer, and until I put the past behind me, so to speak, I could not slow down and begin anew. My thoughts were as active as ever while walking, my mind more furious than even when I write. But, without books or outside influence, my thoughts seemed to circle like a vulture around several subjects. Only as I left Michigan behind me, and the entire north and mid-west, did I begin to slow and to enjoy the journey for its own sake. I was free at last, free of civilization and the metropolitan harangue that had for so long kept me a beast.

Chapter 24:

My next important adventure began several months later on a warm summer day, in Texas. The road I took that particular day passed through several towns, leaving no place for the wanderer to stop and rest himself. Thus, I was growing tired and yet could not take my lunch as I usually did. Around one o'clock I passed an open cemetery, walled on three sides by a picket fence but along the road by only a row of giant oaks, a rarity in the area. A funeral was going on not far from the road, mostly attended by old persons, though one particular woman stood there, blond like the sun, who captured my attention like a net catches fish. So I resolved to take my lunch there, under the shade of one of the oak trees, and watch the funeral.

I set my pack behind me and reclined onto it, slightly to my side with my now shoeless feet resting off to the side. My lunch was a collection of cheeses I had bought from a farmer earlier in the day, unpasteurized, as he said with a libertarian gleam in his eyes, with the understanding that something is inherently better when the government is not involved. Although the flavors were not particularly diverse - they all tasted rather sharp and provolone - it was the most pleasant way to consume the large amount of calories I needed. Although I had $50,000 on my back, I remained married to foods of a high calorie-to-dollar ratio, meaning I abandoned my typical Spanish olives, fried fish lunch - with the exception of Sundays, on which I always treated myself to my old rounds.

I was sitting there, eating the cheese with my fingers as I broke it off the block as if eating bread, and watching the funeral as a spectator. The old zombies around the casket did not seem to notice - their attentions were more on the accommodations of the dead, which they would taste soon enough - but the young lady glanced at me from time to time with a sharp look, although not of a harsh or disagreeing nature. Rather, she seemed entranced and titillated by my mystic position: I was, to her, a siren, a symbol of the road and of freedom. Since we are all symbols to one another of what we ourselves desire or disgust, I was glad enough to be desired, so I winked at her slyly, as I would never have done before, when I was settled. She was young, not yet twenty, with light blond hair that was still closer to yellow than to white. Her eyes, as I saw later, were gray, settled always with a mask, a shroud over her thoughts. Eyes are beautiful because of their expression, but hers had none and yet were more beautiful than any I had seen before. She wore a short, white dress - which fit nicely in the fresh spring - and a white top, close around the middle, that hinted without a guise of subtlety at her slight bosom. Her breasts were not large: they almost did not exist. But again, they were beautiful, graceful.

When the ceremony had ended, the old ones gave her a pitiful glance and departed. She stood beside the grave until they left, then, when she was alone, walked over to me. Her steps were not Tamara's, with her quirky beat, but they were steps a walker could envy, perfectly paced and consistent, no swagger or sway which, when extended over a thousand miles, would leave the hips ablaze. Saying nothing, she sat across from me, leaning back on a tree and crossing her legs gracefully.

"A fine funeral?" I asked, enjoying my cheese.

"As good as any; there are too many in this town."

"Are there? I did not see a town."

"You haven't come to it yet: I saw you coming from the east, but town is a quarter-mile west. Town," she laughed at the word, "That is what it is called, though more live in this graveyard than in the town's graves."

Silence came. She did not, as many others would, look around at the trees or the surrounding scene to avert her eyes from her silent companion, even a silent stranger. Rather, she looked at me straight on, her eyes a matador and mine a bull. At length, I charged:
"Such beauty is rare: many major cities cannot claim to have produced a woman - a girl - of your charm. What is your relation to the dead?"

"Distant, now; but, in life, she was my mother, my only family. I am alone now."

"But you are not sad?" I asked.

"Sad? My mother had been dying her entire life. That is what people do here in Mennonite land. They do not live for love or beauty, but against sin. They are born sinners and every moment grow in aptitude for that eternal virtue. No, people do not live here: they die slowly."

I was struck. Tamara had enchanted me with her control of emotion, her synthesis of emotion and reason. Yet, with the element of emotion present, I could not trust her: I cannot trust my feelings, since it is my job, as a novelist, to manipulate those of others. But this girl enchanted me with her outright denial of emotions. She had none. Thus, she could not manipulate: she could be trusted, perhaps.

"And how has your death been thus far?" I smiled and continued eating the cheese.

"Agonizing. I am beautiful, you say, and the men here know it. The young are plenty in town, though they did not come out today, and the young men are committed to seducing me. It is their hobby."

"Has any won?" I asked.

"No; they cannot."

"That is just as well. I am Edwin," and I did not offer my hand, but continued eating.

"Michelle." She paused. "I do not like that name, though."

"Then do not use it. Make another name up."

She thought for a moment, then, "Rumpelstiltskin. Call me that, if you must call me something. It is an ugly name; perhaps it will make me equally ugly."

"You do not like your beauty?"

"Why would I? It only makes me an object of lust."

"To some; but others enjoy beauty like they do fine wine."

"Yes, a pleasanter path to drunkenness. Men want me for sex, nothing else, and as a man you are among them."

"I do not want a lover," I said. "I have had enough of that: I am here to forget, to misremember it in the face of things new and unknown. If you are beautiful, it is only ugliness to me, to whom all love is cast aside. Are you beautiful? Yes: I would not lie. I simply do not care. Cheese?"

"Is it from Farmer Stoll, down on the corner?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then no thank you: he does not pasteurize."

"You do not loathe the government?" I asked.

"Only men and their penises."

I paused. "You have no one left?"

"No one: I am alone among the wolves."

"Good luck then, Rumpelstiltskin," I said, finishing the cheese and standing. I took my pack in silence and hoisted it onto my back. Then, without turning to her, I said this as I faced the street: "The road calls me, tempting me with its freedom. I will never, could never, love you as a woman. My heart is another's. But I will be camping on the western side of town tonight, on Mauck Road, as the map calls it. If not, good luck." With that, I took to my feet and did not turn back.

Her town passed by like a sneeze: I reeled up, closed my eyes, and it was gone. The buildings had been imported from the 1950's, complete with malt shake advertisements and left-to-right, neatly combed young men. The people were incestuous, it seemed, like ants or bees that all spawned from the same queen mother. Yet that is the way of small towns, where marriage is a hobby as much as wood-working or gardening. I did not think of the town as I passed through, though it took twenty minutes to walk through at my pace. Rather, I thought of Rumpelstiltskin.

Five miles from town I hit Mauck Road. An abandoned school building stood near the intersection of the two roads - by this point both roads were of only dirt - raised five feet above the road by the natural curve of a hill. On the other side, down the hill, was a lake. I did not create my usual camp, but only took off my pack, reclined against it, set the shotgun beside myself - as I always did when sleeping - and closed my eyes. Yet I did not sleep: I listened for footsteps. I waited for the girl with what I suppose must be called impatience. By this point in my travels, my murder was far enough behind me that I did not fear for myself, but, my fear gone, I was beginning to grow lonely. It is fine to be a hermit, I thought, as long as one has a companion in the process. Rumpelstiltskin had enchanted me - not with her beauty as much as her emotionless visage - and I desired to know her better.

Soon, about ten o'clock, I heard footsteps approaching. At first I heard only a single pair, yet as time passed and they drew nearer I heard a second pair, faintly treading the grass beside the road, as if sneaking behind the first. The darkness was now complete: the moon was new that night. So, unable to see, I took up the shotgun and crept down to the roadside as the footsteps approached. The gun was already loaded. I knelt low, stooping to the ground, and silently tread to the far side, near the lake: the side from which the footsteps approached. A small clearing presented itself going down the hill toward the lake, at first a narrow path which then widened into a ten foot opening amidst a collection of thorns and bushes, all under the shade of four large oak trees. I placed myself at the opening.

"Rumpelstiltskin," I called when the first footsteps came near. My voice was low enough that the follower could not hear. She came off the road and into the clearing with me.

"Edwin?"

"Who else? You are being followed."

"I know."

"And yet you left town nonetheless?" I asked.

"Of course: you, the mysterious transient, will protect me better than the town police," she said. "I am sure that is the sheriff."

"Step to the side and hide yourself, to the right of the entrance," I said.

She did and I knelt on the left side. We were obscured by the bushes as well as by the darkness, pushed into the foliage so that whenever the sheriff entered the clearing he would stand between our hiding places and the lake, into which the clearing opened with a steep drop. After a moment, the unsteady footstep approached, by sound the foot fall of an aging man. He came into the clearing slowly. By his movements, which could be barely made out in the darkness, it was evident he had an erection.

"Michelle, pretty little thing, where are you?" he said with a rapist's sneer.

I moved my foot slightly, as if trembling, while Rumpelstiltskin remained absolutely silent. I breathed heavily, to attract his attention. He laughed and started towards me with a dash, expecting to have his way with the girl. But he was not expecting me to fly out of the bushes toward him. I first punched him across the face, which powerful blow knocked him fully to the ground. Then, with a strength grown only by walking all day with a hundred pounds on one's back, I picked him up as if to throw him over the ledge into the lake. A tender voice from behind stopped me, however.

"Rape him," she said. "Do what he has done to so many helpless women."

"Revenge is not my game," I said.

"Then what are you playing now?"

"You have me there," I paused. "Yet there are degrees of revenge."

"You are a Danteist?" she asked, "With your degrees of hell?"

"That could be said, yes."

"Then think: does not Dante punish the wicked with their own perversions? If you threw him into the lake, you would punish a murderer. He, however, is a rapist."

I paused, enchanted by her logic. "For you, then, I will. Do you have the shotgun?" I could barely see her form standing by the opening, but I thought I saw her holding the gun.

"Yes," she said, "You need not worry of his escaping."

"I wasn't. But you know, Rumpelstiltskin, this is a perverted man."

"I know well enough. He hasn't had me yet, but he has tried on numerous occasions."

I sighed. "If I must."

The sheriff laughed.

"On the other hand," I said, "He may enjoy it, since he is clearly a masochist."

"I'll take it, big boy," the sheriff said in that homosexual tone which, when spoken by fleshy old men of German descent, is painful to the senses.

"We shall see," it was my turn to laugh.

Our eyes had been growing used to the darkness, so that by now we could see faint things. But here, in the clearing with the lake beside us, was markedly brighter, as the light of the heavens was magnified by the lake. Both could see me clearly against the water, a silhouette. I pulled down my pants quickly, in the hasty way one must while committing a revenge rape, and gave myself an erection. The thought of the fifty year old man lying before me made it difficult at first, but, when I thought of the girl watching, the spark came and my penis extended magically. It was, as I have said before, quite large, something which I found previously rather annoying but which I now felt pleasure in having, that I might give pain to the devil I found before me. While I described my time with Tamara in a glimpse of detail, I will skip over this act, for reasons quite obvious. The rapist found his game to be a pain in the ass, so to say. When I was done, I took the hand-sanitizer from my pocket and climbed down to cleanse myself in the lake, while the girl kept the sheriff in place with the shotgun. I always kept a bottle of wash in my pocket, that I might keep the grime of the road at arm's length.

The climb from the lake to the clearing was difficult, even with my tremendous strength. After a moment's exertion I reached the top and was immediately accosted by the girl: "What will we do with him? He knows who I am."

I was stumped for the moment. He was, after all, the head of the local police, even if he was corrupt. If he went against us, finding us alone on the road in the exact center of nowhere in particular, we would be damned.

"We must kill him," I said, without visible hesitation. I did not entirely mean it at first, except as a way to scare the sheriff, who now lay whimpering on the ground in pain. I was disgusted to look at him and to think what I had done. So I looked at Rumpelstiltskin instead. She held the shotgun still, pointing it at the sheriff in readiness to do the deed. He moaned.

"Not so fast," I said to her, "We cannot just kill him."

"Why not? He has already suffered what he has made others feel. Don't let your conscience say you are now a rapist: if he had gone to prison he would have had just as bad a time," she said. "We are saving the taxpayers their wages, of which he has already eaten enough with his injustice."

"Then you are a libertarian?" I asked, "That you would deny the government its due?"

"A pasteurized libertarian," and she winked. "He would have been raped and killed either way."

"He would have been, no doubt. But that is not what I meant: he cannot just kill him, since the shotgun will splatter him about and ruin us. We must dispose of him in a clean way, and a way in which he will not be found until we are far from here. Besides, if the sheriff disappears on the same night you do, it will lower suspicions on your part and raise them on his. When he is finally found, the townsfolk will have already condemned him as your seducer."

"They have no conscience about such things," she said.

"No, but they will be jealous to not have done it themselves."

"What will we do then?"

"You will kick him over the ledge into the river, then I will shoot him as he hits the water," I said.

"And if you miss?"

"I won't: it's a twenty round clip."

"If you shoot him enough the bullets will weigh him down," she said.

"Yes, but if I shoot him that much it will attract attention."

"No one lives out this way, though," she said.

"No one at all?"

"No, it is Farmer Stoll's land: that is his church's school up there on the hill."

"We cannot leave the body where the children will find it," I said.

"But they are Mennonites," she returned, "They are taught the harshness of God first hand. It will be a field trip to them."

"Fine."

I walked forward to the sheriff, who had been listening to the conversation in fear, and kicked him hard in the stomach. He spasmed, but did not move. I tried again, towards his head, with the same result.

"You are kicking wrong," Rumpelstiltskin said, and she came forward. She kicked him, first, hard in the head for revenge. Then she placed her foot against his midsection and rolled him along toward the ledge and toward the fifteen foot plummet to the water. Before, I had gone down to the water a few yards to the left, where a fallen tree made the descent easier. When he was at the very edge, she said, "Ready? I will push him off now."

"Ready," and I held the gun to my shoulder.

She pushed him off and he tried to scream as he fell, though nothing except a slight howl came out. A second after he was in the air I began to shoot, following his form as it fell. It took a minute for the gun to use all twenty shots, most of which were expended while he was in the water. We both stood for a moment in silence and awe at the deed we had done.

Then she said, "Do you have a flashlight? We should see if he is really dead."

"He is dead. But if you must know, here," and I handed her the mag-light I kept on my belt.

Rumpelstiltskin hesitated for an instant before she unscrewed the top enough to make it shine. "She has a heart, at least," I thought, "Though a small one, as small as her bosom." Then we were blinded by the sudden beam of light that came from the flashlight. Our eyes were so accustomed to the dark that for a moment it was as if heaven had opened and Jesus descended in all the glory of God. But it was, in the end, just a beam from the flashlight. The sheriff was clearly no longer alive, as his body had been literally torn apart from the shots, all of which seemed to have hit him. His blood spread out over the water like a layer of red pond scum. Yet, as we watched, it disappeared into the mass of water. His body did likewise and after several minutes the pieces of the rapist were indistinguishable from a flock of dead geese.

"We have a long walk before we can rest," I said at last. "We'd better be going."

"Of course," she smiled. Then she turned the flashlight off and we were consumed by the darkness.

Chapter 25:

We returned to my camp across the road, took up my pack, and were off. The shotgun I reloaded and replaced in the pack, the handgun still in its place on my side in case we should meet trouble along the way. It was shortly after eleven when we started walking. For an hour we went in silence, making surprisingly good time in the darkness. A few dogs barked as we passed, yet those were the dogs that were always barking and thus given no attention: their only wage was an annoyed sigh and the thought that they were once cute, but that puppies, like young wives, inevitably become hairy, smelly, and possessive. That was my thought at the time, anyway, though it came from nowhere. But that is the way with walking: thoughts wander along with the feet and finish thirty miles from where they began.

At last, Rumpelstiltskin broke the silence: "I will go with you - I cannot go back, now - but know that I despise you."

"Because I did as you asked? I did not want to rape him: he was a dirty old man."

"Not because of that, no. For that I respect you, or, if I may, the powers of my beauty to control you."

"I do not care for your beauty: I have been wrecked by sirens before, as I have said. Go on."

"I hate you because you are a man and as such are possessed by a demonic penis. In your case, a diabolically large penis. Among men that might bring you respect, but, to me, it is a curse."

"I did not ask for a large penis any more than you asked for beauty. If I ignore your curse you must ignore mine."

She thought for a moment. "Very well: it is a deal. But do not let me see it ever again."

"It is no more, to you." I paused. "You must trust me in this. We are both real."

"Are we? Perhaps I am only in your imagination, only in a story you wrote down somewhere?" She smiled. My heart wept.

By dawn we had covered thirty miles: a rigorous pace, perhaps, but one which our beating pulses easily kept time with. That area of the country was almost entirely deserted, covered only with farms and small villages. As the sun came up we found ourselves in a lonely part of the road, with forests on either side. We set off into the left forest, careful not to leave tracks of our passing from the road, and walked a distance into the wild. Then, seeing a large brier bush, we carefully climbed through the outer branches and into the small hollow in the center of the bush. We spent the day there, sleeping and eating what little food I had left. That evening, as twilight departed, we came out and returned to the road.

We traveled another thirty miles that night, far from the scene of our crime, if it can be called that, and, camping a few hours before dawn, we returned to the daylight, starting out again around ten in the morning. We were now nearing the southern border of the United States, in southern Texas. The land was growing naked, with less and less vegetation, though we could see trees in the distance, growing along a river.

"We'll stop in the next town, rather than going around like we have been," I said as the afternoon drew on.

"How do you know we are coming up to another one?" she asked. "There aren't many around here."

"The cars: traffic is increasing subtly. You'll be able to tell these things soon enough. Also, the roads are slightly wider and the paint is newer. We will hit a town soon."

In an hour I was proved right. There, in front of us, stood a small town, like any other in the area. We thought we had passed our troubles on the road, and thus took no precautions as we came into town. If we had indeed passed them, they caught up as we loitered in that small pinch of civilization. Rumpelstiltskin left for the grocery store, to resupply our food, and I headed to the bank, still carrying my pack and, thus, my guns, in order to check the balance of my account. I was a transient, perhaps, but still I was curious as to how my sales were doing, and the only way I could see that without revealing my location was to check my royalties, which action the bank would not report to headquarters.

"I will meet you outside the bank in half an hour," she said as she left. I went inside the bank.

I still wore my walking clothes: a long, black trench coat and jeans. My pack, as I said before, remained on my back, giving me a rather daunting appearance. The bank was a small, brick building, with a counter that ran along the length of the wall opposite the door, and small, glass offices flanking it on either side. Two clerks stood behind the desk as I came in, while a customer in dark sunglasses was nervously approaching the counter with a piece of paper in one hand and with his other hand in the pocket of his leather coat. I, myself, had both hands in the pockets of my trench coat, as was my habit, holding onto my harmonica, which I had been playing while I walked and which now stuck out to the side in an odd manner, though I did not notice that it did.

The man before me approached the counter slowly, looking around fearfully. Several feet before the counter he turned around to see who had come in. He jumped as he saw me, startled by my rough appearance. I gave him a nasty look, as I did to all who looked down on me as a transient. This proved too much for him. To my surprise, he dropped the paper he was holding - a single square of several inches on each side - and walked quickly out of the door. The clerks had been busy while this happened and did not see him, only his back as he walked away. I picked the fallen paper up from the floor absent-mindedly, thinking entirely of other things: mainly, of my royalties and from that to Tamara, who was somehow connected to my life as a novelist.

"Good day," the lady behind the counter said.

"It is indeed," I smiled. "I haven't needed a tent for weeks now: my only roof is the stars."

"A traveler?"

"Yes, and a poor one. Which is why I am here, incidentally. But you know how it is: every poor but ambitious young man is willing to do anything to make it big. The checks don't always come in the mail, though: sometimes you have to go get them yourself." I was talking of my royalties, of course, though she could not have known it unless she read my mind. Evidentially, she did not.

"We are all poor here," she said with an uneasy smile, looking at my pack.

"You need not fear me," I answered her eyes more than her mouth. "I only do what I do for freedom, to throw off the chains of society that bind me to what I do not want. I live only for my own desires, now: a true hedonist. But here, I need to check my account, to see how much I have."

"What is your number?"

"I have it, just a moment," and I could see her eying the harmonica in my pocket as I spoke. I reached for something to write with and, seeing the piece of paper already in my hand and forgetting where I had gotten it, I set in on the counter. I could see words written in a heavy script facing the teller, as if someone had pushed harder to make them more forceful. But I could not read them upside down. With my right hand still resting on the harmonica in my pocket, I raised my left to the counter and began to write out my account number on the paper.

The cashier, however, was by now too flustered to care. She moved slowly to the vault behind her and began filling bags with cash. The bank had recently received a large shipment of currency, it seemed - perhaps for distribution to area banks - for a larger amount than usual was sitting in the vault. After a moment she had filled the bags and reached into a drawer beside the vault to put a small plastic container into the bags with the money. While she was doing this I was struck with awe that I had received so much in royalties. She was putting an incredible amount of money into the bag: had I truly sold that well? Perhaps my murder and insanity were good for royalties, if nothing else. But then I thought that I did not want to take the money out - I did not need it, and, if I did take it, it would reveal my location. So, just as she lifted her hands to drop the plastic thing into the bag, I said:

"Wait, don't put it in the bag: I do not want that." I meant the money, but she thought only of the plastic thing. She dropped it, her hand shaking, and gave the bags - three of them, all full of hundred dollar bills - to me.

"I have done well, it seems," I said, smiling and entirely at ease. My relaxed state, however, seemed only to make her more nervous. "My future is bright." I took the pack off, put the bags inside, and was out the door in a moment. As I went, my mind filled with thoughts of grandeur and fame, of the belated recognition of my genius with heavy sales, when I happened to look down at the paper I held in my hand and which I had taken from the floor and, more recently, from the counter:

"Give me all your money," it read, "Or I will kill you."

"My God!" I cried, "I've robbed the bank!"

Chapter 26:

Just then, as I stepped into the parking lot, Rumpelstiltskin came running toward me in a flurry, grabbing my hand and pulling me away from the building.

"Come on, Edwin," she whispered, "We have to get out of here fast."

She was beautiful, that I could not deny, though it did not affect me. Her yellow hair fell down around her head and her gray eyes streamed out with their calm, rainy day gleam, even as she grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side. She held a bag of groceries in each hand, with the handles of the bags leaving her hands free. One of the bags had a newspaper hanging out the front.

"We must leave at once, disappear," she whispered again. She glanced around, as did I, but no one else could be seen.

"Indeed we must," I smiled, my alarm diminished by her appearance. "Follow me!"

Grabbing her arm, I dashed behind a corner of the building and then behind a bunch of bushes that stood nearby, camouflaging our bodies until we could no longer be seen. In a moment, a police car came whirling up to the bank and, the car still running, a fat old man in blue leapt out and ran into the building.

"They've found us," she moaned, guilty.

"No, they haven't and they won't. Come on."

I dashed out of the bushes as quickly as I had jumped into them, Rumpelstiltskin directly behind me, and we piled into the police cruiser in a second. The officer inside did not see us, though he could be seen through the glass doors, flirting with the cashier. The sight confirmed my opinion that middle aged men, especially American, should not flirt, and that prostitution should be legalized for the impotent. Yet, at that moment, I threw those thoughts out of my mind and threw the cruiser into reverse. I had not driven in a year, since before my faked suicide so long ago. Somehow, though, the act was so simple I could not forget it. I turned off the sirens and turned down the main street, driving calmly and slowly until we left the town behind us. Only then did Rumpelstiltskin break the silence:

"They found the sheriff's body, mangled as it was, and discovered my absence. Someone saw you at the funeral, where we talked. The papers are calling you the "Dark Wanderer" now, saying you corrupted, perhaps kidnapped, me, and murdered the innocent sheriff who was trying to bring me back," and she showed me a newspaper headline that read, "Dark Wanderer steals pretty Texan and murders heroic sheriff."

"They always use too many adjectives in newspapers," I said, "It hurts my ears to hear it read, such pan-handled writing."

"Forget that: we are fugitives, murderers. They will have us, Edwin!"

"Not at all," I smiled, "They haven't yet caught me from the last man I killed."

She was silent, her face frightened. I could hear her thoughts: "What have I thrown myself into?"

"It was an accident," I answered her thoughts, "The first man had kept me in a mental institution for several months, and, when he prevented me from leaving, I bit off his middle finger and he fell out of a fifth story window."

She was doubtful. "I've never believed accidental murder stories. Either way, they've found us. The police probably know of both crimes and are hot on our tails."

"No, they came because I robbed the bank," and, as I drove, I grabbed one of the bags of cash from my pack and showed it to her. "They must have just had a shipment of cash come in. I've never seen this much before."

"My God! You're a monster. Yet what could I have thought? I watched you rape an old man."

"At your request, ugly woman!" I cried in anger. In a quieter voice, I continued, "Besides, it was an accidental robbery."

"An accidental murder and now an accidental robbery? This is too much: I knew your large penis was an omen of ill. I will never trust a penised-person again. And the larger, the worser."

"An accidental robbery: I do not lie. Here," and I handed her the paper. "The man in front of me dropped it when I came in and I set it on the counter without reading it, to be polite. I am absent-minded sometimes."

"Absent-minded indeed, to walk into a bank with a hand gun poking out of your pocket!"

"What?" I reached into the pocket of my trench coat and pulled out the harmonica.

"Never trust a penis!" she laughed, "If not devious then dumb ass."

"What will we do?" I stumbled. "This is far too much to be explained. Perhaps the sheriff alone, and perhaps the robbery, but the police will never buy both, with my previous record to boot." I sighed. "There is only one thing we can do."

"Mexico," she whispered. But she sounded excited.

"Exactly. It cannot be far from here. How will we cross the border, though?"

"The penis asks me, the broad?" she smiled. "You are the Dark Wanderer: shouldn't you know?"

"If I was from Texas, but I am a northerner. You, however, are from the area."

"The drug dealers have tunnels that cross under the border," she said.

"Are you a drug dealer?"

"No, but you are," she said.

"I am not."

"Close enough, though: big guns, big cash, big cock. You would make a fine drug dealer."

"Forget my penis, as you promised. You are beautiful, you know."

She hit me across the face, then said, "Fine. I will forget." She smiled strangely, attractively, shooting out at me with her gray eyes.

Just then, the police scanner lit up and a voice came across: "We have a stolen cruiser and a bank robbery out at Delphi."

Another voice came across, answering the first, "How much did they get?"

"Two million."

Rumpelstiltskin laughed aloud.

"Goddamn!" someone called out, "Two million for breaking the law? I should have been a robber, not a cop. Why did the bank have two million dollars on hand?"

"The Federal Reserve was shipping in the new hundred dollar bills, to thwart counterfeiters. Looks like they got banged up anyhow. Anybody seen the cruiser? Number 65928B."

Rumpelstiltskin took the receiver up and spoke into it: "Dispatch, this is 3458B: we saw that cruiser five minutes ago, heading south on Route 24."

I grabbed the receiver from her hand and shoved it onto the dash, turning it off.

"Fool!" I cried, "We are driving south on Route 24!"

"I know."

Over the intercom, a voice came back: "Cruiser 65928B, this is dispatch. We can see the name of your cruiser whenever you call in."

She laughed, throwing her head back in pleasure.

"Fool of a woman," I sighed.

The voice came back: "All units take notice, the fugitives are not on Route 24 South. That was the fugitives themselves. They're probably heading west to California."

"Fool of a man," Rumpelstiltskin winked at me.

"Count the money," I answered after a moment. "There's more in the pack, $50,000."

"Did you accidentally steal that as well?"

"No: the president of the College of Hiram gave it to me after I faked my suicide. He didn't want the cash: he keeps his wealth in Swiss banks and in quarters, to keep it from his whoring wife. You'd like him - he is an eunuch - but for his million dollar dildo."

She looked me over closely, suddenly sober. "Who are you?"

"The Dark Wanderer."

Silence came down like the rain, which fell from the sky like silence. But it was not silent, as the raindrops beat against the metal roof of the cruiser. After half an hour of counting the cash, which was all neatly bundled, the girl said only, "$2,150,000." Then she packed it away into my backpack, taking out some of the supplies to fit it in. The shotgun she placed on the seat between us, along with several of the police guns. I was overrun by a strange feeling then, driving to Mexico with a mess of cash and a beautiful woman beside me, who, however, I would fiercely offend to call such.

"Who are you?" she asked again after an hour.

I looked over at her: a trite answer would not do.

"I am Edwin O'Donne," I said, "Though that name would mean nothing to you. I am a pacifist novelist from the College of Hiram."

"And a murdering, robbing, kidnapping transient in your spare time?"

"I am running," I said. "Besides, I am not a kidnapper."

"I could tell that from the beginning, in the graveyard. But you are a murderer. I watched you rape and murder the sheriff, Edwin: there was no conscience in you," and she dueled me with her eyes. "Yet I respect that: I am the same and I know how it is. I do not know why it is, though, what would drive you to murder. I was driven by hate, that old devil who had raped all my friends and was after me. He got what he deserved, that I do not doubt: thus I use the words kill and murder and execute to mean the same thing. But what of you? Where have you lost your conscience?"

"In my mind," I said. "I do not know what is real any longer, what is true. Did I rape and murder the sheriff, or did I simply write it in a novel, for the horde of spineless, weak-minded readers to devour, those who have the courage to read it and yet lack the courage to do it? I've dedicated my life to the creation of perfectly real fictions. And now, having reached some apex in life and talent, I cannot tell if it is fiction or reality. Thus I have no conscience, for no one sins by writing or reading or telling a story that all know to be false but the one who tells it. I will not meander like some Sunday sermonist, whose audience has no choice but hell to listen, Rumpelstiltskin: I am mad in mind and thus in conscience."

"Should I pity you?" She smiled innocently, though I knew she was not innocent. But, on the other hand, she was a woman; and though it is hypocritical to call a masculinist a pig and a feminist a hero, it is at the same time not altogether inaccurate. By that I mean that a woman is somehow capable of being, at once, innocent and experienced, a virgin whore. She continued: "You flee love? You said as much before, yet I cannot understand such a thing."

"I flee it like you flee beauty. Yet I know all along that I have it. She said she came to love me through my writing. In three days she seduced me, but I had to test her, so I faked my suicide. Several months passed as I faked a coma, and still she came, still she visited me daily."

"Yet you left her? You are a bastard, Edwin," and she hit me across the face again, a thing she greatly enjoyed and which, I will admit, her beauty made rather enchanting, rather enjoyable.

"I do not know if she is real or not!" I moaned. "It could all have been a fictive dream."

"Then wake up!" Rumpelstiltskin was visibly annoyed at me. She fumed for a moment. Anger made her beautiful and out of respect I saluted her with an erection. Unfortunately, with the size of my penis, she could easily see it and cried out, "You bastard! Hide your penis, man!"

"Have you ever been to college?" I asked.

"No," she was calmed by the apparently random question.

"And yet you possess a good knowledge of history and literature. When we were hiding in the thorn bush, you laughed at my comparison of Napoleon and Alexander the Great."

"I did."

"But how?" I asked. "You do not learn such details in high school."

"I've read."

"I know that, but who is my question."

"D. Whaner, the queen of history."

"Aha!" I cried and laughed aloud, "I could smell the scent of the feminist take over. If it consoles you at all, makes your beauty less painful, she also has given me an erection."

"You are a bastard, Edwin," she smiled, though it meant nothing that it meant the last time she said it.

"What will we do, then? It is entirely up to you, Rumpelstiltskin, since I am wallowing, as I say, in a delusion of fiction and reality."

"We will go to Mexico, to escape the police: we have little choice in that," she said. "But after that, I will see to it that you return prostrated on your knees before this Tamara, declaring your love and stupidity and begging her to take you back."

"Fair enough. What of you?"

"I will be along to harass you. I have no family now, you know."

"Fair enough. But I must say, Rumpelstiltskin: you are quite beautiful."

"I know," and she paused but continued to look at me. I pretended to keep my eyes on the road. Then, she said, "Now, in case this is in fact a novel, as you fear: to hell with all this pedantic symbolism. To Mexico! Return to plot, to action!"

Chapter 27:

An hour later we came to Guadula, a small town on the American-Mexican border. A town, I say, but really it was an extended dump filling the waste space on this side of the river. The rain had thought the place too pathetic for its presence, and so fled to the north without dropping anything on the town. By the looks of the shrubs, it seemed that was the normal way: they were shriveled and abused like the short and curlies of a Cuban prostitute.

"The border at last," I broke the silence. It shattered, fell back, then regrouped and returned within the moment. I attacked once more, "We'll need to lose the car."

"Let's baptize it: drop it in the river," Rumpelstiltskin said.

"We are not really desperadoes; we are only pretending."

"That is all you ever do, Edwin, but this is as real as anything else in your head."

"Do not play with me," I said. "I may be a dashed and drooling novelist, but I have a soul."

"Novelists do not have souls; you are too ironic for that."

"Either way, the car must go," I said.

"There!" she pointed to a place on the left which, as we were driving slowly, sat beside us winking: a wrecking yard just outside the main dump-town. Wrecking yards do not usually wink, but this one certainly did. It was a castle: the outer walls constructed from rusted sheet metal and the moat was a pile of broken cars and shattered dreams. I turned the cruiser sharply into the gates, which were locked, and opened them with the force of the car, parking in front of the inner building as an oppressed sigh escaped from the brakes. I took the pack, now containing only guns and money, and got out, the girl at my side. Two giant guard dogs ran toward us, foaming at the mouth and fully prepared to bite. I said nothing. I did nothing, only looking at them without a show on my face. The dogs slowed, stopped, then turn and ran away.

"You're a fool, Edwin," she laughed. "You do not look menacing now, even with the gun poking out of your coat. You are most frightening when you are yourself, relaxed and mysterious."

"Of course," I said, and I put the gun away, donning my ironic novelist's face. I was no longer a poor novelist, I thought, and the fact that I carried over two million dollars on my back gave the feeling of prominence and eloquence, although the money had no relation at all to my writing. Still, it was money.

At that moment three men came out of the building, all carrying shotguns, all dressed in torn jeans and bandannas, and all with untrimmed mustaches dripping around their mouths.

"What you want?" the leader said, eying the police cruiser.

"Mexico," was my only response, spoken with a careless smirk.

"And the car?"

"It's yours, as is this," and I threw a bundle of hundreds at him, missing to left and hitting his companion in the chest. The man quickly bent and took it up from the ground. "You need to know only two things: first, I have killed and I have raped and I have no regret; second, I need to cross to Mexico tonight. You can do it?"

Rumpelstiltskin laughed, possibly at my demeanor and possibly at our situation. But she was beautiful, and for a gangster, a tough guy, a beautiful woman is far more important than either money or guns. They were unsure at first, but as she laughed their minds were made.

"Tonight? Yeah." He thumbed through the cash. "These bills look fake, man."

"New design: fresh from the Federal Reserve. For tonight, at least, you're playing with the big boys, comrades." I said comrade thinking it was a criminal's term from the Cold War, but to the Mexican dumpsters, it was meaningless.

"I've never heard of the Comrades."

Rumpelstiltskin threw her pretty face back and laughed again, exposing her miniature bosom through the white shirt she wore. But, even miniature, it enchanted. Again, the men could not stand against her beauty.

"We have to send someone through the tunnel tonight, anyway: Boss Moho wants the cash from his last shipment. You take it, you can go."

"Thank you," I said, and we entered the building to prepare for the trip.

The building was rather nice inside: a single room with a tall, stucco ceiling and wooden floors. A corner was walled off as the bathroom. In the center stood a mahogany table, no longer lustrous, with a few piles of cash on top - old cash, a striking comparison to the crisp bills I had thrown to the men. But the money was not theirs: if they took it, a fiercer enemy than the police would be after them.

"You take this across to the Boss's man and we'll take care of the car. There is a sealed paper inside one of the boxes with the amount, though, so don't have any thoughts."

"How much is it?"

"A million," he tried to sound impressive."

"That's all?" I smiled. "I can handle that." The girl smiled, the handgun she had at her side no longer concealed.

"The Dark Wanderer?" one of the men asked.

"If I am, you don't want to know."

"I understand."

"You will make sure the car cannot be recognized?" I asked.

"Don't worry: they won't find you now. And once you cross," but he did not finish.

A few hours passed before darkness came. We passed them playing cards on the table with the cash in the center. No one spoke. We were playing poker and no one speaks while playing poker with a million dollars in the center, even if it isn't in the pot. When dark came at last, I said:

"The time is here, gentlemen. Take us to the tunnel."

"It's over there," and one pointed to the bathroom. "Come on."

I took my pack and Rumpelstiltskin took the druggie's cash, carrying it in a canvas pack they had for that purpose. The leader led us to the bathroom and, unscrewing the toilet, pulled it away to reveal a two foot hole, through which the pipe fit. He pushed it aside and they lowered us down, first the girl and then me. Darkness beat us over the head when we entered the tunnel. The ceiling was only three feet from the floor and the walls were lovers that could barely be kept apart. But a track ran along the floor, upon which sat a trolley. I laid on my stomach, my pack barely fitting below the ceiling, and Rumpelstiltskin did the same behind me.

"We're ready," I called up, and they began to pull the rope on the pulley system that brought the trolley across.

After half an hour we came to the end of the tunnel. The time was only ten - too early for the shipment - so we waited there another hour. But we did not speak. Neither of us were comfortable posing as drug dealers, and death, a possibility, was not a happy thought. Hedonist philosophers like only happy thoughts. At last a creaking nose came from above and the sound of unscrewing and the moving of something heavy and metallic. Then came a burst of light from the crack, which, although dim in the room, was bright to us, having sat in darkness for the last hour and a half.

I still wore my trench coat, with the pack on my back. But I had to take the pack off to hand it through the opening. When I came up, I stood face to face with five armed men, all of them pointing their weapons at my head.

"We don't know you," they said.

"Does it matter? I have your cash."

One stepped forward to look in the pack.

"That's mine: yours is with the girl," and as I spoke Rumpelstiltskin came up. They hushed, awed by her beauty and the money that overflowed from the pack she carried.

I stood facing the hole for a moment. Behind me, footsteps approached. They were strangely familiar. The armed men stood aside and lowered their heads in reverence at the approaching person and stepped aside. I began to turn in order to face the newcomer, but he stopped me, saying, "You will look when I let you look. First, who are you."

"I am nobody. Who are you?"

"The Boss's man for this collection." There was a familiar twang in his educated voice that I remembered. I felt a sudden impulse to turn around and see him. Yet the guns kept their vigil on my head: I feared a sudden movement. "Who are you?" the voice asked again.

"I am a washed-up novelist. Who can blame us, though? When the literature flows, we need no drugs, no money, no loving. But when it dries up, no amount of LSD or sex can give us the highs we use to get. We are the demons, friend, the literary drudges who have to do whatever they can to replace fictive dream with some real dream. Who am I? You know well enough."

Rumpelstiltskin stood in awe at my speech and at my chutzpah, which at first had seemed a joke and caused her to laugh. But the voice grabbed me and turned me around, embracing me with its uncontrolled red beard and laughing in delight.

"Edwin!" he cried.

"Yes, it is me, Caleb Clifford."

"How did it come to this, friend?"

"I could ask you the same."

"You could and you will! Wait, though, not here: wait until we are safe at Moho's house. He is a fan of yours, you know, after I introduced him to some of your literary works." He paused. "Who is the girl?"

"A friend."

"Tamara," and he trailed off into silence without finishing.

"I am not Tamara," Rumpelstiltskin said, her beauty eloquent enough. "But this fool of a man will beg her forgiveness soon enough," and she kicked me.

"Masochist," I said.

"We all are, philosophically: masochists and hedonists," Caleb sighed. "Come, it is a long trip to the island."

"The island?" I asked.

"Yes, Moho keeps his headquarters on a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, for security: no one comes in without him knowing and no one goes out. He is a good man though: well-educated, literate, and keen."

As he spoke, Caleb led us - myself, the girl, and two of the armed men - to a military jeep waiting outside of the building, which turned out to be a pueblo and plaster rectangle of a baker's shop a few dozen yards from the border. The windows of the jeep were heavily tinted. The two armed men sat in the front, beside the three men already sitting there, while Caleb, Rumpelstiltskin, and I sat in the rear, separated from the others by a metal wall. The money was with us.

"We will drive, first, to an airport two hundred miles south of here, then fly to the island."

"A long trip for a mere million dollars," I said.

"Yes, but it is a loose end that had to be tied up. I have seen your royalties, though, Edwin: a million dollars is not yet mere to you."

"I have more than double that in my own pack, in newly minted hundreds."

"Come into your possession through illegal means? I am happy, Edwin, that you at last have the courage - or should I say sensibility? - to take on the man."

"He has courage," Rumpelstiltskin smiled, "But he is still a fool, in my mind: he accidentally robbed a bank," and she went on to tell, in humorous and humiliating detail, my adventure earlier in the day.

"I have had worse accidents than that," Caleb said, "As have you. I had thought, until you popped out of the ground to deliver my money, that you were hidden away in Dr. Ames's home. And yet you are here, in Mexico, a fugitive."

"Things are not always as they seem," I said.

"With you, especially," Caleb said.

"Yes," I hesitated. "You are not entirely above board yourself, though. How are you a drug dealer in Mexico, when I left you an English professor in Michigan?"

"A novelist, if you please, not a professor," he said.

"Of course. I did not mean to insult you."

"Things were beginning to come to a head when you came out of the mental hospital," he said. "Whaner was pregnant with my seed and the protest swiftly coming to a conclusion. It was decided against me, however, in the public opinion: at first the people were sympathetic, but finally they were annoyed. The corporate mothership won. My life was endangered by their assassins and the annoyed transients, so, when I got a letter from Moho inviting me to take up my dwelling with him on Acopico, his island, I did not hesitate. Now I make myself useful in various small tasks, and in the off times entertain my host with conversation. Few interesting tongues live among the dealers, these days."

"And your LSD is provided without the need for cash or caution?"

"Yes, now that you mention it," and he turned his head to the side.

"So everyone thinks I am still with Ames?"

"Yes, those who know anything at all. Tamara goes everyday to try to visit you, poor girl, and the heartless Ames turns her away. Even to her he would say nothing."

"Yes," I said, "Just as I told him to do. I did not trust any of you when I left, for, with good intentions or not, I was a fugitive. I still am, really; perhaps even more so. He is a good man, Ames."

"I cannot see how," Caleb said. "His wife is a roving prostitute and he does not seem to care. He is a hard man, I'll give him that."

"He is neutered, actually, like Jacques always says he will be, and keeps her to throw guilt on those who fall to her charms. But cruel? No, for he gives her precisely what she wants: wealth and sin. That is the way with most women, it seems."

"Most, yes," Caleb said. "You have a knack for attracting the most beautiful to you, Edwin."

Rumpelstiltskin slapped him across the face. "I do not care for your implications."

"Feisty woman," Caleb laughed. "Is she at all literary?"

"Not that I know. But who can tell?"

"Moho will enjoy her, though she might think twice about slapping him on his own island."

"He will not enjoy me if he thinks to do so for my looks," she smiled at him, and she must have known her charms. She was, after all, a woman.

With that we fell into silence. The rest of the ride passed quickly and in an hour or two the jeeped stopped in a remote, overgrown farm, so totally shrouded in darkness that no city or village could have been within fifty miles. A barn stood in the middle of a grove of trees with a clearing in front of it that stretched for a few hundred yards: the runway. The plane was hidden within the barn. Caleb led us out, in a hurry to gain the plane and return to his nap. In a moment we were safely within the plane, the five armed men remaining in the jeep and only two pilots and ourselves in the small plane. We were off in another moment, flying to the remote island which had become Caleb's haven, an exile of the civilized world.

Chapter 28:

Dawn was appearing, sticking its toes out from under the covers, when I woke. There, drawn beautifully on the canvas of the sea, was a small island, no more than three miles across and four long. The beaches came inland a hundred feet even at high tide, where the water just nipped the feet of the palm trees standing sentinel along the coast. In the center of the island, on the crown of a hill, stood a mansion, a jungle castle, with sprawling gardens and fountains on every side. To the south of the mansion a lake filled the ground, its shores lined with manicured plants too wild to be called a garden. It was, in short, a tropical paradise.

"Welcome to Moho's domain," Caleb said as we landed. "There is no fear of society here."

The plane landed on an air strip that ran parallel to the hill upon which the mansion sat. We were greeted, upon exiting the plane, by several armed men. Caleb sent them off with a wave and led us along a narrow, paved pathway to the top of the hill. Tropical plants came in close on every side. At the summit of the hill, the foliage suddenly fell away and left us facing a veranda, made of stone and looking over the hill on every side but that on which we approached. That is, on the other three sides it gave a clear view of the country beyond. The sky was only slightly bluer than the sea, and each stretched on together in a loving embrace until they finally disappeared into the distance. A lone man sat on the veranda, reading a book with his legs crossed at the knees. He was tall, thin, with a long, olive face and a long olive nose. His hair was dark and disappearing, having already retreated to a ring around the sides and back of his head.

"Caleb," he smiled as we came up, "I am finding your tastes flawless. This O'Donne writes with a passion, even in these novelist-for-hire fantasies he made a living on," and he showed the cover of a cheap fantasy I had written. "Who are your friends?"

"O'Donne himself, and his companion Rumpelstiltskin," and we bowed as Caleb introduced us.

"O'Donne himself? This is a great surprise and a greater pleasure. The pleasure is mine, Edwin."

"That is arguable," I smiled.

"Indeed? A literary hello, at least, for a literary man. How did you find them, Caleb? I only set you to pick up a few dollars from the border, not a literary genius and a goddess."

"So you did, but when we opened the door to the tunnel I found my old friend carrying the cash and twice as much of his own."

"And the girl? An ugly name for a beautiful creature," and Moho smiled with the leftward portion of his mouth, while the right remained immovable.

"To hell, bastard," but before the sweet creature could slap the boss, Caleb grabbed her arm and stopped her.

"She is in denial," he said.

"Not that so much as disgust," I said. "She has been mistreated and desired for her beauty all her life. To flirt with her is to insult her."

"I was not flirting," Moho said, returning to his seat and beckoning us to do the same. "Rather, admitting the obvious. I, myself, am already taken."

"And who is the fortunate woman?" I asked.

"Fortune herself: a powerful man can have no weaknesses, so I have neutered myself. I did the deed on my thirtieth birthday, as my hair lessened and my physique fell away. The best loving was in the past either way, I thought, so I removed the last opening my character had. In the past, a girl like Rumpelstiltskin here could have ruined me with a mere smile. Now, however, I am invincible."

"The most powerful men are that way," I said, "Though I did not know it until recently."

"Yes; most gain their power by nature's impotence and not by their own choice. Still, there are few greater blessings nature can bestow than a limp penis," Moho said.

"Or the lack of one altogether," Rumpelstiltskin now sat beside me, leaning close.

"Alas, I am cursed of nature," I smiled.

"Yes, I heard of the size of your member," Moho said.

"There must be few things to speak of here in paradise," I smiled.

"There are none, at times, but literature and love, and we are both men. If you think it a curse, Edwin, I have the tools here to undo it, to make you invincible."

"At this very moment?" I hesitated.

"Yes."

"I will not let you!" leapt from Rumpelstiltskin's mouth.

"You are suddenly on friendly terms with my loins?" I asked.

"Not I," she said, "But Tamara."

"Tamara," I sighed. "She cannot be real."

Caleb looked at me from across the table, in ignorance for a moment. Then, in a flash of revelation, he cried, "So that is how it is, Edwin! I understand now: it is your mind that has done you in like this. I have thought the same things myself. No, we will not neuter you. We will fetch Tamara! We will reunite the lovers!"

"Yes, we must," Moho said, growing animated and shaking his left hand slightly. "I have heard the story, from the suicide to the coma, though I had thought you still in the custody of Dr. Ames."

"I left him that first night," I said. "But if we bring Tamara here, we cannot rightly leave Dr. Whaner and the child behind. We must have them as well."

"We must, for sure," cried Moho, leaping from his seat in excitement.

"Yet we cannot just go and ask them to come: the police are after both Edwin and myself," Caleb said. "If we bring them with us openly, they, too, will be branded criminals and be kept from returning home ever again. No, on second thought they are safest and best in Hiram."

"If you want them, take them: we are all hedonists, are we not?" Rumpelstiltskin's face battled the dawn for the crown of most beautiful. She won. "We must kidnap them," she said, "That is the only way to bring them here safely if they are under surveillance."

"That is easy enough: I have an elite kidnapping team already on my payroll," Moho said. "We have only to call them in and the deed is as good as done."

"It seems a bit rough to me," I said, "To kidnap our lovers - our abandoned lovers, I should add. We left them, Caleb, for our own purposes. Whether they would have us back is not a question that is already answered, and to kidnap, above being an altogether unromantic thing, would be harmful: if they are taken here and want to return, they will not be able to without being arrested for involvement with Mr. Moho."

"Kidnap them," Rumpelstiltskin insisted. "It is for their own good." She threw me an odd look which, clouded by her gray eyes, I could not understand.

The opinion of the girl, enchantingly beautiful as she was, finished the question despite my objections. Moho immediately called in his chief-of-staff to have the matter carried out. The chief-of-staff was an old man, bent in two with age, with a cotton ball beard that reached the middle of his chest. Yet his eyes were alive and his lips glossy with the remnants of youth.

"It is done," he said, and, returning to the house, he added, "They will leave this evening. I will offer the usual commission?"

"Double it, though it will no doubt be an easy catch," Moho said, "And be sure they know not to harm the women, on peril of their lives. They are kidnappers, not assassins. Remind them that, after their last mission's bloodbath."

"Wait a moment," I said. "Do you keep them here on the island?"

"I do."

"Then let me go with them, to be sure nothing goes wrong."

"You are an expert in these things, in crime?" he asked me.

"It seems so, by now. But if I go it will perhaps no longer be a crime."

"Very well," he said, "You must carry a gun whenever you work for me, though."

"I already do," and I showed the handgun stashed in my shirt.

"Good; you can meet them by the airfield." Moho stood and turned indoors, followed by Caleb Clifford, leaving me and the girl alone.

Rumpelstiltskin leaned forward and crossed her arms on her lap, her eyes following mine like a fox after the hounds: if I looked away to the sun rise, she intercepted my glance and forced my eyes to dance.

"Do you love her?" she asked at last.

"I think so, yes."

"Yes or I think so?"

"Yes."

"Am I beautiful?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Then why do you not love me?"

"Because even the sea is beautiful," and I stood and turned to the path down the hill.

But she leapt from her seat and followed me in a burst of passion, putting her arms around me from behind to stop me. Her hands were magical, sending a blast of love and fire into my skin where they touched: the hands of a woman, of an enchanter.

"Even the sea is not always cold," she said. "Who is Tamara? Who am I? We are only in your dreams, in your literary mind. You write dialog, yes, but it is not real, is not actually happening. All this is only in your mind, Edwin: you still lay in Aksenov's stretcher, comatose. Yet if you stay here, loving me, you will never have to know for sure: the dream will continue. If you seek Tamara, however, you will know that this island is only in your mind. Do not throw away the heaven you have made yourself in search for past loves. Be content. You do not have to know your madness."

I turned to face her. Her hair was thrown back about her face, her gray eyes shining out on the verge of emotion. Her nose anchored all of her features with its sharp point. But, most of all, her lips sat upon her chin like a regal queen upon her throne, delicately and gracefully moving with each syllable. Her body was slender, her skeleton poking through: even her breasts were hardly fleshly. Yet even they held themselves with poise, more than merely dragging and slouching along, unable to fight the force of gravity. They were balloon breasts and they were beautiful breasts.

I looked into her foghorn eyes. I was silent, still for a moment. Then a memory came like a thief in the night and stole my heart: a memory of my night with Tamara. She was a faithful woman.

"No, I will go. If this is not real, I no longer desire it," and I turned and started down the path with my steady, constant pace. Rumpelstiltskin did not follow.

Chapter 29:

The kidnappers were already assembled at the airfield when I arrived. Their duty was to be available, at any hour, for whatever mission Moho needed, however dangerous. Many of their comrades had been killed over the years. Yet the perks of the job - high wages and life on a tropical island - outweighed the smirks. The three men were all South American, the first dark with thick, curly hair and the other two olive skinned with black, straight hair. All wore beards over their faces, rather than masks, though the final outcome was the same since the beards came up to a line with the bridges of their noses.

"Do you have a gun?" the dark man, Parson, asked, and I was surprised to hear a perfect standard American accent, pronounced with more precision than my own voice.

"I do," and I showed my handgun.

"That will do," Parson said. "Moho has not given us orders for this mission: he says we must follow your lead. Do you have experience in the kidnapping industry?"

"Not at all."

"Then I will be lead: you can brief us on the target and play shotgun."

"Shotgun?" I asked.

"Shotgun," he answered as he handed me a high-powered, semi-automatic shotgun. "If something goes wrong, start shooting."

"Of course." After all I had seen, on the road and in the mental hospital, the command did not in the least disturb me.

The second kidnapper, Jarin, had a map unrolled on the side of the plane and was scrolling his finger across the Great Lakes area of the United States.

"Here," he said, "Hiram, Michigan." With that he threw the map onto the ground and leapt up into the plane, taking the pilot's seat.

"We will not bring the map?" I asked.

"Why? We will not need it," Jarin smiled.

The rest of us sat down in the rear seats of the plane, leaving the final seat open. Several bundles of cargo occupied the area between the seats. Their sides were marked with the word "Explosives."

"You are familiar with the area and the targets?" Jarin asked.

"I am, yes."

"Then you know somewhere we can take down the plane? The closer the better," he said.

"I don't see how we could land within a mile of the college, if that: the entire campus is covered with trees, leaving a single, intertwined canopy covering it," I said. "And the town surrounds the canopy, with its narrow lanes. Yet they both live on the campus: Whaner atop the School of the Past and Tamara in the southwest dormitory."

"How tall are the dormitory and the tower?" the pilot asked. "In other words, do they extend above the tree line?"

"The tower stands far above the trees. The dormitory is much lower, but its corner extends beyond the canopy."

"Be glad the fee is double," he sighed. "I will drop you all down, then snatch you up again from atop the buildings with the targets. Until then, I will take a nap. Good night," and he locked the controls in place and reclined his seat back. The others did the same. I was frightened at first, but then, seeing we were in the open skies, I joined them in the nether world.

I slept surprisingly well, only waking to a rough shake from the pilot's hand. He said nothing but nodded to the country below, whose dreary, forested landscape I easily recognized as Michigan's. From above, things could not be recognized as they could from below: I did not know whether we were over Hiram or not.

"That is the campus," and Jarin pointed to several acres of trees surrounded by a town.

"Already?"

"You've slept all through the night."

"Will we wait for nightfall?" I asked.

"No: I cannot see to snatch you from the roofs after dark. The dawn is the best time."

It was, as he said, dawn, the sun just now appearing as a distant light bulb on the horizon. The other two men were preparing their equipment for the job: each wore a parachute with a handgun strapped underneath the jacket. I was handed a parachute and quickly put it on.

"You know how to parachute, I hope," Parson said.

"I do," I said. I had read about it in a book.

"Excellent. This is your stop. Rendezvous on the roof once you have the girl."

With that, Parson opened the door of the plane and threw me out, far above the ground. Below, on the outskirts of the canopy, I saw the dormitory that housed Tamara: a rectangular, brick tower with a superfluity of Gothic arches placed in every possible corner. I tugged on the directing ropes several times, too hard at first, causing me to whirl around like a hurricane. After a moment, however, I took the things under my control and circled around the dormitory roof like a vulture. With a thud and a surprisingly painful impact, I landed. In another moment I had the parachute off and opened the door that communicated with the top floor. If she still lived where she had before, Tamara would be in the corner of that floor.

It was dawn on a Saturday morning and no one roamed the halls, not even the transients that had taken over the men's dorms. I rushed quietly down the hall to the far corner, where stood an unadorned metal door without a window. I knocked lightly. A stirring noise sounded from within. I knocked again and the stirring grew louder. A third time and footsteps approached the door.

"Who is it?" the voice was Tamara's.

"Sleeping beauty," I laughed.

"Edwin?" she almost shouted and the door pulled open.

Tamara was beautiful. Her midnight hair, even when unshowered, was possessed with the same dignity and off-beat step as she herself. I said nothing at first, but stood staring at her in awe.

"You are real," stumbled from my tongue.

"I am," she smiled.

I could not resist: I took her words into my mouth and kissed her.

"As are you, it seems," she gave me a strange look.

"I have much to explain, I know," I said. "But, for now, we must escape. The plane will return soon: come, to the roof!"

She followed me with excited footsteps, the padding of her bare feet like a funk song as it echoed across the empty hall. In a second we reached the door to the roof and then were on top, the sun now bright enough to make the place a heaven, the trees on the eastern side coming in close. Off in the distance the humming of a plane's engine could be heard, drawing closer as the tide of time slowly went out.

"We will have to jump onto the plane," I said.

She looked at me, alarmed, "What have you done?"

"Many things," I smiled, unable to refrain from it at the sight of her face.

"Murder?"

"And robbery: but I have found a refuge, a safe haven. Come, the plane approaches."

As I said this the small plane could be seen coming over the trees, low enough that the top branches brushed its bottom. A rope ladder hung down from the open door, as did Jarin's face, peering over the edge at us.

"Jump!" he yelled, and, hand in hand, we did. For a moment it was free fall and suicide. Somehow I had closed my eyes and as I was falling I thought we had missed it, that we would plunge to our deaths together. And, strangely, the thought did not alarm me. But I was wrong, either way, for at that instant my hand hit the rope and grabbed on involuntarily. My eyes burst open, revealing Tamara beside me on the ladder and the pilot leaning out of the plane.

"Climb up!" he cried.

Tamara went first, reaching the plane after fifteen seconds, while I was directly behind her. The pilot pulled up the ladder and slammed the door behind us. Then he lumbered over to the cockpit and returned to the controls, which he had left unattended as he brought us in.

"I've done worse," he said, "Don't fear the ghost controls."

We were not alone in the plane, however: the other two kidnappers had already returned with Whaner. She now lay stretched out in the back seat, her legs spread apart and her hands rubbing her very-pregnant belly. The two men were standing over her, frightened as they probably never had been before.

"Kidnap a pregnant women?" Parson cried out hysterically.

"She will be fine," and Tamara sat beside Whaner, looking her over. "The baby won't come for a few days yet, though the excitement has stirred things up. How did you get her on the plane?"

"We jumped from her room on the tower," Parson said.

"She is lucky, then."

"Luck is not a factor," the other man said, "We are professionals."

"Professional what?" Tamara asked.

"Kidnappers."

"I've been kidnapped?" and she looked at me.

"Willingly, I hope," I smiled. "I came across Caleb Clifford in my wanderings, on the Mexican border while I was smuggling drug money through a dealer's tunnel. He brought me to the tropical island that serves as headquarters for his patron, Moho, where he had fled from the authorities. We found ourselves there in paradise and thought to make it heaven by bringing in our lovers."

"Presumptuous genitals!" Whaner's smoky voice sounded. "To leave a woman for untold reasons and kidnap her back as a favor? Genitals and brains, am I not right, Napoleon?" and she turned to the portrait of Napoleon, missing its frame, that was unrolled on the floor beside her. She had brought a box of books and a laptop from her office, throwing her demands on even her kidnappers in such a way they could not refuse them. No one can refute a feminist historian.

"You were not in Ames's palace?" Tamara asked, her spirits dampened.

"I was not, though I heard of your regular visits. For that I can only beg forgiveness," I said. "Ames did what he had to, in keeping my location a secret. I was, in fact, traveling the country on foot, escaping my problems. I thought so, at least, for I seem to have only found more along the way."

"And you became a drug dealer?" she looked at me askance.

"No, not in the least, Tamara: I simply brought a load of money across for them in exchange for free passage to Mexico, to escape the law. I was fleeing a murder and a robbery, yet those, as I will explain later, were justified and accidental."

"Of course," she smiled. But she did not need an explanation: she loved me.

Tamara was content to remain unaware of my activities: she did not want to know, she said, because it would not matter either way. I was humbled by this and resolved never to leave or misuse her again. She grabbed lightly onto my arm and we held a delightful conversation on some obscure novelist we both enjoyed. It goes without saying that all truly great novelists are obscure. Whaner fell silent after a time as her contractions fell away and the child within decided to take a nap and come out later. Twelve hours later, we landed on the tropical island that was to be our home.

Caleb, Rumpelstiltskin, and Moho stood at the landing strip to meet us. The girl was as beautiful as ever, a fact not lost on Tamara, who said as she was introduced:

"A marvelously enchanting woman, Edwin."

"Not in the least," I said.

"You need not console me," Tamara laughed. "I am not jealous."

"I only say otherwise because I am forbidden from the truth," I answered.

"She may call me beautiful if she wants," Rumpelstiltskin said. "You, however, Edwin, still may not."

"A powerful brain," Whaner said from Clifford's arms. "I am glad to finally meet the woman who can insult these men without fear of their lashing tongues," and she gave Caleb a sneer.

"Rumpelstiltskin is quite the writer, actually," he said. "I have been working with her while you were gone, teaching her the trade of the novelist."

"Rumpelstiltskin?" Whaner asked.

"An ugly name for an ugly girl," I said.

"Let her be wary of the power of the pen," Tamara said, suddenly serious. "It can corrupt the mind, breaking its ties to reality. I have experienced it myself," and she held me close. "You will not venture to pick it up again, Edwin? I fear it is too dangerous now that you have found reality to raise the question once more."

"I will pick it up only once more, that I promise; and what I write will not be fiction. I will write a brief novel of my adventures," I said.

"I eagerly await it," and Moho's hand twitched in readiness.

With that we walked the path to the veranda and enjoyed a marvelous dinner in the twilight of the late afternoon. Our life from then on was a continuation of paradise, each day spent walking the island with our lovers and engaging in literary conversation over dinner, with siestas spent in furious and fervent reading. Moho continued his drug business with ever increasing prosperity as the United States increased the potency - and absurdity - of its anti-drug laws. Whaner continued her historic research and writing, assisted in prose by Clifford. They married soon after the birth of their daughter, named Napoleon in some strange twist of fate, and had seven more children over the years, all female. Tamara and myself were also married. Our life has been one of untold pleasure and consistency, each joy greatened by its contrast with the period of my insanity and addiction to the pen. I have resolved never again to dabble with my mind as if reading were a game, when, at any moment, insanity may strike from the resulting disorientation. This, as I have said, is my last use of the pen. I have only one thing more to write before the curse is broken forever:

THE END

THE
HEDONIST

JONATHAN DUNN

Version 1.0

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 12:

Chapter 13:

Chapter 14:

Chapter 15:

Chapter 16:

Chapter 17:

Chapter 18:

Chapter 19:

Chapter 20:

Chapter 21:

Chapter 22:

Chapter 23:

Chapter 24:

Chapter 25:

Chapter 26:

Chapter 27:

Chapter 28:

Chapter 29:

THE HEDONIST

JONATHAN DUNN

Version 1.0

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 12:

Chapter 13:

Chapter 14:

Chapter 15:

Chapter 16:

Chapter 17:

Chapter 18:

Chapter 19:

Chapter 20:

Chapter 21:

Chapter 22:

Chapter 23:

Chapter 24:

Chapter 25:

Chapter 26:

Chapter 27:

Chapter 28:

Chapter 29:

THE
HEDONIST