Three OF Hearts PDF

A NOVEL BY RICHARD BOROVSKY
THREE OF
HEARTS
OR
WHAT LOVE DOES
i
Richard Borovsky, 2002
All rights reserved
Copyright 2007 by Richard Borovsky
“Believing in Mind” (Hsin Hsin Ming) by Seng T’san, Third

Patriarch of Zen, translation by Richard B. Clarke
“The I Ching,” translated by Richard Wilhelm, published by
Princeton University Press, 1967
ii
Thanks to Michael Borovsky and Nico Borovsky for
their generous help with editing and the mysteries of
the computer, to Peter Borovsky for his advisory
assistance, to the patient people at Integrative Ink,
and to John Schill for his kind encouragement.
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To all flowering members of the vegetable kingdom,
the poetry of Dylan Thomas, cirrus clouds, our
children and their children and theirs as well, the
sanctity of devotion, the flutter of the night moth’s
wings, the wedding of Only and Forever, all
nicknames—particularly Ninny and Tweet, the songs
of Cole Porter, the novels of Tom Robbins, the Upper
Midwest, all the Simpsons—particularly Lisa, the
enduring power of faith, the Great Lakes, the
sculpture of Michelangelo, Bach’s left hand, the color
of Gretchen’s hair, the paintings of Vermeer, the
game of baseball, the Beethoven Symphonies—
particularly the Fourth, all bubbles rising in
Champagne glasses, the sacrament of marriage, the
transformative power of landscape, the seven colors
of the visible spectrum—particularly violet, and art
for art’s sake.
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Also by Richard Borovsky
Available through Lulu.com
A PEACEABLE KINGDOM
THE SONG THE BIRDS FORGOT
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
THREE OF HEARTS
OR
WHAT LOVE DOES
THE TOP FLOOR 1

THE HORATIO HOTEL 4
THE RESTAURANT 7
HORACE, THE HOUR KEEPER 12
BERNARD THE ELEVATOR MAN 28
FELIX, THE ARTISTE 48
THE HOUR KEEPER, INSUBSTANTIAL 76
THE ELEVATOR MAN AS ROSIE 88
THE ARTISTE IN LOVE 103
BUTTERMAN 114
SAINT BERNIE 129
SEVEN DAYS WITH GRETCHEN 137
TWO BY THE WINDOW 157
THE BATTLEFIELD 166
LOVE DEFINED 175
THE HOUR KEEPER, BUTTERED 189
FREDA 196
SPEECHLESS 212
BUTTERMAN AS POET 217
THE ELEVATOR MAN, BUTTERED 227
THE SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE 234
THE HOUR KEEPER,
BUTTERED AND TOASTED 250
THE ELEVATOR MAN, UNWRAPPED 263
THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR 273
GRETCHEN 288
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THREE OF HEARTS
THE TOP FLOOR
I’m flat on my back, contemplating the end of my life, which should

happen any day now.
I’m not sleepy or unwell. I’m on my bed, propped up on
pillows, with my black and white female cat sitting on my chest in
her sphinx position. I don’t know whether cats have names in their
own society, such as it is. I don’t know whether they have names
when they’re still in the litter, for instance; when they share a home
with other cats; or when they meet others between buildings, in
yards, or in alleys when they live in cities that have alleys.
My current cat, whom I named Lois, is one of a number I’ve
lived with over the last sixty years: I was born into a family with
cats. That’s with cats, not of cats, though if given the choice I
might hesitate. Lois is one of the more friendly cats I’ve known (or
affiliative as they’re known in the business), but other than that
there’s nothing to distinguish her other than that she is a cat. At
fifteen she is old for a house cat, and I’m still not certain if she
knows her own name. Like most of her species, she’ll respond to it
if I call her in a certain tone of voice; but she’ll also respond if I call
her Hildegarde or Gildersleeve, as long as the voice is right. And if
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THE TOP FLOOR
she does know her name, it’s not important to her as it is would be if
she were a dog. But if she were a dog, she’d never be up here on
my bed, let alone relaxed and gazing at me from my chest as I
contemplate my rapidly approaching end.
It may have aroused your curiosity that I am going on about
cats on this Thursday afternoon in 2002, which may be my last
among the living. A question may also have come up regarding just
how I know about my future, given that I have claimed to be in good
health and “comfortable.” People in good health rarely expect to be
dead within a week, unless they’re about to enter the most horrific
kind of war, which I am not, or into a hazardous venture of some
life threatening sort, which again I am not. And people reclining on
their own beds with a cat of their choosing on their chests are
typically not those condemned to death by lethal injection,
electrocution, firing squad, or hanging, which again I am not. And
those who describe themselves as “comfortable” are usually not the
ones who are planning suicide—though I can’t speak with any
certainty about suicides. It may be that the very prospect of leaving
a life of torment is comforting to them; but that’s not true in my
case, or in my life, I’d prefer to say, since I don’t consider myself a
“case.” All questions regarding my imminent death will be
answered in good time.
Beauty is a more immediate concern of mine. It always has
been. I consider Lois an especially beautiful cat, and for that reason,
she’s not only permitted but encouraged to sit on my chest. She has
nearly symmetrical black and white markings on her head and face,
particularly when viewed from here on my back. The top of her
head is black, as are her pointed ears and the space around her
yellow-green eyes. It’s as if she’s wearing a black half mask, but
there’s a white diamond on her forehead, and this white fur carries
down between her eyes and around her perfectly pink nose and her
mouth, and then extends down over her chin, silky neck and chest.
Along with this she is blessed with startlingly long white whiskers.
She is looking at me intently and purring; the purring leads me to
believe that she is content, but I haven’t an inkling, a hint, even a
vague intimation of how she perceives me or the world around us.
This interests me greatly; there’s nothing to suggest that a cat’s
consciousness is any less intense than ours, only more narrowly
focused. On cat business. Which is what? And, surprising to say
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THREE OF HEARTS
(for you perhaps, but not for me), it is this awe in the face of the
unknown, this profound unknowing that has developed through a
lifetime of experience that accounts for my present circumstances:
the comfortable contemplation of my own death, which I expect to
arrive before next Monday or Tuesday—though as with all bets,
commitments and promises, one can never be entirely sure.
My bedroom is the only room on the third floor. It is a long room; it

stretches the full depth of the house I’ve lived in since I moved up
from Chicago seven years ago. The front and back walls have wide
windows, arched on top, opening onto the street and backyard. The
walls on the sides are windowless and rise only five feet before
meeting the slanting ceiling which comes to a sharp peak above me.
The skylight which is set near the rear of the room opens with a
crank, most often to the night sky, weather permitting. The stairs
from the second floor end at a landing next to the front window,
which, in the summer, is filled with the fullness of a maple tree.
The tree grows on the strip of ground between the sidewalk and
street—a residential one but wide and often busy. In honor of that
tree (which I consider an intelligent being, perhaps even more so
than the cat), the long wooden bench under the front window is
covered almost entirely with potted philodendrons (philo, love +
dendron, tree), leaving only one cushioned space in the middle
where I often sit and look out.
I never tire of looking out of windows—in the city, at least.
I think I would soon tire of a beautiful view of the mountains or of
broad green fields or of an ocean or lake. I am fond of traffic,
motorized and pedestrian. At the age of sixty, I still nurture the
habit I developed as a child looking out the window of my mother’s
apartment back in Chicago: wondering where the cars and people
are going, and spinning stories to satisfy my curiosity. And I do like
the sound of traffic on this street, no less than one might like the
sound of wind through thr trees, or a river, or water crashing against
rocks or lapping at a moonlit beach.
My name is Horace. I am happy with my life just as it is.
3
THE HORATIO HOTEL
THE HORATIO HOTEL
I live in a small room with one window at the back looking out over
a public parking lot. If someone called the room shabby, they’d
maybe be right. It does need painting—the walls need washing, at
least—but this is a “residential hotel” where decorating and
cleanliness aren’t all that important. My room does have a sturdy
door with two deadbolt locks. The rooms on the first floor and the
ones by fire escapes have bars on the windows. I live on the third
floor, so there’re no bars blocking my view. My room is at the back
of the Horatio Hotel. The elevated trains clatter by day and night on
the street in front of it, and anyone calling my room shabby would
probably also say this hotel is “on the wrong side of the tracks.”
The tracks run on a dark, old, riveted steel platform that keeps the
street below it always murky during the day; and that darkness fits
right in with the traffic sounds that make a background for the
screeching and grinding of the trains. The edge of the prosperous
part of downtown is on the other side of the tracks, where the old
buildings rise straight up along with the new gleaming ones that are
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THREE OF HEARTS
made of glass, steel and marble. The old elevated tracks run around
a part of downtown Chicago, making what everyone here calls “The
Loop.”
On my side of the street, the Horatio Hotel’s side, the
properties aren’t so desirable, like the city of Chicago planned it that
way years ago and doesn’t want to bother changing its mind. Here
the buildings are older, grimier, and smudged by the exhaust fumes
coming from under the tracks, fumes that seem to steer clear of the
polished buildings on the other side. I can’t say why this is. And on
this side the pedestrians aren’t dressed so fashionably. Even on the
brightest days it seems darker on this side of the tracks. Other
people have noticed this too, not just me; so don’t think I’m some
kind of crackpot. Some say it’s soot in the air spewed out by the tall
brick chimneys of the factories nearby. But these factories shut
down years ago. Some people say that the old soot’s still here,
some say it’s all in the shadows cast this way by the tall buildings
on the other side, and others say it’s just a sign of neglect. Across
the street in the tall buildings, there are modern, thriving businesses.
On this side, the old buildings house leftovers from former times:
small time suppliers; light manufacturers of goods hardly used any
more and dreary offices staffed by people who have probably
missed one boat or another. But when I meet people who work in
the buildings around this hotel, they’re always pleasant. And it is a
little darker over here, but I don’t mind; and I don’t think of my
room as shabby. I’m very happy with it and with the clatter of the
trains that reminds me that life goes on uninterrupted.
The brown walls in my room with all the cracks in them
haven’t been painted in years—I’d say maybe twenty-five. The
white ceiling also has cracks and has its own covering of soot along
with its automatic sprinklers. The room is furnished with a small
under-counter refrigerator next to the porcelain sink with a small
drain board alongside. I have my own two-burner hot plate and a
small microwave that I keep on the counter next to the sink. Along
the wall opposite the sink is an alcove with a toilet and shower stall
but no door, only a curtain. My bed’s on the back wall across from
the windows, so if I prop myself up on pillows, I can see the sky
outside. Along with my bed, there’s a linoleum-topped table with
two straight chairs in the room and one worn but comfortable
armchair. I do have a clock radio and a small television, but the
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THE HORATIO HOTEL
television’s reception could be better since there’s no cable here.
There is a dark blue rug on the green linoleum floor. Besides my
clothes, books, dishes and a few other things, the dark blue rug is
my only personal possession. The hotel janitor lets me borrow the
vacuum cleaner once a week to keep the rug clean. It’s like the
ocean for me. I have one plant, a philodendron I keep on the
windowsill, and a dozen or so plates I like set on a wooden molding
about head high on all four walls. I keep a blue cloth on the table,
along with a pink bowl where I keep oranges when I have them,
because I do like things to be pretty. My bed is covered with a
colorful quilt I found in a thrift shop years ago. There is always
activity in the parking lot, so I keep my comfortable armchair next
to the window.
I never get tired of looking out my window. I love the way
the pattern of cars entering and leaving the public parking lot always
changes during the day, and even the few at night, too, because
these comings and goings seem like the pulse of life. There’s
always traffic on the two streets I can see and stoplights at the
corner where they cross. In the summer, I open my window and
watch the taxis, the yellows ones, the checkers, the red and white
ones; and I like the way I can never tell which kind is coming next.
That reminds me of the way life is too. In the winter I wrap myself
in my quilt and I watch the snowplows make their rounds and the
janitors with salt and the pedestrians trudging through the grey
slush. I’m happy with the way I live. I have a twelve minute walk
to work at a fashionable old hotel, The Randolph House, where I’ve
operated an elevator for thirty years now. Once a week I hang my
uniform on a hook outside the steward’s office, and when I come
back for my next shift it’s been dry cleaned and pressed. I keep my
shoes in my locker and shine them daily, when I also brush my hat.
I have my hair cut at the hotel’s expense in the gleaming barbershop
once every two weeks where I have a manicure—something I need
since I often shake hands with our guests. I sometimes feel so
happy just delivering them to their home floors that I have to hold
back my tears. My life’s not complicated and that’s the way I like
it. My name is Bernard
.
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THREE OF HEARTS
THE RESTAURANT
My name is Felix.
“Hey, Kathleen,” I say, calling her over to the mâitre‘d station

where I’m standing. “Don’t say ‘Soup or salad,’ say ‘Salad or
soup.’ ‘Soup or salad’ sounds like super salad. Okay?”
“I don’t get it.”
Kathleen’s my friend and practically my sister but I roll my
eyes at her anyway. ‘Would you like soup or salad with your
dinner?’ ‘Gee, I don’t know. What is a super salad, something like
a chef salad, but real, real big?’ Okay?”
Kathleen says she enunciates quite well, gives me a look
and walks away. It’s just 5:30.
It’s a Tuesday night, and by the look of the reservations it’s
going to be slow. I’m touchier than usual tonight, however. When
I was showing the new busboy how to set tables, he asked my why
the knife blade should be turned in toward the plate.
“Because it looks good that way,” I answered.
“Really?”
I knew that it might have been a mistake to pull him out of
the dishroom to work in the dining room. Just after I hired this kid
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THE RESTAURANT
he asked me if my name really was Felix. I said it was, and that it
meant “Happy”. “Like Felix the Cat?” he asked. “Yeah,” I said,
“just like Felix the Cat.” So he was a kind of wise-ass student type,
but he was smart and carried himself well.
“The turned in knife blade symbolize that the knife is ready
for action on the plate, not off of it? How’s that? And anyway it
looks good. The curve mirrors the curve of the spoons…”
“But the spoons have two curves…”
“Enough, okay? This isn’t design class. But if it was, I’d
be in charge, just like now. I also want you to be sure to stagger the
placement of the two forks and the two spoons next to the knife.
Nest them in together. And the water glass is to be above the tip of
the knife. And if all the silverware’s polished you make all the
settings exactly the same, perfectly parallel, the wine glasses will
ring a little, all by themselves, they’ll sing. Listen for it.”
I’m in charge of the dining room here. There are only
eighteen tables in this little basement restaurant, nine in each room.
The smaller room is triangular, pie shaped, there’s a fountain
surrounded by plants if the far corner—a little boy pouring water
out of a jug. The fountain is easily clogged, but the two little tables
for two on either side of it are the most private and romantic in the
place. Or some prefer table #6 in that same room, another one for
two people, which, though not secluded, is adorned with a
periwinkle blue tear-drop glass chandelier above it.
The rough sandstone walls in the room are painted white;
the beams across the ceilings are salmon colored, the carpet forest
green. Several misty landscapes and a tapestry are hung on the
walls; the ceiling is low and the lighting soft. There is only one
large round table in the Fountain Room, all the rest are “deuces”—
that’s what we call them. I’ve heard that in most restaurants they’re
called two-tops, like four-tops and six-tops, but this isn’t most
restaurants, and two-top is an ugly word. We also can push tables
together, of course, but still it’s hard to put large parties in this
room. It’s a perfect room for Valentine’s Day. And it’s a beautiful
little room, because along with the fountain in the corner and the
little blue chandelier and tables with their golden cloths and
wineglasses that sing when the silverware’s polished and aligned,
there’s a brightly lit marble counter on which deserts are displayed,
and above it there’s an awning in flowered fabric; earth tones—
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THREE OF HEARTS
mustard, muted oranges and rose. Every customer ordering dessert
is escorted to this display, but it’s dark behind the counter except for
a large hole drilled in the concrete wall through which orders are
passed, hot from the kitchen.
Through a short basement passageway, one wall of which is
wallpapered with a bucolic scene of Brittany, the main staircase
comes down next to the maître d’s station in the other room, the
Fireplace Room. This room is larger than the Fountain Room; it
has mostly tables for four, and an attractive but non-functional
fireplace that is filled with baskets of dried flowers. Only the back
wall is white sandstone, the three others are paneled in dark wood.
The beams are painted the same salmon color as in the fountain
room. Across from the maître d’s station (where I spend most of
my time) is an antique marble topped credenza with bottles of wine
on top of it and a matching blue, glass teardrop chandelier above it.
This room has more space and, lacking the fountain corner and
dessert display, less charm, and it is the sight of my increasing
unhappiness.
This restaurant is staffed by my best friends, most of whom
I knew in Chicago before we all moved up here. The music that’s
played in this restaurant is louder than in most restaurants because it
is valued in itself—and it is of my own choice. I don’t cook the
food or create the recipes, but I do choose and order the wine and
drink it whenever I can. Sometimes, once we’ve cleaned up after a
busy Saturday night, we gleefully break several city ordinances and
have ourselves a party down here, secure and out of sight from the
street. No guests allowed. We pull tables together in the fountain
room so there’s enough room for all of us: myself, the wine steward,
a few waitresses, waiters or combination thereof, and whoever’s
washing dishes and cooking. We play classical music, loud. We
pass a pipe and drink Champagne. We eat and drink together, and
wait or hang out in the kitchen when the courses are prepared. We
figure the cost of food and wine and pitch in to pay it. We clean
up, and leave stoned and champagned and off to someone’s
apartment to continue on. But I hate my job.
I hate it, but the force that keeps me down there seems
almost irresistible. Once I burst out during a rush on a cold Friday
night. I strode around the block in my tux, my heart raging at my
captivity. It didn’t matter that the environment was aesthetically
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THE RESTAURANT
uplifting; it didn’t matter that all my friends were there or even that
I often did my job with relish and that the sight of an overbooked
reservation sheet actually thrilled me. I am an arrogant man who
despises restriction. I despise the fact that I knew I would return
that night after I burst out, that though as much as I wanted to, I
could not run until I dropped, or even died—which would have been
fine.
Nothing can please me if it is not of my own design. There
was a time when I worked in that restaurant only one night a
week—on Mondays. I had no other job, but beginning Sunday
night, I was sick at heart. There is nothing I can create and nothing
I can destroy that will satisfy me when I feel like this. Like tonight.
The lights are dim, the candles are lit, Bach’s Goldberg Variations is
playing loud enough for me to follow both the right and left hands.
The two women who are waiting tables are not only old friends of
mine but brilliant and accomplished, each in her own way. I will sit
here on my stool, answering the phone, greeting guests, taking them
to their tables, serving some wine, clearing some plates. It will
never be busy tonight, but I cannot bear it, because no one can hear
me. No one can ever hear when another person is distraught. No
one can ever help when help is needed most.
“Are you okay?” Clare asks as she slips in with me behind
my little desk.
“No. I’m going to explode.”
“Well, wait. We’ll go to Nick’s after we get off.” Clare
understands about as much as anyone does, but it isn’t enough.
“When we get off I’ll be okay,” I say, sorry for not feeling
grateful for her concern. “But sure.” And the thought of a cold
Beck’s or a Harp does soothe me for a moment until I look at my
watch. When I do, I realize I am entirely alone.
Still, it is true that I exult in the heroic feeling we all enjoy after a
crazy-busy Saturday night. I control the flow, and I like it when
things flow smoothly. I like it when people with reservations don’t
have to wait for their table, and I like it when no one serving the
tables gets slammed, and nothing happens that makes anyone in the
kitchen threaten us with knives. I like it when the flow is steady
under the deep, clattery, packed dining room sound of conversation,
laughter, silverware on plates, wine glasses clinking, kitchen doors
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THREE OF HEARTS
swinging open while the Bach flows on with only me listening, as
only I can, because I’ve known every note for years. And it’s so
good when a table opens and we sweep down on it with trays, and a
crisp clean cloth and napkins folded sharp and shined silver and
glasses ready to sing, so I can walk away before it’s finished and
return with a swept armful of guests knowing their table will look as
if it’s never before been used. When it’s humming busy and the
checks and tips are big, and people believe me when I tell them the
Gewurtstramminer is perfect with the duck because it is, and I get
lucky and pour the six of them six perfect golden glasses, the last
emptying the graceful bottle to the last drop in the last glass so that
they politely applaud—and I see a waitress stuff a few bills into the
sweating dishwasher’s apron. And then when no one’s waited and
it’s slowing down and the empty tables are covered only in golden
cloths and it’s ten to ten and no one comes in to ruin what’s
promising to be a busy but early night, and the reservation sheet is
as crossed out and corrected as a manager’s roster for an extra
inning ball game. We have to sit and wait a while when the last
couple by the fountain is still sipping wine and holding hands across
the table, but that’s no problem that because it’s been a good night
and I can listen to The Goldberg Variations, amazed how two
musical lines can coexist and flow in perfect complementary
synergy. And then I wonder how I can look forward to this with
such dread, but I remember again as soon as the two lovebirds at
table four don’t show any signs of leaving, or even any signs of
awareness that they’re in a restaurant, and certainly not that they’re
the only ones in it. So after a little while I go in there and noisily
move some chairs around, hoping they’ll turn and see they’re in an
empty room. But they don’t, and they’re starting to ruin my life, so
I wait until the music comes to climax and abruptly shut it off. But
they don’t even notice. So their waitress and I wait in the Fireplace
Room for another five minutes until I can’t stand it any more.
“Excuse me,” I say to them. “But we’re just about ready to
close up down here…”
And they look around shocked that they’re alone in there,
and even apologize, but I’ve ruined something, and I don’t give a
damn because I hate it again. And the guy knows something’s
wrong, I can tell by his look, but fuck him—and fuck you, too.
11
HORACE, THE HOUR KEEPER
I named my cat Lois regardless of what her mother called her during
her early kittenhood. She may have been known, or at least singled
out, in some other way we cannot know. I was named by my
mother. She chose to call me Horace (Horace, The Hour-Keeper),
probably in accordance with the vibrational field that accompanied
my soul into this incarnation. At least that’s the way the story goes,
the story of reincarnation, one among many she used to tell me at
bedtime, no better, no worse than the others—like “The Three Little
Pigs” or “The Tar Baby”—my mother having a passion for both the
occult and the dramatic. Neither she nor my father had ever taken
traditional religion seriously. Early in life she became a serious
occultist; he a serious pragmatist. My mother eventually became a
woman of uncommon spiritual power. I never knew my father,
however; he was killed by a stray bullet in Chicago in the late
winter of 1942, shortly before my birth.
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THREE OF HEARTS
I should point out here for the squeamish among you that
“an occultist” is not a person who practices ritual black magic. The
term “occult” only acquired its shady reputation under the
superficial gaze of late twentieth century popular culture. Occult
means concealed, hidden. An occultist is one who believes in the
existence of esoteric knowledge, secrets of the soul and the world,
often of ancient origin, and always unknown or ignored by the
culture at large, either academic or popular. It’s probably too late
for the term “occultism” to regain respect, however, not that “New
Age” does any better to describe the spiritual awakening which
began to show itself in the second half of the twentieth century. It
may be that the greatest stumbling block that faces this change of
world consciousness is its lack of a good name.
In any case, my mother once told me it was my father’s
pragmatism that got him killed, and I didn’t understand how such a
thing could be. I understand it now, but don’t think she ever really
did, not fully, at least. She was, among other things, an ardent
student of astrology, and tended to believe the musical clarity she
found in natal or progressed charts accounted for tendencies and
events with a kind of cosmic exclusivity.
But we know that everything my father did in his life led to
his death. That’s how it is with all of us. His commonsense,
practical outlook was only one of the innumerable forces that
shaped and guided him to his meeting with a stray bullet on
Roosevelt Road on the near south side of Chicago. He had just
stepped out of his large black Buick, with his black medical bag in
his hand. He was making a house call, and several people were
sitting on the stoop of the three-flat he was about to visit. But no
one heard the shot fired, which should come as no surprise since the
Cook County Coroner, a man with whom my father played Gin
Rummy, found that the bullet entered the top of my father’s skull at
an angle of seventy-five degrees to sidewalk on which, according to
three witnesses, he was standing erect. So it was determined that
shot had been fired into the air from at least a mile away, probably
more like two. And depending on the angle at which my father
faced the steps, it was concluded that this bullet’s path originated
somewhere to the west or southwest of the spot where he was hit,
and there’s a lot of city out there. But the extensive police
13
investigation that followed found neither evidence of the crime nor
anyone who admitted to witnessing any gun fire at the time.
But of course it wasn’t only the bullet that killed him—nor
his pragmatism, nor the last red light he stopped at before parking or
getting out of his car. It’s never only one thing that causes
another—can I stress that enough? It would help if everyone
learned that in school, very early on. Certainly before the
multiplication tables, which are, if not the last thing one needs to
learn about arithmetic, close to it. People do need to multiply in
their heads every now and then. Some occasionally even need to
divide. Those few who show a genuine love of mathematics, of
course, should be free to explore as they like. But we already know
that, don’t we? But do we know that an attempt to describe the
universe in mathematical terms is like trying to describe human
beings in terms of their skin? Do we know that the only terms in
which the universe can be described are those of the human soul?
The mystery of the human soul. Does everyone remember that it’s
the marriage of the known and the unknowable that lies at the heart
of everything: of us, of the universe? Do we get that? Do we know
that the universe cannot be understood through intellect, only
through consciousness, and therefore the exploration of the universe
is a psychological process? No telescopes or computers required?
I do sometimes tire of being professionally generous, and of my
practiced patience with a culture so blazingly un-self-aware that it
considers itself advanced; so blazingly un-self-aware that it
institutionalizes revenge, and accepts the claim that this time the
physicists really have found the smallest particle. I know that these
attempts to grapple with reality are in themselves the workings of
the universal mind learning to know itself—I know this, but the
grapplers do not. I even know that I have every reason to love them
for it all, and so should you.
So I do believe I have my priorities in order.
There is a desk perpendicular to the back wall of my long bedroom

with the peaked roof, so as I sit at it I can look into the back yard
and the alley beyond. If it weren’t for the alley, which is trafficked
by many people taking shortcuts and a few cars, I’d probably tire of
14
THREE OF HEARTS
the commanding view of the yard, despite the lush flower garden
that grows there every spring and summer. It is purely an aesthetic
garden: no vegetables, just flowers, butterflies and bumblebees and
any other insects who find it homey. I don’t plant or tend to the
garden; I have someone do that for me. There have been a long
string of horticulture students who’ve made it a project for a modest
sum. I do clean and maintain the house, however, in which, along
with Lois, I am the only resident. There isn’t any furniture on the
first and second floors, and it’s an easy and satisfying weekly job to
sweep and dust an empty house. The first floor contains an
unusually spacious living room and a small dining room. The
bedrooms are on the second floor. Essentially it’s a structure
containing kitchen and lavatory appliances to support my room on
the top floor. Other than trips down to the kitchen and bathroom, I
rarely leave this room. As I said, it’s a long room and everything I
need is in it.
There is an excellent old upright piano in the room on
which I occasionally play the simplest pieces by J.S. Bach; there is
my desk, book cases, lamps, all the early twenty-first century
electronic necessities (musical, video and other), my telescope, a
sofa, several comfortable chairs, a coffee table, a bed, a dresser and
a wardrobe. The small amount of wall space left is covered with
reproductions of the astonishingly dramatic paintings of the
Baroque period of European art—Caravaggio, La Tour, and
Manfredi in particular. And though I have no doubts about the
ongoing life of my soul after death, I do wonder—still lying here
with my cat on my chest—what my experience will be like without
these comforts of home, without the comforts of this room of mine.
I do have a sense of what death will bring, I believe I have
touched on it in dreams: a memory of something so manifest and
familiar, something that’s always been there for me, something I
wonder how I’ve ever forgotten. But I have forgotten; and I believe
it may be necessary to forget in order to live. And besides,
everything I think and feel about death from my living perspective
may dissolve into something meaningless in the face of the real
thing, in which the very idea of sense may not even exist. And to
me, that sounds exciting. Interesting, at least.
So as you might expect, I have a problem with the way most
people in our modern age react to death. When I hear that someone
15
has died, my most genuine response would be congratulatory:
“Well, good for them!” And if my informant happens to be close to
the deceased, I’d modify that with a condolence. Of course, this is
not my verbal response; I’ve never lost any friends that way.
There is one thing that does disappoint me about my
approaching demise, however: I had decided that once I’d reached
seventy, I’d begin to say exactly what was on my mind to anyone
and everyone. And I consciously chose the age of seventy because I
believed that having reached it I’d no longer have anything cruel to
say to anyone—inappropriate, disturbing, shocking, seemingly mad,
yes, possibly, but not cruel. At the age of sixty, unfortunately, I
don’t yet qualify.
Having mentioned that my mother was an ardent student of

astrology, one or another of you may have suspected that it was she
who foretold the time of my death, and you would have been partly
correct. She showed me how to calculate it for myself. I suppose
she didn’t want to know the details; she certainly made no efforts to
learn about her own. But the astrologers who are capable of this
are few, and many think it’s impossible.
Ascertaining the manner of death is a simpler matter; in
technical terms, this is often signified by the Sun, Moon, ruler of the
Ascendant, and sixth and eighth houses. This is explicated in old-
fashioned texts, still available. And in my particular case, both
Mars and Uranus were involved in this interplay of forces and
positions and angular relationships, indicating, according to the
classics: “strange deaths, usually sudden and unexpected, through
inventions, electricity, lightning, railroads, explosions, travel or
suicide.”
But ascertaining time is another matter; it’s been a well-kept
secret for ages, and those who do know won’t tell. Think of the
Hippocratic Oath. For an ethical astrologer, foretelling death is
equivalent of a doctor “doing harm,” or a time traveler delving into
the past and meddling with the timeline. I’m speaking of foretelling
another’s death, however. There is a well-known case of a
prominent uninsured twentieth century astrologer who presciently
16
THREE OF HEARTS
took out a huge policy for the benefit of his wife just before his
unexpected natural death. I suppose I could do that, too.
I do know that after that bullet and my father met on
Roosevelt Road in 1942, my mother immediately drew up the
appropriate charts and to illuminate the forces at play. In hindsight,
the unexpected event seemed predictable, but being the forthright
woman she was, she readily admitted that she wouldn’t have noticed
without looking for it. But she was never overly interested in
astrology’s unreliable predictive tools. She impressed upon me
early on that astrology worked best as a psychological tool; a means
to self knowledge; that a natal chart was the blending of a set of
archetypes, an interplay of tried and true universal symbols. And
she was quick to point out that an analysis of a birth chart reflects
not only the practitioner’s understanding of the archetypes and their
interplay, but his or her character as well. So caveat emptor.
Never accept the astrological insights of a person from whom you
wouldn’t buy a used car.
I’m still at my desk staring out my window when my doorbell

chimes. When this happens I have several options. I can ignore it if
I’m napping or otherwise indisposed. Or, if I’m feeling lazy, which
I have every right to feel, I can pick up my intercom, ask who’s
there and buzz them in, or on occasion, as with Jehovah’s
Witnesses, tell them no thank you. If, on the other hand, I’m ready
to meet the cosmos on its own terms, as I am today, I bound down
stairs and answer it.
And today the cosmos offers a beautiful young woman.
I’ve known a long line of beautiful women in my life; I’ve made a
point of that. But of course, things have changed for me at sixty.
Beautiful women, particularly the younger ones, are ardent about
beautiful younger men, which I understand and accept. But I still
enjoy their company, as females, of course—whom I consider the
more evolved gender at this time in human history—but also as
living objects of art. Yes, objects. Like my cat is an object. I can’t
imagine incurring any wrath for keeping my cat around because
she’s beautiful.
“Hello, Gretchen,” I say. “Nice to see you.”
Gretchen is the horticulture student who’s tending my
garden. She’s is tall, with shoulder length wavy blond hair and
17
brown eyes. She has a singularly Midwestern wholesomeness about
her. She’s dressed in a yellow tee shirt, cut off jeans, and sandals.
She ordinarily goes directly to the garden without ringing the bell,
often without seeing me at all.
“I wanted to ask you something, Mr. G.” she says.
“Because I’m not sure if it’s okay.”
“It probably is,” I answer.
When I interviewed her, a graduate student, she seemed
grounded, bright, and sophisticated. Of course, if she were a skilled
young criminal, plotting to kidnap me and hold me for ransom, she
could have given a grounded, bright, and sophisticated impression if
it suited her to do so. But when we talked about the garden, she
seemed to feel as I do about things both aesthetic and beyond.
“I have a friend who’s a photographer,” she says now a little
shyly, twirling a strand of corn colored hair in her right hand, her
left on her hip. “He’s a student, and he wants to take some pictures
of me… And I thought in your garden might be a good place.”
“Do you want him to take pictures of you?“
She looks surprised at first, then she smiles. “Oh, that’s
what I meant. We’re good friends.”
“Well, then fine. It’s not all that private, but…”
“Oh no,” she laughs, embarrassed. “You don’t think we…”
“No,” I reassured her. “That’s not what I thought. It’s just
that there might be distractions, with the alley traffic. As you know,
this is hardly an enclosed garden in a Italian Villa.”
Gretchen says distractions are no problem, and I ask her
when she wants to do this.
“Now?”
“I don’t see any problem with that,” I said, and I didn’t. It
was a bright, sunny day; it seemed ideal.
She beamed at this, and waved to her friend whom I hadn’t
noticed sitting in a parked car. Gretchen introduced him as Jay. He
also seemed like a pleasant young person, and his camera equipment
looked impressive. I told Gretchen there was juice and bottled
water in the refrigerator and that if they got thirsty they should help
themselves, and to otherwise make themselves at home—out in
back that is, since there was nothing homey about the empty rooms
on the first two floors.
18
THREE OF HEARTS
Then I went back upstairs. I thought for a moment about
watching them from my window but felt uncomfortable about that,
so sat down on one of my easy chairs to continue contemplating
whatever entered my mind.
I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by the raised voices of

Gretchen and her friend Jay. I somehow had it in my mind that they
were arguing over groceries, but when I shook off the dream I
realized that something was very wrong. By the time I got
downstairs, they were already getting back in the car. I called out to
Gretchen just as she’d closed the door; she didn’t answer, but then,
just before he pulled away, Jay hit her on the back of her head with
his open hand, hard enough that so her forehead banged on the
windshield. Then they were gone.
I memorized the car’s license number and went back to the
garden to see if anything there could explain what had happened. I
saw that several of the tall zinnias, red and orange ones, were
drooping on broken stems and that one begonia plant had been
flattened by a heel. Then I went inside and called the police. I told
them that I wanted to report an assault. Then I found Gretchen’s
number and called her. Apparently, she had two roommates, Lorna
and Stephie. Each woman had her own voice mail. I left a message
for Gretchen to call me.
I admit that then I felt a hint of irritation that my serenity
was disturbed. I remembered opening the front door to see what
the cosmos had to offer and, seeing Gretchen, having made the
assumption that what it had to offer was good. Clearly, it was not.
But I didn’t see anything that I could do to help Gretchen, so I just
permitted myself be disturbed, and I spent the next hour worrying
and trying to imagine what had happened, but I’d come up against
something I couldn’t stomach, so I tried the number again.
This time someone answered. I asked for Gretchen.
“She’s not here right now. I can take a message or click
you onto her voice mail if you like.”
“Are you one of her roommates?” I asked.
“Who’s this?”
Her defensiveness was reassuring to me. I told her who I
was, and fortunately, it turned out that she knew that Gretchen did
some gardening for me. She even said Gretchen had told her all
19
about me. Then she said she was Lorna. I told her I was worried
about Gretchen, that I may be meddling in something that’s not my
business, but it seemed important. Then I told her what happened.
“What?” she asked.
“He hit her on the back of the head, hard. I’m sure he hurt
her, and then drove away with her.”
“Jay did this?”
“Yes. And I got his license number and called the police.”
“I don’t think you should have done that.”
“Why not? You think he’ll retaliate?”
When Lorna didn’t answer immediately, I started losing my
patience. “Lorna?” I said. “Is there something you know about
this?”
“No,” she said. “I just mean it’s between Jay and Gretchen.
I don’t think you should have involved the police.”
This annoyed me. “All you have to do is watch a little
television, or go to a movie occasionally, or pick up a magazine to
know that women in abusive relationships sometimes try to protect
the abuser and even blame themselves. So I’d appreciate it if you
told me what you know about this. I’m very concerned.”
“I don’t know anything, and I really don’t know you,” she
said, her voice tightening. I expected her to go on but she didn’t.
“And…?” I asked after a moment.
“And if Gretchen wants to discuss this with you, that’s fine.
I don’t feel right doing it.”
So I said goodbye to her and left her my number just in
case. I got the impression that she didn’t write it down.
Except for my monthly visits to my old cousin Lydia who resides in

a nursing home on the east side of Madison, I haven’t traveled any
farther than my own back yard since early spring, and that’s just as
I’ve wanted it. I’d found a grocery store that not only delivers, but
takes pride in picking out the choicest produce and meats for me. I
suppose they do this for all delivery customers, but the impression
given is one of personal service. I could have sent my laundry out,
too; but there are machines in the basement and an occasional trip
down there does me good. It’s important for humans to
20
THREE OF HEARTS
occasionally spend some time underground. Don’t ask me why, just
accept that.
When I sit down at my desk again and look out into the
garden I see Lois is there, prowling around the disturbed broken
stems among the zinnias. She is walking warily, crouching. She
may be sensing some remnant of earlier disruption; there may be a
cloud of negative emotion not quite dispelled; or it may be a mouse.
It’s probably a mouse. It’s such a bright day that I hadn’t realized
that a thin cloud had moved across the sun—until now when it drifts
away and the garden is dazzlingly illuminated. It takes a moment
for my eyes to adjust. As they do, Lois disappears into the green
black shadows in the midst of it.
It’s often difficult to trace the associative patterns of the
mind, but as I gaze at my garden into which my black and white cat
Lois has just disappeared, I am reminded of my mother. I don’t
even try to guess at the correlation, but it’s one I’m happy to accept.
I enjoy thinking about my mother.
Just after her fortieth birthday, my mother was elected
president of the American Metaphysical Society, an organization
based in a western suburb of Chicago. My father’s unexpected
death did not leave us wanting as one might expect. It was almost
as if he were the astrologer who knew how to foretell the time of
death, because only weeks before he met his fate he tripled the size
of his life insurance policy. And my mother did have an income of
her own, though through a well reasoned agreement with my father,
all her work was done under a pseudonym, given that he, even at his
early age, was a prominent member of the Chicago medical
establishment. He respected my mother’s practice and often
secretly conferred with her in particularly difficult cases, but could
scarcely subject his reputation to the stain of any association with
astrology, let alone, of all things, an astrologer wife. She told me
the two of them laughed about this. But I have to imagine they
were indignant as well, since on one occasion that I know of, my
father attributed his astonishing diagnosis of a presumably
moribund man to my mother’s analysis of his natal and progressed
chart, narrowing the cause of the man’s malady to the brain,
someplace no doctor had thought to look.
My mother’s astrological business did bring in a modest
income—an astrologer’s clients are often wealthy—but since my
21
father’s earnings were far greater, she was able to squirrel her own
away, to save it for a rainy day, never expecting a lightning strike to
accompany the rain. So we were not in financial jeopardy when my
father left us, and in the ensuing years his pragmatic investments
were transformed into a windfall by my mother’s shrewd
management. Until the end of her life, she denied using her
astrological expertise to guide her investment choices, but I know
for a fact that this was untrue. In going through her papers, I found
records of stock purchases and horary charts stapled together. And I
have no objection to this. It has permitted me to follow my personal
pursuits without distraction.
So I am happy to be my mother’s son, and happy to have a
cat who can trigger her memory by simply entering the garden. My
mother’s official position was eventually bestowed upon me, and
though I took the responsibility seriously, I carried a certain
skepticism with me into the office. And as Past President of the
American Metaphysical Society, perhaps the most august exoteric—
that is, public—spiritual society in America, I realize now that
through all my study and research, I learned nothing of any real
value that can’t be gleaned from the two familiar exhortations,
“Know Thyself,” and “Love thy Neighbor.” All the rest of it may
as well be gossip, or fiction, or self-deception. All the beauty (and
mumbo-jumbo) about the sevenfold nature of man, the inner realms,
the esoteric brotherhoods are all aspects of self-knowledge. These
things can be learned anywhere, but only understood within. And
the only things that can be whole and true to us are those we learn
through the medium of love. But we should all know that by now,
shouldn’t we? Despite what modern thought has tried to foist on
us? But Lois has emerged from the garden with a rodent in her
teeth, so perhaps my sermonizing should come to an end. And now
the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Horace? Is that you?”
“Yes,” I say, hearing something distantly familiar in the
female voice. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, you’re going to have to guess that. How old are you
now, sixty?”
“That’s right. I’m Sixty.”
“So? Your voice doesn’t sound any different. Does mine?”
22
THREE OF HEARTS
There’s a crystalline quality to her voice, and an intimacy.
And suddenly then I know. “Miranda?” I say.
“Um hm. Why so surprised? I’d think by now nothing
would surprise you.”
“It’s been since 1979, hasn’t it?
“1978.”
“Fine. But that twenty-four years ago. And as I recall, I
woke up one morning and you were gone.” Which is what
happened. I had rolled over in bed and she wasn’t there.
“I’d say that’s accurate. Were you terribly upset?”
“Miranda?”
“Yes?”
“Oh, nothing in particular. I’m just surprised to be talking
to you again. And I was upset, I think, but not terribly. I don’t
remember my psyche being scarred. It was kind of easy come, easy
go, wasn’t it?”
Miranda doesn’t answer this. “I’ll be in your neighborhood
the weekend after this. I thought it might be nice to catch up.”
I feel irony itself creep over me. Miranda, red-haired, with
a delightful elfin look about her, was a friend with whom I shared
no sentimentality. Our relationship was based on an almost brutal
truthfulness between us, an experimental truthfulness. We even
referred to our several months together as an experiment. If there
was a living soul to whom I could tell the truth it would be she.
“Sorry, but I’ll be dead that weekend,” I can almost say. But I hold
back. Something isn’t quite right. I know this is something I must
keep to myself.
“I don’t hear you leaping for joy at the prospect. I hope I’m
not intruding on something… ”
I still hadn’t answered. “No, you’re not intruding. I’ve
been uninvolved for ten years now. I’ve become quite a recluse.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“From whom?”
“From the crackpots at the Society.”
I remember disagreeing with her about those people, my
colleagues at the time. Now I admire her discernment. “Were you
looking for me?”
Here she hesitated. “Not exactly. But I decided to drive to
Boston from the West Coast and to rekindle as many memories as I
23
can along the way. There’ve been some places and people I’ve
already visited, and you were certainly on my list. If I couldn’t find
you, I might have wept for a minute or two, but, you know… I weep
a lot these days. I’ve become more contemplative myself, and I’ve
always remembered you as a fascinating person.”
Words escaped me.
“So there’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly relieved. “There is.”
“Is it some reason why you don’t want me to come up to
Madison to see you?”
“No.”
“Are we playing a guessing game?”
“No. I just don’t know how to talk about this.” Miranda
was a poet, and being such good one, she struck at the heart of
things, or at least she had in the past. I could tell that my hesitance
only peaked her interest. Something else returned to me then: she
had always had a way to dismantle my defenses. “It’s a
conundrum,” I said. “And I’m afraid talking about it will affect it—
adversely.” This was a lie, I think. I wasn’t entirely sure. I was
still trying to be evasive.
“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Horace, but
I can tell you’re ambivalent.”
“No, no, no,” I hurried to add. “I’m not ambivalent about
you…” And then I realized she’d broken through me again.
“So can I come see you?”
“Yes,” I said, but my tone was still tentative. This made me
uncomfortable. “Miranda,” I said, sincerely, this time. “I’d love to
see you. But it might not work out, and I’d hate to have you come
up here if…”
“Does Jane still live there?”
“She does. She’s always sponsoring things, concerts,
exhibits…”
“So let’s say I’m coming to visit Jane. I’ll call her and
arrange it, and when I’m in town, I’ll give you a call. Now doesn’t
that sound… non-committal enough for you? Conundrum
resistant?”
“Miranda?”
“That’s enough,” she said, “You don’t have to tell me
more.”
24
THREE OF HEARTS
But I did. “There was something in you I cared about very
much. I want you to know that. That’s very important to me. And
it wasn’t anything trivial, or passing. So I believe it’s still there. So
in case I don’t see you…”
“I understand, Horace,” she said, her voice warming. “It’s
the same for me. It’s natural law. It’s physics. I’ll even send you a
poem about that. I didn’t write it. I don’t write anymore; it’s one I
found in one of the innumerable little magazines no one but poets
read, but I can’t remember which one. I’m not even sure who wrote
it except that he’s from Wisconsin. Maybe you know him. So,
anyway, if you don’t get to see me, at least you’ll have this poem.
It’s about what you were trying to say.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I let my mouth do it. “Will
you send it off right away?” I asked.
“I’ll e-mail it if you like. You are… still in step with things,
I assume.”
I gave Miranda my e-mail address, but before I could ask
her where she was calling from or any number of other things to
keep her voice in my ear, she told me goodbye and that I was high
on her list.
I went down to the kitchen then and Lois followed me. It
wasn’t time for her cat food, but that seemed a humanly artificial
idea, so I opened her up a can of human tuna from my cupboard,
and emptied half of it into her dish. She set upon it immediately,
but then after ten seconds or so, she lifted her head from her dish,
turned and looked at me—in thanks? In acknowledgement? In
wonder? Would I ever know?
I had an unopened bag of nice looking cherries in the
refrigerator, and after tasting one which was red-black, firm, juicy
and sweet, I pitted about fifteen others and mixed them with some
vanilla yogurt in a blue bowl. It was nothing Lois would like, so I
felt we were both justly served. I sat at the kitchen table and ate the
gloriously sweet pink yogurt. When the cat and I had finished I
washed both our bowls and set them in the rack to dry.
By the time I climbed to the third story of my house,
Miranda’s email had arrived. In it, she explained that whoever the
author, this poem might have been an homage to a famous poem by
e e cummings, called, “i carry your heart with me(I carry it in my
heart)”
25
She also explained that she had no time for our modern
“cult of originality,” and believed that if someone was brilliant
enough to write another “Mozart Symphony,” he or she should by
all means do it, since we obviously could use a few more of those.
Or paint like Raphael. Or write in the style of a great poet, as this
poet has done. Any intellectual opposition to this principle, she
went on, was based on a blend of egoism or insufficiency or a blend
thereof. The following poem by an unknown Madison author was
attached.
The long hunt in the sun

for the jewel hidden in the leaves
(which is also your heart)
will not have led you here
until I find my heart as well.
And this is a mystery.
And never again, my fair friend,
never again in the long sun
will I search for you, nor you for me,
for I will have found you (you will have found me)
in my heart.
I read through it a few times. I printed it out and returned to

my former reclining position with my head propped up on pillows.
I felt like a vessel being filled. But there was one part, one line that
particularly moved me; that intrigued and enchanted me.

for the jewel hidden in the leaves
(which is also your heart)
until I find my heart as well…

until I find my heart as well…
Was that true? It seemed it must be. But how? How does
that work?
26
THREE OF HEARTS
But then the sight of Gretchen’s head hitting the windshield
reverberated dissonantly with those words, and I decided nothing
was more important than waiting for Gretchen to call.
And then Lois hopped up on my bed again and very
cautiously probed my left arm with her right front paw to see it was
safe to traverse it on the way to my chest. But there was a problem.
Fish was the problem. I did not want to invite a tuna to rest
contemplatively on my chest. So I elbowed Lois away. She
meowed at this and hopped down. Her meow sounded assertive, but
of course I really can’t say—and the trouble is, I don’t feel I’ll have
lived correctly and completely until I can say. So maybe that’s
another regret.
And then there’s Miranda.
27
BERNARD, THE ELEVATOR MAN
For the first ten years I worked at the Randolph House, I paid half
price for meals in the coffee shop like all other employees. Ever
since that tenth anniversary, I’ve eaten free of charge; and since I
know the chefs in the Epicurean Restaurant along with the cooks in
the coffee shop, I’m sometimes treated to expensive meals and get
surprises packed in Styrofoam when I say goodbye. It seems to me
I should treat the hotel staff with the same respect I treat our guests
with, so I say good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to
everyone I meet. This is what I call a living principle of mine, and I
can’t say that there’s been anyone here I’ve known or worked with
that I haven’t cared about.
Sometimes I have problems with people at first, though,
before I know them. That’s when I think of them as selfish bastards
or sons-of-bitches. Those are the kinds of words I use, but never out
loud. I get so angry when I see people being disrespectful to others
that I shake, so angry I call them names, which I know isn’t a
Christian way of thinking of others, so I suppose I’m as guilty as
they are. But I don’t get mad when people treat me disrespectfully.
28
THREE OF HEARTS
One of the dishwashers in the coffee shop, a young one,
just a boy, named Oscar, called me fucked-up old man just last
Tuesday when I stepped in front of him while he was carrying a
steaming hot rack of water glasses right out of the Hobart—that’s
the big, stainless steel dish washing machine. I was taking a
shortcut through the kitchen and he didn’t see me coming. I was
already starting to apologize to him when he set off swearing at me.
He didn’t drop the rack or anything, but I don’t suppose he heard
me over his own voice and the clatter of the hot glasses. When he
put it down on a stainless steel counter, Carl, a friend who’s been
cooking there for fifteen years now, took the boy’s shoulders and
pushed him up against the wall and told him if her ever heard him
talk that way to me again he’d have him fired after he beat the living
crap out of him.
It never bothers me when people in movies or on television
fight, no matter how violent it is, but even the least little bit of real
violence I see between real people makes me sick. I had to sit down
and hold my head in my hands with my eyes shut tight for a few
minutes to settle myself down after Carl pushed Oscar against that
wall. I could hear Carl still yelling at him. “Do you know who that
is?” he was saying. I’d never seen the boy before, and I don’t know
if he’d seen me, but I am one of the oldest people working at the
hotel and I’ve worked there longer than anyone else, so I suppose
that’s what Carl wanted the boy to know. I think he wanted him to
respect his elders. I don’t think that’s a very sensible thing to
expect, though. I don’t think elders should be singled out,
particularly with so many of them being cranky or having
Alzheimer’s these days. I think children should be respected as
much as elders and everyone else, maybe even more.
When things slowed down, I went back to talk to Oscar and
to tell him I should have been watching where I was going, but he
looked at me like I was trying to trick him, so I just said good night
and left. Carl gave me a roast beef sandwich on a hard roll in a
square Styrofoam carton to take home with me. Knowing what can
happen to sandwiches, I opened the carton and wrapped it in foil so
it wouldn’t come apart during my walk home. Carl doesn’t know
how I get to and from work. Maybe he thinks I drive or take a bus
so I can hold the carton flat on my lap or on the seat next to me. I
never say anything to him, though, considering how generous he is.
29
If he ever sees me wrapping up a sandwich, though, I’ll tell him
why.
It may seem odd to some people that I’m so concerned how
a sandwich packaged. But it’s important to me because in order to
enjoy my trip to and from work I need to walk free, holding the
carton in my hand like a book, instead of trying to keep it upright.
When I walk downtown I try to set my mind entirely on what’s
going on around me. If I can do that, the walk’s an adventure to
me—but what you’d maybe call a very quiet adventure, because
even with all the noises around me, my mind is quiet: I don’t think.
But it’s marvelous thing too: I flow right along in the stream of
people with their special faces and the way they carry themselves,
with their mumbling and their conversations and their shouts, and
their briefcases and shoulder bags and packages gift wrapped from
stores. And there’s the traffic, too, with its taxis and cars and buses;
and there’s the polished brass doors, and the restaurant windows,
and electric signs—all in color, all in stereophonic sound, with the
smell of exhaust and the street and well dressed people with their
perfume and aftershave and cigarette smoke and liquor all blending
together as I walk through it, parting the waters like some kind of a
ship. That’s how it seems if I do it right.
But the first thing I thought about when I got back to my
room after work that day was Oscar.
I know how it might seem that Oscar is a funny name for
someone not even twenty. It does sound like an old fashioned name.
It makes me think of Oscar Meyer or some kind of foolish old-
timer, but I think that’s so only for white Americans, which Oscar
isn’t. He’s a Hispanic, but I don’t know just where his family’s
from, though I guess it’s more likely from somewhere close like
Mexico, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, rather than
Uruguay or Chile (I think those people would be considered
Hispanic too, or maybe it’s Latino.) Judging from the way he
speaks though, Oscar was born in this country: he doesn’t have an
accent but does have a way of speaking that seems different from
people from Kansas or Maine. I’d guess his folks speak Spanish.
But something tells me things aren’t happy at home for him. Or
maybe not—maybe it’s not his family; maybe he acted like he did
because of the way the world’s been treating him, maybe he’s been
discriminated against. I don’t know, but there’s unhappiness
30
THREE OF HEARTS
someplace in his life or he wouldn’t have snapped at me like that. I
can sense that, just in the way he looked at me, like he was so angry
because of something he’d lost. I don’t know what. Somebody in
his family? Something he was hoping for?
But I’m also very tired when I get home that night. I
change into my pajamas, robe and slippers and sit in my easy chair
with my roast beef sandwich and a glass of milk. Most people my
age don’t drink milk. I think it’s good for my skeleton since I’m on
my feet all day and don’t have any trouble with my legs or back.
There is a fold-down padded seat in the elevator I use during off
times, but never when the car is moving. That would seem impolite
to me. I am glad to sit down now, though, and put my feet up on the
covered radiator just below my window. Being summer at eight
o’clock, it’s still light outside but just dim enough for the street
lights to show, which gives the street a kind of glow, like in a stage
play; and when I see it this special way like I do tonight, it’s my
street—that doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to other people who care
about too, but it’s also mine. And there’s something about the
north-south traffic stopping at the lights while the east-west traffic
starts up that seems stirring to me. The way one thing always has to
give way for another thing or they can’t be free, but once they
cooperate they can each get their way. It’s a simple idea but a
wonderful one. I think maybe the entire world and maybe even the
whole solar system depends on it, and here I’ve got it acted out for
me right outside my window just two hundred yards away. Every
time the lights change, I feel it. And I’m not some kind of crackpot.
It makes me glad to be alive when I see that, and thankful to Carl
for this sandwich, which is probably going to be more than I can eat
now since I’m so sleepy. I don’t think I’m even going to be able to
wrap it back up and put it in fridge before I doze off.
What I dream is that I’m Oscar, or someone who was Oscar, or is

another Oscar, or someone like him. I’m brown like he is and his
age, too, about seventeen, I think, but not here, not in any city at all.
We are in a very small place, a fishing village I think, by the ocean,
by a bay on the ocean. We, my little brothers and sisters and I along
with my mother, all live in a place I’d probably call a hut; it’s small
31
but it has two open air windows and we sing together in it
sometimes because of the way it sounds inside, and we also tell
stories. There are chickens close by and a young pig. There is one
burro who is with us sometimes but sometimes with our neighbor.
He and the other burros run free through the village at night. I know
all this. I haven’t seen my father many times. He does show up
every now and then, but my mother is usually unhappy after he
leaves so I wish he’d never come around. We take care of
ourselves. Everyone does here. We fish. My two younger brothers
help me out beyond the bay in the boat we also share with our
neighbor and his wife. They have no children and they need help.
Long ago we had no boat or burro either. I cannot tell you how I
know all this in a dream about being Oscar, but I do know it, and I
know much, much more—too much, maybe
Sometimes my brothers and sisters wake up at night with
frightening dreams, and it’s all my mother and I can do to reassure
them that nothing’s wrong. I don’t understand how it is that one can
cry out and wake up the others and draw them right into their fear of
the dark or of some red devil or of death, even. When the sun
comes up, it’s usually all forgotten, but sometimes one of my little
sisters sobs for a while without knowing why while my mother
cooks us breakfast just outside. We all think she is a good cook,
even though we nearly always eat the same things except when we
have meat from a pig or a chicken. We eat fish and rice and beans
and round flatbread my mother makes from corn. And we eat fruit.
These are some of the things I know when I dream I’m Oscar. We
are a beautiful family with our golden brown skin, our black hair
and eyes. Our hands and feet are beautiful and strong. My brothers
and sisters are the most beautiful of all. None of them is grown up
yet; one of my sisters can’t even do much to help my mother and the
others with the nets. She doesn’t even know there is a person
called her father. She is my favorite because she is closest to the
place in the stars where children are before they’re born. She cries
without shame. Once she walked away in the night and was chased
home by a dog. I believe the dog was her ally and protector even
though it bared its teeth at her, because she might have been
trampled by the burros running wild through the village.
My brothers and sisters and I are like links in a chain.
Sometimes we all hold hands when we walk together very early in
32
THREE OF HEARTS
the morning or at dusk, on the beach or just past the place where the
hundreds of tortoise shells are stacked. I tell them that when we all
hold hands no harm can come to us, and when they each ask what
harm do I mean, I tell the oldest, my brother, who is named after the
cradle star, that it is the harm from robbers. And then I tell my next
oldest brother who is named for a night breeze, that it is harm from
snakes. And then I tell my bigger sister who is named for a red
flower that it is harm from ugly old witches, and I tell the little one
who’s only six and who’s named for the happy sound rushing water
makes, that it’s harm from big brothers telling scary stories. We
don’t like to hold hands when people are watching though, because
they smile at us in a way that makes us feel shy. My mother laughs
at us when we are shy. She says everyone envies us because we are
so beautiful and healthy. I have had no brothers and sisters who
have died, and none of us has ever been sick for very long, except
that my brother who’s named for the wind limps because when he
was kicked by a burro when he was little and his ankle never healed
right. My mother told me that we’re all healthy and beautiful
because before I was born she went to a woman her own mother
told her about, a woman who gave her something wild to eat and
told her stories she could not remember because she was in a living
dream. Shortly after she put this blessing on my mother the woman
died. When my mother tells me this she always laughs, and asks me
if I believe in such things or in Christ. I’ve answered her both ways
and she just laughs and tells me I am a splinter of the sun either
way.
But I don’t think I would be dreaming this dream if my
mother had really and truly been blessed. Because this is a shadow
dream and she was cursed. I don’t know who’s at fault, the shaman
who blessed her or Christ who didn’t. But something did happen in
this place that is too terrible to tell, something that has made me
forever sick at heart and has broken me; something that mercifully
killed my mother. I don’t know where she is now. Maybe it’s
better; maybe it’s worse. Maybe she lives in a place where sorrow
is stone and she is a face in a mountain, or maybe she is in a place
where smiles and songs are folded into flowers and no shadows are
cast. My brothers and sisters cried out for me. Again and again.
But I lost them, one at a time, each by name. It came too swiftly. If
I live a thousand years I will never cease to mourn them. I lost their
33
brown shoulders, and their smooth backs; their strong hands and
feet and everything they said to me with their eyes, and everything
will never have a chance to say. And I know there are blood thirsty
fish as deep as they must have fallen.
When I woke up I knew why Oscar was so angry, or why someone

was angry, it really didn’t matter which. And it didn’t matter
whether it was anger or sorrow or just regrets, which grow on the
same stem; and it might have even been me who once suffered such
a terrible loss in another dream I’ll never remember, because it felt
like the terrible loss was my own. I hadn’t slept for more than an
hour when I woke there in my chair with the stream of life starting
and stopping there out my window, and the first thing I did was
wrap up the rest of my sandwich and put it in the fridge. It didn’t
seem like I could possibly sleep again soon, so I turned on the
television and lay back on my bed to watch. But if wasn’t long
before I dozed off. I didn’t dream I was Oscar, at least I don’t think
so. I don’t know what I dreamt, but I woke in the morning with the
television still on. I still felt like I’d suffered a heartbreaking loss,
and the thing I wanted most was to talk to the real, live Oscar. I
knew he was working days that week, so I got to the hotel early, at
noon. I wasn’t on until one, and like I said earlier, all I needed to
do was change clothes, polish my shoes, and brush my hat.
I found Oscar by one of the pots and pans sinks with long
rubber gloves up to his elbows and pools of water around his shoes
on the floor. Someone else was at the Hobart. I wanted to talk to
him about his sadness, but I knew I couldn’t come right out and do
that. I believed in it though. I’d never had such a real dream, but it
was more than that.
“Good morning,” I said to him
He turned around from the sink. “Hey,” he said. There was
no bitterness in his voice, he seemed sorry, maybe.
“I didn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot, Oscar,” I
said. “I’ve washed dishes myself and I know how it can be when
someone gets in your way. I shouldn’t have been barging in here
like I own the place. So…”
34
THREE OF HEARTS
“Yeah,” he said, looking like he wasn’t used to apologies, a
little embarrassed, maybe, like there was something unmanly about
deserving one. “This is my last shift.”
“It is?” I asked. “Better prospects?”
He shook his head and frowned. “No.”
“Just fed up?”
“No. That asshole Carl told me this was my last shift.”
“Did he give you a reason?”
“I was an hour late.”
“First time?”
“No. It takes a long time to get here on the train.” He
plunged his arms deep into the sink again, a heavy scouring pad in
one hand. He was working on a roasting pan. I think he was trying
to look busy to avoid talking to me.
“You know, Carl’s an old friend,” I said, “so I could talk to
him if you wanted. I mean if you wanted to keep this job…”
He shook his head, still looking down into the sink. “No,”
he said. “I don’t get along here.”
“You’re sure about that?” I asked, hoping he’d reconsider.
He nodded, frowning.
But this didn’t seem right to me, like he’d missed an
opportunity. “Well, good luck to you, anyway, Oscar,” I said,
walking away from him then, feeling sad, like I was the one who
needed to talk to him, like his leaving was my loss.
After I changed clothes, I went over and looked into the
Epicurean Restaurant. Earlier on in my days at the hotel, I wanted
to work in there. Not as a cook, or even a waiter; it was the Maître
d’s job that had me interested. But I found out early on that if I
wanted do that kind of work, I had to work as a waiter first and do
some cooking to get to know my way around the kitchen, and
sometimes I regret I didn’t do that. I certainly know how to greet
people and always treat them as valued guests. The Maître d’, Luis,
he does this well too, but sometimes it looks like he’s just putting on
a show.
Even when I’m not up to par, I don’t have to pretend to like
the people I carry up and down. But I didn’t feel like myself for the
whole shift that day, from one in the afternoon until nine at night. I
wasn’t sure, but I figured Oscar would be leaving at four, and found
myself hoping he’d come round in the lobby on his way out, maybe
35
just to break of the rules that didn’t apply to him any more. But he
didn’t.
When I went back for lunch at five, I asked Jolene to just
bring me a sandwich and a glass of ice tea. She knew what kind I
meant. When I have a cold sandwich for lunch it’s always the same.
Roast beef with lettuce and tomato on pumpernickel with mayo on
the side. She says she can tell when I’m a little off because that’s
when I order the sandwich. Most days, I just ask her what’s good,
or just wait to see what Carl or one of the chefs sends out to me.
It’s fine if Jolene knows how I’m feeling; it would be a different
thing if the Hotel guests knew. It’s my job to be feeling just fine as
far as they can tell.
I was starting in on my ice tea, sitting in the back booth of
the Coffee Shop when Carl came and sat across from me.
“I saw you talking to that kid,” he said.
“I was. I understand things didn’t work out.”
“He comes in over an hour late and gives me attitude when I
tell him to come on time. Who needs that? What were you talking
to him about?”
“I was trying to give him a chance to let me know who he
is.”
“I can tell you who he is, Bernie. He’s a piece of shit. You
give people too much credit.”
I like Carl, and I know how strong he feels about things. So
I just nod. I don’t see what harm that does. It’s not like I’m bearing
false witness against someone in a court of law. I think Carl knows
I don’t agree, but appreciates my friendliness. I’m not sure if that’s
a good or bad thing. He gets up and goes back to work to make my
sandwich then, and Jolene brings it out and sits down with me too.
She’s a pretty woman for fifty: I know she’s fifty, but most people
wouldn’t think so. She has blue eyes and she dyes her hair red.
She has a wide face and a mouth and doesn’t seem to be able to
keep her from smiling. If it wasn’t for that I don’t think she’d seem
quite so pretty.
“So when are you taking me out on the town?” she says.
“I’m still waiting.”
Jolene’s always kidding me like that. She’s a married
woman and I’ve been to her house for dinner. She does know me
pretty well, because before I even try to kid her back, she asks me if
36
THREE OF HEARTS
something’s bothering me that I want to talk about. She’s half
kidding there, too, since I’m the one in the hotel people usually
come to talk to if they need to blow off steam or talk about their
troubles.
“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll be okay. I’ll ask you out on a date if I
need a shoulder to cry on.”
That seems to reassure her. But by the time I get off for the
day I’m really feeling poorly. I don’t even stop in the kitchen for
something to take home. I’m upset and I’m anxious to get out on
the street.
When I get out it’s raining. There aren’t many people out
there, and the ones that are, are hurrying past. No one’s looking at
anyone else. The sight of wet, big city downtown streets has always
been a lonely one to me. It reminds me of Sunday nights as a child,
of going home to a place where no one is waiting. Which is the way
it is this evening, but I’ve grown accustomed to that by now. It’s
been nineteen years of that already.
I don’t have an umbrella with me, so I go back into the hotel
where there are always umbrellas in the lost and found. Once
they’re there for ninety days, they’re ours to use, but we’re still
expected to bring them back—at least until the steward, Mr.
Peepers, we call him, decides it’s too crowded in that locker.
I’ve learned to walk in the rain without an umbrella, a warm
rain, at least. Everyone knows that if you have any distance to
walk, you get just as wet if you run as if you walk. The brain knows
that but it’s hard to convince the rest. I’ve done that, though. I can
walk in a summer rain without hurrying. People look at me like I’m
crazy, even though I’m the one who’s enjoying myself. But tonight
I take an umbrella. I suppose I’m not up to enjoying myself, which
is a foolish feeling, I realize, but like with what I was saying before,
just knowing can’t always convince the rest of me. I do see one
beautiful thing on the way home: it’s the red, green and yellow
reflected on the street at the stoplights. It feels to me like all the
hurrying around me to get out of the rain, all the hurrying to get out
of downtown, or to get home to a feeling that’s waiting there, or to
get away from something that’s upsetting is all dissolved into those
colors—pools of them, shimmering there like spilled paint on the
street.
37
When I unlock both locks on my door and enter my room
on the third floor, the light in my window has that same colored tint
to it coming from the intersection just outside and across the parking
lot. I sit in my chair by the window for a while without turning the
lamp on because I want the reds and greens and yellows to stay
vivid and bright for me. They fill me up and keep out that sadness
I’m feeling. Finally I decide to turn the lamp on and read. The
book I have about the American Revolution doesn’t interest me,
though, so I turn on the television and go to the refrigerator to get
myself a something to eat. I watch over my shoulder as I make a
peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There’s early news on and I don’t
want to see that so I flip through the channels until I find a detective
movie. I don’t know who I’m trying to kid, though, because even
though it’s early evening, I fall asleep almost immediately and have
the following dream.
At first I think it’s in old Boston because there are muskets
and there’s an ocean there, but then I know it’s Los Angeles. And I
can’t tell whether I’m with the police or the police are after me, but
I’m on the beach, running through the sand. Then it all settles down
into what’s real—and this isn’t a dream. It’s happened too soon.
I’m Oscar again.
My brothers and sisters are with me, but not on the beach
any more; we’re in the festival boat. The woman and children have
picked the fruit and flowers the day before. The festival boat is
really just the same fishing boat we share with our neighbor, but it
carries a blessing along with the flowers and fruit, just like all the
other boats—dugouts and outriggers I think they’d be called. Some
of us in our village are Christians and some only trust the shamans,
and others, like me, take what we like from both. If Christ and the
man with one eye who stands in fire both bless the boats this day,
that sits well with me, and I never heard that ripe fruit and strung
flowers are one of the Christian God’s sins.
There must be thirty boats out just past the entrance to the
bay. Some of the men are drinking a fermented beverage made
from the bitter juice of a root mixed in with sweet sap so they can
swallow it. I’m not old enough yet, and suppose when I am, those
men who drink it won’t seem so frightening to me with their eyes
red and noses running green. But there’re only a few today. Close
to me is a boat with an uncle, and there’s a cousin not far from him.
38
THREE OF HEARTS
Mine is the only children’s boat, and my little sisters are the only
girls out on the water. It wouldn’t be allowed but we are known as
a blessed family.
The sudden change in the wind is a surprise, but no one is
prepared for how quickly the water falls away underneath us.
Everyone has turned back in a bobbing group. I’ve never been out
in rough water with the children before, and I’ve never seen a sky
like this before either. It had been calm, with fat, white, sluggish
looking clouds that were suddenly stretched and swept away with a
hot, grey-green wind off the water, like a sky in a bad dream. I
knew that because I wasn’t dreaming. Then a fierce looking man
with a narrow face in the stern of a long, brightly painted boat
shouted something to us. I couldn’t understand him, but he scared
me. He was one of the possessed, and my brothers started to cry,
both of them, even the older one named for the cradle star. So soon
my sisters start crying too. They are sitting together in the bottom
of the boat holding hands with their laps full of flowers and fruit.
But my brothers need to paddle strongly if we’re going to follow the
rest of the festival boats in to the bay where the water’s shallow and
never unfriendly, even in storms. But they’re not paddling strongly
because they’re crying. Now the painted boat with the men who are
dreaming awake is turning back toward us into the wind. But I
don’t think we need saving. The wind is at my back and even
though the sunken water is still sliding back and away from shore,
our boat is still moving under my power alone. All four men in the
painted boat are shouting at us now, but they aren’t getting any
closer even though they’re cutting at the strange water furiously.
Then they stop and look, not at us like I thought at first but behind
us, where, when I turn, I see a mountain, green like the sky,
swelling in from the sea. I think it’s a mountain, though I’ve never
seen one. It is far higher than the tallest tree I’ve known, and
suddenly it’s silent, but then there’s shrieking.
I’m not paddling any more. My younger brother with the
name of wind is the first one I lose. His hand slips bit by bit from
mine in watery thunder that’s upturned the silence. Now I can’t
hear myself scream. Then my next brother slips away from my
other hand after I feel the bones in his fingers break in my grasp.
Now the flooded boat is upright again. I am in the bottom
surrounding my sisters with my arms, screaming the names of my
39
brothers who are trying to stay up in the churning until the stronger
one is gone, sucked away like in a high wind. I don’t know where
my other brother is. The boat is gone forever now. My littlest sister
who’s named for rushing water is clinging to my waist, choking on
the water in her lungs. Then for a moment we see the sky, which is
nearly black, and then like everyone else, she’s torn away and my
other sister’s hand is in mine until the world comes to an end.
Flowers and fruit wash up on the shore for days on end, but
only flowers and fruit. Nothing else. No one else. The wisest and
kindest of our neighbors take me and my mother away and burn our
hut to the ground and build us a new one. We are given pigs and
chickens. We are given pots that have survived from grandmothers’
grandmothers to assure us long life. We are now the richest in the
village. But my mother follows my brothers and sisters and dies
into their invisible arms. I forgive her for leaving me. I have
already turned to stone, and the wind and water will wash a away a
little at a time until I join them or disappear forever.
When I wake up in my chair by the window my right hand is

bruised and aching. I don’t think I’ve actually been asleep. I don’t
know what to call the place I’ve been, or who I’ve been, but I’ll call
myself Oscar because that’s simplest. After I take off my clothes
and get in bed, I sleep till morning again with no dreams, but in
terrible distress.
Looking back on it all in the morning, I don’t know how I
can continue to live like I’ve been living. Everything I touch or see
seems tilted, weighed down, thrown off kilter by this. It’s like I
have a new self here inside me with its sorrow along with it. I don’t
see how I can go in to work.
In my thirty years on the job, I’ve only missed two days due
to illness. I’ve had a knack of being sick on my days off, and I have
a healthy constitution, so even those days don’t happen much. But
today I feel ill. I’m not on until one in the afternoon again and I call
work at nine to speak to Peepers. I tell him I came down with
something during the night, and I feel okay about saying that
because it’s true. Maybe the world is still a little behind in
understanding that with heartache you’re just as sick as with the flu,
40
THREE OF HEARTS
but today I understand that. But I know that if I stay in my room in
the Horatio Hotel today, I’ll be physically sick. I need to move my
body, to walk, maybe a long way. I need to be alone but not alone.
I need to see people and cars and taxis and maybe dogs if I’m going
to make it through this day.
When I get outside it’s still raining. I walk in the shadow of
the El tracks, close to the splash and stain of exhaust, and I’m not
even comfortable there until a train rumbles by overhead sending a
fine spray down across the sidewalk. There are dozens of people on
that train; each one coming from somewhere and going another—
except for maybe one or two who are going nowhere or who have
nowhere to go. There are always a few like that on the trains.
Today I am one of those.
And it’s not just Oscar. It’s not just my loss of those
smooth brown shoulders and dark eyes and strong feet and hands
that I wasn’t strong enough to hold. It isn’t just that that’s pulling
me under that mountain of the sea. Because I am surrounded by it
now. As I walk, I pass the faces of secrets; some locked shut, some
swung open. Then I see one woman and I know I should keep my
eyes to myself. She looks forty. She is wearing a dark raincoat and
carries a small black umbrella. Her pace in her high heels is quick,
business like. She looks like she knows how to give orders; the way
she put on her make-up makes her look severe. Her mouth turns
downward in a frown, but she smiles and nods to me our eyes meet.
It’s a pale, weak smile and a surprised nod, but it shakes me.
Because I am ill today and I see her mother with the same
dark eyes but who is wrapped up in disappointment, a mother who
weighs this fragile woman down with her distorted hopes. It’s all
perfectly easy to see. To imagine. To know. I’m ill, so I don’t
know what the difference is. I know her mother had called this
morning, early, and badgered her. I could taste how her coffee grew
cold as her mother spoke. How her stomach soured. I saw she was
innocent. I saw her in her car, parked in an indoor garage in the
dark of the last stall against the concrete wall. I saw her fix her
makeup after her crying had smeared her face. I saw the people she
worked with, high up on the other side of the tracks. I saw how she
lied to them, how she hid her sorrow, how she tried to be who she
never was or would be. I wanted to run after her and tell her that it
was all right, that I knew. So I tried not to look at faces. I crossed
41
under the tracks to look only at the traffic, only at the bodies of
people hurrying in the rain, only the stone faces of buildings, the
gleam of windows, the polished shine of the brass. Why had a door
to the sorrow of the world opened up in me?
I stopped for coffee in a busy place. I sat at the counter.
“Just coffee, please,” I said to the waitress whose nametag read
“Marie.”
I could not avoid her eyes. They were pale blue but unclear.
Her face was loosely locked, like she was. I was ill, but felt secure
there. Marie wouldn’t reveal anything to me. The coffee was weak;
I expected that, so I drank two cups. I had to put my hand over my
cup to stop Marie from filling it a third time.
Back outside the rain had stopped, and I couldn’t help
myself. I looked in most every face I passed. But it seemed like
maybe a protective veil had fallen when the sky brightened, because
now the faces I saw were just faces: they were plain or pleased or
haggard or selfish—nothing more. In my brain I supposed it had
been the coffee, and for all I knew it might have been, because I
now was walking with a spring in my step, even right through the
puddles. More of the women and men who rushed and just ambled
past me were smiling now that the rain had stopped, but the beauty
of the colored lights on the wet streets was gone with the sun. And I
guess I might have been smiling too as I walked through the crowds
on my way to the park between downtown and the lake, feeling like
whatever was wrong with me had maybe been cured.
And after a fifteen minute walk through the park, I thought
maybe I’d stop back at the hotel to see if I could still work that day,
and I sat down on a bench to think about it. The sun was warming
my face but when I closed my eyes I saw that woman again, clear as
day—the woman with the black umbrella who had been forced into
her life and saw no way out. And as soon as I saw her in my mind’s
eye, I collapsed inside and I knew couldn’t possibly go to work, that
the sun or the coffee or whatever it was hadn’t cured me at all, that
my wellness was a sham, that I’d been cheated, that everything I’d
discovered in my illness was terribly true and terribly real.
I walked quickly through the park in the direction of the
lake. I believed that when I came to the broad concrete walkway
with the cyclists and the joggers all passing behind me and the great
empty lake stretching off to the horizon, I’d be standing in the only
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THREE OF HEARTS
place in the city where a man like me can find peace. But who is a
man like me? How did I get to be this way? That’s what I’m
wondering as I’m hurrying across the park and finally come up to
edge, out of breath, the dark water just below my feet.
“Bernie?” I hear from behind me. “Are you all right?”
I turn and see Jolene, but not in her pink waitress uniform.
She’s in jeans and a Bears sweatshirt. “I thought you were going to
jump,” she says.
“No,” I say. “I’m taking the day off. I’m not feeling well.”
She stares at me. It seems like she can’t understand why
I’m there, or how she happened to find me. Then she says there’s a
bench there where I should come with her and sit for a while.
The bench Jolene leads me to is still wet with rain but warm
under the morning sun. I don’t care if I get my pants wet so I just
go and sit down. Jolene makes a fuss about the place she’s going to
sit and takes a tissue out of her purse to try to wipe it off. That
doesn’t do much good so I just change places with her. She thinks
this is funny.
“Do you know how to swim, Bernie?”
“No,” I said.
“You looked like you were going to jump in the lake.”
“I wasn’t.”
“But if you had, don’t you think it’s kind of wild that I
would have been right here to fish you out?”
“I wasn’t going to jump, Jolene. I’m just not feeling well.”
“I can tell you’re upset, and I’ve never seen this way before.
So there’re two strange things.”
Jolene’s Chicago Bears sweatshirt is white and has only a
small logo on it. It’s a nice sweatshirt, it looks expensive, dressy for
a football sweatshirt, but I’m looking at it to avoid talking about
what I don’t even want to think about. “Two strange things?” I say.
“Uh huh. Us meeting here by accident in a city of millions
of people and your being upset. Two strange things.”
“But this is a place where lots of people come to walk. It’s
a civic attraction,” I say, sounding gruff. “It’s not as strange as if
we met on a side street somewhere on the southwest side.”
“Bernie?” Jolene’s leaning over toward me on the bench,
looking all concerned. “What’s wrong? I promise I won’t tell
anyone at work. I won’t even tell Jack.” Then she tells me I’m a
43
person everyone comes to with their troubles so it’s easy to think I
don’t have any of my own, and that if I did, who would I talk to?
She might be right, but I don’t want to think about it.
Jolene’s worked in the coffee shop at the hotel for nine, maybe ten
years now. Her husband Jack works for the city up on utility poles
and he makes good money, but he and Jolene don’t have any
children so she works pretty much to give herself something to do
besides watch T.V and get fat, like she says, and she’s such a
friendly person that all the people she waits on love her. She makes
strangers happy every day.
“I sometimes still talk to Abby,” I tell Jolene all of a
sudden, which is true, and I’m surprised I haven’t thought of Abby
once since this trouble started.
“Does it help? Talking to her? Do you find comfort in
that?”
But I can’t answer. I’m just staring out at Lake Michigan,
which has little whitecaps out past the breakwater where the wind
must be stronger. Then I say some things I didn’t expect to say.
“I’m emotionally upset, Jo,” I blurt out. “I’m having ideas about
things I don’t know how to talk about. It would sound crazy. I feel
crazy.”
“Crazy? You’re the least crazy person I know, Bernie
Schmidt,” she says waging her finger at me. “But that’s probably
not what you need to hear right now, is it?”
“I can’t tell you what it is,” I say to her.
“That’s okay,” she answers. “I’m okay being the person
you can’t tell.”
What she says really doesn’t make any sense to me, because
I know how much she wants to be helpful. So either she’s lying,
which I doubt because that wouldn’t be like her, or she’s even more
big hearted than I knew. The thing is, though, I’m not sure if I can
get up off this bench and walk back into the city. It’s almost like
I’ve had a stroke or something like it because I feel immobilized. It
isn’t even so much my dream about being Oscar in another time.
It’s the woman with the black umbrella. And then I realize tears are
coming down my cheeks.
“Will you help me get home?” I ask Jolene.
And now I see she’s very worried about me and I don’t
know what’s best. “Sure. I’ll walk you home, okay?” she says.
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THREE OF HEARTS
“Or do you want me to go get my car? That’ll take a little while,
but I can go get it and pick you up right back over there if you like,
by the light, across the Drive?”
“Jo,” I say. “I haven’t got a friend in the world.”
She was starting to stand up, but she sat right back down
when I said this and took booth my hands in hers, like in the
movies. “You mean it’s like I said before, you’re everyone’s friend
but no one’s yours?”
I nodded. “Jo, I’m sixty-four years old, and for the first
time ever I’m scared of what’s happening to me. And I’m not even
sure if anything’s really happening or if it’s just going to go away.
But it’s beyond my power, Jolene, because I might be insane or I
might be blessed. And I can’t talk about it…”
“Are you having a religious experience, Bernie?”
I don’t know why I was so shocked to hear those words, but
I was. ”No, that’s not it,” I said, but I felt strength flowing back into
my legs. Then I told her walking would be fine.
And it was, all the way across Grant Park. I was feeling a
little badly about Jolene getting so far away from where she parked
on account of me, but I knew she’d ignore me and wave her hand at
me if I said anything about that. I looked at people we passed along
the way, and all of them seemed either empty or locked tight, but
once we crossed over Michigan Avenue back into the crowds I saw
something that changed it all.
It was another Hispanic person. It was a girl, or a young
woman, maybe—I’m too old to know what to call her, but she had
two children, little girls like Oscar’s little sisters. But it wasn’t the
little ones that touched me. It was the mother. Because in her face
was a well of sorrow so deep that I sank to my knees on the
sidewalk as if I was looking down into that well and got dizzy.
Jolene screamed, but the young woman came up to me and knelt
down and took both my hands like Jolene had on the bench and
started saying something to me in Spanish. “Padre!” is what she
said to me, and then more words I can’t remember. I had to turn
away from the girl and pull my hands loose, and even though I felt
weak I got back on my feet. Some people had gathered around by
then, but no one seemed to know what was going on until Jolene
told me the girl must think I’m her father, and someone said, no, she
45
thinks you’re her priest, and then I sat right back down on the
sidewalk.
“Someone call 911,” I hear Jolene say.
“No,” I tell her, but someone’s already calling.
Then I hear people say things like “Give him some air,”
which I’ve always wondered about when the stricken person is
outside in the open. But I’m not stricken, I’m just stunned, I think.
But Jolene’s kneeling down on the sidewalk next to where I’m
sitting, and she’s holding my hand again. But I’m not the one who’s
in trouble, I start to say when I realize that the girl and her children
are gone.
“Please let me stand up,” I say, not just to Jolene but to
another woman who’s trying to tend to me. “Where’s the girl?”
“What girl?” someone asked.
“The Mexican girl! The one with the children, the one who
called me her priest!”
And everybody looked around but the girl wasn’t there.
Jolene was the only one who’d had a really good look at her, and
even she didn’t see her leave. This gave me the chance to get back
on my feet though, and I admit I was a little shaky.
It isn’t long before the ambulance roars up, and it’s just
when I’m starting to feel even worse because it dawns on me that it
wasn’t sorrow I saw deep down in that well of the girls soul, but
fear. She was terribly afraid of something, and now she’d run away.
And even though I wasn’t her priest like she thought I was, maybe I
could have helped. But the paramedics are taking my blood
pressure and pulse and are asking me questions about my medical
history. And I keep trying to explain that I wasn’t the one with the
problem, but that doesn’t seem to be what they want to hear. So I
ask Jolene if she could go look for that Mexican girl her little
children, but she says she can’t leave me.
Then the paramedics try to convince me to come back to the
hospital for tests, and I have to raise my voice to them. “It’s not
me!” I say. “I’m just upset about someone else!”
The woman who seemed to be the one in charge and who
didn’t stand back like everyone else did when I shouted began
talking to me quietly then. She told me she’d feel best if I came in
for observation, but that I could do what I thought was right for me.
She said that either way, I should go to my doctor for a check up,
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THREE OF HEARTS
and that maybe I was having an anxiety attack, and that something
could be prescribed for me if it happened before or it should happen
again.
She was being very respectful, so I listened to her patiently,
but I knew she wouldn’t understand. I didn’t even bother telling
her anything more about the girl and how I thought they should try
to find her, because I knew tears were about to well up in me again
and I didn’t want to scare Jolene.
47
FELIX, THE ARTISTE
FELIX, THE ARTISTE
I guess you could say I’ve never had much luck with pets. My
parents never had them. I had a few turtles and goldfish and one
yellow canary that escaped and flew out the back door. Once when
I was in my early twenties and was living in an apartment by myself
in Chicago, I decided to get a cat. So I went to the pet store and all
they had were kittens so I took one of those. I asked them what else
I would need, so I also took home a cat box, litter, a few cat toys
and some food. I think the kitten was golden, but I’m not sure. I
put out its food and cat box and gave it dinner and then played with
it for a while before I went to bed. I remember being very tired. It
wasn’t long before the kitten was in my bedroom jumping at my
blanket every time I moved my feet, because my bed was just a
mattress on the floor. After a while this started to get annoying
because I couldn’t get to sleep, so I picked the kitten up and put it in
the other room. But the bedroom had no door on it, so the cat kept
coming back and pouncing at my feet. Finally I started kicking it
off, but maybe it thought that was some kind of game, because it
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wouldn’t stop. Then I closed it up in the bathroom with its litter
box, but it jumped at the door and scratched and meowed until it
was driving me crazy. I was pretty pissed off by then but I let it out
to give it one more chance. But it kept it up, it kept pouncing on the
bottom of my bed, so finally I just got up, pulled some clothes on,
picked up the cat and walked two blocks down the street and back
into an alley where I put the cat down, said, “Stay!” and walked and
then ran home. That was the end of the cat.
And that wasn’t the only lousy thing I did when I was
younger. While we were still in high school, I used to drive down
into Chicago with my rich suburban friends and taunt drunks on
Skid Row—which was on West Madison Street then. We’d pull up
along side the curb, maybe in a big white Lincoln convertible one of
my friends drove, and call a drunk over and ask if he wanted a beer.
He’d always say yes, but then when he did, we’d dump a beer all
the hell over him out of a big red soft drink cup we’d fill for just
that purpose. And we’d laugh and drive away. I also did some
pretty nasty things with a pellet gun. But that’s ancient history.
Just a year ago, though, when I had another apartment I
decided I wanted a dog. I’d been working as Maître d’ at
Bernardo’s for a few years already, and I went down to the humane
society, and asked for a dog that was due to be euthanized soon
because I liked the idea of saving an animal’s life. I had to choose
from three very deserving looking dogs which was hard, heart
wrenching, really, but I forgot about that once I went home with the
brown one with nice eyes and floppy ears that the woman at the
Humane Society said had a lot of Spaniel in him. I decided to call
him Fido because I believed that name came from the Latin root for
loyal.
As soon as we got in the apartment, I knew I wanted to take
him to the park to play. I was in a good mood. I was off that night,
and wouldn’t start to feel sick until the next morning. I had a box in
a closet with a football, a baseball glove, some skates, and a few
baseballs, softballs and others and an old beaten up Frisbee, which I
knew was the perfect thing for Fido. So we went to the park near
my apartment. It was a very big park with a public pool, long
expanses of green, and it was bordered on one side by a boulevard, a
street with a landscaped strip of lawn in between the lanes. I’m
pretty good with a Frisbee so I selected the longest unobstructed
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
strip of grass I could even though it was next to the road. There
was no way I was going to hook one to the left. And I didn’t, I
threw a perfect, long, high shot straight down the center of the
fairway. Fido knew exactly what to do and took off after it like a
natural born athlete and retriever. Just when I thought he ought to
slow down, however, just when he should have prepared for his
leap, he didn’t. He kept running and the Frisbee fluttered down just
behind him. But instead of turning to pick it up, he kept running,
and running, and then he angled over to the sidewalk along the
boulevard. And then he kept running down the sidewalk like he
knew where he was going; he stayed out of the street, but he kept on
running until he was out of sight. And I ran after him for a while
but never saw him again. I was so disappointed I just left the
Frisbee on the grass where it landed.
It was fifteen years between the dog and the cat, so it’s not
instant Karma, at least not on a human scale. I trust it more this
way, anyway. It seems it should take some time for all the pieces to
fall into place. So you see I did have a spiritual education even
though I don’t lead an exemplary life. I do know the answers, most
of them, in case you’re interested, but that doesn’t stop me from
hating what I hate, which is anything that restricts me. And I’m not
such an idiot to believe that restrictions are only imposed upon us.
No, I know the part I play and I play it well, but some day,
something’s got to give.
Once, around the time I had the cat, I got an appointment
with a man who was the head of a philanthropic foundation that
helped out creative people. I was and still am one of those. His
office was in a venerable old mansion in the best part of town. The
ceilings were high and the furnishings elegant. As soon as I sat
down he asked me if I wanted coffee, and I did, and then a young
woman far too well dressed and well maintained for the likes of me
brought it in. I couldn’t even imagine her with her clothes off.
Then he asked me outright what I wanted, and I said I wanted to be
free. He didn’t hesitate for a moment before he laughed at me, but
his laugh wasn’t derisive. No, it was more like the way you’d laugh
at a child. He asked what I’d done, which wasn’t much—just some
art and a little music—and he said he couldn’t give me freedom, I
had to earn it. Of course I was an idiot back then. I had lots of lofty
ideas, many of them flawed, but no experience with the travails of
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THREE OF HEARTS
maturity, nothing beyond the part-time job I had in a sleazy gift
store on the wrong side of the tracks—a job that I hated as
passionately as I hate what I do today. Then the beautiful
untouchable woman came back in and told him he had a phone call.
I finished my coffee long before he was off—and this asshole went
on having a personal conversation about what a terrible cold he had
as if no one were sitting in his office. I’ve seen rich and powerful
people do things like that a number of times since then and I
wholeheartedly despise them for it. And even though his laughter at
my desire for freedom was not unkind, he wasn’t entirely justified
in it. Because my answer is the same today. I want to be free. I
know what it means, now, I didn’t then, and I’m not sure whether
Mr. Foundation did either. Freedom is obviously a psychological
state. If he’d suggested that we might have had a nice conversation.
I don’t live in an apartment any more. I can’t afford it, so I just live
in a room, and not a very nice one either, but it’s in a nice house,
and the rent is low. There’s only one window in it and it looks out
on a wall of the building next door, but there are no windows to
look in, it’s just brick. If I crouch on the floor and stretch my neck I
can see a little slice of the sky, but the room’s not all that dark. The
building next door is painted white.
When I moved in here I wanted to make a new start in life.
I was now without a wife of five years, and that wasn’t symbolic at
all; that was real, but that I rid myself of all my own possessions
was strictly symbolic, strictly ceremonial magic. This room was
furnished with only a bed, a table and a chair. There was an old,
discolored yellow shade on the window, the kind that sometimes
rolls up with a snap and a flap that can startle you. I went and
bought sheets, a pillow, a quilt, and some towels and things for the
bathroom that was down the hall. I also bought a deep blue
tablecloth for the one table and an emerald green bowl to keep on it.
The window shade was so outstandingly ugly that I had to take it
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
down, buy a piece of deep blue material and a spring-loaded curtain
rod to drape it over.
There was something else in that room, something that you
hear about but rarely see, something that suggested deep sorrow and
desolation, but I fixed that up. I made a cylinder of cream-colored
musical manuscript paper and rigged it to fit safely around the bare
bulb that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room as the only
source of light. I had to try it, though—just for a while on the
evening before I put the paper shade up, so I sat in the straight-
backed chair at the cheap, old wooden table there with the bare bulb
hanging above me, and I did what one traditionally does in a rented
room with a bare light bulb hanging above: I contemplated suicide,
which is something worth contemplating. I’d suggest it to anyone
who believes they take life seriously.
Now that I’ve been in the room for a year, I’ve accumulated
a little money and enough possessions to occupy every lonely space
in it. The possessions have largely been gifts. A book case, two
framed prints—one Cezanne and one Chagall, a butterfly chair with
a red canvas cover, a deep red garage sale rug, a large round mirror
without a frame, a small antique table, a dream-catcher, books that
friends thought I couldn’t live without, candle sticks, candles and
more. I do have a number of friends. All this I supplemented with
numerous wooden wine cases of my choice, a fine wicker basket I
found set out in an alley one garbage day, a slightly damaged
modern floor lamp I found in the same alley on another Thursday, a
coat tree and a radio I bought at Goodwill, along with the few things
I need in the pursuit of my own artistic goals, fitful though that may
be at times.
Years ago, a little after the incident with the cat, I had a job in a
warehouse, a dusty old wholesale place that stored and shipped
lamps. I’d worked there for about a week and already hated it when
a Friday afternoon came along when there really wasn’t much of
anything to do. I was just sitting there, waiting for a shipment that
obviously wasn’t coming in that day, so I suggested I tidy up the
display room, a place I’d noticed was particularly unattractive. I
think I may have been under the influence of amphetamine; that
would account for volunteerism. The lamps in that room were set
out on a wall of receding shelves, five of them I think, like stadium
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THREE OF HEARTS
seats, but the lamps were placed poorly, many were hidden behind
others, and there with no consideration given to their sizes, shapes
or colors. So it was not only an ineffective display, it was artless.
And I was just the man to fix that up, because the lamps themselves
weren’t that bad. I spent about an hour doing the job, during which
I also dusted the shelves, lamps, and shades. I finally had it
arranged so that there was a sight line that showed off different
lamps from every place in the room, and with the largest ones in the
back and the middle, none was obstructed. At a few minutes before
five, the boss, who also owned the place and was the man who’d
hired me, strolled into the display room and before he even looked
at me started laughing.
“What the hell you think this is, an art gallery?” he said.
I didn’t answer, but no, that shit hole was no gallery.
“I don’t think you’re going to work out for me here,” the
boss added then, as if I should have known. “You’ll get your check
in the mail.”
It was on the previous Wednesday of that week that he’d
found me leaning against a stack of cartons surreptitiously jotting
down a phrase in a pocket sized book of manuscript paper. This had
pissed him off. The entire process, which he’d interrupted just at
the end, had taken a grand total of fifteen seconds. “Don’t let me
catch you doing you’re music lessons here again,” he’d said. I
didn’t try to justify myself. It was his place, after all. I felt wronged
by the world, not him. But apparently he felt moved to say a little
more to me that Friday afternoon after he’d made it clear that he had
no use for me or my sense of design.
“I hope you make the top forty,” he said, as I was leaving.
The top forty? I said to myself. The top forty? You stupid
fucker—you pathetic, stupid fucker. I hadn’t bothered telling him I
was getting married the next day. The marriage didn’t last all that
much longer than the job, though.
The top forty?
Exactly. Once, last year, my friends and I held a little concert series
at the restaurant. Upstairs, actually, where there’s a less formal
version of Bernardo’s. It’s another small place, but it’s on two
levels and in the middle of it, behind glass, is the big oven where the
baking’s done for both restaurants. There are white marble counters
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
in the showcase bakery too, and a baker working most of the time,
mixing dough in the big mixer with the revolving hook, or forming
loaves, decorating cakes, or pulling trays of croissants out of the
oven and setting them in rolling racks where everyone can see.
Also, on the main floor, there’s a little raised area in the front next
to a plate glass window with forest green café curtains on brass
hoops. It overlooks a street busy with pedestrian traffic, and it’s an
area big enough for two deuces, which are very desirable tables for
those who want to see and be seen.
For our concert series we took those deuces out, and in their
place we put chairs, music stands and musicians, three of them.
Among the best in town, too. Our friend, the conductor of The
Madison Chamber Orchestra, brought his little clavichord and two
associates on the first night, one with an oboe, the other with a cello.
After a free dinner, they started to play at eight and continued on
until ten. The people eating upstairs were mildly interested; several
of us downstairs—staff, not customers—were passionately
interested, so much so that we closed early and shooed out any
lingering guests so that we were able to be upstairs before the
musicians stopped, which was when I made a proposition to them.
Once the restaurant cleared out, they agreed to play for drinks, and
on that night what I offered was a jumbo bottle Grand Marnier, a
good orange flavored cognac given to me by a wine salesman.
They played only baroque music. Johann Sebastian Bach
and Georg Philipp Telemann, in particular. There were three
performers—up there in the window where two tables normally
were—and an audience of three, sitting up close to them and a little
below. What we had in common was our passion for music and our
rapid consumption of Grand Marnier. This was a music
appreciator’s great dream come true. Maybe this is how it was in
the court of an enlightened eighteenth century monarch—if I was
the monarch. Think of it! If we heard a passage we particularly
liked, they’d play it again; if we heard a phrase we liked, they’d
play it again, and again, or they’d play just two of the three voices,
or just one! We took the music apart if we pleased, and so did they.
And we drank to the oboe, we drank to the cello, we drank to the
clavichord—raucous toasts to the clavichord! We heard one
movement of a most beautiful Telemann sonata time after time,
stopping to repeat our favorite phrase, which had become the motif
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of the night. We lost track of time. By the time the evening ended
we, all six, felt like friends. How many people ever share that
particular intimacy? The series, known from that night on as the
“Grand Marnier Series,” was unfortunately short-lived. There was a
second concert but no more. Practical things, legal and others, got
in the way. The Telemann never made the top forty.
Of course, if I weren’t working here with my friends—
whose tastes and appetites are similar to mine—I’d never have been
able to tolerate it as long as I have, since my desire for freedom is,
as I’ve pointed out, insatiable. If it weren’t for my friends keeping
me indoors when I wanted to bust out, my former wife might have
dropped the ax even sooner than she did. Now it’s only my fear of
living in a homeless shelter that keeps me in my tux, and I’m
thinking seriously about that—my fear, I mean, about whether it’s
real or an illusion, and I’m siding with the later.
And I’ve been thinking a lot about my name, too, and how
ironic it’s been for me so far. When I was a little kid, I loved my
parents and listened to them. When I was a teenager, I hated them
and thought they were stupid. Once I became an adult, I could
tolerate them, but still didn’t consider them too bright. Particularly
my mother, who came up with my name. She claims to have known
what it meant—happy—but only as an afterthought, I’m sure. She
just liked the sound of it; which is okay, I suppose. I asked her once
if she knew what felicity meant and she didn’t have a clue. I didn’t
bother asking about felicitous, which means well-suited,
appropriate, a happy match. What I’m getting at is that so far Felix
has not been a felicitous name for me, at least not so far. Most
people wouldn’t give a shit about the meaning of their name, but
I’m one of the ones that does. My mother might have taken that
into account if she were a little smarter. And of course, there’s the
other thing. Her name is Mildred, which means mild threatener,
mildly severe. How about mildly retarded? Our last name is
Kotka—which, as I explained to my mother when I learned the
truth, is Polish for cat.
So I’m thinking of quitting this job and trying to live with
no money. And I’m calling it “my pursuit of happiness,” which is,
after all, my inalienable right. And living with no money means
living on the street. It doesn’t mean hanging out at friends’ houses,
or accepting money or food from anyone but strangers or charitable
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
organizations. It’s summer now, so if I go ahead and do it, I’ve got
a good few months to get accustomed to the life before I have to
retreat to a homeless shelter. So I feel I’ve got it pretty well figured
out. And there’s one thing more. Once out on the street there’s
only one practical artistic pursuit. Sure, it’s possible to draw, but
drawing isn’t necessarily portable, drawings can be damaged when
you’re sleeping on a grate—and anyway, I’m not that kind of artist.
I need a studio. And I suppose one could compose (which is
something I’ve done a good deal of), but that would be more
practical with a safe place to keep an instrument, and it would
preclude a piano. And writing out novels or even short stories in a
notebook you jam into your coat pocket is essentially undoable.
So is there homeless person’s art? There certainly is! And
what might that be? It’s poetry, of course, an art I’ve practiced in
the past, and with some success. I actually had a poem published in
a respected little magazine! And the homeless lifestyle might even
be conducive to poetic inpiration.
But I’m at work now. Greeting people at the bottom of the
stairs and greeting them graciously while in my inner dialogue
balloon (that balloon floating above my head with bubbles for a
stem) I’m telling them to go get fucked for coming in here at nine-
thirty on a Wednesday night. Where the hell do they think they are,
New York City? If they were, they’d be paying five times as much
for this dinner and they probably wouldn’t get past me without
being separated from a handsome tip. The trouble is there are six of
them, and they look like aggressive business types who won’t react
well if I try to shoo them out early. These folks are going to sit over
dessert, coffee and probably brandy until they’re good and ready to
go back to the hotel from which they seem to have come. Once ten
o’clock rolls around, we won’t let anyone else in, and I do have a
plan for ten o’clock. There’s only the new sous chef in the kitchen;
no one to complain if I break rules, so I’m going to open a cold
bottle of white Bordeaux I like, and make it disappear while I’m
waiting for the six jagoff hot shots to leave. I’ll probably be very
nice to them to, once half the bottle is gone. I’ll probably even
engage them in genteel conversation, maybe even witty
conversation. I do like people. But when entertaining them, I prefer
to be a little drunk. Is someone offering a job like that? It might
keep me off the street.
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THREE OF HEARTS
It’s at ten to ten that I open up my bottle of Graves and pour
myself a glass which I hide under the counter of my Maître d’
podium. Clare’s working again tonight and she’s someone I can
trust, so after I finish my first glass I offer her some, making her
promise to not let it be known to anyone on the other side of the
kitchen doors, and only to drink a little so I don’t have to open
another bottle. I add that I’ll buy her drinks after work over at
Nick’s. Her six people are having a good time at their round table
in the Fountain Room and I put on Scherezade because I know it’s a
piece that Clare likes, and after I finish my second glass, I realize
I’ve been a jerk so I call her over and pour her a tall one. She
appreciates this and tells me the customers will never know because
they’re all drunk already.
By the time it’s all over we’ve finished the second bottle
and roll into Nick’s in a pretty merry state. There’s never been
anything romantic between us, which makes us good drinking
partners. Nick’s is practically empty, though, and the only ones
there are old men like Nick himself. We both know what we’re
looking for is some high energy night life, and there are lots of
places to find that in this town. What do they say? Berkeley is the
Madison of the West? A crowd, loud music and an uninhibited gay
element is what we choose, and the Club de Wash isn’t that long of
a walk. We figure we’ll stop for another drink on the way if our
spirits are lagging behind us somewhere on the street.
It’s on the walk over down the very wide and tree lined
West Washington Avenue that I tell Clare that I’m considering
becoming a poet in the streets.
“Oh, that’s a great idea!” she says. “You’ll be our
Rimbaud! Didn’t he live in the streets of Paris?”
I tell Clare I think I’m more of a mystic than Rimbaud, and
don’t really know where he lived, but feel a little hurt that she seems
so wholeheartedly in favor of the idea without showing any concern
for my wellbeing. It is a risky proposition, after all. She thinks I
have the spirit for it, that’s fine, I expected that, but… But then she
goes on:
“And if you find you absolutely can’t stand it, you can come
to our apartment and we’ll never tell you we told you so.”
Now that’s more like it, I’m thinking. That’s the kind of
back-up I’ll need. The “we” she’s talking about includes her
57
FELIX, THE ARTISTE
husband, David, who’s going to be meeting us at the Club de Wash,
and who’s someone else I’d trust with my soul, something I feel
pretty generous about now that I’ve had a bottle of French wine and
one British gin and tonic. I do like the English. We don’t feel we
need to stop for a drink, though, Clare and I, we’re feeding off each
other’s high spirits now, and we know what it will be like to enter
the Washington Hotel. It’s like opening Pandora’s other box—the
one Dionysus slipped her on the sly, the one with all the excellent
vices in it: reckless, unrestrained, frenzied, orgiastic, drugged,
drunken fun. That’s what’s sealed inside the doors of the Club de
Wash on a good night. All you have to do is open the door a crack
and it seeps right out into the street.
I remember being very, very friendly with some people I didn’t

really know, people whom I told a good deal about my life, some of
it true, but I have no idea how I got home last night. There’s a good
chance I walked because it’s not far. When I wake Thursday I have
no money in my pocket (I didn’t have much to start out with, so no
great loss), no apparent bruises or aches (so probably no spills
taken), and (woe is me) no cigarettes. The one ashtray in my room
is empty, but not the wastebasket I emptied it into, where I’m able
to dig out three dry butts, one impetuously snuffed out nearly-
pristine-whole-cigarette with one slight tear near the end which I
mend with cellophane tape with a practiced precision. I don’t feel
hung over, which is dangerous. And I have the night off, which is
also dangerous. There could be a very bleak Friday morning
looming in my future. But it would take more of a fool than I am to
worry about that now. I’ll opt for the happy fool, Felix the Fool, a
bit unsteady on my feet, but securely buckled down to my soul, and
I grab what’s necessary and go down the hall brush my teeth,
shower, and plan the day’s festivities.
I’m feeling unreasonably good when I come back to my
room, but just in case, I pop one of the mega-painkillers left over
from a dental calamity. I also check my stash, something I’m
paranoid about. But it’s there: an “Altoids” tin nearly full of
excellent marijuana from God knows where, someplace exotic, I
think. It’s not yet eleven in the morning and I don’t have to be at
work until four o’clock tomorrow, and I might even be able to do
something about that if I really need to, because someone owes me a
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THREE OF HEARTS
favor. So Felix the Fool is living up to his name, and Felix
calculates that this much—a morning like this—might be possible
even while living the street. I said I’d never take food or money
from friends, I didn’t say anything about a little weed or an
occasional bottle of Bubbly.
I dress in a purple tee shirt, khaki shorts and sandals, and
feeling no pain (even the beginning of a buzz) I leave the house with
two destinations in mind, both close: the convenience store with the
cash machine and cigarettes, and a coffee house. Though coffee
makers aren’t allowed in the rooms, I still make coffee in mine, but
I’m becoming a coffee snob, and look down on my own brew.
What I’ll do is have a cup at Boston Blacky’s while I look out the
window at all the poor suckers going to work or school, and the buy
a jumbo when I leave and pour it into the thermos I’ll bring along.
That’ll be good for two more cups at home to launch me into a
perfectly normal day—which in my book (which I’m yet to write
out in full) means a perfectly unencumbered day, a perfectly free
day. Which reminds me of that asshole, Mr. Foundation, whom I
now realize must have been scthupping that high maintenance chick
in his office.
Well, good for him, I guess.
So I do all those things. The only problem being that here
in the national capital of political correctness there’s no smoking in
coffeehouses. It’s hard to get a bigger stick up your ass than that,
but I open my pack of Camel straights anyway, tap a few out so they
show like in an old cigarette ad, and put it on my table just to make
a statement and possibly alarm some non-smoking wuss who
happens to see it there.
When I get home after all that, I take a moment to remind
myself of what I’m planning to do that day, and in light of my
probable future, I opt to forego pen and paper and use my
typewriter—I still am at home, after all, so I may as well accept its
comforts. And by the time noon arrives I’m truly lit, my cigarettes
seem to be smoking themselves, I’m in harmony with whatever
forces are governing me, and by the two in the afternoon, I’ve got a
poem to show for it:
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
Humble citizen of the mystery,

Turn to your father and your shadow,
Your mirror and beloved;
Honor death and turning,
Yet never hear a voice
A crystal clearer than your own.
Turn for guidance to the stars,

To ancient virtue, prudence, folly,
Honor gods and words of gods,
Yet never know a vision burning
Brighter than the guise
In which the world appears to you.

There is nothing beyond this:
Every moment is a wedding
And a wedding and a child.
And I like those last two lines because they’re enigmatic,

not easily synthesized, a little bewildering, just like the real thing, it
seems to me: Every moment is a wedding, and a wedding and a
child—as if every moment is itself and mysteriously more. Like
many of my poems, this one doesn’t necessarily reflect the grittiness
of my life as I live it, but the sense of self to which I aspire—the
ideal, Platonic version of myself, we’ll call it. That’s the kind of
poet I am. Some people frown on that, usually people of little faith,
I’ve discovered. But in any case, this new poem makes me feel I’m
on one of my rolls, so I’m down in the big communal kitchen where
I’ve got a bottle of good French Champagne a wine salesman gave
me stashed away in a paper grocery bag. When I’m back in my
smoky cloudbank of a room, I open a window, and feeling happier
than is probably legal in many states, I open the bottle of bubbly
like the trained maître d’ that I am: holding the cork, turning the
bottle and releasing it with only the slightest of pops. Then I drink
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THREE OF HEARTS
it, line for line, down to the last drop, leaving this in its place, a
pretty little lyric.
Her eyes at the window are filled with a tree

that is filled with the wind that is dark with the sun.
It is evening now, all dark over turning,
moment by minute and inch over mile.
Her eyes at the window are lost in a tree,

it is wide over small among amber and green.
It is evening now, wide among silver,
deep as a forest of purple, or roses,
or children alive in a story of amber,
lost in a forest of purple and green.
Her eyes at the window are lost in a moment:

Twelve days wed with twelve nights burning,
wide as a wish among forests of meaning,
dark as a kiss on a wish of goodnight.
Pretty fucking good, I say to myself. Sweet and ripe! But

it’s not night like I said in the poem, not yet, I just made that up, and
I’ve been inside long enough. My ashtray runneth over, my
Champagne bottle awaits a bright bouquet snatched from someone’s
garden, my typewriter’s still steaming and needs to cool down, so,
after changing into evening clothes (same shirt, but long pants, and
pristine white socks under same sandals) I hit the street. As I
consider what I’ve just done, I’m impressed: two poems in a day
after a year off is, after all, unprecedented. So I roll merrily down to
the square and stop up at the bar of a second floor restaurant that
another old friend runs, and sit there with iced espresso to get my
earth legs again. It’s a little after five and I’m wondering whether
I’m good for anymore today. There’s something going on in my
brain about
A rose-white city on a distant shore,

Where the wishes of eternity are folded into flowers…
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
but I don’t know, sometimes if they don’t come in a lump, the
pieces will never fit together as well as if it had. I like to think
about Handel and those blazing three weeks of his when he put his
Messiah on paper, or the last few weeks of Schubert’s life when he
wrote those three great sonatas and I don’t remember what else.
Direct, unstoppable inspiration. Maybe that’s what it means to
“never hear a voice a crystal clearer than your own.”
But I’m afraid that’s not me: I’m just a clod sucking
caffeine. It’s not me yet, I mean, because I do expect that kind of
life. If I didn’t, what kind of a fool would I be? Not one with a
capital F, I can tell you that. Speaking of a capital F, there’s a
waitress here named Gretchen whom I think I like and who I’d
really like to have a go at. It doesn’t look like she’s on tonight,
though. Maybe she’s the reason I came in here. Maybe she’s the
one I was writing about, maybe it’s her eyes at the window. I’d like
that. These things do come from someplace, you know.
So I sit for a while halfway between inspiration and
something approaching normalcy. Don’t get me wrong, some of my
best work’s been done with nothing circulating through my blood
but my own God-given chemicals, and I imagine if I had the God-
given time I deserve, these high octane passion fests would be only
occasional. Like holidays, or Saturdays, maybe. It’s about this time
my friend who’s the proud proprietress of this classy joint asks me
if I wouldn’t prefer some Cognac in my iced espresso. If I were a
wise man, which I’m not, I’d look at every human approach as an
offering from the cosmos—anyone who writes the stuff I do ought
to know this. But I, in my ignorance, am more selective, I turn
things away all the time, but this particular offer seems to be coming
directly to me from the mouth of God through his chosen
messenger.
“Save the Cognac, sweetheart,” I say. “Brandy’ll be fine.”
Of course, I don’t ordinarily call her sweetheart. Just when
I feel like I’m in an old film, and just when I’m on vacation. In fact,
I’ve never called her sweetheart, except once maybe, when I meant
it in a different way. She looks at me curiously.
“I take it Gretchen’s not here tonight,” I say to her, for the
first time expressing my interest.
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THREE OF HEARTS
“No,” she says, her brow furrowing. “She was on last night
but she didn’t show up, and her roommates don’t know where she
is.”
“That doesn’t seem like her,” I say, though I really don’t
have much to base that on, except an equal mixture of Champagne,
caffeine, goodwill and lust.
But then the phone rings.
“Good evening,” Odessa says, “L’Etoile.” She listens for a
moment, says something or other, pushes the hold button and dashes
upstairs to her office, but not before giving me her old-soul-barrel-
of-fun look, and telling me to let the bartender know that the drinks
are on her tonight. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe it. She must be
possessed. I stand up and stretch. If I weren’t in the bar of the best
restaurant in town, overlooking the State Capitol and all, I’d shout
something out in an unknown tongue, something exuberant and
celebratory, about how much I love my friends, and how much I
love having so damn many of them. But instead I slip down the
stairs and out onto the street and around a corner to have a hit on my
little one hitter I brought along just in case. After that I take a few
deep breaths of warm evening air then and pop a couple of Altoids
to mask the evidence, before bounding back up the carpeted stairs.
Just then the bartender returns. I ask him for another of the same
but with brandy this time, and slip a ten on the copper bar.
“She told me it was on her,” he says.
“I know, man,” I say. “That’s for you.” Apparently I’m
intoxicated.
I’m thinking that if I lived on the street I wouldn’t be able to
come up to L’Etoile for iced espresso with brandy, or iced anything
for that matter. Because, 1) I wouldn’t have the money, 2) I might
be dressed in rags, and 3) My lack of personal maintenance might
cause offence. But so? I’d wake every day knowing that was I
restricted only by my own lack of imagination. I don’t know where
I’d wake, but homeless people in this politically correct town don’t
normally freeze to death or find themselves breakfast for foot long
rats. But I do wonder how a voluntarily homeless person would be
viewed and treated by the others, all of whom have been touched by
trouble if not tragedy. Would I be seen as taking advantage of the
charity that helps them? Would I be an outcast among outcasts?
Would I have to lie, to fabricate a story of hard luck to justify my
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
position in the dinner line at the Salvation Army? Shit! I hadn’t
thought of this. It takes the edge off of my expectations. I suppose
it will require some clearheaded consideration. Screw that! That
might change everything. I finish my drink and leave.
It’s just now getting dark, and the feel and mystery of the
darkness buoys my spirits back up after that troubling confrontation
with a possible version of reality. So I try to shake that off, and I
try to walk without touching my feet to the sidewalk, to feel like
that, I mean. To have the buoyancy of a feather. I try to walk in
perfect silence, even in my mind where words so tenaciously hold
court. And I try to walk without being seen. It’s warm and the
wind’s calm tonight, so it should be easy to be invisible, to be seen
through. And I remember my flying dreams now. I usually don’t,
not when I’m out walking. Because in those dreams I know that all
it takes to fly, to spring off the ground with one simple step is the
surety that it can be done. I know that’s a message of promise—
from where or from whom I don’t know. Some say dreams are real
events on other planes. I don’t think I buy that. Some say that
they’re messages from our spirit guides. I don’t think I buy that
either. But I believe the promise. Just seeing how I cling to my
uncertainty is proof enough that people can fly. To shed that
uncertainty would be miraculous—and there you have it. Or there I
have it, I don’t know about you, even as generous as I’m feeling
right now.
When I unlock my door I remember that when I went out I
left the one window wide open and the fan on full tilt, just so I’d be
able to walk into this place and have it feel cool and soothing and
darkly alive. I kick off my sandals, strip off my socks, change back
into shorts and sit back at my typewriter. I empty the ashtray, light
a Camel and begin. But there’s nothing much there. I pour myself
a glass of the cold white wine I’d been saving along with the
Champagne. There’s still that crap about the wishes of eternity
folded into flowers, and something new about listen to the flutter of
the night moth’s wings, but I’m not about to be fooled by the allure
of more than I’ve got coming. And I’ve suffered a disappointment
in thinking I might be rejected as inauthentic by the homeless, so the
wind’s already out of my sails, which is no state to be trying to
make art. So my only option is sleep, which might not be so easy
considering the quantity of caffeine still coursing through my veins.
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THREE OF HEARTS
So even today’s a fucking compromise. Listen the flutter of the
night moth’s wings—yeah, fuck that too.
I wake up feeling pretty good, maybe because I fell asleep early. I

feel good for about twenty seconds, actually, until I remember I
have to be at work at four this afternoon. It seems to me that my
best option is to go back to sleep, but I’m going to have to get down
the hall to the bathroom before I can do that. Whatever happened to
chamber pots? And of course once I’m out and down the hall, sleep
may no longer be possible. It’s only when I get up that I remember
that I’m a practicing poet again, but I’m sure as hell not going to
look at what I wrote yesterday, because if I do, I might find
something wrong. Rather than facing reality, you see, I prefer to
spend a few days with a fantasy of creative perfection. Yeah, that’s
the way it is. I’m glad I’m not still a painter with a big-ass
canvass’s to stare back at me. In a few days, when the planet’s spun
a couple of times and maybe some of my cherished ideas about
myself have been flung off and away, I’ll look at it again and be
able to correct anything that’s doesn’t seem right. But I’m not about
to go trampling through my sweet dreams this morning.
When I get back from the bathroom, I’m starting to feel a
little sick, but I think that’s just because I’m hungry, so I go
downstairs to make myself a sandwich. So far, the people in this
house are pretty good about not stealing food. They’re not too good
about being absent from the kitchen when I go in there, however.
They’re all younger than I am, students and student types, and the
most annoying one is drinking tea down there when I shuffle in.
I’ve got nothing against lesbians, I like lesbians, but I don’t like
pushy, man-hating, anti-smoking, vegan lesbians, which is one of
the possible ways to classify Tina, and the one I usually choose. If I
had any bacon in my part of the big fridge I’d cook it now just for
her. She’s already narced on me for my illegal bedroom coffee
maker.
“Good morning, Tina,” I say.
“Oh, hello,” she says. “The whole house stinks from your
smoking yesterday.”
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
“I doubt that,” I reply. “It must just be your sensitive
nostrils.”
What I don’t say is “It must be your sensitive pussy sniffing
nostrils,” because that really doesn’t have anything to do with it,
does it? And as I said, I like lesbians; I like anyone who breaks the
mold. And as I expected, Tina shuts up now and fumes (so to
speak) at me in silence. The non-resident owner of the house
smokes himself, so the place is not about to be converted beyond the
existing NO SMOKING in the kitchen and bathroom and stairs and
hall. And I even heard from him that Tina herself used to be a
smoker, but I’ve never chosen to bring that up. Maybe I’m saving
it.
I am making a ham sandwich for myself there in the kitchen
with her, and wonder if there’s a way to accidentally slip a piece of
ham down her shirt. But I suspect that would be classified as an
assault. I do know what to expect from Tina, though—once I’ve
finished making my sandwich, I mean. It’s her well known counter
cleaning obsession. Even when meat never touches the counter, as
is the case this morning, when the meat goes straight from the
package to the bread which is seated securely on a plate, she’ll say,
as sure as the sun will rise: “I hope you cleaned that counter.”
So I’m already pissed. I’m pissed because I’m not asleep
and I’d like to be; and because I may be a little hung over but I’m
not sure, but I am sure that I have to go to work later, and I’m
thinking of this sanctimonious man-hater bruiser saying, “I hope
you cleaned that counter.” And then she does it, but worse: “I do
hope you cleaned that counter,” she says. So I guess I got a little
out of line.
“C’mere,” I say. “Look.” My sandwich is already made
but I’ve kept one slice of ham out and I wipe the counter thoroughly
with it, enough so the slice starts to fall apart. “Hmmm. Did I miss
any places?” I ask her. And then I take the ragged piece of pink pig
meat over to the table where she’s sitting and give the spot right
around her teacup a thorough wiping as well. And then I leave it
there sitting in front of her. And she just seems to sink back into
herself for a moment, and then, like a human sledge hammer, she
punches full force me in the stomach.
And I’m down on the kitchen floor sure I’m going to die,
which is the way you feel with the wind knocked out of you, but
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THREE OF HEARTS
that’s no consolation to me at the time. My sandwich is also on the
floor, which even in my death throes seems the greater offense.
Tina’s just sitting there.
Now I’m not the kind of person who’s going to complain
about this to anyone because I did provoke her and enjoyed doing
that completely. As I was trying to get back on my feet, I actually
felt a certain fondness for her because of what she’d done, and—and
don’t ask me why—the first desire ever had to see what she looked
like with her clothes off. And then I saw she was crying!
Unbelievable! Of course I didn’t know why she was crying, and
crawling around picking my sad, scattered sandwich remains
seemed far more important than finding out why. And I don’t know
why I was so concerned about cleaning that up either, but I even
found myself vaguely reassembling the scattered mess as a
sandwich before I threw it in the garbage—I say vaguely because
the order was screwed up, with lettuce on the outside where the
bread should have been holding it all together.
I knew Tina was watching me pick it up, and I could hear
her sniffling a little, too. But by the time I was back on my feet I
had enough wind to react more appropriately to the situation.
“A bit of an over-reaction, don’t you think?” I said.
“You’re such an asshole,” she said. “What do you think?
That just because I’m strongly principled my feelings can’t be
hurt?”
And I had to say, she did have a point there. So I said I was
sorry. And so did she, actually, but I couldn’t help feeling I came
out looking at the wrong end of the dog. But then when I started to
make another sandwich, she got down on the floor to clean up the
mayonnaise and any remaining meat molecules and told me that
she’d pay for the lost food if I liked. I found this quite moving.
“No, forget it,” I said. “Maybe someday you can make me
nice cucumber sandwich.”
“Not a chance,” she said, and got up and left the kitchen,
forgetting to take her teacup off the table. When I got back upstairs
with my sandwich, I felt like I’d made a new friend.
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
Any expectations of getting through the day hangover-free were
dispelled as soon as I walked into the restaurant. I don’t know the
controlling physiological hangover mechanism but suspect that it
can have an emotional trigger, because once I got to the bottom of
the stairs I felt both queasy and as if my nervous system were laid
bare. My first glance at the reservation sheet sickened me further.
The bookings looked as if they were made by that chimpanzee who
for nearly all eternity types but does not recreate the entire works of
Shakespeare. Serious rearrangements of tables would be necessary
to prepare for the hordes that descending the stairs at 7:00 and then
at 7:30, and it was 4:01 and no one else was here. So I started
taking the chairs down off the tables myself hoping the exercise
would ease my suffering and maybe even give me insight into how
to seat the reservations taken by the chimpanzee who’d apparently
forgotten how to say, “Would 7:15 be all right, sir?” Or “We could
seat you at 7:45, ma’am.”
When I had all the chairs down and none of the three
waitresses had shown up, I poured myself a glass of club soda,
dropped a lime wedge into it and sat down to study the reservation
sheet, but the thought of even one person not showing up filled me
with such anguish that I had to start calling them. And apparently
the Arch-Fiend himself had a hand in organizing this late Friday
afternoon for me, because no one was home at any of the numbers I
called, there was no one to tell me, “Oh, she got started a little late,
but she should be there by now.” It was only 4:11 now, and there’d
still be time to set up, but I couldn’t help thinking the worst so I
called someone else who can sub sometimes to see if she was
around. Then I hear both Clare and Kathleen coming down the
stairs, so I hang up.
“Are you mad because we’re late?” Clare asks.
“No,” I say, which is true. “I wasn’t mad, I was worried.”
“You look pale,” Clare says.
“I am pale,” I answer. “Where do you think Willow is?”
“She’s not in until 4:30, remember? Thanks for taking our
chairs down.”
It takes about twenty minutes to get the reservations arranged so that

no one gets slammed between 7:00 and 8:00—that is if all the
parties come in just on time—and when I’m finished I help setting
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up the tables. We open at 5:00. The first reservations are at 5:30.
By six I’ve had two cups of coffee and feel like everything might be
okay as long as I keep looking at the reservation sheet every thirty
seconds or so. When the three 6:45 tables are late and come in at
7:00 with all the 7:00 reservations who are right on time, I walk
back into the kitchen and tell the chef that something very bad may
be about to happen. On the way back out I see that my new busboy
who should be busting his ass doing something or other is talking to
the guy who’s doing dishes.
“Jesus!” I say to him. “Fold napkins! Prep settings! Get
out there and see if you can get a jump on something! Man, don’t
stand in here talking! It’s Friday night!” And I just rush past him
without waiting for a reply.
When I’m back out on the floor I see my wine-steward
(who does all the wine on busy nights but also acts as a host) seating
a deuce in the wrong place. This is because I didn’t remember to
make the appropriate two-way-arrows on the reservation sheet,
which is actually a map. So one of the waitresses just got three
tables at once, and that’s only the beginning of the problem. This is
a very small restaurant. The people who have flooded down the
stairs to wait for tables are getting in the staff’s way. Waitresses
with trays of straight-from-the-broiler “French Onion Soup” are
being jostled; there’s a big crowd of customers jammed up around
the dessert display in the Fountain Room; and the busboy, who now
suddenly has a full busbin of dirty dishes can’t get through the
crowd that’s trying to squeeze up past the maître d’ stand that I’ve
vacated because I’m trying to seat a party of six at two dueces
pushed together. The most troubling thing about all this is that
within a matter of minutes, the wine steward and I will have seated
all the tables, and all will seem well, but that will be an illusion, a
disturbing illusion, because many of these happy customers attended
to by gracious waitresses, may within a half hour or forty-five
minutes be angry, snarling customers who don’t understand why
their food isn’t up yet, attended to by testy, frantic, or nearly
hysterical women, who themselves are being badgered by dangerous
cooks and a suicidal maître d’.
And then at 8:00 there’s another wave, not quite so bad but
compounded by four jerks who stroll in without a reservation, and
who, after being told I’d have a table for them in about twenty
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
minutes, begin to point at some reserved ones and start in with:
“What about that table? What’s wrong with that one?” Well, as
you might imagine, my inner dialogue balloon is full to bursting, but
what brings me to the brink is the way these guys are walking
around the place checking things out. The kitchen is behind
because of the 7:00 thing, and the waitresses haven’t quite come out
of it either. And there’s another group oogling the desserts and
blocking passage through that room, and then one of these bozos—
jocks, I’d say from the look of them—pulls out a chair from a set
table right behind the dessert jam up and sits his broad ass down on
it.
This awakened my fury.
So as it turns out we have four fewer guests that night than
we might have. The confrontation with and ejection of the offending
customer was hushed and terse, but I was literally shaking after it,
and I’m afraid this was evident to all those around me including the
ill-mannered jock himself.
Once all the eight o’clocks are down, I should be feeling
better, but I’m still upset by the stress of uprooting that idiot from
the chair in the middle of the crowded fountain room and everything
that followed, and there is still table management to be done
because of two big groups at 8:30. I make a partially successful
attempt to clear my mind and focus on the problem, which I solve in
a way that might make everyone happy, or then again it might not.
If I had a rat’s ass to give, I wouldn’t give it.
“You’re looking even paler now,” Clare says as she passes
by me carrying a little round tray with two very pretty desserts on it.
“I’m not surprised,” I answer as she trails off. But then she
stops and comes back to where I’m standing. “We’re all proud of
you,” she says. “For the way you handled that.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say, surprised.
“You deserve a drink,” she says, laughing as she walks
away again.
I believe she means a drink after work across the street at
Nick’s. But considering what the night’s been like, I feel deserving
right now, so I pour myself a snifter of V.S.O.P. and conceal it
under the maître d’ stand, my podium. What I don’t know is that
Bernardo himself, as in “Bernardo’s Restaurant” where I happen to
be working at the moment, is not only on the premises but about to
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enter the dining room through the kitchen door directly to my left
just as I take my first slug of Cognac.
“You know I don’t allow drinking on the job,” he says to
me, which isn’t always the case—only when he chooses to enforce
it. “And particularly if you’re going to be losing me business while
you’re doing it.”
Bernardo is a decent sort, and quite easy to deal with for the
fiery Italian that he is. For the last few years he’s left the most of
the management of the place up to two of us: to Scott, the Chef, for
the kitchen; and me, the maître d’ for the dining room. This
included all the hiring, firing, ordering, scheduling, and the myriad
details of restaurant operation. And since the place makes good
money, he doesn’t meddle. But apparently he knows Mr. Broadass
whom I’d booted out of the place; he’d run into him in the upstairs
restaurant. And he, being the owner and a fine cook in his own
right, but never an employee in the trenches, is of the opinion that
the customer was always right, a notion that anyone who’d slogged
it out with the public on a regular basis for an extended period of
time would roll their eyes at.
“I just poured this drink,” I say, “because of the jackass I
had to deal with down here.”
Then he tells me he wants to talk to me after my shift, and I
finish my Cognac in a gulp as soon as he rounds the corner.
“What he said,” I told Clare across the street at Nick’s, “was that
he’d been thinking of taking some maître d’ shifts in order to get a
‘feel for the pulse of the business.’ And I said, ‘What do you
mean?’ And he said that he’d heard that I’d been abusing the
privileges I had there, and that tonight he saw it for himself, so he
was going to cut a few of my shifts and take them on himself.”
“Where were you sitting?” Clare asked.
“We were at table twelve, and all the rest of the chairs were
already up, and the lights were up too, so it was looking pretty bleak
down there.”
“You’re shaking, Felix,” Clare said.
“Yeah, I am. Because I told Bernardo that if he was
interested in some of my shifts he might as well take them all and
go fuck himself while he was at it.”
“You didn’t!”
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
I shrugged and nodded.
“What did he say?”
“He actually said something in Italian at first. Just two
words, which I can’t remember. Then he said, ‘It’s been good
working with you, Felix, but it’s obviously time for a change, for
both of us.’ Then he poured me another cognac and left. So I
guess I’m going to be your Rimbaud earlier than you expected,
Clare. I don’t think I could have dealt with another week of it down
there in that place, anyway…”
“But Rimbaud died at thirty-seven, I looked it up.”
“I’m thirty-seven.”’
“I know. So I’m thinking you might think twice about
this.”
“I’ve already thought twice, Clare.”
“That’s what I thought you were going to say,” she said,
and looked at me with the kind of sisterly concern that was exactly
what I needed at that moment.
I didn’t stay at Nick’s for long, because I wanted to get up to the bar
at L’Etoile before the place closed down to see if Gretchen was
there. I was feeling adventurous, and just having quit my job and
opened my future up to the unknown, the thought of making a move
for a lovely young creature like Gretchen seemed perfectly
appropriate, as if propriety were in any way germane to my recent
behavior. And as soon as I climbed the stairs up to the restaurant I
saw that she was indeed there. She was sitting at the bar, though,
not working, and she was alone and wearing sunglasses and
whispering to Odessa who was pouring her a glass of wine.
The most accurate way to describe the action of my heart at
that moment is to say it leapt. Looking around, I saw the restaurant
was empty. “Am I too late to join you?” I asked as I walked up and
sat down next to Gretchen.
“No,” Odessa said. “I’m glad you’re came in. Our
Gretchen here has had a rough time of it and she can probably use a
gentleman’s company.”
Again the woman’s possessed, I’m thinking. “I’m paying
for this,” I say putting some cash on the bar as Odessa pours me a
glass of something red, and then walks back into the kitchen.
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THREE OF HEARTS
“Jesus!” I say as Gretchen lifts her glasses for me and I see
her black eye. “Are you okay? Does that hurt?”
“Yeah, I’m okay, and it doesn’t hurt any more,” she says.
“I hope you don’t mind if I take these off.”
“No. No, not if you don’t. It’s dark in here.”
“There were people here before, and…”
“Sure, I know. People are funny about that kind of thing.
Even about bandages. Have you noticed how people always ask
what happened if you’ve got a bandage on? Like if they can see it
they have a right to know? So what if you hurt yourself doing
something violent or criminal? Or what if it was a sexual injury?”
“It’s not a sexual injury,” she smiles. “A guy hit me.”
“No way! I mean, I believe you but… is he behind bars
now?”
“He’s not in town anymore.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Someone else did.”
“God, I’m sorry,” I say. “You seem so nice. So… I mean
it’s hard to believe anyone would hit you.” I find myself staring at
her. “...But I know people are awful sometimes, and that anyone
can get hit, and that no one should be. But, uh… did you hit him
back, this jerk?”
Here she smiles again. She happens to have perfect teeth to
go along with her brown eyed, blond haired, farm-girl good looks.
If it weren’t for a certain sharpness to her features, she’d looks like
the cheerleader who just won the County Fair blue ribbon for her 4-
H project yearling calf. But she has a bit of the bird of prey in her
beautiful face. “Actually, I hit him first,” she says.
“Whoa!” I say. “Am I in danger here? A woman already hit
me today.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not. But I had it coming. I hope he did too.”
“What did you do to get hit?”
“I’m not going to tell you. Odessa said I was a gentleman
and I wouldn’t want to tarnish my image. Let’s just say I taunted
her about her political correctness, but I hurt her feelings, and I’m
sorry about it.”
Gretchen takes a sip of her red wine. “You know, you’re
going to have to tell me at some point.”
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FELIX, THE ARTISTE
Again, the leaping heart. How lucky am I getting? “Oh, I’ll
be happy to tell you if I get to know you better,” I answer, starting
to tremble a little. “Once you get to know that I really am a
gentleman—when it comes to gentle women. This was not a gentle
woman, and I did behave badly. So why did you hit this creep?”
She took another sip of wine and stared down at the copper
covered bar for a moment. “He’s someone I’ve known for a long
time and who I’ve had an on and off thing with, starting back in
high school. And we did some pretty crazy stuff together. And
two days ago he told me that he’d told someone else I know all
about it—the crazy stuff—like that was funny or something, and I
couldn’t believe he’d share something so private, and I just sort of
lost it and slapped him. It wasn’t like he was a stranger or anything,
he was almost like someone in my family. I thought. Then I told
him to take me home from where we were, and when we got in his
car he hit me on the back of my head, and when I started crying he
slapped across the front seat with the back of his hand and hit my
eye. And I couldn’t believe this person I’d know so well was trying
to hurt me… I couldn’t believe it”
“Do you mean he wasn’t just mad because you slapped
him?”
“No. He kind of laughed when I slapped him. It was
something else. It just came boiling up. Maybe it’s because we’re
not together anymore. Maybe he’d been saving things up. He said
awful things. It was sick….” She shook her head, then smiled
again. “So, now that I’ve brightened your evening…”
“But wait a second. What’s to prevent him from going after
you again? I mean, I know it’s not my business, but still, I don’t
want you getting hit again.”
“You don’t?”
“Yeah, you know what I mean, don’t you?”
Gretchen nodded. “I’ve been staying with a friend he
doesn’t know. He’s going back to Iowa, anyway, and I’ve got a can
of pepper spray on my person at all times. You want to see it?”
“No, that’s okay. I’m feeling accident prone today.” I
finished my wine. “Do you want to go out someplace?” I asked.
“Yeah, but…” she pointed to her eye.
“Do you have any idea how good you look in those
glasses?” I asked then.
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THREE OF HEARTS
This essentially stopped the conversation. Odessa returned
at this point, and seeing us silent with empty wine glasses, asked if
we wanted another. I started to protest but she said she had an hour
of work to do upstairs in the office, and the downstairs door was
already locked, and that…”
“I’d love another glass,” Gretchen said, and for a moment
there I was the happiest man in the Upper Midwest.
75
THE HOURKEEPER, INSUBSTANTIAL
THE HOUR KEEPER, INSUBSTANTIAL
On Saturday morning I called my Aunt Lydia to make sure she was

up for my monthly visit.
Lydia is my mother’s younger sister, and as my mother was
a typical older sibling in her self-contained, responsible nature,
Lydia was a typical younger one: independent, contrary, and wild.
As I understand it, even early on, she displayed an artistic
temperament, a single-mindedness, an intense focus, which, when
disturbed, caused regret to all involved. I’m told she was always a
bright but careless student. At Chicago’s Art Institute School, she
distinguished herself by her painterly abilities but also by her unruly
behavior which culminated when, at twenty, she abruptly packed up
her paints and left for Paris, not to return for thirty years.
She wrote to my mother regularly, but the letters were more
poetic than informative; and when my mother visited her in 1958, a
few years prior to Lydia’s return to this country, she found her
producing large abstract expressionist canvasses—exceptional ones,
but only occasionally, the larger part of her time spent drinking
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THREE OF HEARTS
Cognac with everyone and anyone at all and housing prostitutes in
her spacious studio. She returned to Chicago just in time for the
1960’s, and though she was already fifty herself at the time, she told
me some years later that by 1965 she’d taken enough LSD to get
God high. I did see her occasionally during her “middle aged
hippie” days as she called them, and she was always welcoming and
pleasant to me, not at all remote or bizarre; but apparently she was
also becoming marginalized and reclusive. After my mother died in
1971, Lydia bought a little house with the money my mother had
provided for her. At that point she stopped painting altogether and
became a cat woman. She ordinarily maintained a population of at
least twenty animals in her home, one of whom, 15 years ago, gave
birth to Lois. Eventually, and unfortunately for the neighborhood’s
cats, life became too complex for Lydia’s diminished capacities—at
one point she began a door to door campaign collecting signatures
to sponsor one of her cats, a huge black and white named “Felix,”
for an open congressional seat—and as soon as I brought her to
Madison and installed her in a long term care facility, she took on a
vacant look and an even more profound fuzziness of mind from
which she’s never recovered.
I believe I can attribute my love of cats to my aunt Lydia. I
also believe I inherited her eccentric streak, which has remained
dormant all these years. I alone, like a seismographer, have been
monitoring its rumblings of awakening.
Lydia is ninety-one years old and quite sick now, and I’m
no longer certain if my regular visits register in her consciousness in
any way I can understand. So maybe she’s something like my cat.
She doesn’t speak much, and when she does, it seems to take place
around the time the Beatles first crossed the Atlantic. She smiles
when she sees me, however, which is reason enough to cross town
to visit her, particularly since this will in all probability be the last
time I do that, and since, she too, seems to be about to depart. So if
I think she’s receptive and the moment seems appropriate, I might
whisper something to her about meeting again soon, in “Heaven”—
whatever that might mean to her. Most people have some sort of
afterlife visualized for themselves, even those who claim not to
“believe in” one.
But my monthly visits to the nursing home are pleasant for
me personally as well, since I enjoy the thirty-minute bus ride to get
77
over to the far east side. It’s another opportunity for me to look out
a window, and in these last meditative months of mine, this
pleasure’s heightened. Everything I see becomes more charged with
meaning as I realize I may be seeing it for the last time. And I’m
surprisingly free of sorrow in my observations; rather, I’m often
moved by such warmth that I feel radiant.
“These are what we call cars in this little life here,” I say to
myself. “And those are what we call trucks; and these are people,
and they are covered with cloth. And see how everything has a
shadow, something we usually take for granted here, and see how
all those wires criss-cross above the street and no one seems to see
them? And every one of those people covered with cloth is a
universe unto themselves, each one feels as important as all the
others do, and isn’t it funny that they practically never remember
they’re walking on a huge spinning ball? And see how happy they
are when they love each other? And all along this street, too, there
are those other people, the ones called trees, the ones who are so
content they have no need to roam, and who move and speak only
so slightly, and only in their lifelong romance with the wind?”
And what of all the other ways I haven’t thought? I
sometimes wish I would board the bus that drives on for all eternity,
that turns corner after corner, revealing what’s forever just out of
sight and just out of mind. The wonder bus: not one with a sign
above the windshield that reads: # 10 Bus, Belvedere Boulevard, or
# 6 Bus, Highland Avenue; no, only the simplest of signs that reads
nothing but ∞, that symbol alone, back lit above its face, it’s grille
configured into an enigmatic smile. And perhaps I’m thinking
about that today because my time’s so near: it might have been
yesterday; today would be right on the mark, or it could be
tomorrow.
Of course I’ve yet to ride the wonder bus; I may have in my
dreams, but if so, I’ve forgotten. Every four weeks I ride the city
bus, though—that’s not monthly as I said, but moonly, and I ride it
only as far and often as I need, and always on Saturdays. And I’m
about to leave the house this Saturday morning to catch the bus that
regularly passes my corner around 11 A.M., but the phone rings.
“Hello, Mr. Guthrie?”
“Gretchen…? Are you all right?”
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THREE OF HEARTS
“Yes, I’m okay. I am. And I wanted to thank you for your
concern.”
“Concern? I’m still concerned. The last I saw you were
being hit in the back of the head. I called the police.”
“I know. They finally caught up with him, too. But I
didn’t press charges as long as he stays away from me. He’s back in
Iowa now—Jay, that’s where he lives. You see, he’s an old friend,
and I guess he’s got an anger problem now. He never did anything
like that before. But he’s history.”
“He is?”
“Uh huh.”
“So are you confident this won’t happen again?”
“I’m confident I’m not going to be seeing him again.”
“Okay.” I say, still not quite comfortable with it all. I
paused. I didn’t know how to continue; I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know her well enough.
“It was bad,” she finally said. “He did hurt me, but there’s
no permanent damage… to my face or my feelings.”
“Well, as long as you’re all right…” I said.
` “It didn’t have anything to do with the photos he was
taking,” Gretchen explained, sounding a little worried. “Or your
garden or anything like that, in case you’re concerned. And I hope
it’s okay if I keep working for you.”
“Of course it’s okay,” I answered, thinking of the provision
I’d made for her in my will to cover her remaining wages for the
summer, and a little extra. “You do excellent work, Gretchen, and
you’re always welcome here. I hope you know that.”
“Well, I’m glad.”
“Good. And I know it’s not really not my concern, and
you’re an adult and I don’t mean to be meddling in your business…
but I need to be assured that you’re going to be all right. You
understand? I found it very upsetting to see you abused.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me, Mr. Guthrie. That’s
what I called to let you know—that I’m fine now.” There was a
momentary pause, slightly awkward. “So…” she went on, “I should
be by next week, okay, and… Ooops! I’ve got another call. I’ll be
just a second.”
It wasn’t a second, of course. It was more like minute,
maybe a little more—enough time to wonder if she’d forgotten me.
79
But when she got back on the line, Gretchen sounded as if she’d
been laughing. “Sorry,” she said. “So… I just wanted to say thank
you.”
“Thank you, too,” I said. “I’m glad you’re sounding well,”
And then we both hung up. And then I left.
Just as I arrived at the corner, I saw the bus I always take pull away
and drive off down the street without me. In my younger days I
might have chased it to the next corner, but a fifteen minute wait on
the bench at the bus stop seemed far more appealing. As my name
indicates, I am a punctual person, but given Lydia’s condition, a
fifteen minute departure from my accustomed visiting time should
scarcely matter—unless she happens to die during that fifteen
minutes, or I myself should die, since it is Saturday.
But it’s a sunny Saturday and the bench is warm, and the
world is passing in front of me. I don’t think about the world,
though; rather I find myself reviewing my “final arrangements” as
we squeamishly call them these days. I don’t think I’ll disappoint
anyone with my last wishes. I have no family other than Lydia, and
the director of her nursing home assured me that her “arrangements”
are in order. I never married, and though I spent a number of years
with a number of extraordinary women, no children resulted. Due
to my modest way of living, my investments have continued to
grow over the years, and though my association with the
Metaphysical Society was long and at times fruitful, they can seek
their endowments elsewhere. I have willed all my assets to the local
Humane Society, with the single stipulation their director personally
sees that my own cat and close friend, Lois, is given the best
possible home, one in which she has free reign of a yard, preferably
enclosed, and that her health and welfare be periodically looked
into. As far as my “remains” are concerned, if I had my way, I’d
choose to be left someplace where wild animals could have a special
holiday feed. But that sounds like too much fuss for those involved,
so I wish my “remains” to be cremated and—I’m very clear about
this—then be surreptitiously scattered in the nearest available
dumpster. I suggest stealth only because I imagine that there are
civic ordinances preventing such lack of respect for human
“remains.” (Anyway, I think “leftovers” would be a more
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appropriate term.) Beyond their nutritive value, I have no respect
for human remains, and I wish to make that clear.
No profound insights or thoughts of any great significance
circulated through my mind as I waited on that sunny bench.
Nothing worth repeating dawned on me. I had drifted farther than I
thought, though, because the next bus took me by surprise; I had to
jump up before it pulled away. Once settled in my seat on that
eastbound bus, it was my intent to gaze at the world that passed
around me with eyes wide to everything I’d always failed to see, but
apparently whatever agency governs my mind had other plans. And
very particular ones, too, because I began to recall a late afternoon
in the summer of 1978—and quite vividly. It was a Friday, I
remember that specifically, and Miranda had met me after work at
the Society Headquarters just west of Chicago. She’d come in her
new, red, Italian convertible to take me off on a dinner picnic
outing. She was pleased if not enthralled with the car and I
wondered if I’d be able to compete. We were in our late thirties
“Do you think we shared past lives together?” she asked me
as soon as we sped off out of the Society’s driveway. She was a
lovely woman at the time, with fiery red hair set off by her dark blue
eyes.
I thought about the question for a moment. “Why do you
ask?”
“Oh, don’t be a foolish man. If we’re lovers today, doesn’t
it follow that we’d already established something in the past? I
can’t believe two people who’ve hardly known each other can
simply tumble into something as thunderous as this.”
“Would you like to consult one of my psychics?”
“You’re speaking as though you’ve got them on your staff,”
she said, laughing, as we turned onto the highway.
“I suppose I do. The place is rife with them. It attracts
them; it has a long history of that. And I’ve got these “animal
sensitives” making inroads now too. But consulting any one of
those psychics about something important would be like going to a
dental hygienist for back surgery. Really. There’s one woman
whom I respect, though, and I think if I asked her, she might read
us.”
“So is this woman there today, at the Society?”
“She lives there, Miranda.”
81
“She does?”
“Yes, she’s a little like a piece of furniture.”
“What do you think she’d say if we just dropped in?”
The woman I was speaking of was Edna Witherspoon. She
was confined to a wheelchair, though her disability was only
physical. She’d been a pioneer in psychic research but had strayed
from the mainstream and now spent most of her time reading and
translating obscure esoteric texts. She wasn’t a practicing
“psychic”—just psychically gifted. She’d worked in the library of
the Metaphysical Society and was one of the few remaining
residents of its sprawling old building. She rarely leaves her room.
“We’d be her first visitors in months,” I said. “Maybe
years.”
“So? You wouldn’t mind, would you? It isn’t too rash or
romantic for you, is it?”
Miranda was a treasure. Spontaneity had never been one of
my strong traits, and I told her that as well as I could.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, smiling across at me.
“I’ll just have to find a place to turn around.” She accomplished
this at the next exit quite abruptly and with a considerable
screeching of breaks. Then she patted me on the knee.
It was shortly after we got back on the highway, that
Miranda turned to me.
“Why don’t we try to guess before we visit Edna?” she
suggested, bright eyed, having to raise her voice above the wind.
“Why don’t we see if we can come up with any connections we
might have had? We’re both intuitive people, we should be able to
pull something out from the etheric realms, don’t you think? I
believe I can do it. I’m a poet. Poets can do anything.”
“Oh, I believe I can do it, too,” I said, not to be outdone,
and believing that I could. “That sounds like a fine idea, but can
you manage that while you’re driving?”
“You worried?”
“No, but I need to close my eyes for a few moments.”
“I can drive with my eyes closed,” she said, waiting for me
to react. I didn’t.
“Maybe you’re right,” she conceded. “We should pull off
again. So we can park someplace.”
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I laughed, but Miranda was quick to act and soon we were
sitting in her car under a large old cottonwood in a small, and nearly
empty suburban park. She had a way of making things happen as
soon as she set her mind to it. And there was no formality about it.
We didn’t say a word; we just settled in, side by side in the front
seat of her little red Italian convertible. Fifteen minutes went by
before we looked at each other, and when we did Miranda leaned
over and put her arms around me, her head on my shoulder,
suffusing me in her perfume.
“You want to make out, too?” I asked her.
“I always do,” she said. “But not now. It might distract us.
Let’s get going again and tell our stories on the way, okay? You
first.”
So we drove off and I told Miranda what I’d seen when I
closed my eyes and cleared my mind.
It had been the two of us, together in a courtyard,
somewhere that looked Mediterranean, maybe in Italy or Greece.
We were standing together, both holding baskets of flowers, and we
were expecting visitors for whom the flowers were a gift. We were
of the gentry, and had prepared for a ceremony, a wedding, maybe,
or a rite of passage. And we were jubilant. It was as if we were
about to host a celebration for visitors we revered, and because of
their majesty the best in us both was enhanced. And that was all I
saw, and that’s what I told Miranda. She was quiet for a while as
we continued back in the direction of the Society.
“It’s amazing, Horace,” she said, “but I may have seen the
same thing,” she said. “We were together in a warm, sunny place. I
saw trees, which may have been olive trees, but maybe not. It was
fleeting, evanescent. And we were dressed and adorned; and I saw
the flowers too. We were carrying them, garlands, maybe, or
bouquets, I’m not sure. I don’t know what we were to each other,
but we were very close. And there were large colored objects of
some sort that seemed to have been moved to prepare us for
whatever it was we were anticipating. Some were blue, different
shades of blue. They were somehow very important. So were the
flowers. And then it was gone. And all that I was left with was a
sense of the deepest cobalt blue and the smell of gardenias.”
Miranda looked across at me then with a piercing gaze, and
83
we didn’t say a word until we pulled into the circular driveway in
front of the Society.
“Do we want to test this?” she asked after she put the car in
park.
“I don’t know,” I said, uncertain of what she was
suggesting. “We might find out who we were waiting for. Who we
were so devoted to..”
“Will she see that?” Miranda asked. “Do you think? And
do we want to know that?”
“Do you mean, wouldn’t it be better to uphold the mystery?
The one we’ve discovered? In our sacred hearts?”
“Good for you, Horace! That’s precisely what I mean!
Precisely. If you weren’t such a loveable stuffed shirt, you might be
a poet. And even though we’ve driven back here, I don’t think we
should delve further. Maybe another evening we’ll call on Edna,
just for a visit. But I think we should go off on our picnic now and
dedicate every sandwich and strawberry to the wonder of this, and to
the sanctity of what we don’t know. How does that sound to you?”
It sounded right on the mark.
“The sanctity of what we don’t know,” I said. “Perfect.
We’ll keep it clean; we won’t touch it.” As a matter of fact, Miranda
and I never mentioned that experience again. And soon she left my
life as mercurially and as thunderously as she had entered into it.
I didn’t know anything about my Aunt Lydia’s past lives, except, it

turned out, about one of them—the most recent one, this one—
because Lydia was stone dead by the time I arrived for my visit.
“But I just spoke to her an hour ago,” I said, just as anyone
would say in similar circumstances. What I didn’t say was that she
was an artist once; that she’d painted huge, bold paintings in deep
reds and blues; that she’d drunk with Hemmingway and Ravel; that
she never listened to anyone’s advice, that she took enough LSD to
get God high. But it was true; she was dead. Old Lydia beat me to
it, and once I’d recovered from my surprise, I asked if I could have a
moment alone with her (her leftovers, actually, though I didn’t say
that) in her private room. There was something I needed to say as
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soon as possible. It was something I’d heard that the no-nonsense
esoteric teacher, G.I. Gurdjieff, said at his grandmother’s funeral;
something that had upset the others in attendance, which is why I
waited until I was alone with what once was Lydia. I’d said it a
number of times before on similar occasions, and I’ve never felt
wrong in aspiring to model myself after anything Mr. Gurdjieff said
or did. So once the door was closed and I gazed at her lifeless face,
did what seemed an appropriate little dance and said, respectfully:
“Now that she’s turned up her toes, may she with the saints
repose!”
Then I sat down on a chair across from the bed and closed
my eyes. I sat for several minutes in silence before anything
touched me, and then it was very slight, already very distant. It was
the faint chiming of bells, and it was Lydia’s voice, but her youthful
voice, a joyous one, one I’d never heard, but one I recognized as her
own, although it was also the sound of bells, which makes perfect
sense to me. I listened to it until it faded away; it left me with a
most singular and disquieting feeling: light at heart, light on my
feet, but not myself at all. I attributed it to the proximity of death.
After I came out of the room, everyone said they were sorry
for my loss; and not having yet reached the age of seventy, I played
the part along with them, though without much enthusiasm, oddly
altered as I was. But they all reacted to death so mechanically, so
unquestioningly, and above all so negatively. Is that the way
unimaginative dead people look at birth? Then I left without much
ceremony, thinking that I would never again ride that bus, never
again enter that place… But even as I thought it, something seemed
flawed about the notion. I have no words to describe it, but it
seemed absurd, and impossible that I would never again enter that
place. It seemed that once I’d entered it, I would always be entering
it; that it could no more disappear than anything else. And that did
not make perfect sense to me. It made no sense at all; none
whatsoever that once something happened it had always happened
and would always happen. It made no sense, and that was
surprisingly reassuring, because I wasn’t entirely sure who was
thinking it.
I rode home in a deep daze. When I got on the bus I felt
insulated from myself—or from something else, maybe not myself.
Maybe I was watching myself, separated out in a place where
85
everything always happens. I did realize the route was strangely
altered and I still heard the sounds of the city around me through the
open windows of the bus. The hum and hiss of traffic, car horns,
the persistent wail of sirens, music from car stereos welling up and
receding, but my gaze was inward, or someone’s was, and I dozed
off for a while somewhere along the way.
In my bus dream, Lydia was sixteen years old. She was walking on
a grassy lawn, radiantly green; she wore a flowered dress and had
white flowers in her hair. Again she spoke to me, but her words
were not mixed with the chiming of bells. And she didn’t speak in
words, not actually; she only laughed. Her laugh was innocent yet
mischievous.
“What?” I asked her. “What is it?”
But she only laughed, as if she had no need to explain
herself, as if I should have already known, and then her laughter
faded into the hum and the hiss, and the resounding bass lines of the
music rushing past, and the gripping wail of those sirens again. But
I didn’t want Lydia to leave me until I understood her, until I
understood everything, but I couldn’t hold on, and when I awoke I
realized I’d missed my stop. Or someone had.
Once I’d climbed the stairs back to my third story room and looked
around, I realized that everything looked different to me, as if all the
furniture, everything on the floors and walls had been shifted
slightly, realigned; or as if it somehow had less substance to it. I
stood spellbound for a time before it all began to make sense to me,
and it made a very comforting kind of sense; maybe even an
obvious kind of sense. The word insubstantial came to mind—after
all, today might be the day. And it had been an odd one—things
had happened out of order, in a peculiar way; and there was Lydia’s
beckoning laugh, which had felt so real, intimate and immediate. I
wondered for a moment if I was still alive. I’d heard accounts of
this kind of anomaly; I’d heard stories of souls unprepared to move
on, who lingered here, believing themselves still alive; I’d even seen
movies; and I’d read the “Tibetan Book of the Dead.” It’s been
known to happen.
But to me? How could such a thing happen too me, the past
President of the American Metaphysical Society, one so informed
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THREE OF HEARTS
on the subject? One so prepared, so unafraid, so unresisting? But is
that what I’d been? Or had that all been part of the dream of my
life?
So I did what seemed reasonable at the time, and took
myself back down stairs. I was standing on my small front porch
about to descend the three steps to the street, when I suddenly felt
dizzy and turned back into the house, into the empty front hall,
where I let myself slide down and lean back against the wall, my
legs extended in front of me. It bothered me that I hadn’t gone out
yet to speak to someone to see if they’d respond to me; it seemed
absurdly inconvenient that feeling sick should stand in the way of
learning if I was still among the living.
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THE ELEVATOR MAN, AS ROSIE
I didn’t want to talk. We’d been walking west across the loop and I
hadn’t said a thing.
“What happened when you saw that woman with the
children, Bernie?” Jolene finally asked. She’d been brooding all the
way. “What upset you so that made you fall down? I don’t
understand. I’m worried you have a blood clot or something in your
brain.”
“They said I was okay, Jo,” I said, wanting her to leave me
alone. “The paramedics said all my numbers were okay.”
“Oh, what can they know from numbers? She told you to
go to your doctor. Are you going to do that? Do you even have a
doctor?”
I looked up and saw the blue sky between the tops of the
forty story buildings lining the street. It seemed to me the sky
didn’t have any opinions about anything. It didn’t even care if
clouds obscured it from view everyone’s view. I wished I could be
like that. So I tried.
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“Look, Jolene,” I said, not sounding much like the clear
blue sky, “You want to know what I saw in the girl’s face? It was
fear. She was carrying fear in her heart. And she knew I saw it,
that’s why she knelt down and took my hands and called me her
priest. It was because she was afraid! Do you suppose any doctor’s
going to tell me maybe I’m seeing what I’m seeing so I can help
people? That maybe it’s not a curse but a blessing? Doctor’s don’t
know anything about that. But neither do I. I don’t know how to
help strangers in the street that don’t even speak my language! I’m
scared too!”
I’d shouted there at the end, not like the blue sky would do.
I’d never spoken this way to Jolene, but it the only way I could get
it out, which I thought was what she wanted.
“Bernie,” she said, sounding very patient. “I want to stop
by the hotel on the way to your place. You can just wait for me. I
want to talk to Peepers. You’ve got to have months of sick days
stored up and you’re about to take some of them. And you know
what, Bern? I’m not taking no for an answer. I’ll tell him it’s
medical if you want, that your doctor told you to take a little time
off, but I’m going to do it. And after I do that, and you have the
peace of mind that you won’t have to go to work for a while, we can
discuss this further. I’m not kidding around, Bernie.” Then she told
me to wait for her in O’Connell’s and to order some lunch but not to
look at anyone in the face.
It’d been a long time since anyone told me what to do, and
it all swirled in on me at once. Jolene was going to lie to Peepers
and she was making decisions about my life. And I didn’t care.
And when she left me in front of O’Connell’s, I made the strangest
decision. I looked up again and decided that I was really going to
try to be like the blue sky and just stay the same all the time no
matter what was happening underneath me. And I sat down in the
restaurant thinking that, which I suppose was only a way of
relieving myself of whatever was happening to my brain or my
vision or whatever, but I felt like I’d made an important decision
about my life just when it was going out of control and into the
hands of someone else.
“Did you order something?” Jolene asked when she came and sat
across from me about fifteen minutes after I went in.
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“No,” I said. “I’m a gentleman, remember?”
I could see by her smile that I must have been looking better
in her eyes.
“You know what, Bern? After I talked to Peepers just now,
I called Jack, and we’d like to invite you to come up north with us
for a week. I know you told me you like to fish. And we have three
bedrooms in the cottage and only my sister and her kids are
coming—and they’re teenagers who like to sleep out in tents so they
can do stuff Marcy doesn’t approve of. And Marcy’s kind of
unhappy right now with her divorce and all. So besides us wanting
you to come with us because we like you, I was thinking maybe you
could talk to her a little bit, because you... you know…”
I had to laugh. “So first you tell me to go to a doctor to have
my head examined, and now you’re trusting me to see into your
sister’s soul?”
“So you are feeling better,” Jolene said.
And then the waitress came over to us and refilled my
coffee and took our orders, and Jolene went on talking like I’d
already accepted her invitation, which I guess had. Mostly, though,
I liked the idea of getting to a place where there wouldn’t be too
many people to look at.
“You’ll love it up there, Bernie. We always take a friend,
the only reason we never asked you was because you’d never take
that much time off, and it’s not worth driving up for any less than a
week. It’s such a nice cottage. We share it with Jack’s parents but
they hardly ever go up anymore. Jack does all the maintenance on
it. The road is at the back of the house, and there’s a lawn in front
of it that goes right down to the dock. There’s no beach, but we
swim off the dock. And there’s a boathouse next to it where Jack
keeps his outboard, and we’ve got the key to our neighbor’s
pontoon boat, and they’re never there this month, so that means we
can sit in lawn chairs and barbecue out on the lake.”
“What did you tell Peepers?”
“That you fainted and your doctor told you you needed to
rest up, and that they did some tests on you but the results weren’t in
just yet, and that I was going to try to convince you to come up to
Wisconsin with us to so we could take care of you.”
“What kind of tests did I have, Jo?”
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“I didn’t tell him that. It just sounded like the right thing to
say to make it all more convincing.”
I sat there thinking about how easily she just took
everything over. I didn’t say a thing.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you coming?”
By then, of course she already knew that I was, but I gave
her a smile and told her that I didn’t think I had a much of a choice.
“Do you ever go out of downtown Chicago, Bernie?” Jolene asked

me the next morning as we drove out of the city. She’d insisted that
I sit in the front seat next to Jack so I’d have a better view of things
as we drove north.
“I don’t have much reason to.”
“Where did you live when Abby was still alive?”
“We had a little apartment on North Avenue when working
people could still afford to live there.”
Jack looked over at me. “Do you want her to stop giving
you the third degree?” he asked.
“No, it’s fine,” I answered, but Jack had turned around to
the back seat and told Jolene she should let me enjoy the view. He
was friendly about it and she laughed, but still it got me thinking
about how the things I enjoyed doing were so bound up in
downtown. The personal things, I mean, like watching traffic at
stoplights and thinking of the pulse of life, and walking through
crowds of people and feeling that everything so rich and full—until
the day before yesterday.
“When Abby died, I moved right downtown to the Horatio,”
I explained, “because it was close to work and because I needed to
get away from the memories.” Both Jack and Jolene went dead
silent when I said this. I think they might have been diagnosing me.
Jolene and I had talked for a long time sitting at that table after
lunch at O’Connell’s. I didn’t tell her about my decision about the
sky, though, but I did tell her what little I could manage about Oscar
and the dream. I explained that just because dreams and imagination
were different from what’s real, the way a person could feel because
of them wasn’t. And I also told her I wasn’t sure what I believed at
all anymore. She looked at me with a very serious expression the
91
whole time I talked, and finally told me that whatever it was that
was happening to me, whether it was a blessing or an affliction or
both, I should try to relax and take time to see what it turned out to
be. And that’s exactly what I was doing; that’s what my decision
was all about. But I think she was still looking for clues, which is a
natural thing for her to do being such a caring person. But the sky
doesn’t give clues, is what I was thinking there in the car, and I
didn’t say much for the first leg of the trip, and when I did, I was
careful to avoid any subject that might start the two of them trying
to diagnose me again.
Jolene told me that she and Jack usually stop at a certain place just
outside of Madison, Wisconsin on their way up to the cottage.
Madison, they explained, is about half way. She told me that there
was nothing special about the place, except that it wasn’t a fast-food
outlet. It was a little truck stop, she explained, with decent food
“You mean it’s a place where little truck’s stop?” I asked
her.
“Very funny, Bernie,” she said. “But that’s true, come to
think of it. There’s no parking lot for eighteen-wheelers, so the big
rigs don’t stop there, but working men do, and I’d bet most of them
drive pickups. We’ll just see. It’s not far.”
Jolene was right. We all laughed when we saw the parking
lot, which looked like a sales lot for pickups, though there were
some minivans there too. Maybe it was being out of Chicago for
the first time in twenty-some years, but I felt brand new, and much
more like the blue sky than I’d even expected. There weren’t any
tables available in the restaurant, maybe because it was early
afternoon on a sunny Saturday and lots of people were traveling, but
the three of us were happy to sit at the counter, Jolene in particular,
being a waitress who always preferred to sit at the counter. This
was a pink counter top. I hadn’t seen a pink counter in a restaurant
before and it was very attractive. I also noticed that all the stainless
steel surfaces behind the counter looked like they’d just been wiped
down, and I wondered how they managed that during this busy day.
Jolene said the hot pork sandwiches with gravy and mashed
potatoes there were the best she’d had, and I’d never tried one of
those, and it felt right to order it to go along with my new outlook.
Then Jolene said we should listen for the Heavenly Choir singing
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THREE OF HEARTS
because this was the first time Bernie Schmidt had ordered a
sandwich other than Roast beef on pumpernickel with lettuce and
tomato with mayo the side, which made Jack say maybe he should
order one of those. So we were all feeling pretty good, and I even
felt secure enough to look into the faces of the people I saw in there,
and either these were a bunch of happy Wisconsin people without a
care in the world, or I’d been given some kind of new lease on life.
But not for long, I’m afraid, because we’d just ordered our
sandwiches when something came on the television that changed
everything. The television was up on brackets on the wall behind
the counter. And it was funny, and I don’t know why, but it seemed
that at that very moment everyone seated at the counter and a lot of
the others in the restaurant were watching it.
It was “A WKOW Breaking News Bulletin.” I remember
that because Jolene had told me how they’re crazy about KOWs up
there in Wisconsin. And it was a terrible thing. What happened
was some maniac had got on a city bus on the east side of Madison
at 11:15 that morning with a can of gasoline, and that he’d soaked
himself, the bus driver and some passengers with it and then lit a
match and set them all ablaze. Some of the people, including the
maniac, had been taken to hospitals in critical condition, and one
man who’d just been riding on that bus was pronounced dead on the
spot. This was a horrible thing, a horrible fate for these people who
were just going about their business; and the reporter on the news
seemed very upset, her voice was shaking as she reported the story
and she was being very brave not breaking down and crying. Which
is what some of the people in the truck stop nearly did as well,
which also opened up all sorts of miseries to me.
I went from being a new man one minute, to a weak,
cowardly old one, burdened with more grief that I could bear. And
it wasn’t just sympathy all these folks were feeling; there was more:
it was fear and shame and loneliness and grief of all sorts that
erupted, and leaked out, swelled up in all those people, without their
even knowing it. Maybe that’s what human sorrow is; maybe it’s
that when something so terrible happens it awakens memories of
different suffering in everyone, without anyone ever saying that.
But Jolene saw something in my eyes that made her put her arm
around me.
“Do you want to leave, Bernie?” she asked.
93
It was good that she said that, because her words snapped
me out of feeling like maybe sneaking away and reminded me of
my trying to be like the light blue sky.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, while at the same time I couldn’t help
but see that the woman sitting down a few stools from to Jolene had
a look of horror—not on her face, but just behind it—and the horror
had nothing to do with the tragedy on that bus in Madison, but of
someone she lost, maybe in an another accident, maybe a child.
And that feeling was so much like what I knew, what Oscar knew,
that I couldn’t stop myself and just got up and walked over behind
that woman and put one hand on her shoulder—not even thinking
that I could get in trouble for touching a stranger. But she looked
back at me like she wasn’t surprised.
We didn’t say a word. I just felt it—her sorrow—and there
were pictures with it, too. I know this sounds crazy and it doesn’t
happen to other people, but this was real life, mine. I think the both
of us were close to sobbing, but we didn’t let ourselves because
what was happening between us was so moving that we wouldn’t
have been able to bear anyone’s attention or any embarrassment
along with it.
After I let go, she looked at me as I sat back down between
Jolene and Jack, and a few other people looked too, but I suppose
they thought I must have known her, so pretty soon everyone closed
back up into themselves and talked about how terrible it was that
those people were burned so badly and that one man was killed,
how terrible it was that you could just be going across town and
have your life destroyed, and how terrible it was that crazy people
were out on the loose. And it wasn’t long before our sandwiches
arrived, and even though I realized that this hot pork sandwich was
probably very good, I didn’t really enjoy it.
Jolene didn’t each much of hers either. She kept looking at
me and then stealing a glance down at that woman, and I think
Jolene knew exactly what had happened to me in there. If she
hadn’t, she wouldn’t have called me “Saint Bernie” as soon as we
got out the door. She was joking, but only half way; I could tell.
But I felt something like a saint for a little while after we left.
Maybe that’s the way you feel when you can put your gift to good
use without breaking your own heart.
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The rest of the ride north was very beautiful to me, even though
we’d learned of that terrible human tragedy. I think things also
looked beautiful because we didn’t get back on the Interstate but
drove on county roads where the scenery was closer and there were
farms to be seen along the roadside, and small towns, and forests.
Everything stood out brightly for me, like someone was describing
it, except that I was the one doing the describing. “That’s a farmer’s
house,” I said to myself. “And that’s a barn, and those are black and
white cows. And those are power lines, and here’s a little town, and
a little town bank, and a little town pharmacy, and a little town
tavern, and…”
“You daydreaming, Saint Bernie?” Jolene asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t answer you, I’m daydreaming.”
Jolene and Jack’s cottage was on Crescent Lake the town of

Rhinelander, Wisconsin. I’d half forgotten that Jolene’s sister and
her teenage sons were going to be there too until I saw a second car
already parked on the back lawn when we pulled up. Then I saw
Marcy. She came out through the back screen door and waved to
us. She looked just like Jolene but maybe ten years younger and
with brown hair, but there was nothing in her face that showed that
she was unhappy the way Jolene said, or that she might need
someone to talk to about her troubles. I suppose it’s selfish of me,
but I was relieved when I saw she looked happy. I’d had one good
experience. That didn’t mean I was going to have any more.
When Marcy and Jolene hugged, a comforting family
feeling surrounded them; I could feel it from across the yard where I
was helping Jack unload the car. Then Marcy came over and
hugged Jack, and the same feeling surrounded the two of them. It
was a long time since I’d felt anything like that, and when Jolene
came over and introduced me to her sister, I must have seemed
distracted because I was flooded with memories.
So many years ago when Abby and I were first married, her
parents sent us plane tickets to California to come visit them and the
rest of the family. I’d never had a family of my own. I was raised
in the last days of orphanages until I was eleven, “The Lutheran
Home,” it was called, and then with a private family until I was old
95
enough to work. The private family was always decent to me, but
they had problems with their own three children who’d become
juvenile delinquents in the early 1950’s. I remember those foster
parents of mine grieving over their natural children; grieving
because they believed they’d given them every advantage and felt
they’d failed. I was younger and I suppose they thought I didn’t
understand what they were speaking of, but you hear a lot when
you’re raised in a church home with thirty others coming and going
all the time. If my foster family’s kids had been living ten years
later, they’d probably have been flower children along with
everyone else, but as it was, one went to the reformatory, and the
other two ran away. So for my last year of high school I was alone
in that big house with Mr. and Mrs. Severson, which was the
gloomiest year of my life.
So you can see why I was so glad to go to sunny California
and visit a happy family. I don’t know why Abby and I didn’t just
stay there and start over, considering we’d hardly started back in
Chicago, but we didn’t. We loved our little apartment on North
Avenue, so we came right back after the two weeks we’d taken off
of work. But the experience there was my first surrounded by
people who loved each other: brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts,
uncles, grandparents; and these people all took me in as one of their
own. This was southern California, and one of the family had a
house close to the beach, close enough so we could walk there in
just ten minutes, and I can remember like yesterday the first time we
all trooped down together. Four generations, considering one of
Abby’s sisters had little twins: the grandparents, parents, the
children and the two babies all trekking over to the beach one day,
all with towels and radios and pails and shovels. I remember being
with another of Abby’s sisters and looking back at the line of us
coming down that street with palm trees all long it. We were at the
head of the line, and I was proud.
I don’t know if everyone in happy families feels proud—
probably never as proud as someone new to it. Abby and I visited
every two or three years from that summer on. We never did
anything special there; we never even went to Disneyland, but I
don’t think that would have been much of a hit with me, because I
was happy as can be just having dinner in a big group, and washing
dishes afterward, and then playing cards. And sometimes I helped
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with something that needed fixing around one of the sister’s houses,
or we all went for a drive along the Pacific coast, or just grocery
shopping. I can count eight times we visited during nearly twenty
years until everything seemed to breakdown at once. Abby’s
parents died within a year of each other, and if that weren’t bad
enough, there was controversy about the will that started Abby’s
three sisters and one brother feuding so badly that within another
year some of them weren’t speaking to the others. And these had
been such loving people, and probably still were at heart, but the
confusion about the favor of their parents—who were in the grave
then—brought out the worst. Then Abby got sick, and my world
fell apart. When she died six months later, only two of the sisters
and one cousin and her children came to the funeral.
But I’ve done pretty well since then; I’ve kept Abby alive in
my heart, and that counts for a lot. That’s where I’ve tried to keep
her, in my heart. When I moved out of the North Avenue
apartment, besides photographs, all I took was the blue rug we
bought when we got married and some beautiful china plates that
we were given. And I haven’t done badly living by myself. Way
back when, I had a few invitations to come to California to visit the
sisters who were still in contact with me, but I always passed on
those opportunities, because I didn’t want to feel how different it
felt out there without Abby and the closeness of everyone else. So
that should explain why I felt so emotional when I saw Jolene and
her sister Marcy hugging and being so happy to see each other like
that. I felt like I was being invited back inside after a long time
away.
“So this is it, Bernie,” Jolene said once we were inside the cottage.
“Isn’t it sweet? You can sit yourself down right here and look out
the picture windows in front and eavesdrop on Marcy and me while
we make dinner in the kitchen—that sounds like a vacation, doesn’t
it?”
Then she took me upstairs and showed me where my
bedroom was, where I could see the lake out the window. I changed
clothes up there and when I came back down, Jo and her sister were
already starting to get busy in the kitchen.
“Come down to the lake with me, Bernie,” Jack said.
“There’s men’s business down there. Men only!”
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“Oh, I don’t know...”said Jolene. “You sure Bernie’s ready
for that?”
But Jack had already taken my hand. He led me down to
the shore and showed me his boat and the little shed with all the
fishing tackle in it, and told me he was thinking about going out
early the next morning. When he asked if I’d like to come with, I
told I would.
“If those women ever start to get on your nerves,” he said as
we were walking back up to the cottage, “just come down here to
the shed and fiddle around with the tackle and lures and stuff.
That’s what I do.” And he winked at me and clapped me on the
shoulder then. I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled.
Back at the cottage I plopped myself down in an old easy
chair in the main room on the ground floor, which extended all the
way from the back to the front of the house. Off to the side was an
enclosed porch with a dining room table in it. From where I was
sitting, I could see out the windows in the front and hear Jolene and
Marcy talking while they made dinner together, exactly like Jolene
had said, and this was a very enjoyable thing for me. Just like
clockwork when the fried chicken dinner was ready, Marcy’s two
teenaged boys came in in their swimming trunks and sat directly
down at the table as if they were equipped with some kind of dinner
sensing device. Marcy made them put shirts on and set the table for
us, and they seemed nice and polite when they were introduced to
me. I mentioned this to Marcy later, and she said that they were
always polite to everyone but her.
After dinner I insisted on helping with the dishes, and as
you might expect, everyone protested, saying that I was their guest,
and everything else people say on those occasions.
“What would you say if I told you I’d enjoy myself more if
I helped?” I asked. “So I could feel more a part of things?”
I guess they weren’t expecting to hear anything like that,
because they all got quiet for a moment but then made a joke of it
and let me right in on the job. That’s when I could first see how
much love those people really had inside them. And I could also
tell that Marcy was suffering from a loss, but that she still had so
much to give. And like an old man, I was feeling very emotional
and almost cried while I was washing dishes, and I know Jolene
noticed it. I don’t know if she knew why I was feeling that way or
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not, but she didn’t say anything about it, and that made me feel our
friendship went even deeper than I thought.
But I dreamed about the being the Mexican girl that night. It was
like being Oscar again; that’s how real it was. I wouldn’t really call
it a dream. And there was nothing that made me feel funny about
being a girl, either. It all seemed natural to me. I can tell some of
her story as I dreamt it, or like it was given to me—I’ll never know
which it was—but I don’t think the words without the feelings I had
will amount to much. But that dream changed my life forever. And
it might seem to you that I concocted this whole story by myself,
just like it might be hard to believe that I touched that stranger at the
truck stop and felt her sadness, but I’ll tell you that when I woke up,
I cursed the day this terrible gift had been given me, and anyone
with any feelings in their heart will understand that it was more than
any one man can bear.
People called me Rosie once I crossed over. I crossed by holding

both my daughters above my head so that I hurt my right shoulder
and neck. They haven’t healed since. Across the river I gave all the
rest of my money to a man who knew my uncle. There were others
there, and many of us were shivering in the wet cold. He told us the
ride in the truck would take seven hours until we came to a place
where we’d find other workers like ourselves and work. This was a
place that needed more people, he told us, and he had taken
Mexicans there before without any problems. But the problems
started as soon as were locked in the back of the truck, because one
of the other women had a sick child who vomited, and my own girls
were so sickened by the smell that they vomited up the big meal
we’d forced ourselves to eat before the river crossing. There was no
ventilation in the truck and about thirty people were packed in, so
others were sick, too, and as far as I could tell the ride was far
longer than any seven hours I knew. He stopped once to let us
relieve ourselves by the side of a dark road, but my girls had already
soiled themselves, so all I could do was wipe them off on the grass
and throw away their underthings. When we finally got out, the
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woman’s child who had been sick looked to me like he was going to
die.
But it turned out that what the man told us was true, and we
found friendly faces and lodging and work where he let us off,
which was someplace in the State of Oklahoma, someone told me
when we got there. But the field work didn’t last for long, only
three and a half weeks. And then when it was time to move on there
was confusion, and dishonesty, I think, because those workers who
had been in the country longest knew what to do, and those of us
who’d only just arrived needed guidance, and not all of us got it, or
maybe it’s even true to say that some of us were misled.
I won’t put the blame on anyone, but my girls and I and two
older men climbed into the back of another truck. I hadn’t even sent
any money home yet, but I had to give everything I had to the man
who drove us north. He said he could take us to Joliet, in Illinois,
where he knew there was work. He was a friendly man and I
believed that he wanted to help us. But he was also frightened of
being caught, so he told us he could only let us out once at night to
do our business by the side of the road. Just like before, the rest of
the time we were locked in. But this ride too took about twelve
hours—in the dark and cold. But no one was sick. All of us were
scared, though—and my babies couldn’t be consoled.
In the morning we arrived in Joliet, Illinois, but only on the
outside, at a gas station, where the driver, whose name was Hector,
made telephone calls to contact the people with the work. It was a
bad morning, I knew that as soon as I saw the light of day, and the
bad news came when Hector told me that there was only work for
men there in Joliet. It wasn’t farm work, it was hard labor. I didn’t
cry or anything, but I felt like it, I knew Hector felt sorry for me
because he told me that if I didn’t want to stay in Joliet and look for
work on my own, he could take me where he was going, to Chicago,
where he could introduce me to some other Mexican people who
might help give me a start. I felt happy at the thought of meeting
those people.
Hector made us get right back in the truck after using the
toilet at the gas station, but he bought all three of us American
breakfast at a restaurant down the road and gave it to us in white
boxes to eat in the back of the truck. It was hard to eat in the dark,
and it was sweet and syrupy with queer tasting sausages, and the
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first American food my girls had ever eaten, but we were thankful to
this man for treating us like his family.
It wasn’t that long, an hour maybe when we slowed down
and started to hear heavy traffic sounds around us. I’d heard
Chicago was a big city, and also heard Hector cursing up in the
truck’s cab. He was cursing at other trucks, I think, or cars, because
they wouldn’t let him drive where he wanted to go, and then I heard
him curse even more bitterly when we slowed down because we
were in a place he did not want to be, a place where trucks weren’t
allowed to go, and he couldn’t get out and didn’t want to attract
attention because he had three illegals in the back. All this I heard
through the wall into the back of the truck, and it had begun to make
me go weak with fear. The girls were asleep.
And then when we’d been going very slowly for a while,
and stopping and starting with traffic sounds and smells all around
us, and with horns honking—at us, I think—Hector, all of a sudden
banged the wall of the truck between us and turned so sharply that
we slid against the side before he stopped. Both girls woke up
crying. I heard Hector’s door slam and then saw the back door of
the truck rise up.
“Get out! Get out!” he screamed. “You have to get out!
There are police on the street. This isn’t where we’re meant to be! I
can’t help you any more! Get out! Now! I’m in trouble! Run
away!”
I never saw a man as frightened as Hector just then, sweat
was pouring off him, he was shaking like he had a high fever, and
his eyes were wide and terrible like he’d seen a vision of the Devil.
And there wasn’t any time to think, so I had to pull the girls out off
the truck with me, across the metal and splintered wood, and I
hadn’t even looked around when Hector ran back in and started to
pull away from us.
I had never before in my life been in a city. I had never
before in my life seen a building higher than three stories. I took the
girls’ hands and ran after the truck but I was too frightened to move
much farther than out on to the sidewalk of a wide street with shiny
buildings that towered to the sky, where I fell to my knees and
prayed to the Holy Virgin. Some people stopped and asked me
things in English, which I couldn’t understand but that seemed kind
and concerned. They were dressed in business suits, even some of
101
the women. But I knew I couldn’t stay on my knees there, so I
looked around to try to find a church, but all I saw was towers that
made me dizzy, and mobs of people and cars jammed up together.
My heart told me there were things there that would devour me and
my children, but my brain told me that could not be so, not in
America, so I began to walk through it all, but every step I took I
felt hope running streaming down out of my pores. And we walked
for a quarter hour, I was pulling my babies behind me, and I did not
see one church. A city with no church? I only saw towers that had
not ceased; and people, Americans, some who looked like they
should have stopped for us, but who hurried past. And my girls kept
asking, “Where are we, Mama? Where are we?” but they seemed
more curious than afraid; they hadn’t been hurt when I dragged
them from the truck, so they asked me, “Why are you crying,
Mama? Why are you crying?” And I didn’t dare answer them, I
could only hold tightly to them until I saw a man who, though he
wore no collar, I believed was a priest, and I went on my knees to
him and pleaded with him to help us and take us to a church, and
then when I told him we had no money, he pulled his hands away.
I pulled my hands away. Then I woke up in the bedroom of Jolene

and Jack’s cottage near Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and decided that I
could not go on any longer and needed to take my own life.
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THE ARTISTE IN LOVE
Gretchen and I had each finished our second glass of wine, and in
the half hour we sat there with empty glasses our conversation did
its best to touch on everything essential in our lives: our families;
our pasts; our values; our tastes in art, music, literature, and food;
our prejudices and our preferences; our recurrent dreams. Gretchen
even managed to fit in how when she was eleven, she’d created a
piece of outdoor art in her back yard. Symbolic art, really, because
in the absence of trees in the yard, with her father’s help, she’d dug
seven holes with a post-hole-digger in which she securely planted
narrow ten foot poles—and at the top of each of these she’d attached
one of seven spectral colored pennants: red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, and violet. Besides being “cool to look at” as she
remembered feeling about it, she’d also believed that these poles
stood in for trees with different powers. A very imaginative girl, it
seemed to me with a very accommodating father. Then I told her
about how I’d shot sparrows with my BB gun. We were still talking
with a passionate intensity when Odessa came back downstairs and
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told us she was ready to close the place. I was still occupied being
the happiest man in the Upper Midwest and asked Gretchen if she
wanted to go somewhere else for a while. She was kind of tired, she
said, but she’d like it if I walked her home. I immediately
envisioned holding hands with her as we walked, so my happiness
quotient actually rose. I was trembling when I held the door open
for her at the bottom of the long staircase that led down from the
restaurant, and as she went out her hair brushed the side of my face
and I went weak in the knees.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m weak in the knees.” I told her.
She’d just put her sunglasses back on, and to those she
added a slightly aloof expression, held out her hand and said, “Here,
I’ll hold you up.”
What I wanted to do right there was this: I wanted to take
both her hands and say, “Gretchen, I know we hardly know each
other. We haven’t even worked out a common language. We
probably will get to know each other, and learn how to say things,
but by then this moment will be gone; we won’t be strangers
anymore. And there’s a power we have to affect each other when we
still are strangers that we’ll never have again. And I’m going to tap
into that power, Gretchen, and tell you that I’m about to fall in love
with you, that you are beautiful and everything you say to me makes
my heart sing, and that if I felt the way I do now for the rest of my
life I’d feel I’d had the fullest life a man can have.” That’s what I
wanted to say.
Gretchen looked at me as I took one of her hands. “What?”
“Oh, I was just thinking of telling you that I was about to
fall in love with you, and that I really wanted to say it now while we
were still pretty much strangers, because it’s such a powerful thing
to hear from a stranger, but mostly because it’s so true—even
though I know I’m taking a risk by saying it to a person who hits.”
“But that’s exactly what I was hoping you were going to
say,” she answered.
“You were?”
“No, silly, I’m kidding,” she said, squeezing my hand and
putting her shoulder up against mine as we walked. “But I’m glad
you said it, but I don’t know if I can trust you yet—after all, you’re
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newly unemployed—you may be a shiftless drifter. You sure don’t
waste any time, do you?”
“Oh, but I always have. I’ll admit I’ve felt this way about
women before but never dared say anything until the appropriate
time came along, if it ever did, which it sometimes didn’t. I’ve
never felt intimacy with a beloved stranger. But I didn’t waste time
with you because I wanted to see the look in your eyes when I said
exactly what I felt.”
“But I’ve got sunglasses on, Felix”
“So I had to imagine, okay? But I could tell a lot by the
look in the rest of your face, your smile, in particular.”
She sniffled.
“You sweet, dear person,” I said. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she said, lifting her sunglasses to reveal that she was
not. “Just sniffing. But you are scaring me a little. Intimacy can be
risky.”
I sighed. “I’m really sorry about that,” I said. “Sometimes
I’m an impetuous fool, but you’ve struck me like a meteor,
Gretchen, so I was thinking I was the only one at risk of being hurt.
Which makes me a kind of selfish jerk, doesn’t it?”
“So you do like Rumi, and Cole Porter,” she said, changing
the subject back to the poetry we’d been talking about at the bar.
“That’s a very good reference. A good thing to know about a
stranger, particularly a poet. My parents know the man who made
those new Rumi translations.”
“Well, that’s a good reference. But I thought your parents
were from Iowa.”
Here she dug her nails into my hand. “Try University of,
smarty. What did you think, farmers?”
“I was kidding, you didn’t have to hurt me. That’s the
second time today now. And, anyway, I have great respect for
farmers.”
“You do not.”
“I do. I really do. I spent a year on a farm. I got up 6
A.M. and milked cows—Holsteins… Are we going in the right
direction?” We’d turned down along another side of the Capitol
Square, heading west, and I thought she lived on the near east side.
“No, we’re not, but I don’t think that implies anything about
our future.”
105
“So we have one?”
“Will you just try being still for a while? I don’t mean not
talking. Just be still. Let me lead the way.'’
But I did stop talking for a while as she led me around the
square, and as we walked I started to feel a sickening knot in my
solar plexus. Then we sat down on a bench. “So let me tell you the
rest about the magic poles in my back yard,” she said. I hadn’t
known there was more, and I was a little distracted, but… “I used to
take two of my girlfriends out there with me, and we’d sit down on
the grass around one of the spirit trees, I called them, and I’d make
them tell stories with me, and we’d always be in the stories, which
were very adventurous and romantic in an eleven year old kind of
way. But we’d have to tell different kinds of stories under each tree:
there’s be stories about the Red King or the Orange Queen, or the
Yellow Prince or Green Princess, or the Blue Sage or the Indigo
Divine or the Violet Maiden. And you know who I always was?”
“The Violet Maiden?”
“How did you guess?”
“I’m your soul mate,” I said. “But I forgot to tell you
something before, something very important, okay? You see, I just
paid my rent, so I’ve got about a month in my place, then I was
planning on trying to live in the street…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how I’ve done what I’ve hated for so
many years now, that I decided to break the mold and see what
happened to me if I just fucking refused. And I got that opportunity
tonight. I don’t really know what I’ll do when my money runs out.
I may buckle under the way I’ve always done in the past, and
because of what’s happened in the last few hours I almost wish I’d
never made that decision…”
“Almost wish? What does that mean? Almost? And also,
what does it mean that you forgot to tell me that… that little detail
about your life while you proclaimed your love?”
I was in deep shit. Maybe I was crazy as people
occasionally suggested. There had been a history of such
suggestions. Or maybe just out of control, as my more forgiving
critics had insinuated. But since no major psychological overhaul
was possible at the moment, and since I’d already disclosed my
feelings so freely, I couldn’t do anything but be wide open.
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“Well,” I said, looking at her in the shadows, unable to read
her expression. “I say I almost wish because I have a conventional
side that worries that… No, not worries, assumes that I’d be
anathema to you if I were the kind of person who’d do something
like that, who’d be rash enough to do such a chancy thing. That’s
what my estranged half-brother-self thinks. But I am the kind of
person who’d do a thing like that, Gretchen. And also I withheld
that detail because once I was talking to you, nothing else seemed
like a real part of my life anymore. So I forgot, okay? I was
focused in the moment, and the future evaporated. It evaporated
until just now when I shut up and tried to put everything that
happened tonight together. And I should probably be sorry that I
didn’t tell you that at first, but…”
“But you were scared.”
“Right. I was scared.”
Gretchen didn’t say anything for a while.
“This is a lot to digest for a farm girl like me,” she said,
smiling now and taking my hand, which instantaneously realigned
the constellations in my firmament. “But I admire what you’re
doing. Like I said, I was raised with those kind of values—
morally, at least, if not actively. My parents came of age in the late
sixties, they never really did much of anything, but I know my
grandparents marched with Dr. King, so I believe in sacrifice for
what’s just and for what’s of enduring value. And yours is a kind
of ‘lilies of the field’ gesture, and I’d like to think I’d do the same
thing if I felt oppressed. And I love lilies of the field. That’s my
field, remember? So if you’re wondering if you’ve blown it with
me, the answer is that you haven’t blown it with me. But,” she said,
tossing her head back and sitting up straight, “I don’t want us to
blow our entire emotional wad tonight, so I want you to walk me
home nicely, and then call me tomorrow afternoon once I know
what my plans are going to be for the evening.”
“So…?”
“So, you think about what your plans are going to be for
tomorrow evening, and if I’m free we might make plans together,
and if I’m not we’ll plan for another time.”
“So… you have a date?” I said, wanting to swallow my
words before they got out. “I want to kill him.”
107
Gretchen laughed, and pulled her sunglasses back again,
and looked at me with one brown eye and one big black one.
“There’s one thing I know about you already, Felix. I never have
to worry about you hiding your feelings from me. It’s reassuring
that you’re entirely transparent, even though I think it’s impertinent
of you to ask me what my plans are.”
“Impertinent?”
“Yes,” she said, putting her glasses back on and taking on
that same aloof appearance she had before.
“But before you said that you believed Odessa when she
said I was a gentleman.”
“A gentleman can be impertinent. A boor can’t.”
“So you want me to call you in the afternoon?”
“Yes, about three.”
We got up and walked a few blocks without saying a thing.
Since Gretchen’s tall, we ended up walking in step together, which
was kind of funny, but it was only a few more blocks to her
apartment. She’d been looking steadily ahead when she took my
hand and leaned into my shoulder again. “I’m supposed to get
together with my old roommate sometime tomorrow, maybe for
dinner, if she can do it, okay?”
I put my arm around her and didn’t say a thing as we
walked along, bumping hips now. When we got to her house, we
hugged each other just long enough so we could really feel it, and
then we said goodnight.
“Voodoo,” I thought. “Do do that voodoo…”
The remaining words of a Cole Porter song immediately
came to mind and I sung my way home:
“You do something to me, something that simply mystifies me,

Tell me, why should it, you have to power to hypnotize me?
Let me live ‘neath your spell,
Do do that voodoo that you do so well,
For you do something to me, that nobody else could do.”
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I was up at seven, with the opening theme of the second movement

of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony rolling gently through my mind.
The second movement of that most powerful of all symphonies
begins with a quizzical, delicate statement which is heard only once
in its simplicity before it’s taken up in the magnitude of the piece as
a whole. It’s a wonderful way to wake, and I had only eight hours
to wait. So I got out of bed singing, which is always promising.
There wasn’t much room to dance in my room, but I let the kindness
of Beethoven guide me around a little before I stubbed my toe on
one of the metal casters at the foot of my bed, causing only a
moderate amount of pain, not much, but no less nor more than
anyone in love might expect to feel on an average morning.
When I went out in the hall with my towel on the way to the
bathroom, I ran into Tina, who, wet haired, was just going back into
her room.
“You sound like you’re in good voice today,” she said to
me.
“Why, thank you,” I said, moved by the sentiment. “That’s
very nice of you to say,” at which she gave a little nod of
acknowledgement, reassuring me of our newly established truce.
The bathroom was hot and steamy after Tina’s shower, and the
thought of her naked in the space I was about to occupy gave me a
tingle I never would have felt before our confrontation the night
before—there’s something about a woman who knocks the wind out
of you. Still, I gave the shower floor a good scrubbing before I got
in. No, not for lesbian cooties; I always scrub the shower floor, and
I mention it only because I was feeling such outrageous good will
for the woman that I even considered skipping the procedure. And
of course it was nice that the room was already heated up.
But it wasn’t yet 7:20 when I returned to my room, and
there was nothing on my schedule for the day. Not until precisely
3:00 in the afternoon, I should say, when it seemed my day would
begin in earnest. But it was Saturday, and something was missing,
something that had occupied nearly every Saturday of mine for
years now: dread. True, I was nearly paralyzed in anticipation, but
it was anticipation of happiness, not confinement.
109
But no matter how joyous the occasion, I couldn’t be still, I
was equipped with enough self knowledge to know that, so after I
dressed, I stuffed my laundry into a pillowcase and headed out for
the laundromat. I have always enjoyed visiting the laundromat.
Impatient as I can be, I’m usually happy when I’m waiting. Not
waiting for someone who’s late and may not show up, or waiting for
a bus that might not get me to work on time, or languishing on hold
with the customer service department of some monster corporation;
no, it’s the safe kind of waiting I’ve always liked. Like at the
laundromat, or in a waiting room for an appointment, where there’s
officially nothing to do, so the mind can be free. On the rare
occasions when I travel by bus or by train, I manage to arrive at the
station early just so I can wait. So the forty-five minutes at the
laundromat were minutes well spent. I thought about Gretchen for
most of it; or, more accurately, I fantasized about Gretchen, and
across a wide spectrum, from the sacred to the profane, though my
more sacred thoughts tended to end up slipping in bed with the
profane. I also watched my clothes spin in the dryer, something else
I consider a perfectly respectable pastime. There really wasn’t all
that much in the dryer to watch, though, and I would have ordinarily
held off until Monday or Tuesday to go to the laundromat when a
full load of clothes had accumulated, but that adverb ordinarily was
driven out of town at the end of my conversation with Bernardo last
night and hasn’t been seen since.
So. Once I’m home, I put away the still warm clothes and
towels, and look for something else to do. The forty-five minutes at
the laundromat, plus the walk there and back, and the minute or two
to put the things away, make it 8:30 now, which leaves still six-and-
a-half hours to wait. Which means it’s time to do something else,
and in this case, it means it’s time to clean the room. I’m feeling the
requisite energy to get down on my knees to scrub the floor, but I
don’t have the means to do that: no bucket, no sponge, and none of
that special Murphy’s soap for a hardwood floor. In the first year of
my recent marriage—something that’s not been on my mind lately,
since I’m vastly happier now that it’s over—I offered to wash the
floors of our nice apartment several times. I had always believed
that to wash a floor one used a sponge-mop and a bucket with
something like “Spic and Span” in it. And I did that. I’d seen my
mother do it, and I’d learned about it through television ads, where
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Americans learn a great deal about life. My efforts at floor washing
met with only tepid approval from my wife, however, and it wasn’t
until I saw her method that I understood why. Apparently floor
washing, when done by those in the know, is meant to be an onerous
experience. Sore knees, sighing, and specific grunting sounds seem
to necessarily accompany this very serious business—this business
so much more serious than washing a car or the dishes or one’s
self—and the words, “There, now that’s really clean,” are
apparently compulsory at the task’s end, just to remind anyone
within earshot of the unique nature of the accomplishment.
But I make do with the little lightweight Hoover I picked up
at Goodwill for five bucks, and it takes care of both the bare floor
and the carpet. Then I take up the feather duster than somehow
became mine since I moved into this room and attack the bookshelf,
lampshades, the picture frames, and other nooks and crannies (the
crannies requiring particular diligence.) I’m not a wholesale idiot,
so I do realize I’m re-seeding my floor with dirt as I do this, but I’ve
never been able to remember to dust first, and anyway, there’s
something about the baseness of floors that cries out for first
attention. Then I do a little Windexing with the Windex I borrow
from the bathroom. Truce or no truce, I’m glad I don’t see Tina on
this raid. But as I move my typewriter to wipe off my table top, I
have the stunning realization that perhaps I am a wholesale idiot for
missing the opportunity of… of the year? Of the decade? I’m a
poet, right? And I’m blazingly in love?
But there’s a problem. A serious coffee problem. I don’t
have any—not a bean—and my spirits, high and soaring as they are,
aren’t quite high enough. And I was too mooned-out when I passed
the convenience store on the way to the laundromat to remember to
stop and buy the coffee I needed. But that would have been crap
coffee anyway, and regretting the past’s an idiot’s occupation, so
I’m out again and off the Boston Blacky’s to spend some big bucks
for a slug of the real stuff and a thermos to go again. It’s 9:30 when
I sit down at my typewriter with my steaming cup to accompany my
steaming mind. I’m confident. I’m in love. I’m finished before
eleven. And it goes like this:
111
On the brightful tuning of this song
Leaves grow branches, branches trunks,
My doubtless dying dead and dumb,
My spinners spin a wishful thread
Of winter roses blooming stems with silken
Roots that feed the soil, and brother
Earth the sweetest lump that sugared
Any steaming cup as whitely starred as ours.
And one by one the notes descend

And play across the keys, their tassels
Trailing, trimmed in trills,
Their long call short, their daring done,
Their resonance remindful of the rose
And wishlong silvered look that plays
In pearls across your eyes
And whitely lights the stars in mine.
And once I finish this little love song, once I know it’s right just the
way I finally put it down, the way it landed on the page like two
amorous birds, an extraordinary notion grips me. Extraordinary not
only because it feels to me like the order of the world depends on
my calling Gretchen immediately, but because it feels as if it’s this
poem that’s compelling me to call. To call now. Immediately. At
once. Not at three in the afternoon, but now, at 10:58 A.M.
The phone rings only once.
“Gretchen?”
“Felix?”
“A poem made me do it, Gretchen. A poem made me call
you. That’s the truth. I’m a gentleman and never would have called
you before the prescribed time, but a piece of art intervened.”
“Really?” she said. “I can’t remember a piece of art
intervening in my life before. What kind of poem is it?”
“It’s a love poem, silly. And I wrote it for you—just now.”
“It’s one of yours?”
“Uh huh. I’ll give it to you later. This is only the
annunciation.”
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Here she paused. “The annunciation,” she said. “So…
you’re not going to read it to me?”
“No-o, not over the phone. That wouldn’t be right. And
anyway, this way I’m giving you something to anticipate too,
considering I’ve been a dizzy duck since the moment I woke up.”
“You are a dizzy duck,” she said with a sweetness in her
voice that melted me even further. “I’m on the phone reassuring my
employer right now so I can’t talk. But I will be anticipating the
poem and your call at three, promptly. Can you manage that?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, “Yes, I certainly can,” at which Gretchen
laughed and gently hung up. I closed my eyes then and felt that
warmth under my eyelids, and the corners of my mouth rising
irresistibly in the warm currents escaping upward from my heart,
which at this moment seems the source of all things enduring and
good.
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BUTTERMAN
I sat, dizzy, on my hall floor for only another minute before

something happened that clarified my status for me—my mortality
status, I should say, my status on the materiality scale—because my
black and white cat, Lois, climbed the three steps of the front porch,
entered in through the open door and loped right past me as if I
weren’t there at all. Odd thoughts bloomed in my mind as time
slowed during this occurrence. For example: Where was my actual
body? Was it this, here in the hall, or was it at the nursing home
with Aunt Lydia? And who was going to feed Lois tonight? And
how would Miranda know that I’d remembered the afternoon of that
picnic? And did the grocer have any more of those wonderful
cherries? These questions and more were addressed then when Lois
returned to the hall, rubbed up against my leg, meowed, and pushed
her head into my hand as I petted it.
“I thought I was dead, Lois,” I said. “And I’m still not sure.
You’re only a cat.”
I had no trouble getting to my feet then; the dizzy spell had
passed, and as I walked through the door onto the porch, I saw my
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neighbor, Mr. Knutson (a human), coming toward me down the
street.
“How are you today, Barney?” I asked.
“Better than you, I think. You look pale, Horace. Are you
all right?”
“I am,” I answered, with an exuberance that may have
surprised him. “I had a little dizzy spell, but it’s over now, so I think
I’ll just sit here and get some air.”
Which I did. I sat on my front porch Adirondack chair for
about fifteen minutes, all the time wondering how after living as
long as I had, I could be so foolish to mistake a brief feeling of
insubstantiability for death. I was cosmically embarrassed, not one
of your everyday emotions.
But that was last Saturday, and today is the next Friday, a fact that
clearly requires an explanation—or an attempted one. Because you
might recall—and I hope you do, since it’s no trivial matter—that
according to a long revered and tested astrological formula, I’d
ascertained that I’d have “shuffled off this mortal coil” by Monday
or Tuesday at the latest. To avoid cumbersome technicalities, let me
explain that if a margin of error did exist in my calculations, it was
to err toward an earlier day rather than a later one, because on
Tuesday of this week, Mars, one of the key players in this drama,
made a transit in my progressed chart that closed the door on the
possibility of my demise. So somehow, something intervened.
Needless to say, I had checked my calculations beforehand more
times than I can count, and the formula—or formulae, really—come
from an unimpeachable source.
A good deal has happened to me since Tuesday when Mars
made that transit, but as far as I can ascertain, certain things went
wrong, or as I should probably say—considering contemporary
prejudice—what went right.
According to my understanding, there are two possible
weaknesses in the means of calculating one’s time of death, and
both depend on the life of the individual being studied. One of
these, I’ve been able to put aside as non-applicable because of the
nature of my life, since mine is a life without any major conflicts.
But the second and best possible explanation of what went right
would assume the kind of strong personal associations that I do not
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have and have not had for years. It’s all too easy to be blind about
oneself and others, so despite my doubts, I must consider the
following.
Often when trying to understand the effect of the planets
and their interactions in one’s birth and progressed chart (the
progressed path of the planets throughout one’s life in relation to
their positions at birth), it’s useful to resort to the keywords long
associated with these planets, with their angular relations, and the
signs of the zodiac and the twelve houses. But in trying to put
together a meaningful proposition using these keywords as they
apply to my unsuccessful death, I can’t do much better than the
following—and this after a long, hard day at my desk.
All I can come up with is this: There is a RELATIONSHIP
or ASSOCIATION in which I am involved, which is somehow
LAVISH, and which is strongly influenced by SPONTANEITY, by
IMPETUOSITY, and last of all by BEAUTY of some incorporeal or
even aesthetic sort. And in some way the sheer SPONTANEITY of
the relationship diverted what seemed in every way inevitable. It
was as if a wild card were played by some lack of restraint unfitting
to the time. But of course I am not in a relationship of any sort, let
alone a lavish one, in which spontaneity plays any part, and I can’t
identify any lack of restraint in my behavior.
So obviously, I can’t be reading this quite right. Obviously,
I’ve got something wrong, there’s some connection I’m missing, or
some reversal or displacement of which I’m unaware, as if I’m
applying these principles to myself in the wrong way or to the
wrong person or persons, or personifications or even institutions or
histories.
Astrologically, apparently I was in over my head. So
perhaps some day I’ll take the problem to a professional I trust, if I
should come across one in the undetermined number of years that I
have to live. But that, of course, goes directly to a matter of far
more consequence.
I spent Wednesday with my books and my calculations, and at night

I tried to keep my mind distracted with my telescope. The sky was
cloudless and the air was 65 degrees, so my skylight not only
opened to the cold sight of the remote past, but the cool summer
breeze as well. When I went to bed, I asked the powers that may or
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may not guide my life to make me clean and clear, to bathe me in a
purifying sleep, so that when I woke, I might seize the day and all
its rekindled possibilities in my newly granted life.
My newly granted life!
I slept later than usual on Thursday, and having forgotten to
close my curtains the night before, I was awakened by the sun’s rays
directly on my face. And that was really all it took; a good way to
start a day or even a life, I think, no further omens or assistance was
required. I do not know what I dreamed, but I knew that this day, at
least, this first day of my reprieve, I’d spend like a child.
My first desire was one I’d had from time to time, but had
never permitted myself. It had seemed too infantile—until then,
when I turned on my side, took my pillow, pulled it under my
cheek, bent up my knees, and with the light blanket drawn over my
head, snuggled back to sleep in a sixty-year-old’s best
approximation of the fetal position. The feeling was delicious. I
only slept for a few minutes, I think, but I woke breathing from the
deepest chambers of my lungs.
Then I stayed in bed, stretching my back, curling my toes,
asking myself what I’d turn to next: and it was a daydream—of
swooping out my window and soaring over the rooftops of the
neighborhood, invisible to all but dogs and cats who howled and
meowed to the consternation of their owners. I could fly for an
hour if I mustered the imagination, and what a silly man I’d be if I
couldn’t do a thing any child can do. So I flew on. It was easier, of
course, with a flowing cape, and easiest for me if that cape was
yellow—yellow as butter. And that’s simply whom I’d become; I
was “Butterman,” as long as only I would know, and not my
neighbor Knutson, or the people at the nursing home, or the bus
driver, or Gretchen, or that lawyer of mine. I could fly myself down
to the State Capitol and make tight circles around the dome as the
dogs walking the square barked and howled and tugged at their
leashes. But this was also work, not too much—and not the
flying—it was work to keep the stupid man at bay: that a fool, the
Past President with such inconsequential, grown-up concerns. Why
not fly every day, I wondered? And not the old man’s astral travel
nonsense, no, just this, and see how far afield I can go. Maybe due
east all the way to Lake Michigan. Or perhaps I’ll just stand here
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on this lady’s head—the statue that crowns the Capitol dome. Lady
“Forward,” in gold leaf.
Or even better, I’ll just shrug it off and see what I can find
to eat, so I went downstairs laughing—not without some
introspection, though.
I was on what they call these days a learning curve. That I
had a bowl of chocolate ice cream as soon as I got down assured me
that I was on the right track; the bowl of Raisin Bran I had after that
assured me that I was not insane. And to me, now that Friday’s
come along, that seems just the place to be when newly alive: in the
safe vacuum, warmly insolated between innocence and madness.
A little later on Thursday, after I finished breakfast (and did
the dishes), I took a bath instead of the shower and played in the
water, even getting out of the tub, into my robe, then down to the
kitchen to get several corks which I then held under the water and
let go, trying to catch them before they bobbed all the way up. I
practiced this long enough until I got good at it, and stayed in the
tub for an excessive length of time. Then I decided I’d better be
doing something that was good for someone other than myself, so I
got dressed and sat down for a while to think about it.
As a free man, I realized, there were no artificial bounds
within which I had to operate. I could, if I chose, become a clown
and entertain at children’s parties, free of charge, I could do that; or
if I chose to volunteer as toilet scrubber in The State Hospital for the
Mentally Ill, I could do that; or if I chose I could spend some time
walking the city streets giving away a hundred dollars a day to
anyone who looked deserving, I might be able to do that, fifty
dollars for sure; or I could volunteer at the Humane Society, or the
Henry Vilas Zoo, or the Veterinary School at the University; or I
could teach the rudiments of Astrology or other esoteric arts at no
cost to the students. Or, of course, I could always fulfill my dream
of becoming an elevator operator—as I said, to me, as mystic a
practice as that of the ferryman in Siddhartha—a more selfish
ambition, I admit, but nonetheless fulfilling a hallowed task of
delivering people to destinations. Or I could do so much else and
still be able to fly around Dane County every morning or wherever
else seemed like fun.
Of course, it made sense to ponder these possibilities for a
time—and a day later, on Friday, I’m still pondering. I have already
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made several decisions; not regarding my new vocation, but about
other things. For instance, I have decided never again to turn to
astrology or any other method of divination again regarding my
future, and particularly concerning my death. I overcame my
“cosmic embarrassment” as soon as I realized that I had unwittingly
presented myself with a unique emotional opportunity, one that
typically requires a near-death experience to achieve, a brush with
mortal danger, a reversal of a terminal diagnosis, or a reprieve from
a firing squad or electric chair (while either blindfolded or strapped
down.) I have been given the opportunity to experience life anew
because of a mistake I made. So along with my decision to swear
off all divination, prophesy, even speculation, I have added a
resolution to never doubt myself again. The reasoning is simple: if
through an apparent mistake I have delivered myself into a second
childhood—not of senility but maturity—it’s clear to me that I’m
ignorant of the actual effects of my actions, and therefore it’s wisest
not to judge them.
On Friday night Miranda called me. She said she was happy I was
available, and I told her she didn’t know the half of it. We decided
to meet for breakfast early the next day and then spend the rest of
the morning at the Farmer’s Market on the square.
We were to meet at nine, but I was up early and downtown
by eight. The Farmer’s Market was already bustling. I got a cup of
strong coffee to go from a streetside vender and plunged into the
crowd that slowly circulated around the Capitol Square. At once I
was assailed with ears of sweet corn and peppers and eggplants of
varying shapes; and with clumps of broccoli and cauliflowers and
cucumbers; and with bushel upon bushel of tomatoes—red ones of
every shape, green ones, orange ones, yellow ones, little yellow
ones with red veins; and then with watermelons, cantaloupes, and
other melons, unidentifiable, but succulent, I’m sure. And
intermixed with all this were tables and crates stacked with fresh
herbs, basil that announced itself from yards away, oregano, sorrel,
sage, and other savory green things I couldn’t identify. And there
were early apples, too, and plastic gallon jugs of fresh-pressed cider.
And jars and jars of honey: there was red clover honey, buckwheat
honey, pumpkin honey, basswood and black locust honey; and
popsicle sticks for samples. And then there was a mushroom stand
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in the midst of it all with a subterranean perfume. And there were
flowers, a bounty of them: there were lilies, sweet orange and
yellow ones; bee balm, fragrant and lavender; cosmos, hot pink, red,
and magenta; there were white gardenias, white snow drops, and
there were sunflowers. And cheese, too, of course, and bags of
squeaky white cheddar cheese curds; and fresh eggs, and fresh
chickens; and there were croissants and sweet baked things; and
people, the vendors and farmers, and the kind who get up early for
fresh produce, or to walk their dogs around the square, or to mingle,
or look for friends, or like me, who reads it all like the it was the
news.
By a corn stand, I hear a woman talking to a friend.
“He took the engine out and found all these coiled wires and I don’t
know what, and he tried to use my kitchen scissors to cut through
them, and I said Ryan, talk to your Dad, he’s got to have the tools
for that…”
Then by the first tomato stand, another woman to her friend:
“I’ve got so many I can’t give them away anymore and still I buy.
Did you read that article? How they’re saying tomatoes are as
beneficial as garlic? Thank goodness. Who eats garlic?”
At a flower stand with quite a spectacular display, I hear an
elderly gentleman shyly tell the kindly female vendor that her
flowers were so beautiful they looked like they’d been picked from
God’s garden again. I decided to buy some flowers there.
At a honey booth, a middle-aged man is leaning against
some crates having a leisurely talk with a farmer about his age. “I
hear if you do it every day or five times a week or so it’s going to
extend your life, but if you’re not doing what you want I don’t see
how it makes a hell of a lot of difference.”
Then at another tomato booth, an elderly man speaks to a
teenage girl. “You grow all these yourself, sweetheart?” At which
the girls turns to an older woman and rolls her eyes.
And these bits and pieces of people’s lives mean nothing
more than what they are, but this morning they are luminous. These
snippets of talk are like pebbles or fish scales or wisps of cloud or
twigs stripped of bark. And after sitting on a bench for a while in
the early sun, smiling enough to attract some attention, I look at my
watch to discover my hour has passed, so I leave to meet Miranda.
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Of course, as we’re all apt all do, I can’t help but picture the
person I hadn’t seen for twenty-four years—after all, her voice had
remained the same. But still, I try to keep my expression guarded so
as not to betray any shock I feel at seeing her aged a quarter of a
century. I know she’s well past fifty now.
But I am stunned, and it shows on my face as soon as I see
her waiting at the table in the restaurant I’d suggested. It is a place
on State Street, only two blocks from the square. “Bernardo’s
Restaurant and Café,” it’s called—the restaurant, a more formal
place with a good reputation occupies the basement; the café the
upper two floors. I first see Miranda from outside as I approach the
Café. She’s aged gracefully; just as one would hope. There are
wrinkles, yes, but her delicate features remain harmonious, none is
exaggerated, none gone weak. In twenty-five years, people can
become caricatures of themselves, grotesques; she has not. She is
sitting primly behind green café curtains at one of the two window
tables overlooking the street. She’d still has her intriguing, elf-like
look. She fits perfectly in the little tableau: she is wearing a grey
silk blouse, a green jade necklace, and her hair is still red, like
polished copper.
As I enter the place, I remind myself that I am, in fact, the
immortal Butterman, so I suppose I was smiling as I approach the
table.
“You look like a kid in a candy store,” she says.
“That’s about right,” I answer, hugging her. “An old kid.
And you look as wonderful as ever.” Then I reveal the flowers I’m
holding behind my back. She beams.
“Picking from God’s garden again?”
I am still standing up. “What!” I ask. “Have you used that
expression before?”
“I’ve heard it,” she says, picking up the unseen bouquet
she’d set between her chair and the green café-curtains. “That’s
what the woman told me when I bought these!”
“I just heard a man say that over on the square. Those same
words. We must have bought our flowers at the same place.”
“So are you saying that seeing me again is like lightning
striking twice in the same place?”
“That’s a poetic way of putting it, but yes, I think so!” I say
sitting down, trying to compose myself by remembering that I’m
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none other than the great, flying Butterman. “I loved that poem, by
the way.” I say then.
“Do you believe it?” she asks, admiring her bouquet, quite
different from mine but no less beautiful.
“You mean that when you find your true heart you find a
treasure that’s buried in everyone? That there’s only one heart?
That love is immutable?”
“Something like that,” she says. “I’d love to find that poet.
It’s a he: I remember that, and he’s in Madison. But I never fully
know what poems mean. I interpret them however I choose, which
is usually emotionally—and never intellectually. If I ever feel I
fully know what one of my poems meant, I either threw it out or
worked on it until I didn’t. If poetry’s not a little bewildering to
me… well, what’s the point?” She turns the bouquet in her hands
and looks at mine. “What is it about these flowers?”
“They’re obviously blessed. So we probably are too.”
Miranda nods and takes a sip of her tea.
“You’re a very beautiful woman,” I say.
“Would you mind repeating that? And thank you for not
saying ‘still.’”
“You’re a very beautiful woman,” I repeat. “I probably
didn’t tell you that enough in 1978.”
“Once, I think. You were very shy. What happened? It
can’t just be these enchanted flowers.”
At this point, a waitress approaches and asks if I’d like
some coffee. I tell her I’ll have what Miranda is drinking, which
turns out to be “Red Zinger” tea.
“It’ll take me a while to tell you what happened,” I explain,
“particularly if I tell it dramatically, which is the way I’d like to do
it. So let’s have a suspenseful little pause before I begin, all right?
Why don’t you tell me how Jane is doing, and maybe a little about
your trip.”
For only a moment a stunned expression crosses Miranda’s
face. She recovers at once, but there’s no fooling the flying man,
and this time I can’t help laughing.
“Horace?” she says with a puzzled look, reaching across the
table and taking my hand. “You’re beaming. Are you in love?”
“Not specifically… but I’m not divulging my secret before
I’m ready. So go on. Tell me about old Jane.”
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A little while later after we’d eaten and I’d just begun to tell
Miranda the story of my reprieve from death, she leaves the table
for a moment, so I’m alone to watch the passersby and listen to the
conversations around me.
Outside on State Street, on the sidewalk across it, I saw
what might have seemed an apparition if I were a gullible man. Of
course, it wasn’t an apparition. What I saw was a middle aged man
who looked like he’d lived harder than most. He was dressed in
antique “hippie” gear, and had a dissipated, disheveled look; long
unkempt hair and a sign which, with the aid of a shoulder harness,
he held high above his head.
“THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR,”
the sign reads. My jaw didn’t drop, but my eyes must have widened
at this unanticipated reminder of the truth. And then I saw two
young men—students maybe—stop the ragged looking gentleman,
engage him in what seemed friendly conversation, shake his hand
and walk on as if there were nothing unusual about running into him
on State Street. That I’ve foresworn divining the future does not
mean I believe in the silly notion of “accident,” nor does it preclude
recognizing personalized messages from the Universal Mind. This
was already an extraordinary day in an extraordinary new life, and
being confronted with the truth itself coming toward me down the
street wasn’t something to be ignored—certainly not by Butterman.
Then I heard two women speaking together at a table not far
from me.
“She bought the book, like he said, but she’d only got a
little way through, when she told me she was so disgusted she
actually threw it down the thing by the service elevator in her
building. And it was an expensive book.”
“The thing?”
“The thing, you know—the incinerator thing, the chute.”
I wanted to hear more of this one, but I was distracted by
the sight of a muscular, shirtless young man coming down State
Street with a large snake, a python, I think, wrapped around his neck
and shoulders. Some passersby seemed repelled—some
histrionically—but others, children, in particular, were fascinated
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and eagerly touched and petted the snake when the young man
stopped and introduced them. It was only that parents who wanted
to entice them away. The young man would have stood there all
day making sure the children saw how gentle and beautiful his big
pet actually was.
Just then a very distinguished looking man was seated at the
other table in the window next to mine overlooking the street. The
hostess treated him deferentially, along with the younger blond
woman who accompanied him. It seemed she knew and respected
them both. After she asked them if they wanted coffee, his vivacious
companion asked him how it was going.
“Much harder than I’d expected,” he said with a lilting
Italian accent. “It only took me a few days to realize how capable he
was and what a load he carried downstairs every night. He’s a good
man. A free spirit. He once told me poets don’t have to follow the
same rules as ordinary mortals, so I should have known!”
Here his companion laughed. “So you think you should
have struck a deal?” she asked
“I think so,” he said. “Maybe I still will.”
But then Miranda returned.
“So,” she said sitting down across from me, “you were
saying…?”
“What was I saying?”
“That for the last year you’d been living under the
impression that you wouldn’t be sitting here with me today or
anywhere else… unless in a crematorium—where I’ve heard the
bodies do sit up straight once they’ve reached a certain
temperature.”
“Is that true?”
“Oh, I don’t know. And I don’t much care. I prefer an
blend of truth and fiction in life, don’t you?”
“I’m starting to,” I say, surprised, never having thought of it
like that. “I am. And I haven’t before—that’s part of why I’m so
happy.”
“I’d ask where you’ve been all my life, but I know the
answer. So tell me the dramatic part.”
So I go on with my story after we leave the café and walk
the two blocks down State Street to the Square, where the two of us
are now assailed by the natural bounty of southern Wisconsin in late
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August. By the time we make a complete circuit of the square,
Miranda’s bought honey for herself and Jane, and I’ve bought
honey, cider and a variety of mushroom I’ve never seen. I insist,
however, that the mushroom vendor assure me they aren’t
poisonous, just in case my calculations were inaccurate in some way
I’d not suspected. I’d also told Miranda the whole story, including
“THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR” and how when
lightning struck in the same place twice regarding those flowers
from God’s garden it had awakened a hope in me that she’d end her
cross country drive right here in Madison. She said she’d already
considered it.
“Do you remember when we first met?” she asked me then.
“Ah, yes, I remember it well,” I said.
Miranda looked at me skeptically. “Yes, that was Maurice
Chevalier, wasn’t it? Who sang that song in...? What was it in?
‘GiGi? About an old couple who have different versions of the past.
He sang it with Hermione Gingold, I think. Leslie Caron was also
in that movie. It must have been... 1958?”
“Yes. I remember it well.”
“Do you realize how that dates us, Horace? There are more
people who’ve never heard of that movie than those who remember
it, and the number of those who do is growing smaller as we speak.
But I’m sure your memories are skewed, dear. The man’s always
are. As I remember it, Jane had dragged me out to your
Metaphysical Society for an ‘Open House’ that you were having in
an attempt to attract younger members. Ha! You were by far the
youngest member there, as I recall, and you were getting on.”
“I was thirty-six.”
“That’s what I mean, and you were surrounded by old
fossils smelling of vitamins who hadn’t noticed the 1960’s and
certainly not the 70’s. And you didn’t attract young people, not the
kind you wanted to. Jane and I were the youngest guests and we
were your age—practically.”
“There were more,” I said. “We enrolled a few new
members.”
“I don’t remember any such thing.”
“You see?”
“So we met at the punchbowl, of all things. You remember
that, don’t you?”
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BUTTERMAN
“No. I remember meeting in the library.”
Miranda rolled her eyes. “I didn’t know there was a library
until the next time I went there, Horace. I met you at the
punchbowl. You were wearing a bow tie, and it was non-alcoholic
punch. Jane introduced me to you. ‘The President,’ she said.”
“You’re making this up.”
Miranda laughed. “I said to you, if you’re in charge, can’t
you get some Champagne to pour this sweet concoction, or at least
some Vodka? And twenty minutes later you reappeared with two
bottles of expensive French Champagne.”
“It wasn’t that expensive.”
“So you remember?”
“That part I do.”
“And what did you do then, if you remember it so well?”
“You’ll have to refresh me.”
“I asked if you were going to pour them into the punch, and
you said most of the members were tee-totaling vegetarians. So I
asked you just what you planned to do with the Champagne and you
left the room and came back with the bottle bubbling over and
poured two punch glasses full. One for me and one for Jane. Do
you remember that?”
“I couldn’t very well drink at the open house.”
“I suppose you couldn’t. But Jane and I made up for that,
didn’t we?”
“I don’t think anyone knew.”
“Well, that doesn’t speak very well for them.”
“But then we talked in the library.”
“No, Horace. I told you that wasn’t that night. Jane and I
just got loaded and went home. But do you remember when I
kissed you?”
“I thought it was after we talked in the library, but I
remember.”
“Oh, really? What was it like?”
“It was very sexual.”
“Yes. I thought if I put my tongue deep enough down in
you, I’d touch your heart.”
“You did.”
“Oh, I know that.” Miranda smiled. “Horace, I kissed you
outside in that circular driveway. Jane was already in the car trying
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to figure out if she was sober enough to drive us home. Before I
kissed you I flipped your little bow tie off. You see, I knew that
there was something there beyond your mild mannered, Clark
Kentish President of the American Metaphysical Society. I thought
it was going to be easier to bring out though. But I was young and
proud, so I believed I could do it myself in a matter of months.”
“Were you disappointed?”
She thought for a moment. “No. I really wasn’t. I noticed
my own shortcomings when I was with you—and of course I never
in a thousand years would have believed who it was lurking within
that sweet inhibited soul I found so attractive. And I love it,
Horace. Butterman! It’s so completely daft! The image is so roly-
poly and you’re still thin as a rail. But I suppose if you keep eating
ice cream for breakfast like you say and wolfing down those sticky
buns like you did back at that café, you’ll fill out some.”
“You want to come see where Butterman lives?” I asked.
“Can we fly?”
“We can try.”
“Do you wear tights with your butter-yellow cape?”
“No. Pajamas.”
Miranda considered it a minute and decided she’d rather
walk.
It was during the walk then that we discussed the ways in
which I might be of service to the community.
“It would be a shame to waste your erudition,” Miranda
commented after I’d made a few suggestions.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Can a thorough
knowledge of Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine” be of any more real
value than a sparkling clean toilet in the State Mental Hospital?”
“Horace, there are people to do that, people who need their
jobs and who may be unionized—and I’m sure if you think about it,
you know where you’ll end up if you go out there with such a
suggestion.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I should start a school of some sort,” I
offered. “A place where I could scrub the toilets and lecture on the
Egyptian Mysteries.”
“That would beat giving away fifty dollars a day to
homeless winos.”
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BUTTERMAN
Then Miranda didn’t say anything for a while. When she
spoke again she took my hand. “Could you afford that, Horace? A
school?”
“It would take some planning, but I think I could manage.
There are so many possibilities, so many ways of doing it. I do
know the people to talk to, though, or at least the kind of people to
talk to…”
“Really?” she said, “Well, that’s promising. I’m actually
feeling quite moved now.” She’d let go of my hand and was
walking on slowly. “Flooded with ideas. I’m nearly dizzy with
them, so I’m not going to say anything for a while.”
That’s when it struck me. Not like lightening, hardy like a ton of
bricks: like a bouquet, perhaps, or like a basket of flowers.
“There’s something we both forgot,” I say. “It happened a
long, long time ago. A long, long time ago. The flowers,
remember?”
Miranda looked perplexed.
I help up my bouquet. “What are these?” I asked her,
touching some small white flowers.
“Gardenias?”
“Yes. The deepest cobalt blue and the smell of gardenias.
Remember?”
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THREE OF HEARTS
SAINT BERNIE
So I decided to do it. I didn’t see Crescent Lake out my window, all

sparkling in the morning sun. All I saw was how I looked to Rosie
when she was pleading with me and I pulled my hands away. I saw
it over and over again. Now it was Rosie; who would be next?
Every time my life showed any sign of improvement, it got worse.
There was no way out. And I suppose because of the way I felt that
morning, someone could say I was mixed-up, or afflicted with some
disorder, or insane, because there was nowhere I could go with my
feelings. I couldn’t help Rosie, who just as well might have been a
figment of my imagination, and I couldn’t help myself forget her
pain and the pain she felt for her children, or worry who was going
to invade me next. So I decided to do it. But not there at the
cottage. I’d have to keep my plans concealed.
And I don’t believe it’s a sin. There are no people who
depend on me, except as a friend, and only a few of those, and
they’re adults who need to be responsible for their own feelings.
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SAINT BERNIE
But my feelings are something I can’t be responsible for anymore;
and I’ve led a good life, so I feel right avoiding what’s just around
the corner. And maybe it’s something I can’t name—like I said,
it’s a disorder or insanity—but those words can’t capture the dread I
feel of knowing anything else like what I know about Rosie and the
need to get away from it forever. It makes me feel like I should
have been the one riding that bus that got set afire, that someone
should have done something like that for me!
And in case someone’s wondering how one day a man can
be looking down on things like the sky does, and then up from a pit
at midnight on the next, then that someone doesn’t know how much
pain there is in the world, and doesn’t know the things a person will
do to keep from feeling it. And whoever’s wondering probably
can’t understand how a man can put his hands on a stranger’s
shoulders to share her heartache one day, and then decide to never
help anyone again, because when one stranger looked to him for
help, he pulled those same hands away. And I suppose, too, that the
person wondering about this is the kind I might call a son of a bitch
if I got angry, because they would be showing a lack of respect—
and not just for me, but for everyone. And that’s about all I have to
say about people who don’t understand.
There’s a mirror in the bedroom at that cottage, and when I
woke that terrible morning, I looked at myself in it and saw that I’m
going to have to be vigilant about hiding my feelings because I
looked like I’d had a brush with death. So I rubbed and pinched my
cheeks and to make them rosy and slipped into the little shower
room upstairs there, before anyone could see me looking like that.
By the time I was out of the shower I was feeling the relief of
knowing I’d made a good decision, because I could turn the pain of
my dream away with the assurance that there wouldn’t be many
more to come.
“Did you sleep well, Bernie?” Jolene asked at breakfast.
“You don’t look too rested.”
“It’s just the change of scene,” I said. “The quiet of the
night keeps me tossing and turning. A city boy needs traffic and
sirens and horns to sleep. But I’ll get used to it.”
And everyone at the table thought that was funny, so I felt
in control of things again.
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Jack yawned. “I still want to go fishing, even though I slept
as late as a teenager?” he said to me. “You still interested, city
boy?”
And I had to say I was, so I did, even though the idea made
me numb and I was worried I’d give myself away. But then I
remembered the fishing I did when I was younger at a cottage just
like this that belonged to a friend of Abby’s family, and when there
were two or three of us were in the boat, it was a quiet time without
much conversation. And even though my stomach was tied in
knots, I made a show of eating breakfast, which was ham steaks
with fried eggs cooked on top, and asking for seconds so Jolene
wouldn’t worry.
But of course she didn’t know what there really was to
worry about, but now I was feeling protected from heartbreak.
Maybe I was like a robot with some of my wires removed, which
isn’t either a brave or a cowardly thing: it’s like a thick layer of ice
or of mud, or a stream all jammed up with fallen trees, or a place
where a bridge fell down across a road.
By the time we were out on the lake that morning, I’d
decided I’d buy a pistol at the sporting goods department in the
Marshall Field’s Men’s Store. I was pretty sure they still had guns
there like they did years ago, and I liked that store. If they didn’t
carry them anymore, I knew there was a gun shop west of the loop
where I’d go if I had to. It made me feel even more secure to have
decided that, like another wire had been disconnected. I knew what
I’d write in my note already, too, and that it would be to Jolene.
And I knew I wanted to sit at my window looking at the traffic and
the lights when I pulled the trigger, and that the barrel would be in
my mouth, and I even thought of how my head would look and the
wall of my room. What I didn’t care about was whether I caught
any fish that day, but I did catch one Northern and acted as excited
as I could. I had to or I would have been cheating Jack, who didn’t
catch a thing.
Of course everyone made a big deal out of the fish I caught,
which was big enough to filet and cook up in butter for dinner as a
kind of appetizer. After dinner the family played Whist, a card
game like Bridge but made much simpler. I sat out. I knew I
couldn’t concentrate on cards because already I was so worried
about going to sleep and having another vision. When it was time
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for bed, I asked Jack if he had any brandy so I could get over
missing the city sounds and get to sleep. Again everyone thought
this was funny—except Jack, who put his arm round me in the
kitchen when he poured my drink and asked if anything was wrong.
“Nothing a glass of brandy won’t take care of,” I said. And
I didn’t look at his face to see if he believed me or not, but just said
goodnight to everyone and went upstairs.
No one there at the cottage in Rhinelander knew it, but I
hadn’t had a drink in nineteen years. Not since I drank myself into a
stupor and fell down in a bar on Western Avenue after Abby died. I
don’t remember too much about it. Only that while I was sitting at
the bar having one whiskey after another, I was fighting to hold all
my grief inside me, and that when I tried to get down off the
barstool I fell on the floor like a drunk and started to cry. I didn’t
know anyone there, and don’t know how I got home to our place on
North Avenue, but I think I got up and ran out of that place before
anyone started to laugh.
I never drank much before that night, and like I said, never
since, and the brandy Jack poured for me tasted awful but went right
to my head. By the time I’d drunk it down, it started my crying for
Abby. But I didn’t make any noise about it and fell asleep after just
a few minutes.
When I woke up in the morning it was raining, and it rained
on and off for the rest of the week. Jack said it didn’t bother him
since it was good fishing weather, but both Jolene and Marcy were
upset because they’d wanted to keep on sunning themselves like
they had that first Sunday. The two boys practically disappeared.
During they day, they were in town or someone else’s cottage with
some girls they knew or went looking for other some girls, and at
night, Josh told me, they were at a striptease bar where the women
did filthiest thing I’d ever heard of—it was a place they could get
into with their fake I-Ds. After the first day of rain, Jolene tried to
get over her upset and cheer everyone up. But the rain hadn’t had
any effect on me, so she concentrated her efforts on the others,
suggesting all kinds of rainy day activities from renting videos to
playing board games or charades or reading aloud from mystery
books. On the third night I had another frightening dream about a
different lost girl in Chicago and how she cried for her babies. She
was something like Rosie but not quite, and it ended again with me
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pulling my hands away from her, so I don’t see any point in talking
about it.
It was the next day that Jolene sat me down under the eaves
on the front porch, saying she wanted to talk to me. There must
have been a leaf clog up there because the rain didn’t run out of any
drain pipe, but dripped and sputtered down all the way across in
front of us so that anyone who went down the porch steps got
soaked.
“How you doin’, Bernie?” she asked.
“I’m holding my own,” I answered her.
“No, Bernie, you’re not being yourself. Suddenly you’re
not interested in other people, and that’s your gift, you know that,
and that’s and one of the things people love about you. You’ve
hardly spoken to Marcie since we’ve been up here, or even to me. I
was hoping that getting away would be good for you, that it would
make you happy... Bernie? Are you having your visions again?”
“No. I’m just being quiet—like you said, watching and
waiting. Remember?”
And that was about all I said, and that was the worst kind
of lie, since it was turning an untruth back on a friend. But I was
only protecting myself. I can’t say I ever felt any sicker about what
was happening to me than just then with Jolene. It got me to
wondering if I should just get it over with up there in Wisconsin to
save myself three more days of dishonesty, but the thought of
creating a memory that would ruin summers at the cottage for
Jolene and Jack seemed even worse. Still, I had to make that
choice: and I made it for Jolene and her family, even though the
next night, by whatever diabolical trick of my mind or whatever was
possessing me, I dreamed that I pulled my hands away from that
same girl, over and over again.
And so I say: Does Marcy have a problem with her divorce?
I’m sorry if Marcy has a problem with her divorce. Or maybe I’m
not really sorry. Maybe what I’m sorry about is having to be here
and pretend to be the same as everyone else. But the rain keeps up,
on and off for the next three days, and by the time dinner comes
around Friday night, I’m not able to smile anymore, and hardly able
to speak, and I’m sure that I’ve contributed as much to the overall
gloom as the rain, but I hadn’t let on a thing.
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SAINT BERNIE
The plan is to leave early the next morning so we can stop in
Madison for a kind of farmers’ market that Jolene likes to go to
every year. Then we’ll go back to Chicago, and I’m counting on
getting there before Marshall Fields closes. I don’t know what time
they close on Saturday.
When we all get up at the cottage the next morning, the sun is
shining, and I can’t help but feeling a little better, even though I
know I’m going to be dead before much more than a day passes, at
most. Or maybe that’s the reason I am feeling better. Or maybe it’s
the sunshine, or leaving for home that perks me up, but the
sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s become such a part
of me has let up a little. But not for long, because as we drive off
and I start going back over my time at the cottage and realize that I
hardly said goodbye to Marcy, the feeling starts to weigh me down
again.
We’re all quiet in the car on the way back to Madison, and I
realize I’m the reason for that. Some things just have to be. I try to
go to sleep but I can’t, so I spend my time concentrating on what it’s
going to be like to be relieved from all this. I start to wonder that if
I’m dead, who’s it going to be that’s free; who’s going to feel that
I’m not suffering any more? And then maybe I do fall asleep. It’s
much warmer when we get to Madison than it was up on the lake,
and after Jack parks the car and we walk to the square around the
Wisconsin Capitol, I see what Jolene meant when she said this
Farmers’ Market she wanted to go to so bad would be mobbed!
I can hardly believe it! Are you crazy, Jolene? I want to say
to her. Are you crazy for bringing me to a place like this? Why
would you do that, with all these faces? Of course, I don’t say a
word, but Jolene senses something right away.
“Oh, Bernie!” she says, taking hold of my shoulders, and
glancing over at Jack. “I don’t know what I was thinking! I’m
sorry. You want me to give you the keys so you can go wait in the
car? It’s just that you’ve been so quiet… I… forgot. I’m sorry
Bernie. You want the keys?”
But I didn’t. I was more frightened of sitting in that car
alone than mingling in with the crowd. That was the first moment I
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felt that it must be insanity that had a hold on me. I told Jolene that
I didn’t mind the crowd, that I’d be okay and just started following
the two of them around. There were more vegetables there than I’d
even seen in one place. And some fruit too. I do like fruit, but I’ve
never really cared for vegetables: green beans and corn, that’s about
it. So I saw a lot of things there I don’t like, like broccoli, and peas,
and cauliflower, and mushrooms, which I’d rather not even look at.
There were apples there, and when Jolene saw me looking at them
she asked if why I didn’t buy a bag to take home to my room.
Would you eat them? she asked. All I did was shake my head. Are
you crazy, Jolene? I was thinking.
There were stands selling honey there, too, something I’ve
never seen much purpose for, considering there’s sugar, even in
cubes. But I tried not to look at people’s faces there. I’d been
practicing that for a few days already. There were men holding
hands walking around there, and some women holding hands, too,
but nothing I hadn’t seen in downtown Chicago, just never so many
in one small area. I saw a man and woman arguing, and that made
me feel like I was kicked in the stomach, and then I saw a fella and
a tall blond haired girl right in the middle of everyone kissing like
no one else was around, and that made me feel even worse than the
ones who were fighting. I also heard a child crying and that
suddenly made me feel sick, like I wanted to cry too, but there was
something else at that market that distracted me from it.
There were beautiful flowers, all around, and the sight of
those made me feel so terribly sad it almost felt good. There’s
probably another way to explain that, but I don’t know one, other
than there was a terrible sweet sadness to those fragile, beautiful
things. At one point when Jolene and Jack were quite far ahead of
me I felt I had to say something about the flowers, and I did to a
kind looking, grey-haired woman. I told her her flowers looked like
she’d picked them from God’s garden. And she laughed and said
the Earth is God’s garden. And I wanted to tell her, no it isn’t, it’s a
terrible place where no one understood anyone else’s pain; it’s a
lonely place I hate, but I couldn’t say that to her because it might
have extinguished the twinkle in her eye, which seemed to me the
only wholly good thing I saw in a week.
When I thought we were finally ready to leave, Jolene
decided she had to go back to one of the bakery stalls to buy herself
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a chocolate filled croissant. Jack rolled his eyes because earlier she
said she was going to resist temptation. But Jolene said she did
resist it, now she was giving in to it. But it turned out they’d just
sold out of chocolate filled croissants, just a minute ago. The
proprietor told Jolene that they still had some at her bakery, which
was a place about ten minutes away by car, and Jack said it would
be all right with him if they stopped there, even though it was out of
the way. I felt myself get angry at Jolene again for being such a pig
and dragging things out, making everything take longer, but I didn’t
let on. Saint Bernie never lets on, I’m thinking, and I’m thinking
that if my face is as sour as the way I feel I’d like to spare anyone
with goodwill from looking at it.
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SEVEN DAYS WITH GRETCHEN
As hot as I was to trot, it wasn’t all that difficult to wait until 3:00
P.M. to call Gretchen, because punctuality can be fun. God knows,
the exact time when things happen probably affects life in every
direction including up, so why not play that to the hilt? Which is
something I ordinarily do, and which makes my temporary poetry-
crazed aberration this morning all the more singular. But I knew
what was in store for us that evening. I knew we were a perfect
match. I also knew that even if Gretchen was having dinner with her
old roommate, we’d still be on each other like otters before
midnight, maybe even eleven. And no, I’m not going to claim I
didn’t nurse a pretty solid stiffy most of that day, but any man in
love will know that wasn’t the first thing on my mind. It was
second, and a close second, but what I wanted most was to be
subsumed in her presence, and show her by my every word and
137
action that I thrived there. So, waiting to call her exactly when she
requested was like shining my shoes, or straightening my tie, or
checking the mirror for the sparkle in my eye—and it’s too bad
people don’t realize that except when in total darkness, we all have
sparkles in our eyes, all of us, all the time. It’s just that sometimes
we have a better reason for it than others. For example:
1) SATURDAY
Heart fluttering violently at 2:59 PM. Dial again at 3:00

sharp, find line busy. Redial at 3:01. Still busy. Imagine Gretchen
talking to recent attacker and deciding to give him another chance.
3:03, still busy. Imagine she’s forgotten—“Oh, I’m sorry, you
were going to call this afternoon, weren’t you.” 3:05, my phone
rings—idiot with wrong number—wants to talk to Chico. 3:06, try
again. Still busy. I will surely die. Heart flutter swells to ominous
thumping. She’s forgotten. I’ll never recover. 3:07, try to touch
numbers on phone lovingly. Hers rings. She answers, apologizes
immediately. SUN RISES WITHIN CONFINES OF ROOM.
Explains mother called at 2:50 to say sending check for
days missed at work. G. thinks she’ll be out one week until eye is
pretty again. One week? I think, all for me. She says, where are
you taking me for dinner? SUN RISES WITHIN CONFINES OF
CHEST.
I say, meet me on same bench on square. She says, bring
poem. Thumping has given was to voluble rushing of blood.
Suddenly, after blur of walk, I’m there! All there! Sitting with on
bench with G. in 3:30 Saturday sunshine filtered through tall trees.
Read love poem with thighs (in shorts) touching, her head on my
shoulder. I tell it like it is:
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On the brightful tuning of this song

Leaves grow branches, branches trunks.
My doubtless dying dead and dumb,
My spinners spin a wishful thread
Of winter roses blooming stems with silken
Roots that feed the soil, and brother
Earth the sweetest lump that sugared
Any steaming cup as whitely starred as ours.
And one by one the notes descend

And play across the keys, their tassels
Trailing, trimmed in trills,
Their long call short, their daring done,
Their resonance remindful of the rose
And wishlong silvered look that plays
In pearls across your eyes
And whitely lights the stars in mine.
It does. It plays in pearls. She says she hopes I never

change. SUN RISES WITHIN CONFINES OF PANTS.
She says, what does it mean: My doubtless dying dead and
dumb?
I say (I love you) it means transcending death: what was
doubtless is now dead and dumb.
She says, what does it mean: Their long call short, their
daring done?
I say (I love you) I have no idea. I’m a poet.
She says a girl like her can get swept off her feet by a guy
like me.
Trust me, I say. She says she does.
Long walk then, small talk, big talk: restaurants, friends—

flowers, poems—old loves, new hopes. First kiss near
Gorham/Hamilton, James Madison Park: her face in my hands.
Second kiss, same location, my face in hers. Spectators smile.
HAPPIEST MAN IN UNITED STATES. More walk, more talk,
139
small, big: jobs, parents—beauty, music—bodies, God. Dinner:
white wine, French bread, salads (chicken and Chef). Enter my
room 8:00, Champagne in one hand, G. in other.
8:30 to midnight: like butterflies, too tender for words.
2) SUNDAY
Wake at 6:00 AM, feeling like poet. G. is Sleeping Beauty: hair

fanned out on pillow, sheet trailing off her like Botticelli Venus
rising out of sea; perfect, but still, I cover her. Pray she sleeps.
Make strong coffee. Smoke strong cigarette. Am poet. One long
sentence:
Though I cannot tell you why,

I love you as the trees love twilight,
and as I watch you sleep by the open window
at dawn, your eyes closed in a comfort
that restores me, I remember you smiling
as you wake, still lost in the violets
that will not forget you as you turn to me
in a moment forever that never again
in the palest of blues will be.
Like in a love story, I place the poem on the pillow next to

hers, and leave for the shower, hoping that when I return I’ll find
her reading it. It’s a very thorough shower one takes when
planning on climbing back in bed with Botticelli’s Venus, and
that’s exactly the shower I take. I don’t expect the same of her;
because it’s fine with me, even preferable this morning, if she’s
scented with the sea. But she’s still asleep, so I leave things as
they are and tiptoe to my armchair, put my feet up on a small
wooden cable-spool I stole from a construction sight, and thank my
lucky stars for twenty minutes until she awakes, when everything
goes according to the script. Returning from the violets, she
encloses me.
Afternoon at her place listening to Beethoven’s 4th
Symphony, her favorite—an unusual choice. On bed, sitting up,
clothed, behind her, legs around, her hair in my face, my arms
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THREE OF HEARTS
around her shoulders, hands softly clasped above her breasts for
entire symphony. Black eye a little better. Greener now, with a
touch of purple. She tells me how in high school went on a
personal campaign in Iowa City to save “Noble Trees and Striking
Views” from developers’ bulldozers. Failed. I tell how in high
school frequently put two “Betas”—colorful, graceful, long finned-
and-tailed, never-to-be-put-in-the-water-together, Siamese Fighting
Fish—in a small goldfish bowl together to see if I could induce
ichthyocide. Succeeded. Then long walk again, again small talk,
big talk. Apparently unable to separate conjoined hands. Surgery
not an option. Pry loose at 3:00 PM. Plan to meet at bench at 7:00
sharp.
Go down for nap at home. Wake at 6:45. Run like the
wind. Venus has a picnic basket, packed with marshmallows and
thunder. (Or so it seems.) What less could she carry? What’s less
is: a Quiche Lorraine, warm, not hot, just right, and a chilled
California white. Sunday night dinner on the Capitol lawn, the
square near empty. We tell jokes.
Sleep again chez moi. Talk till two: of biggest lies, of worst
mistakes, those we’ve hurt most. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
“Goodnight.” Not a care in the Western Hemisphere.
3) MONDAY
Long day. Awaken afraid. Brood for an hour before G. stirs.

“Oh, it was fun at the beginning, all right,” she’s saying, “but now
that you’ve showed me your bag of tricks…” And anyway, I think,
she’s way too beautiful for me. “You had me believing I’d get a
poem a day for life,” she says now, her dark side showing. “But
now you’re a bum, you live in the street. You smell. Go away.”
And she’s way too young for me, too, I realize. “I know he hit
me,” she says to add the coup de grace, “but the sex was so-o good.
So I called him up. You don’t own me.” I should have expected
this, nothing lasts. I’m worthless. I’m dirt off her shoe.
“Good morning sweetheart,” she says.
And she talks all morning about landscape architecture,
about getting another degree, about making things outdoors:
landscapes that make you fall in love; gardens that make you
remember dreams; hillsides that sweep away regrets.
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At lunch at Canton Café, I tell her how scared I was when I
awoke. Am called “Idiot,” a word which goes well with “Sweet
and Sour” and “Moo Shoo,” as in Sweet and Sour Idiot, and Moo
Shoo Idiot. Then we talk about kindergarten. We talk about the
terrible bus fire that was all over the news. We wonder about the
man who thought he was going for a bus ride and was incinerated.
Then can’t talk for a while. There’s a husky edge to Gretchen’s
voice, like the splash of pomegranate juice, or the violin in its low
registers, but just an edge. We do not talk of the poet of the streets.
Her fortune: A kind heart opens all doors. My fortune: After a
long journey you find joy. “Present tense,” I say to her, and eat the
little piece of paper to make it mine.
Then an afternoon of shopping and doing her laundry, the
presence of which makes me weak in knees again. I tell her how I
love the laundromat. She tells me she doesn’t because of creepy
guys like me who sit and watch the dryers spin and are probably
preparing to expose themselves. I ask her if she’d love the ideal
laundromat; she says she loves the ideal anything. I tell her she’s
the girl for me. She says I’ve got that right. Her black eye’s now
just green and pink. Regarding her injury, I tell her if she had no
arms and legs I’d carry her around in a basket and attend to her
every need, and love her no less. She says that doesn’t sound all
that bad, but then like a streak out of the blue, I remember waking
up so afraid, and I break down and tell her I might lose my nerve.
She says she’ll help me through. I say we have a problem. She says
she knows.
We dine at Burger King. Lovers who have problem but love
Whoppers have small problem. No problem big as Whopper.
We agree to walk to Picnic Point. I tell her if she had no
arms and legs I’d strap her on my back and she could sing in my
ear. She tells me if I had no arms and legs, she’d pull me in a red
Radio Flyer with a pirate flag high on a stick. How would I be
propped up? I ask. You wouldn’t, she says, you’d just roll around.
We’re going to talk about our problem later, we say.
It’s later almost immediately. So talk about the problem,
Gretchen says, the two of us sitting at the end of Picnic Point, a spit
of land that curls out into Lake Mendota, the August sun going
down behind her. This will be the start of something big, I say.
Then start, she says. Make words.
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“I’m scared,” I say. “That’s first. That’s Number One. Not
little scared: not, will I get in trouble? will I get caught? scared; no,
big scared, losing my love, losing myself scared—and which is
which?”
“That’s another question. First, how are you scared of
losing your love?”
I look at her to see if she knows how difficult it is to
articulate all this, and can tell she does. “By making myself
unavailable to you by my lifestyle choice,” I say. “That’s how.”
“Oh, really? Do I detect psychobabble?”
“I told you I’m scared,” I say. The woman’s tough. I try
again. “I’m scared that if I’m a homeless poet who smells like
garbage and has no permanent address, you’ll dump me.”
“I can see why you’d think that. And how are you scared of
losing yourself.”
“By not doing something I believe in… because…”
“Because?”
“Because I’m in love.”
“And therefore…?”
“You’re terrible, Gretchen. You’re relentless,” I say.
“I’m aware of that. I thought that’s what you like so much
about me. Can you answer that question or do I need to answer it
for you.”
“Oh, I can, smarty. I’m scared that because I’m in love I
won’t do something I believe in, and I’m not sure if I trust in the
love as much as I trust myself. Okay? There, I’ve said it.”
“That’s what I love about you.”
“Only that?”
“Don’t be a ninny. And think about it, Felix, you’ve known
yourself for thirty-seven years and you’ve only known me for a
few days.”
“Don’t say that. That makes me feel sick.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it that way. I feel the same way you do.
I feel like we’ve known each other forever. But I’m right, am I
not?”
Gretchen is sitting across from me, both of us cross-legged
on the grass. The setting sun is behind her, and I’ve never seen her
look quite so dramatic. “You’re perfectly right,” I say. “But
there’s something else, too. There’s a problem with the problem.
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There’s a fly in the ointment. And I know that fly, the one that’s in
our ointment, and it’s one whopping fly, my darling, but the
trouble is my swatter’s very small…” Just a suggestion of a smirk
crosses her face. “Don’t say it,” I say before she can answer with
anything about size not mattering or some such crack. And
anyway, it wouldn’t be merited. “Would you like me to explain?”
I ask.
“Yes, Felix. I’m sorry I smiled.”
“Well, you should be. No, maybe you shouldn’t be. Maybe
you’re prescient. Because smiling’s really my point—or a lack of
it: that’s the problem with our problem. I wrote a line about it in a
poem once: “Smiling is wider than wishing is deep.”
“That wouldn’t refer to living in the moment, would it?”
I take one of my long hard looks at her. She’s still wearing
sunglasses, of course. The slight hawk-like edge to her features is
heightened in the backlighting, which also gives her tawny blond
hair a radiant aura. She has a peach colored tank-top on and red
shorts. She’s kicked off her sandals. Good God! How did I
stumble into this?
“That’s exactly what it means. Exactly. Who are you?
How do you always know?”
“What is it you think I know?”
I have to think a moment. “That my problem’s imaginary.
How’s that?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Gretchen answers.
“Well, of course it is. It takes an impeccable mind to live in
the moment. Extraneous things keep buzzing in, and as I said…”
“Yes. Your swatter, I know, Sweetie.”
“And,” I said, “I don’t mean to say it precludes planning.”
“Expand, please.”
“Fine. I mean it’s possible to plan for the future without
being attached to it, without clouding the present with it. It’s
possible to say, “Gee, sweetheart, soon I won’t be able to pay my
rent anymore, so you know what I’m planning to do? I’m planning
to become homeless, because I refuse to compromise my principles
any further. And you know what else? I’ll bet that whatever
happens will affect our relationship, but if we’re really in love like
we think we are and concentrate on that, everything should work
out for the best whether we foresee it or not, so let’s not pollute the
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future by making up scary stories about it. Okay? That’s what I
mean. It’s possible to say that. But I’m still scared.”
“That’s what I thought you meant, and I am too. But I think
it’s probably harder for you, like there’s more on your shoulders.
But still, think of it. Aren’t we two lucky ducks? With our lives
and happiness together hinging on the difference between
enlightenment and…what’s the opposite? Darkness? Ignorance?
Don’t you think that’s a privilege? I do. And you know what else,
Tweetie? I think we should walk back to town and celebrate by
getting a little drunk.”
The twelve minute walk down the path back from Picnic Point was
interrupted by only one segment of dialogue:
“So what’s with the Ninny and Tweetie? I asked.
“It’s my father. The big hearted English professor. He’s
been calling me names as long as I can remember. Kindly ones.
Silly, ninny, tootsie, nitwit, tweetie, bunny, goosie, pinhead… You
like those names, don’t you?”
“Uh huh.”
“And cats?”
“Cats? Oh… Sure, of course.”
4) TUESDAY
Fortunately, we only got a little drunk. Chez moi the next

morning we were feeling fine, and I made coffee just as Gretchen
was waking. It was already nine o’clock. She was very grateful
for the coffee, and asked if I’d come make it for her every day
when I was living in a cardboard box, smelling like garbage with
lice in my hair. I told her no, under those circumstances all she
could get from me was a staff infection. She said that wasn’t a
very friendly thing to say first thing in the morning, so I freshened
up her cup, and we sat smiling, each to ourselves, for a long, soft
trailing on of minutes.
It was her plan that morning to spend some time gardening
for the distinguished gentleman she’d already told me about: a
wealthy recluse, but a very kind and knowledgeable one, she’d
explained. When I told her that that fit with my plans as well
145
because I wanted to write that morning, she looked at me
suspiciously and asked if I would have informed her of that had she
not been planning to be away. I said, er…no. She said that was
something we’d have to work on, which made my heart leap like it
had the first night I saw her there alone at the bar at L’Etoile. She
asked me why my eyelids fluttered, and I told her that I loved her
and the way she cared about my creative welfare. She looked at
me very seriously then, and I pictured her, years hence: The
Mistress of the Hills, Mother Nature’s Deputy with scores of
uplifting, therapeutic, inspirational landscapes, all of her own
design. A regal woman in a cape. Good God!
“What?” she said
“Can I tell you some other time? On a walk? Or in bed
some morning just when we wake up, after we’ve finished our
coffee, maybe?”
“I like that idea.”
Then she went and brushed her teeth and came back to tell
me she met a nice woman in the hall. Then she kissed me
goodbye, her hair tickling my neck, and said she’ll be back around
two in the afternoon if that was all right with me, or meet me
someplace if that was better. I said she could come back only if
she brought some sweet, juicy fruit.
Just after she left, I realized I could have walked out with her since
I needed to go to Boston Blacky’s for a thermos of the good stuff.
And then I was glad I didn’t. There was something in the privacy
of that ritual I cherished, and it wasn’t selfish. It was as if the
alchemy of poetry began even in my preparations. I walked to
Blacky’s in a suddenly altered state. The kind of state it usually
requires good drugs to attain. There was a buzz in the trees; the
sun was dripping gold. “Hot Damn!” I said aloud as I entered in
the coffee house, turning a few heads, and then said it again as I
left just for the symmetry of it all. I played my invisible game
walking back home with my full thermos, and also tried not to let
my feet touch the pavement. I opened my one window wide when
I got in, cleaned my beautiful, cobalt blue ceramic ashtray, and
took the next three hours firmly by the horns:
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With the caterpillars and golden ants

alive across the trees with morning, the white sun
rains among the nectar and the green.
The caterpillars,
climbing silver leaves, sugared with sun,
sing to the owls and sleeping bats
as the moon forgets, and the green sun
scatters in the scarlet leaves.
And waking late, we will

wait with our coffee by the high white window,
the bowls of fruit untouched,
and the cats on the stone floor at our feet
will have curled away to sleep,
and we will not question the spreading of the day,
nor the long folding of our silence.
And as time seems a circle

we will watch the half moon fall
like a long stone slowly past the window as it pales,
the one sun full above us,
our coffee forgotten, with the candles,
and the high white bed:
And hardly have we known ourselves,
yet I cling to you like a sure stone path
run wild among cathedrals of birds.
“Two by the Window,” I’ll call it.
“You cling to me like a sure stone path run wild among cathedrals
of birds?” she says, standing next to my table, the poem in her
hand.
“I sure do, baby!”
“And we watch the half moon fall like a long stone slowly
past the window as it pales?”
147
“That too.”
“And we have cats?”
“Two, I believe.”
“And stone floors, and a high white window and a high
white bed?”
“We do.”
“And there’re caterpillars out there climbing silver leaves
sugared with sun?”
“I believe there are, Gretchen. How was your day?”
“It was sunny and good… apparently not as good as yours,
but I brought us peaches and plums. Is that all right?”
I say of course, and put my arms around her and my head on
her shoulder and breathe in her essence and thank my stars, all of
which are lucky, and cling to her like a sure stone path run wild
among cathedrals of birds.
At five in the afternoon a thunderstorm sweeps across the city as

we’re walking from my place to hers. We’ve blocks to go still, and
try to walk calmly in the warm downpour as if there were no
reason to hurry, let alone run, which, of course, there isn’t. We
find it difficult but eventually manage, and at that point our walk
becomes our metaphor for life as we know it.
“You see!” she says, rain streaming down her face. “These
could be tears, but they’re not. There isn’t any problem at all!”
5) WEDNESDAY
Eye much improved. G. calls L’Etoile and says (daringly)

that she’ll be ready for work Saturday night. Writing at night will
be fine. I’ll be waiting for her at bar after work, brimming.
It’s a bright, sunny, clean day after last night’s storm, but
after G. and I go out for breakfast, we return to bed and talk and
play the day away. It seems a day of taking stock, tucking in,
reviewing, repeating things proven to make us happy. We also note
that the week’s honeymoon will be ending soon. We do not ask
each other when we’ll have another week like this together, but we
both think of it, which adds a bittersweet flavor to our day. We
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cook dinner at her house with roommates Lorna and Stephie, both
of whom seem to be trying to impress me. I’m flattered beyond
expectation, and Gretchen seems proud. Just before we eat, another
thunder storm rolls through. The power goes out just in time for a
candlelit dinner, but then, as if prearranged, comes on afterwards, so
Gretchen and I can retreat to her room where we watch “Groundhog
Day,” which leaves us sobbing for joy.
Then we go for a walk in the cool, twice washed city, and
then back to her house for early bed. We whisper under the sheets
that smell like a spice bazaar. The alarm is set for 7:00 AM. We’ll
pick up our rental car at 8:00 to head south to Chicago. We’re like
butterflies again, and fall asleep with fingertips lightly on each
other’s lips.
6) THURSDAY
The plan is simple. A leisurely ride to the city, an early

lunch downtown at the Berghoff on Adams Street, then a few steps
over for a day at the Art Institute; then afterwards, maybe some
time on a bench in Grant Park, or on the grass next to Buckingham
Fountain, or walk over to the lakeshore. No money for a hotel
overnight, though we’d like to. When Gretchen’s designing
gardens that make people fall in love, that’s when we’ll stay at the
Drake, we decide, or when I win the lottery.
Gretchen had never been to the Berghoff, that German
Restaurant so firmly rooted in downtown Chicago that the Federal
government itself had to change his plans for an ominous glass and
steel tower because the Berghoff refused to move. It’s hard to say
just what it is about that wonderful place: the food’s good (but not
great); the beer and root beer are good (but not great); the waiters
are businesslike, if not a little aloof; atmosphere’s bumping and
bustling, the décor’s tasteful and well worn, but somehow all that,
along with its location and its big city clientele make it an
irresistible, unforgettable place, an institution, and the perfect place
to introduce to a friend, and particularly when newly in love.
We eat wienerschnitzel and drink draft root beer, so as not
to be fuzzy headed for the art.
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Having been born and raised in a northern suburb of
Chicago, the Art Institute was familiar territory for me. Gretchen
too, had visited there frequently with her professorial parents; they
eagerly drove from Iowa. In my case, it was I who had to prod my
good natured but semi-intelligent mother to take me downtown
before I myself became train and bus-worthy.
As in Wisconsin, storms had passed through northern
Illinois the night before and had left this late August day clear and
cool. We were beaming to such a degree when we arrived at the
museum after lunch that we decided to sit on the steps for a while.
We feel too radiant to go indoors again, so we watch the Michigan
Avenue traffic and the people crossing over. For protection, we sat
close to the northernmost of the two majestic bronze lions that
stand as sentries at either side of the building’s broad steps. But as
we’d noticed in the restaurant, many people in Chicago,
particularly women, look outlandish, absurd, as if they’re dressed
as clowns or made-up for a costume party. This, the view of clear
sighted Madisonians, mind you, not country bumpkins—Madison
being, among other things (besides the Berkeley of, and the
Cambridge of), the Athens of the Midwest. So we watched in
amusement, Gretchen and I, as quite ordinary people paraded by,
many of whom had gone to great lengths to make themselves look
extraordinarily foolish. Then we went inside, and once in the
presence of great art, felt ashamed of ourselves for being so petty
outside on the steps.
It was the big El Greco that first quieted us down. His
“Assumption of the Virgin,” a towering 13 feet tall and 7 feet wide,
with the Virgin, draped in silver blue and deep red, rising to
heaven, above and away from those of us standing below; rising on
a crescent moon through the clouds with angels about her and
apostles and saints beneath. “Goddess Ascending,” Gretchen
prefers to call her, and far be it from me to argue with that. Then a
grand Tiepolo quiets us further still. It’s another painting with
floating figures: this time it’s an enchantress dressed in gold with
breasts bared, and who’s successfully seducing a sixteenth century
crusader from his mission. Painted in the mid-eighteenth century
in creamy pastels with draperies floating like the clouds that carry
the enchantress, it enchants us by its buoyant presence in that
room.
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“Another Goddess?” I ask.
“All women are Goddesses.”
Again, I don’t disagree,
It’s the Art Institute’s great Manfredi that shuts us up
completely, though. It is called “Cupid Chastised.” The artist is
Bartolomeo Manfredi, and the astonishingly dramatic painting was
created between 1605 and 1610. The contrast between light and
dark in the painting is extreme. In it, Mars, in a red robe, belted at
the waist, whips a naked, winged cupid, portrayed as a fair-
skinned, tender youth whose quiver and broken arrows lay beneath
him and his powerful white wings. Venus, in white and dark green
with a dark green floating sash, looks at Mars imploringly and
extends a hand in protest. To upper right, two grey and white
doves exit the picture plane. It is early 17th century photo-realism.
The people are shockingly alive, their movements frozen mid-
frame, creating a composition explosively active, yet in stately,
harmonious equilibrium. Other than subtle skin tones, it is only
the red of Mars’s robe, the white and green of Venus’s, and the
delicate blue sash circling the fallen Cupid’s chest that account for
the full range of color against the dark background. It looks like
something out of Beethoven made visible. It’s too real for our
world. It’s flesh, flowing garments and the passion of the gods
whipped into action. We feel changed by it. We want to take it
home.
“We don’t need to see anything else, do we?” Gretchen
says.
“No, but don’t you want to know the story?” I say. And
then I read it to her: “In ‘Cupid Chastised,’ Mars beats Cupid for
having caused his affair with Venus, which exposed him to the
derision of the other Gods.”
“Mars is a fool,” Gretchen replies.
And I’m certainly not going to reply to that.
Though the Manfredi is the last painting we need to see that
day, we go on and see others. We see Renoir’s beautiful little
circus girls—unlikely acrobats with orange balls—too pretty, too
soft, to inhabit anything but a Renoir painting. Then we see
Cezanne’s “Basket of Apples,” a quintessential still life composed
like a classical quartet. Then we see Van Gogh’s face as he saw it
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in 1887: surrounded by dots, sparks, really, of reds and greens, the
same sparks that coalesce into blazing stars in his “Starry Night.”
Then we go see the big De Kooning and the big Pollack,
and the great airborne Calder that rings like a trolley car. But it’s
enough. The frozen music, the snap of Mars’ whip, the glistening
god-skin in the Manfredi was enough, and soon we’re back out on
the steps looking at the world with compassion appropriate to its
diversity.
“So that’s what you want your gardens and terraces and
hillsides to do?” I ask. “Change people?”
“Exactly,” she answers. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”
We don’t sit on a bench in Grant park then, or sit on the grass next
to Buckingham Fountain. We do walk over to the lake, though.
Because after great art, we figure, how can you go wrong with a
Great Lake?
We walk by the lake for a long time, and then sit by it, and
them walk back downtown to get our car from the Grant Park
underground garage. By the time we drive the two and a half hours
back to Madison and arrive at Gretchen’s house we’re famished.
But there’s not much there, so we make do with fettuccine with
olive oil and parmesan cheese. We drink Sprite. I myself prefer
and full bodied Cola with pasta, but Gretchen says she always
prefers white on white—and that’s all there was, anyway.
7) FRIDAY
Friday morning G’s eye seems just about fine—just a pale

hint of purple. She checks its presentability by dabbing with a bit
of make-up. Should easily pass dimly lit restaurant test tomorrow
evening, perhaps even unretouched. Her dinner with old roommate
formerly planned for last Saturday night has been rescheduled for
lunch today.
“I’m not sure if I’ll write anything or not,” I say. “I may
just wander around the city being grateful,” at which she gives me
a come-hither look and then a long, silent, full body hug.
“So I say certain things that automatically elicit specific
reactions from you?” I ask. “Is that the way it works today?”
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“That’s the way it works every day, silly. Now do you want
to walk me downtown or stay here for a while by yourself? You
could climb right back in bed and snooze for a while or go through
all my drawers, if you like.”
“Can I really?”
“Um hm. And you know, that actually makes me kind of
hot,” she says, “the thought of you going through all my things.”
“Then by all means. That’s what I’ll do.”
“So…” she says. “I say certain things that automatically
elicit specific reactions from you. That’s the way it works, right?”
She’s laughing as she goes out her door, saying she’ll leave
me here to decide for myself. I immediately climb back in bed and
bury my face on her pillow, where I soon fall very happily back
asleep. I figure I’ll go through her drawers when I get up.
But when I wake an hour later I’m afraid again, and remain so for
most of that day. My swatter is too small to keep dark visions of
the future away from me, and they not only alight but sting,
repeatedly. I am curled in Gretchen’s fragrant bed, a bed of
cinnamon and roses, thinking of every way I’ll be expelled from it,
turned out; of how our lives had touched for only as long as pure
happiness can last in a world peopled by imperfect individuals such
as ourselves. I decide to wait there until she returns so as to be
comforted by her, reassured, reminded of what power I do have.
But that would hardly be the point, would it? So after brooding a
while longer, I leave her room and underwear drawer behind,
determined to grapple with this on my own. The sky is clouded
over today, the air close, which seems designed to match my mood.
I walk to the square, hoping, despite my resolve, that I’ll see
Gretchen and her friend coming or going if they’d chosen to lunch
at L’Etoile. Everything that passes through my mind via my
clenched solar plexus reflects the same irresolution. I am seeking
detachment yet at every turn trying to avoid it. I am seeking
detachment in order to assure my continuing bonded security. And
the more I swat and thrash, the more deeply I’m stung.
It’s at this point when I begin to wonder who Gretchen’s
really meeting that I regain a bit of balance. I’m able to turn that
image away, and wonder if that’s progress enough, but up pops
another in its place: the image of me, here, one month hence, on a
153
bench on the square, homeless and thereby loveless—and this
image returns to me relentlessly.
Then I remember someone once told me that peace takes
constant effort to maintain, while chaos maintains itself. Yet soon
after such an objective thought, I immediately constrict. Chaos
maintains itself. A train of somber, lonely images parades through
my mind via my solar plexus.
When the time comes that I imagine Gretchen will be
returning home, I restrain myself from calling her. It’s my intent to
get through the afternoon on my own. Maybe, I think, if I simply
let myself free-fall though every dark image of jealousy, heartbreak
and loneliness I can conjure up, I’ll come out cleansed at the end of
it all; but by the time I’ve circled the same block nearly a dozen
times, I’m just as miserable as when I began. Wasn’t there
something about my doubtless dying being dead and dumb? Huh?
I wonder if all romantic poets are all liars.
It’s seven that evening when, exhausted, I knock on
Gretchen’s door. Lorna tells me she’s not there, that she went to
try to find me at my house. I ask if Gretchen had tried calling me,
and Lorna clouds up a little when she says she thinks so. So I head
for my house—but no, head does not convey how I went. I forged
my way, upstream, trailing a wake of calamitous images behind
me. I strode, eyes narrowed ahead, distraught at the state I’d sunk
to, yet powerless, or more aptly, having relinquished all power to
the chaos that was maintaining itself very well, thank you.
A block before I arrived at my house, I stopped and put my
arms around the cool green pole that supported the stoplight at the
corner. I did this for no reason I could understand, and didn’t even
think that I might be observed. The pole was so reassuringly
permanent, unmovable, and by means of its unmistakably red light,
it spoke. It said: STOP! And I felt such joy in the feel of that
staunchly upright steel pole against my body. But I didn’t think a
thing. I knew it said STOP! but didn’t try to apply that principle to
the darkness of my cascading emotions. I simply held on to the
good steel pole for dear life. And I didn’t let go for a while: my
eyes were closed but I heard and felt the buzz and click of the
lights changing more than once, my left ear pressed against the
pole. When I opened my eyes and let go no one was around, no
people, no cars, but the light was red again. I waited patiently, and
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once it changed, I walked across the street feeling as if I’d been
released from prison; not for good behavior, but by virtue of a
pardon—but by whom or by what I did not know. I supposed it
must have been the green pole.
As soon as my house came into view, I saw Gretchen
sitting on the stoop reading a book. She smiled then she saw me
and asked where I’d been. I told her it was a long story that I’d tell
her a little later after she showed me the book. She said she’d just
bought it. It was a book of Italian Baroque Painting, and it
included a print of “Cupid Chastised” by Bartolomeo Manfredi,
and she was looking at it when I walked up. And there it was,
super-real as ever, even on the page. When I told her what I’d
been going through that day, she said that after lunch she’d gone
off for a walk by herself to try to grapple with some of the same
things, and that she’d had a hard time of it, too, but had calmed
down considerably after she’d bought the book and had a chance to
look at the paintings. Then we sat together on the steps then and
went through it page by page. When we finished we went upstairs
and sat leaning back against the headboard of my bed and tried to
sort out the day. We made some progress at that, but when we
couldn’t get much further, she told me she once read that the less
evolved parts of ourselves have a right to exist and should be
treated lovingly. I asked her where she read it, and she said, “In a
self-help book.”
Which made sense, because it helped.
And today is Saturday, my second one with Gretchen, but the first
one on which she’s not wearing sunglasses, despite the brightness
of the day. Like so many other Madisonians, we rise early and go
to the Farmers’ Market on the square. Being late August, it’s
particularly busy there. In three weeks it will be September 15th,
the day my year’s lease on my room expires. We don’t mention
that. As we’re buying green beans and apples, we’re speaking
about the evening:
“So it doesn’t bother you now? You’re not tense because
you have to go to work?”
155
“No, lamebrain, I’m not. Not everyone’s work-phobic. I
don’t mind at all. It’s a great job. It’s the best restaurant in the
city, and everyone that works there is professional, and sweet, too.
I’m a lucky woman. I might even like to keep a shift there when I
have a real job, just to be with Odessa.”
Humbled, I ask her if she wants a cantaloupe. She says she
does but doesn’t want to lug it around. I volunteer. She takes my
hand.
“You know what?” she asks.
“No.” I say, at which she puts her hands on my shoulders
and kisses me—right there in front of the melon stall. I’m mildly
embarrassed.
“That’s what,” she says.
“I thought so,” I say. I lift her glasses. “Your eye looks
fine, even in this bright light.” Then I pick up a cantaloupe and
sniff it, press the top, and buy it from the indulgent proprietress.
Six ears of sweet corn have been added to the bag I’m
carrying with a dozen early apples, a jar of honey and the
cantaloupe already in it. We’re almost all the way around the
square, when Gretchen decides we absolutely must have chocolate
croissants. I tell her filled croissants are not my favorites, but she
insists I try these. We buy the last two chocolate croissants they
have, and Gretchen goes on and on about how lucky we are. And
after nibbling mine, I have to admit to her they really are very
good, and as we’re buying some coffee to go with them, I tell her
that she’s also right about being lucky.
“What would have happened if they’d already been sold
out?” I ask her. “Since you like them so much?”
“It would have been a very, very bad situation,” she
answers, laughing. And I can’t see any reason not to agree.
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TWO BY THE WINDOW
I’d just reminded Miranda that as with our bouquets of flowers both
“Picked from God’s Garden,” we’d each been carrying flowers in
our separate, self-induced past life readings (or imaginings) twenty-
five years earlier. The more we thought of it, the more astonished
we became. The astonishment lasted for blocks as we walked back
to my house and only deepened the meaning of everything else
happening to us.
I’d already looked to my Butterman Within for approval of
my startling new scheme: the founding a school of a sort yet
undetermined, ideally with the help of a woman I hadn’t seen in
nearly twenty-five years, and whom I felt might have all these years
been my true partner, or even my “soul-mate.” After all, we’d
already agreed with the words of the unknown poet. We believed
that:
“The long hunt in the sun for the jewel hidden in the leaves,
(which is also your heart), will not have led you here until I find my
heart as well.”
And all this, mind you, clearly not the thinking of the sixty-
year-old Past President of the American Metaphysical Society, at
least not before his startling reprieve from death. No, to the former
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TWO BY THE WINDOW
sixty-year-old Past President of the American Metaphysical society,
this scheme, particularly the partnership proposition, would seem
senselessly romantic: a worldly task for a retiring man and a
proposition reliant on personal love in an individual who’d spent
years striving for the universal. But to Butterman, a sleek figure
despite his name, things looked different. This scheme seemed not
only hopeful, but precisely what was needed to evolve beyond that
state of Past Presidency.
“What a strange house!” Miranda said, as I ushered her into
the empty but swept and polished downstairs. “What a bizarre
place. What’s the matter here, Horace?”
I didn’t answer at first because I was laughing. Then I told
her to keep looking. So she poked around for a moment or two,
looked into the kitchen, looked at me with a perplexed and slightly
sour expression, and then climbed to the second floor, which,
beyond the contents of the bathroom, didn’t have a moveable thing
in it. Miranda gave me a more severe slantwise look before
climbing up to the third floor. When she arrived, she stood at the
top of the stairs, looked into my richly furnished room, back at me
a few steps beneath her, and said, alarmed:
“Horace? Have you been living in your higher principles
alone?”
“I should think that would be obvious,” I said. “My house is
a metaphor for my life. Convenient, isn’t it?”
“But…” she said, shaking her head. “But what does your
Butterman think of all this? This preposterous imbalance. How
can he live here?”
“Sit down. Please,” I said, offering her a spot on the soft
leather couch. “Those lovely time-traveling flowers of ours are
going to need some water. I’m going to go back downstairs and
put them in a vase, or maybe two. We can talk about Butterman
and my higher principles when I get back.”
Down in the kitchen, I combined the bouquets of red and
orange and pink and white (the gardenias) in a large pale green
vase, filled it with warm water and brought it back upstairs. I
bounded upstairs with it, actually, something that I decided to do
more of once I got in better shape and limbered up a bit. I limped
into my room, put the vase down on a table near the couch and sat
down next to Miranda who looked at me quizzically.
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“Yes, I’m limping, and that’s precisely the point. Can you
follow that reasoning?”
“No. I’m missing something.”
“I bounded up the stairs, Miranda, like a young buck. The
point is that I’m feeling a compelling, irresistible impulse to
change, to rejuvenate, but to let that go unchecked would be not
only irresponsible of me but potentially dangerous...”
“Now wait,” Miranda said. “You’ve come up with this
since we left the Farmers’ Market? Since we talked about your
esoteric school? You’ve chosen to harness your enthusiasm?”
“I suppose you could put it that way.”
“I respect that, Horace, but I hope your new alter ego won’t
get suffocated by… by that stodgy old busybody.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. What I’m more concerned
about is losing what’s valuable about that solitary, selfless, old
busybody Butterman’s come to rescue from irrelevance.”
While Miranda was at a loss for words, I began to laugh. It
was silent at first, more of a quaking, really, and it never
progressed beyond a closed-mouthed chuckle before Lois appeared
at the top of the stairs. She walked directly toward us, jumped up
on the couch next to Miranda, and began to purr.
“Lois,” I said, by way of explanation. “With me for the last
fifteen years. The love of my life, and the only female in it. I’d
rather know her mind than travel to the stars. The longer I’m with
her the less I understand.”
“Understand? She purrs, what’s to understand? She’s
radiantly in love.” Miranda read my expression. “With anything
that makes her happy.”
“I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently but I never
thought of that.”
“That’s because you’ve been living in your higher
principles, old man. And why were you laughing just now?”
“I can’t really say. Isn’t that progress?”
Miranda gave me a look, petted Lois, and then got up and
walked around my room. She looked at the dramatic prints on my
walls, the Caravaggio, the La Tour, and the Manfredi; she looked
at my piano and the Bach two part invention on it; she examined
my telescope; she perused my bookcases and my collection of
records and CD’s; and she absorbed the views out both my
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windows. Her walk ended at the back window, where she sat in
the desk chair that looked out over the garden.
“So, Horace,” she said. “I have a philosophical question for
you. A metaphysical question, really. Are you still equipped to
answer a metaphysical question?”
Lois had followed her over to the chair and jumped up on
her lap. I gave Miranda a dubious look.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll take that as a yes. Here’s the
question: what do you think it was that snatched you from the
clutches of death? Do you think it was your own ‘all knowing
soul’ that led you into an astrological miscalculation in order to
give you a fresh outlook on life? Or was it an outside agency that
acted ‘spontaneously’ or ‘impetuously’ as you explained to me
when we were looking at the mushrooms, something that involved
a ‘relationship’ and aesthetic ‘beauty’ or ‘lavishness?’”
“You’re thinking you were secretly involved?”
Miranda laughed. “You wicked man! Yes, it did cross my
mind.”
“It crossed mine, too. But that wasn’t precisely the question,
was it?”
She smiled enigmatically. Then she patted Lois who was
cradled on her shoulder now and who seemed intrigued with her
copper-red hair. The cat reached toward it tentatively with her
white, left front paw. It had been years since anyone had asked me
a question like that—but hadn’t replying to thought provoking
questions once been my vocation? I was the Past President of The
Metaphysical Society, wasn’t I?
“If you really want to know,” I said, looking at Miranda
suspiciously, “I think the answer to what snatched me from the
clutches of death is four-fold... But I want to be certain you’re not
making fun of me.”
“No, Horace,” she said. “Not now. I’m serious. I want
your studied opinion.”
I wasn’t entirely reassured, but her look drew me in.
“First of all,” I said, feeling like I was beginning a lecture
(which I was), “I can see how it was my own all knowing soul, as
you put it, guiding me through my life, or through this incarnation,
if you’re so inclined. After all, if I have a brain that can regulate
the complex functions of my body without my even having to try
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and without my being aware of it in any way, just think what an
eternal soul can do with the direction of my life. The story goes
that the soul chooses the time, the circumstances, the parents—so
why not a calculated error to bring me to my senses, to bring out
the best in me? Right?”
I paused. She was still listening. “And second,” I said, “it
does appear that everything that happens to any of us results from
an interplay of forces, and many of those forces lay claim to their
own individuality, just as I do; and insofar as I am an individual,
then so are Saturn and Mars and Venus and Lois and you and
innumerable others that may act in relationship to each other and
also display qualities like impetuosity and aesthetic beauty, and so
forth and so on. Saturn and Mars and Venus are just bigger beings
than we are; they live in a different world of time and we can’t see
them for what they actually are any more than we can what
electrons are in their reality. But they’re individuals too, okay?
Not to mention the 300,000 that live in Madison, and the nearly
seven billion in the world, any of whom might have saved my life.
That’s the second possibility—your outside agency.
“The third possible reason then, and this one might
encompasses them both, is the worn out old truism: All is One. But
I believe All most definitely is One, which in this case would mean
that my all knowing soul along with these outside agencies are parts
of one greater being; that they work cooperatively and
interdependently like the biology of our own bodies. So there’s
nothing more remarkable about Saturn affecting me than my arteries
and veins actually containing the blood that flows through them,
just as there’s nothing more remarkable in hearing about both of us
buying ‘flowers picked from God’s own garden’ than noticing that
the petals of a rare, prizewinning orchid have both top and bottom
sides. How’s that?”
Here I paused again, somewhat pleased with myself, and
Miranda still seemed interested, so I went on. “Now, the fourth
answer, the corker, I’d say, is the metaphysical one, and
encompasses and obliterates the others entirely, because it really
isn’t an answer. And that’s just the point, because both this stodgy
old busybody and Butterman believe that the mysteries of life, or
the mysteries of reality, or of God, or whatever you name it, are not
subject of questions and answers. Questions and answers are a very
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human business. ‘The name of God is unutterable; ‘Tao that is
named is not Tao; ‘The mind is the great slayer of the real,’ right?
Every poet should know that. Answers and questions only pertain
to a conditional reality, a slice, a compromise that doesn’t contain
infinity within every twinkling of every eye, that doesn’t hold
mystery at the heart of every circumstance, that doesn’t know
infinity as the root of every word.
“But still,” I continued, since Miranda didn’t appear bored
yet, “I think it’s a very generous cosmos we’ve got here because
we’re free to pick and choose whichever of these standpoints we
like, none is wrong, some may be more inclusive than others but…”
“But?” Miranda asked.
“But they may all dissolve in the face of love.”
Miranda smiled at Lois, petted her as if to say she
understood what it must be like to live with me, and then smiled at
me. “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for tacking that bit
about love on at the end. That was quite comprehensive, but I have
to tell you, Horace, that as a human, I’m attracted to answer number
two: the outside agency explanation of your reprieve from death.
The first one—that we ourselves or our souls plan our
incarnations—seems like a fairy tale, a pretty one but the kind of
fairy tale that can mislead gullible humans. And number three—
that All is One—seems true and lovely but remote, hard to apply,
not user friendly at all; and fourth one, that the truth exists on a
plane beyond questions and answers, well, let me tell you, that may
be the bee’s knees and ant’s pants for beings without knees or pants,
it may be the $64,000 answer for entities without physical brains or
physical anything elses, but not quite me, not today. Don’t
misunderstand me. I do have my more and less material moods.
But more to the point, let me ask you something else. Did a bomb
go off near you on or about the day you expected to die? Or did
someone drop a piano or an anvil from a fourth story window just
after you walked past? Was there a near miss of some sort?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” I answered. “Though I am isolated.
Of course, Aunt Lydia did die. Maybe there was some connection
there. But I didn’t almost fall down a flight of stairs, if that’s what
you mean, and there were no meteor strikes or showers of space
debris as far as I know. But I don’t watch television news or read
newspapers.”
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Miranda gently removed Lois from her shoulder and placed
her on the floor, handling that Lois accepted as if it were routine.
“It’s a beautiful garden you have out there,” looking out, standing
now. “You say you have a servant pull weeds for you?”
“Stop that,” I say. “I told you, I hire someone who loves to
do it, and she does more than pull weeds.”
“Oh, really? And I’m sure she does it very well, too.
Which sounds just fine for a handsome, retiring gentleman such as
yourself. How old is she, Horace? Is she beautiful?”
“As a matter of fact, she’d both young and beautiful. And
an excellent gardener.”
Miranda looked at me consolingly. “Well, I can’t picture
you down in the dirt in any case. But tell me—seriously—do you
think there’s a chance I may be the individual force that saved you
from the grave? My influence, I mean?”
I laugh again, and for a little longer than either of us expect.
“You may be,” I answer. “You sound like you’d like to be. And
it’s true we have a relationship, and I can’t think of any other I
have, as I said, except with Lois, and you are beautiful, and you
have created aesthetic beauty, and you’re also spontaneous—so that
covers some of the bases. But I don’t see where the impetuosity or
lavishness comes into play; it’s pushing it to say that describes you
or our relationship. But more important, the only contact we had
was that one phone call, and I had the impression that whatever it
was was immediate, or proximate… but I may be reading this
wrong again.”
Now Miranda laughs. “I’m teasing, Horace, but just a little
bit—I’m not convinced either way,” she says, walking over to the
couch. “But I think we can say that whatever saved your life was
something very good. Maybe it was something beautiful, maybe
something impetuous, maybe spontaneous, maybe lavish, but above
all, and definitely good, very good.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I say. “I agree.”
But now something changes. What seems a different
Miranda comes over and sits herself down on the couch next to me.
The tease has left the room. This is a deeply thoughtful woman.
I look at her quizzically.
“Something’s been percolating in me for a little while now,
Horace,” she says, sounding a little regretful. “You know how you
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can ruminate on something without realizing it?” I nod, but have
no idea what she’s getting at.
“I’m not going to be able to stay with you in Madison” she
says. “I have to keep moving for now. You see, I didn’t expect to
find the new you, so I don’t know what else might be in store for
me in the weeks ahead. I also want to give you time to enjoy your
newly emerging self before letting my own newly emerging self
get entwined with it, if that’s ever going to happen.” A hint of a
smile now appears on her face. “If you’re disappointed, I
understand, because I am, too—quite sharply. But I think if we’re
both disappointed, the disappointments should cancel each other
out. I don’t need to tell you my feelings for you, because I believe
they match your own, all right? But I think it’s good that I have
this trip planned, if for no other reason but to test me, and us. I like
to live in my higher principles, too, Horace.”
“You mean that poets don’t have to live by the same rules
as other mortals? I think I understand that now. So you say this
is cancelled out?” I say, pointing to the aching place in the pit of
my stomach.
Now she takes my hands in hers and smiles. The skylight is
directly above the couch where we’re sitting and the sun is
beaming down on her, adding a dazzle to the little scene. “I hope
so,” she says. “We should probably agree to it. We’re big people
now. At least I am. I don’t know about… Batman... But we can
do that, can’t we? For ourselves and for each other? Come what
may?”
I agreed, but I told her that I was very sad. Looking
surprised, she told me that twenty-five years ago, when I was
obviously upset when she left, I hadn’t had the courage or self-
awareness to say it; and now that I’d finally come out with it, it
sounded a bit… improbable?
But I insisted that was only because I usually don’t express
myself that way; and she said she knew that and she was teasing
again, and we spent the rest of the day together: she, looking at my
books; me, listening to her recite some poems; and then together
talking about the poem by the unknown author, whose first name,
Felix, she then remembered, and how with that information she
planned to contact the UW writing department to see if she could
track down some more of his work.
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And then we talked about a school for me to found, about
how there would be no tuition and how I’d find my students. And
we talked about the nature of experience, about that song from
GiGi—which she recalled had been written by Lerner and
Loewe—and the two of us laughed more in an afternoon than we
may have in all our months together in 1978. I told her about my
elevator operator fantasy; and she told me about her more feasible
ballroom dancing instructor hopes. She told me she regretted not
having her hot little Italian convertible anymore, and when I told
her she still had her hot red hair, she batted her eyelashes. But
eventually the afternoon passed away, and Miranda had promised
to be back at Jane’s for dinner. She invited me to come along, but
feeling more pensive than convivial, I declined her invitation. We
sat silently, side by side on the couch for a while then, reminding
me of that day twenty four years earlier in that quite suburban park.
“You know,” she said, as I walked her out to her car, “we
should each allow ourselves fifteen minutes a day to be sad about
our separation, but not to let it cloud our wonderful lives, or our
love of the mystery we each hold so dearly in our sacred hearts...
You remember that too, don’t you?” she asked. “The sanctity of
what we do not know?”
All I could do was nod, at which she kissed me gently on
the lips and went off to her car. When I got back upstairs, I was
happy to notice she’d forgotten to separate out her doubly blessed
flowers.
That night I dreamed I was sitting in the State Street café with
Miranda next to the bright, high window. But it was not a window
to the street as it was in the waking world, but a window to our
lives. There was a half moon above us. And we sat together there,
the two of us, in awed silence, our cups gone cold, and the fruit
platter on the table between us untouched as we watched the moon
sink in the daytime sky like a stone, and with it our past, sinking
away as we clung to each other, familiar yet unforeseen, welcome
yet bewildering, but wholly and uniquely our own.
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THE BATTLEFIELD
THE BATTLEFIELD
Jack had a little trouble finding the bakery where Jolene could get
her chocolate filled croissants. When we did get there, Jolene
asked if I wanted to come in, and when I said no, she didn’t argue
with me like she might have, because she knew I wouldn’t budge.
And then I said, no, I didn’t want a chocolate croissant, either.
Jack went into the Bakery with Jolene, and I’m pretty sure he did
that so he wouldn’t have to sit in the car with me, and I’m pretty
sure they talked about me in there, too.
When Jolene came out she had a bag full of something and
three cups of coffee. She said she thought I might like to have
some coffee, and that if I didn’t I could just let it sit in the cup
holder covered up like it was, because maybe later I might change
my mind or she or Jack might want it. She said it smelled like
good coffee. She also said that she bought a dozen filled
croissants, six chocolate, three raspberry, and three apple, and that
I was welcome to any I wanted. She said that she wouldn’t be able
to get all those at the Farmers’ Market, so wasn’t it good we came
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here? But what was she, crazy? Didn’t I already tell her I didn’t
want one?
I went and opened my coffee though, but just as I was doing
that, some stupid fool ran into our car from behind. We’d just
pulled out of our parking place, and I spilled the hot coffee all over
my shoes and scalded part of one leg, which started me in cursing.
Jolene was near hysterical. “Are you okay, Bernie? Are
you okay?” she kept saying. “Are you okay, Bernie? Are you
okay?” while at the same time Jack was saying: “Calm down,
Bernie. Calm down.” They didn’t get spilled on themselves, but I
was okay and just wanted them to shut up and leave me alone.
It was a woman who ran into us, somewhere around
Jolene’s age, maybe a little older; she wasn’t going very fast but
her front bumper was crumpled and the taillight and right rear
corner on Jack’s car was damaged so that something made a
scraping sound when we moved it. I heard her talking to Jack
outside. She said she was sorry, that she hadn’t been paying
attention and had tried to stop. When Jack told her about the
scraping, she sounded like she was ready to cry. He took a look at
it though, and said that a little pop with a crowbar might do the
trick until we got back to Chicago. Then I heard them talking
about insurance and calling the police and a tow truck. I did
everything I could to avoid looking at this lady because I could
hear the trouble in her voice. Jolene, meanwhile, was fussing over
my leg, which was about the last thing I wanted to have done to
me. I was angry, not because of the hot coffee spilled on me, but
because none of this would have happened if Jolene wasn’t so
greedy about getting her sweet roll, and because I was worried this
delay would keep me from getting to Marshall Fields Men’s Store
before it closed!
And then it took time for the police to get there, and then
there was a lot of jabbering about what happened, and meanwhile
the tow truck got there and had to just sit and wait. When the
police finally left, the woman who hit us offered to drive us to the
garage where Jack’s car was being taken by the tow truck, and
that’s when I got a look at her face, and her eyes. I could tell right
away that a lot of other things weren’t right in her life, that she was
holding back her sobs, and that maybe being helpful to us made it a
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THE BATTLEFIELD
little easier to do that. But it wasn’t making it any easier for me!
And then I sobbed. Suddenly. And twice, like a baby.
It must have seemed that I sobbed for no reason to Jolene
and Jack, and also Freda, which was the woman’s name, so Jolene
and Jack started in with “What’s wrong, Bernie? What happened?
Are you all right?” and it was all I could do to stop myself from
cursing at them and telling them to leave me alone, that I had
enough problems with being slapped in the face with everyone
else’s sadness, and that I didn’t need them meddling in my
problems!
My sobbing must have distracted Freda, because her look
cleared up a little when all the attention was focused on me. But I
avoided her eyes. I was already sensing how she was despising
herself for doing careless things, and maybe stupid or cowardly
things she was blaming on herself. It was all mixed up. So just
before she dropped us off the garage, I told her from the back seat
how sorry I was. I don’t think she understood what I meant, but
she looked at me in the same desperate and hopeful way that
Mexican girl did when she called me her priest, which was
probably the worst thing she could have done. Then when I got out
of her car, she caught my eye again and she looked like she was
about to ask me for something, but all I could do was turn away
because I’m a weak man, maybe I’m an insane man, not prepared
to carry the burden I’ve been given. So God damn this all, I want
to say; God damn this all. And also that I’m sorry and I’m sick.
Then it took two-and-a-half hours to get back to Chicago.

Sometimes the mind can play tricks on a person, particularly when
they’re upset and feel like they’re coming apart at the seams, and
this time, something told me that if I asked Jack to drop me off
downtown at Marshall Field’s while I still had my suitcase with
me, he and Jolene would think something was funny. I was never
going to see these people again and still I was worried what they
might think! But it turned out that it didn’t make any difference at
all, because it was already so late. It was a few minutes after five
when we pulled up in front of the Horatio Hotel, which was where
I had to say goodbye forever to my best friend without letting on
that anything was wrong.
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It was terrible. I could see that Jolene knew something was
very wrong, but she tried and tried to talk to me on the ride back
and I didn’t give her the time of day, so she gave up trying to get
through, like I was a lost cause. I think she was angry. So I just
said goodbye as naturally as I could. I knew that if I dropped my
suitcase off in the lobby and walked as fast as I could, I could get
to the store before five-thirty and maybe it would still be open.
And if anyone thinks I could have used the phone, they don’t know
how much I wanted to find it open.
The way God or Nature works things out does make a
little sense to me, I suppose, because just as I started to walk across
the Loop, it started to rain. And the sobbing started again, too; the
sobbing that begun in the car with that lady Freda, it started to
shake me again across downtown Chicago in the rain. It was a
chilly rain for August, and it was windy, too, so my shoulders were
hunched up, which must have made my sobbing seem even worse
for anyone looking at me. I didn’t know if people were; I wasn’t
looking at them. My mind was playing tricks again, and I was
remembering what it was like my last year in high school when I
lived alone in the house with Mr. and Mrs. Severson, but the
memory was gripping me so tight that I lost track of what I was
doing and walked into the back of a man who was waiting to cross
La Salle Street at a light.
It was the time when the Severson’s natural children were
either run away or in the reformatory, and because of their
disappointment, I guess, they tolerated me but didn’t have much to
give me in the way of feelings. I was seventeen, maybe already
eighteen. They didn’t talk together at the dinner table the way they
did when their three kids were still in the house; and Mrs. Severson
wasn’t cooking the same good things anymore, like her pot roast
and Swedish meatballs and roast chicken with gravy—things that
were so much better than I’d ever had in the Lutheran home.
Meals together had been very important to those parents, and even
when their kids were disobeying them or being disrespectful,
which one or another of them always was, the conversation at the
table was always spirited because Mr. Severson believed in what
he called “Dining Room Democracy,” and he never criticized
anyone for saying what they thought, even if it was meant to
antagonize him and tried to get him riled up—something that never
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succeeded. But I think maybe what broke the parents’ hearts so
badly was that after giving their children that democratic kind of
treatment, it didn’t look like they were going to end up being good
citizens at all. And those kids were smart in school, and I never
was. I wasn’t much for conversation. Those kids could have gone
to college, something I never considered. So you can see how
dreary it was at the dinner table. And I was thinking about one of
those nights when I ran into the back of that man on La Salle
Street.
It was so long ago and so gloomy in that dining room, and
of course I can’t remember what we ate for dinner that night. It
was the dessert I remember. It was pumpkin pie, something I’d
never tasted before I lived at their house, and it was something I
loved; it was my favorite dessert. Back when times were better,
Mrs. Severson would fill a little custard cup with just the pumpkin
filling in it, and then put whipped cream on top and give me a
spoon. But that night when she brought the covered pie plate out
from the ice box, she found that there were only two slices left
where there had been three, and she asked me if I had taken one of
the pieces when I got home from school, and I said I did. I
probably had it with a glass of milk. And there I was,
remembering about those two pieces of pumpkin pie, not even
thinking that I’m going to buy a pistol to shoot myself in the
mouth.
And it would have been all right to go without dessert that
night; I knew I’d had my share of pie, but Mrs. Severson said she
wanted me to have hers. And maybe the reason this came to me as I
was rushing through the rain late that terrible afternoon is that when
I looked in Mrs. Severson’s eyes, I saw how lonely she was without
her own children to dote on. But it wasn’t just Mrs. Severson; it
made me feel lonely that I was just a substitute, so I didn’t want her
pie. She asked me if something was the matter and I said no, but
Mr. Severson said that he thought he knew what was the matter, and
he asked me if I would cut each pie slices into three equal pieces. I
did what he said; the pieces were only slivers, though. Then he put
two of them on each of our plates and asked me if I felt better about
it that way. And I did, because he fixed it; he made it fair for
everyone, no one got hurt, and that might have been the last time I
felt happy about anything at that dining room table. And I know I
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was thinking crazy that afternoon, but it seemed like that was the
last time I was happy about anything.
And then the man I walked into turns around, angry, and
says “Watch it buddy… you drunk?” But when he sees I’m
sobbing, he moves back in front of me to be sure I don’t walk right
out into traffic. But I’m just standing there and not going to do that,
and he puts his hand on my shoulder and leans toward me. “Are you
going to be all right, mister?” he says. “Can I help you?” But I see
behind his mask, and see that he recognizes something in me,
maybe his own sadness. And that’s when the light changed, and
when I hurried away, because it wasn’t fair: I felt pity for him and I
couldn’t bear it.
As I pushed off through that chilly Saturday rain, I’d already
stopped thinking about how Mr. Severson had done something for
me then that no one could do for me now—and that’s really how it
seemed: I was pushing. I felt like I was in a dream I sometimes
have where I’m trying to get home but no matter how far I go I
don’t get any closer, which was a crazy thing to be feeling because I
was walking east on Washington and Marshall Fields was only three
blocks away now. Don’t ask me why I didn’t run. Now I know
there wouldn’t have been any use in running, because when I got
there, I looked at that big gray building and then I shut my eyes
tight. There was nothing to see. I didn’t pull on the brass door
handles. I didn’t pound on the glass. Everything failed.
Everything I did. I was on the corner of Wabash and Washington
in the rain, with nothing to do but walk back home. That’s when I
sat down on the wet sidewalk and put my hands on my head. How
had my life turned out the way it did?
I don’t like to talk about the next few minutes. I felt like I used to
feel back at the Lutheran home, except that I wasn’t small; I was an
old man, so I had no excuse. I got a ride back to my room in the
back of a police patrol car. I lied to the policemen. I said I was
mourning a terrible loss and that I’d be okay once I got home.
But what is a person supposed to do on a night when they
wouldn’t even be alive if they had their way, if some pig of a person
didn’t have to have her chocolate roll, when there’s nothing to do
but wait till morning to call on the phone to see what’s open?
What’s a person supposed to do when they’re frightened like that—
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not of dying, or of going to the gun shop, or of pulling the trigger,
but of having my mind changed, of having to live? I knew I
couldn’t sleep yet. I was scared to jump out the window and get it
over with, so I turned on the television.
At ten o’clock, I got in bed with all my clothes on. I thanked
Abby for everything she’d done for me. And I thanked the
Severson’s, and even the people at The Lutheran Home. The people
at the hotel deserved some thanks too, but all the thanking started to
seem cheap to me, so I started thinking of everything being gone,
and still, and empty—not even blue like the stupid sky, but clear,
forever, so there was nothing to touch me, nothing to even
remember me. But thinking that scared me. Thinking that I might
not have ever been alive scared me, so I guess I fell asleep scared.
The telephone woke me up the next morning. I knew it was either

Jolene calling me or Peepers to find out when I was coming back to
work. No one else ever called me, so there wasn’t any point in
answering, but even on the last day of your life, it’s hard to ignore a
telephone ringing. So I picked it up and said, “Hello.”
“Hello,” he said back to me, “is this Bernard who runs the
elevators at the Randolph House Hotel?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Oscar Flores. Remember me? I worked in the kitchen
until I got fired. You talked to me.”
I felt like I was looking at life from the wrong end of a pair
of binoculars, and hearing that way, too. “Oscar?” I said.
“Yeah, this is Oscar, remember me? On my last shift there
washing dishes you told me that you were a friend of Carl, the cook,
and could talk to him about keeping my job. Can you still do that?
Do you remember me?”
It must be the way it feels to be in battle, with bullets
whistling all around you and shells going off with rocks and dirt
flying, when you don’t have time to think, when you don’t decide
things: you either run, or you fight, or you drag a fallen buddy over
to some shelter, or you curl up in a hole and hide your face and cry.
I never was on a battlefield. I’ve seen them in movies, though, and
in the last ten days I’d been assaulted with enough fear and
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desperation to destroy a life as sure as gunfire or a grenade, and then
when Oscar asked me that question, I didn’t decide. I was too asleep
or too crazy or too brave.
“Sure, Oscar,” I heard myself say. “I’ll talk to him,”
And that’s when my future fell into place like a deck of cards
slipping from someone’s hand and falling in a way I couldn’t
change. And I felt like those cards and everything I knew got
swirled and sucked up into a whirlpool that led right to me.
“And Oscar,” I said. “I’m very sorry about the loss of your
brothers and sisters.”
There was a long silence on the phone. It felt like things
were still swirling in on me. I was sitting in bed now, my back
against the wall, my knees raised up under the white sheet with my
clothes still on. My eyes were shut tight. The battle was over.
“How’d you find out about that?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you, Oscar,” I said. “I don’t know what to tell
you about that, but I feel for you, and for what you’ve been through,
and I’ll talk to Carl and see if I can get him to give you a second
chance. I’ll do everything I can.”
After I said those things, I started to wake up and I talked
with him for about ten more minutes. I felt like the words were
already written out for me and I just said them. I talked about what
he’d have to do, how he’d have to act, and what he’d have to say to
Carl. I made him convince me he wanted another chance. I made
him tell me some things about his life, about where he lived and
who he lived with. He didn’t ask me again how I knew about his
brothers and sisters.
Then I fell back asleep, and when I woke up, it was easier to
be alive. There was finally a little bit of space around me. I was
still frightened, but knew I had something worthwhile to do on
Monday before I did anything else like killing myself.
After I watched the traffic outside my window for a while,
my phone rang again, and this time I knew it was Jolene. I told her
right away that Oscar had called me, and she listened without saying
much when I told her about the conversation. Then she told me she
was very happy for me. It really seemed like she understood a lot
just then, and I though I didn’t tell her, I was thankful that she’d
been so piggy about getting that chocolate croissant, because if she
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hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have been alive to answer Oscar’s call,
and to get another chance for myself.
But then the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like
I should also be thankful to whoever it was that bought the last
chocolate croissants at the Farmers’ Market, because that was the
person who made us go get hit by that woman’s car and not get back
until so late; or maybe I should be thankful to the baker that
morning who decided to make maybe three dozen instead of four
dozen of those croissants; or that baker’s parents; or on and on, until
I started to feel thankful for just about everything, and everything
seemed connected in a way that was very good—something I
wouldn’t have expected to feel that Sunday, still being scared of
peoples’ lives opening up and showing me more than I could bear.
Then when I told Jolene I was coming in to the hotel to talk to Carl
the next day, she reacted like it was Christmas morning and told me
again how happy she was for me, and that she wouldn’t be in till
eleven tomorrow, but if I stuck around she’d love to have some
coffee with me.
I sat for a while then, still watching the traffic coming to rest
and starting back up at the stoplights at my corner, and that made
me feel lonely, like life had been going on without me, but better
too, because I was back and there was finally some space around
me; and then I decided that since I was hungry and didn’t have
much in the fridge, I’d better go out for breakfast.
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LOVE DEFINED
One week has passed. It’s a Saturday again; Gretchen’s been

working for a week. I am happy to report that with the passage of
time and change in circumstances we are no less in love with each
other than formerly, thought it is difficult to say precisely what that
means. Is there a demarcation line between like and love? Between
like very much and love? I don’t think so. We seem to reserve
serious declarations of love for living things, for people, for
animals. When I say I love Harp Lager, or Haagen Dazs coffee ice
cream, or Mozart, or Cole Porter, I don’t mean to imply that that I’d
switch any one of those for Gretchen on anything but a momentary
basis.
Nor do I mean that if deprived of any of those four things,
I’d be heartbroken in any enduring way (though with Mozart, I
might.) Romantic love clearly differs from familial and Platonic
love, but only in the sexual aspect. It’s possible to love, sacrifice
and even suffer for a friend or a teacher as deeply as a parent or a
sibling; thus it seems the only thing that differentiates one type of
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loving—or liking—from another is a good case of the hots. And
since it’s possible to sustain a good case of the hots for someone
you don’t know that well, someone you only like and for whom
you’d never confess love (except under highly pitched
circumstances), the obvious becomes clear: to love someone
romantically simply means to have the hots for someone you like
very, very, very much. Or maybe just very, very much. The number
of very’s can vary. It all depends on one’s habits of self-expression.
The question that lingers, of course, is what happens when
the hots cool down? Does the liking very much still constitute love?
In most cases, I think probably not, unless the cool down
accompanies a companionable voyage into the depths of old age.
So I might have begun this chapter by announcing that with the
passage of time and change in circumstance, Gretchen and I still
have the hots for each other and continue to like each other very,
very, very much. It all depends on one’s habits of self-expression.
(Unfortunately, in any discussion of love, some pretentious
blow-hard is bound to cough up something about unconditional
love. Unconditional? In my dictionary that means without
conditions or limitations. Without limitations? Like a personality?
Like skin? I, for one, insist on remaining conditional as long as
possible. I like having a skin and actually can’t imagine it
otherwise.)
Gretchen and I leaned back on pillows and discussed the above

matters at length when we woke this Saturday morning—only,
however, after she asked me to tell her about how she slept.
“You mean how you slept with your eyes closed in a comfort
that restores me?”
“What kind of comfort was that, Felix?”
“One that restores me, Gretchen.”
“That sounds good! And how did I wake?”
“Smiling? Still lost among the violets?”
“That’s right. And will you tell me about the violets?’
“The ones in your dream?”
“Yes, those.”
“You mean the ones ‘that will not forget you as you turn to
me in a moment forever that never again in the palest of blues will
be?’
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“Oh, yes, yes. Tell me that again. What kind of moment is
that, sweetheart? What kind?”
“‘A moment forever that never again in the palest of blues
will be?’
“That’s right, my good donkey. Now I’m ready to wake up.”
And this was becoming a morning routine.
For me, the week had been both invigorating and disconcerting.
Invigorating in that it offered new challenges—some of which I
met—and disconcerting in that there weren’t enough stoplights with
cool green poles to still my recurring panic.
On the first Saturday night that Gretchen worked, I stayed
home and started to work on the poem, Listen for the flutter of the
night moth’s wings, a strangely formal, rhyming little thing that
lacks juice.
Listen for the flutter

Of the night moth’s wings,
The murmur of the multitude,
The echo of the ancient days,
The voices of eternity
Will speak in secret ways.
The bounty of creation

Will whisper as it sings,
The shining of the evening star
Will mingle in the morning light,
Of the secrets of the night.
I tried to give it some juice by drinking three cold Harps

between the first verse and the second, but it didn’t help much. I
have no idea where this idea came from; I haven’t been thinking
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about the voices of eternity speaking in secret ways, though I
imagine they do that. I’d been thinking about having five or six
productive evenings per week—on those nights when Gretchen was
at L’Etoile—while working on my project of not obsessing about
the future. My exercise in “being here now,” however, was clearly
more one of avoidance than awareness. Any taste of the eternal
present and the freedom it entails eluded me. So maybe I was
telling myself to listen for “The voices of eternity,” since the voices
I was hearing regarding the future were typically temporal and
apprehensive.
But there was still plenty of time for fun, and on Sunday,
Gretchen and I rented a car and drove the seventy-five miles east to
Milwaukee for a Brewers game at Miller Park. Among other things,
this expenditure guaranteed the depletion of my funds by the
September 15th deadline for my sheltered life. This may have
unsettled me a little, but the game made up for it. Our seats were
close to first base; the food, as usual, was excellent, and the Brewers
actually won the game—and in an 11-9 come-from-behind walk-off
slugfest. We didn’t get a foul ball, but beyond that, things couldn’t
have been better.
By some quirk of fate, Gretchen, who grew up in Iowa, one
of those unfortunate states not deemed worthy of a Major League
baseball team, had become a Milwaukee Brewers fan. Not a
Chicago Cubs fan, not a St. Louis Cardinals fan, not a Kansas City
Royals fan, all teams also within a proximate distance of Iowa City,
but Brewers fan—a rare anomaly outside the state of Wisconsin. It
turned out that her father, the big hearted English professor, had
attended a World Series game in St. Louis in 1982 when the
Cardinals had played the Brewers, and had been so impressed, so
totally won over by the two great players on the team, Paul Molitor
and Robin Yount, that he had passed his love of the Brewers on to
his family and nurtured that love by yearly trips to old County
Stadium. The Brewers have not done well in recent years, so when
Gretchen and I left that game on Sunday, both hoarse and elated, we
agreed that the atypical game had been a mirror of our shining
selves. Shortly after we got on I 94 back to Madison, however, we
realized we were both too drunk to drive, and pulled off into a truck
stop where we drank coffee for an hour. This, in turn, caused us to
stop every twenty minutes on the remainder of the trip. It was after
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our last pit stop, just east of Madison, that Gretchen glanced over
while driving and, reading my expression or my thoughts or my
aura or whatever, said, “Just keep focused, baby.”
There are few things that can raise the spirits of a dark
haired thirty-seven-year-old male higher and more instantaneously
than being called “baby” by a beautiful twenty-four-year-old blond
woman with whom one is in love—particularly when the
endearment is attached to an encouragement to sustain that love
itself. Because it was true, I had drifted into a dire vision of my
future homeless self, bereft of Gretchen, bereft of love. Her words
moved me so that I leaned over and put my head on her lap, not
meaning to distract her attention from the road, mind you, just for
the sheer luxury of it.
“Can you drive like this?” I asked.
“As long as I get the attention I deserve when we get
home,” she said.
“You mean finish what I’ve started down here?”
“You got that right, baby.”
This last remark, of course, kept me as sharply focused all
the way home.
It was Tuesday night when Gretchen went to work next, and that’s
when I waded lugubriously back into my poem. Maybe it was the
adherence to the rhyme scheme that made the going so slow, or
maybe I was trying to pull a poem out of the ethers that had not
completely formed there. In any case, there was little pleasure in
the experience. I pushed through it on impulse and persistence,
concerned with the music and not the meaning, though I felt the
meaning followed along. I continued to believe, however, that both
I and the poem was a sham; that I couldn’t follow my own advice
and therefore couldn’t attest to its veracity. But I liked the music
and I finished the poem.
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Of the night moth’s wings,
The murmur of the multitude,
The echo of the ancient days,
Will speak in secret ways.
The bounty of creation
Will whisper as it sings,
The shining of the evening star
Will mingle in the morning light,
Of the secrets of the night.
The songs of men conceal the song

That brings the gifts of God to light,
The songs of God conceal the song
That sings the secrets of the night.
The shining in the darkness
Will turn the tide of time away,
The bell that tolls at midnight
Will name the glory of the day.
Will speak of secret things,
Of the night moth’s wings.
This disparity between my life and my poetry seemed alarmingly

familiar to me. I felt as if my hard-wired, standard equipment
suggested that though my life might be bright and vivid, inner peace
would never be among the qualities I could call my own. The life of
a poet who writes from his higher faculties alone. Perhaps that was
the price I had to pay—but for what?
The next day after we woke and I told Gretchen the story of her
waking from among the violets, she talked to me about her
ambitions as an artist, a landscape artist. She spoke of how she
believed, as I do, that art should be always and above all uplifting to
the soul—never depressing or disquieting as an end in itself, not in a
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world with as much unavoidable suffering as ours. But she believed
that the possibilities of large scale art had not begun to be tapped.
That for instance in the same way that the beautiful settings of golf
courses could be created, sequential segments of landscape could be
made to refresh the psyche by using repetitive, reflective and
transforming motifs of slope, vegetation, shade, color, confinement
and openness, order and randomness, and many other variable
factors to create a living, changing work of art. A great natural
book, she explained, the successive chapters of which could teach,
enlighten or even cure. (I told her it was Goddess work, and she
said she knew that.)
Then she went shopping for groceries and clothes. Later,
after I walked her to work, I stopped for a burger at the Plaza and
then continued down State Street where I ran into Kyle, a street
character who’s been walking State Street longer than I’ve been in
town. I’d always assumed he was a stoned-out casualty of the
1960’s, and like someone out of a “New Yorker” cartoon, he always
carries a large, neatly hand-lettered, laminated placard, that reads:
“THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR.”
I don’t know what came over me, as the expression goes, or

what prompted me to do it, but I stopped as he approached me
coming down the street. I’d wanted to try talking to him many
times in the past but had never bothered.
“So what exactly does that mean, man, THINGS ARE NOT
AS THEY APPEAR?” I asked him, not expecting an answer. He
was dressed in antique bellbottoms and a sleeveless army-green tee
shirt. Having seen Kyle hundreds of times, I’d never heard him
speak or even heard of him speaking. He typically stares.
“If I told you, you’d never believe me,” he replied, his voice
hushed.
“Really…” I said, surprised. “I’m a very accepting guy, so
try me. Please. I’ll buy you dinner.”
“If you think that’s what I’m after, you’ll never
understand.”
“You’re serious.” I said.
“No, man,” he said. “I’m not serious. I’m actually very
lighthearted. Things are not as they appear,” at which he smiled at
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me enigmatically—enigmatically, not dementedly—and took
himself and his mystical pronouncement on down the street. It
happened that I was carrying a copy of the Listen to the flutter with
me, so on an impulse, I chased after him, handed it to him and asked
if that was what he was trying to get across. He surprised me again
by taking a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket, huffing on
them and wiping them off on his shirt. Then he looked at the poem
for a bit and began to read the second stanza out loud:
“The songs of mean conceal the song

That brings the gifts of God to light,
The songs of God conceal the song
That sings the secrets of the night…”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s part of it.”

“But what does that mean?” I asked. “In practical terms?”
“You need to look outside your skin, man. You gotta look
outside your skin.”
“What? Why did you say that? What does that mean?”
But at that point, Kyle didn’t answer; I didn’t expect him to,
and of course I knew exactly what he meant. Or, maybe more
accurately, I understood exactly what his words meant to me. It was
a little spooky. I watched Kyle walk off down the street wondering
what it must be to have a life like his, forgetting for a moment that I
was about to embark on something shockingly similar.
When I get home, I’m not feeling in the mood to work on
any more poetry that outstrips my own understanding, so I direct my
fan toward my bed and take a nap, setting my alarm clock early
enough to be at the bar at L’Etoile before Gretchen finishes her
shift. I wake up about an hour after the alarm was meant to go off.
In a panic, I call L’Etoile but find that Gretchen’s left. I call her
house. No answer.
Now I’m sick, and I’m convinced things ARE as they
appear, and that I have no control over my heart, something so
vulnerable that it expects to be wounded at every opportunity. Then
I think, “Just keep focused, baby,” and for a few moments I’m
relieved because I do understand that losing temporary contact with
Gretchen does not necessarily mean I’ll never see her again. So I
lean back and exhale deeply, but then realize that this relief is only
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skin deep—or more aptly, within the confines of my skin, because
what ails me can’t be cured by having what I want, but only by not
wanting—or wanting only what I intrinsically have. And when I
ask myself what that is, what I have and can expect will endure, I do
know the answer; it comes to me as an epiphany.
And I breathe it in, and I exhale it. That’s what I can trust;
that’s what is my own, yet beyond my skin! Breath! I can be
certain of my next breath: so I breathe it in, and it is suddenly
everything to me. And so is the next breath. And the next. I am
unreasonably happy as long as I breathe, as long as I breathe
consciously, because it excludes everything not of the moment, yet
it leaves no vacuum—at least no vacuum that is not immediately
and naturally filled by the world around me. Do I need to say that
again? That there’s no room for sorrow or dire expectations when
you accept the simplest God-given gift and focus on it and it alone.
Because as long as you live it will be there for you. No effort or
sacrifice involved. And I’m thinking maybe that’s what those
Hindus and Buddhists and Sufis and other assorted monks and
meditators have been talking about for five thousand years, that
maybe I’ve rediscovered the secret to happiness, when I hear
Gretchen’s key in the door.
There are no lights on in my room; Gretchen tiptoes in.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“I thought you’d fallen asleep and didn’t want to wake you
so I didn’t call.”
“That’s fine,” I say. “Come here, cool off and let me show
you what I’ve found.”
That was Wednesday night. On Thursday we spent most of the day

inside in the direct path of the powerful fan I’m lucky enough to
possess. The temperature had risen to the mid 90’s, and of course
the meteorologists were going on about the “Heat Index” being 110
because of the high humidity, which is nearly as asinine as the
“Chill Factor” they ply us with in the winter.
This supposed “Chill Factor”—for those who live in
warmer climates—is calculated when it’s cold out and also windy.
If, say, it’s 10 degrees out and there’s a 20 mile an hour wind, rather
than simply stating those grim facts like they did before the post
modern era, the public apparently insists on being told that when it’s
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10 and the wind is 20, it feels like its, say 15 below zero. Sure, it
feels like it’s minus 15. So they call that the “Chill Factor.” Fine...
but wait a second here. That’s minus 15 WITH NO WIND, isn’t
it! Idiots! And today, of course, we’re being told that with the
humidity, it feels like it’s 110! Well, you know what? When it’s
110 with NO HUMIDITY, it only feels as hot as it does today
when it’s 95 and the humidity’s high! How about that? Does that
make you feel better—or worse, which is apparently the object of it
all?
In any case, as long as we kept the door open a crack, the
powerful fan helped in this room of mine with only one window,
and if Gretchen hadn’t been scheduled that evening I might have
ventured out for a couple of six packs of Harp and stayed put with
my love in her underwear. It was positively tropical outside; the air
was dense, but being the gentleman I was originally portrayed to be,
I walked G. down to her air conditioned place of employment,
where I lingered at the bar long enough to have two Harps. On the
way home I stopped at the Plaza again for a burger and another of
the same. Before I sat down I picked up the new issue of “The
Isthmus,” Madison’s free weekly newspaper, delivered around town
on Thursdays. Leafing through it absentmindedly, something
caught my attention. It was what seemed to be an announcement or
maybe an ad, one column wide and maybe four inches high:
“The Great Way is not difficult

for one who has no preferences.”
From “Believing in Mind”

By Seng T’san, the Third Patriarch of Zen
At the very bottom of the message there was also a web

address of some sort. That’s all. The web address didn’t interest
me. The idea that “The Great Way is not difficult for one with no
preferences” interested me a great deal, however, since it jibed in an
uncanny way with my life much as had Kyle with his “THINGS
ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR” sign. I’m aware that among the
growing population of “New Agers,” it’s been fashionable to carry
on a great deal about “synchronicity,” a term apparently coined by
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Carl Jung, a man whose work I respect. But being an adamant non-
follower, I’ve ignored this cult-fashion with an aloof disdain. I have
to admit, however, that now that my life has risen in its intensity
(and with an increased stress level, God only knows what my
EXPERIENCE INDEX might be!) things outside my skin do seem
to be reflecting and confirming what’s going on inside to a
noticeable extent. As I said, it’s a little spooky, so I took the
newspaper home so I could show Gretchen the Third Patriarch’s
words and also check out the movies and bands in town.
It was not lost upon me earlier in the day, nor was it when I
returned to my room later, dripping, that I was soon planning to say
goodbye to my powerful fan. I realized that I may have been naïve
in my expectations of homelessness, but never in those expectations
did the physical discomforts weigh heavy. I’d heard the expression
“fielding grounders” regarding the picking up of discarded,
smokable cigarette butts; this was something I could picture myself
doing in a pinch, even a prolonged pinch. And I wasn’t one to be
fussy about food, or even the lack of it. I’d always been able to sit
for hours on park benches, in lobbies, or in laundromats; and,
particularly in the colder months, I had no problem remaining in the
same clothes for longer than it’s polite to mention. Of course I
knew there would be physical hardships I hadn’t foreseen, but the
moral victory that freedom from captivity promised was enough to
ease the way for me, at least before the pavement became my new
home.
What was also not lost on me, not entirely, at least, was the
broader implication of the Third Patriarch’s sage words. Maybe not
lost, but clearly misplaced.
After a hot, humid and languid Friday and Friday night, the
air was cleared and cooled by a midnight thunderstorm, and as I
mentioned earlier, on Saturday morning Gretchen and I were
propped up on our pillows discussing our love and our lives. In
light of my epiphany concerning breath, an understanding which
Gretchen keenly shared, we proclaimed that we were doing fairly
well in our mutual efforts. And we felt like a team, the next
objective of which was to walk down to the square and get some
strong coffee at the Farmers’ Market.
It wasn’t long before we were stepping out of the
quadrangular flow of morning shoppers and mounting the slight rise
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of one of the verdant lawns surrounding the State Capitol building.
There were others there too, but not too many: couples like us;
children, running on the Capitol steps, chasing or just exploring; and
single people, some leaning back, taking the morning sun or sitting
on the grass among the old trees with coffee and sweets. All these
people, whose ranks we now joined, were situated between the
bustling flow along the laden tables and stalls on the sidewalk and
white marble Capitol with its dome sparkling in the sun.
Considering the hordes of harvest-time shoppers, surprisingly few
chose to escape the strong current around the square and take refuge
on this island of green, where Gretchen and I, now armed with our
hot coffee and sticky buns, found a spot on the grass in the shade of
a prodigious oak.
“So you realize that saying can apply to anything, don’t
you?” Gretchen said as she took her first sip. She was looking quite
spectacular, which didn’t take much: in this case it was simply her
glowing skin, blindingly white shorts and a white V-necked top to
match.
“What are you getting at, Gretchen?” I asked with some
apprehension, forgetting her appearance.
“You’re being a dunderhead again, Felix. Having no
preferences should mean you can work for Bernardo as easily as
live in the street.”
“Why do you insist on telling me things I want to hide from
myself? I asked, poking her in the shoulder and causing her to spill
a little coffee.
“Are you angry?”
“Yes. Now will you please retract that statement?”
“That would be the hardest thing in the world for you,
wouldn’t it—going back to that job?”
“It would,” I said. “Why do you insist on my facing
reality?”
“How long were you going to wait before you mentioned
it?” she asked.
“Until I had some coffee.”
“Really?”
“I was going to mention it. That doesn’t mean I was going
to do anything about it.”
“You were really going to bring it up?”
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“Will you leave me alone and let me drink some of this?”
I swiveled around so I was facing the crowd of passersby
and took the lid off my coffee. Despite its storied political
correctness, the Madison crowd looked relaxed, unpretentious and
psychologically healthy. I could have easily let myself loose
watching this parade while sipping the intensely hot and flavorful
coffee I just paid an unseemly amount for, but I’d hardly unmoored
when I felt a slight finger poke in the small of my back. I ignored
this poke. It wasn’t a minute before I felt a second poke, a little
higher and a little harder. Just when I was expecting the third, I
turned back around.
“You didn’t really think I was angry, did you?” I asked.
“I think I might have been. I have a habit of being glib,
which hasn’t been a problem for us so far, but I don’t think I’ve
been confronted with anything as serious as this, so… So I think I
should apologize.”
“I’ve thought about it, you know,” I said. “Of going down
there and asking Bernardo for my old job back. It’s not that I’d be
unwilling to do it as I was a couple of weeks ago. It’s a question of
being able to. I feel like I’ve changed, but I don’t know if I’m
willing to be my new self yet. So…”
“So you’re just very smart and very brave. I suppose I’ll
have to make do with that.”
“I think I’m going to cry,” I said.
At this, she scooted over and put her arm around me. “I
think crying would be a very good idea,” she said. “No one will
notice. No one will know but me.”
“You know I cling to you, don’t you, baby?” I said.
“I do know that, Felix.”
“You know how I cling to you, baby?”
“I think I know that too.”
“And how’s that, baby?”
“Like a sure stone path run wild among cathedrals of
birds?”
“That’s right. Like a sure stone path run wi-i-i-i-ild among
cathedrals of birds.”
I closed my eyes then but tears were no longer pending. I
didn’t say anything more though, and we sat there together watching
the people flow past, sipping our excellent coffee and eventually
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eating our sticky buns under that oak tree that had sheltered many
loving couples in the past and surely would in the future. But there
must have been something about us, something eye catching.
Maybe we were radiant, or maybe it was Gretchen and the way she
looked that day, in bright whites in the tree’s shadow against the
brilliant green grass, but every five or ten minutes or so, someone
making their way around the square looked over directly at us and
smiled. And then we waved and they waved back. And it was the
widest variety of people who noticed us sitting there: there were two
teenage girls who smiled and then returned our wave; there was a
middle aged man in a business suit; there was a neo-hippie looking
couple in their twenties; there was a matronly white haired woman;
there was a child, maybe five-or-six; there was a well-groomed
older man with a graying, middle-aged woman; there was a another
woman with her mother, there was a bare-chested young man with a
python who looked like an body-builder; and more. They all smiled
and then walked on smiling even more broadly. By the time we
decided to get up and go because we were stiff from sitting there on
the grass, we not only had permanent smiles plastered on our faces,
but had concluded that the two of us together were a benevolent
force in the world. And we still had two secure weeks left.
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THE HOUR KEEPER, BUTTERED
I looked in the Yellow Pages. I bought a newspaper and looked in

that, and then I watched television for an evening in order to decide
which store I’d visit first. Since I hadn’t watched television,
listened to the radio or so much as picked up a newspaper in
months, this was jarring to my senses as well as informative. I
wasn’t about to be profligate, but the prices seemed competitive and
I hoped to confine my adventure to the smallest number of stores
possible—even only one, if I could manage.
I realized that my plans would have a significant effect on
Lois’ life as well as my own. Both of us would be enriched, of
course, though I assumed I’d be seeing less of her in the future, or
perhaps I should say she’d be seeing less of me, given the new
choices available to her. It would prove interesting, in any event, to
discover just how attached the old girl was to me, personally, as a
living, breathing being.
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THE HOURKEPER, BUTTERED
The first store my research led me to was the one most
appealingly advertised on television. Unsure of the bus routes to
that part of town, I traveled by taxi. I mentioned this to my cab
driver, who told me that not riding a bus could be the wisest thing I
ever did in my life. This seemed an odd joke, but I laughed to be
polite. On entering the store, I was assailed more by the smells—
the fabrics and the leathers—than by the sights, and it wasn’t until I
had strolled about a bit by myself that a sales woman approached
me. I believed this to be a calculated tactic, one meant to induce a
low key, homey atmosphere in order boost sales, but whatever the
motivation, it was successful. I did not feel pressured, and the sales
woman didn’t betray even the slightest sign of surprise when I told
her what I was after.
I had brought a small sketch of my unusually large living
room along to make my plans clear.
She said that it looked like a very good idea, and wanted to
know first of all if I had a color scheme in mind. I told her that I
hadn’t thought of it that way, but explained that when visualizing,
strong colors came to mind. She said that in that case we should
probably start with the carpet, and once that was chosen, choosing
two couches, one love seat, two arm chairs, four occasional tables,
two floor lamps, two table lamps, a dozen or so cushions, and
horizontal blinds for the windows would be far easier. I agreed.
I knew that if I went to one of Madison’s Oriental carpet
stores, my choices would be far wider and more authentic, but the
saleswoman—named Flora—had already won me over, and if it was
at all possible, I wanted to make her day as well as mine. And the
carpet selection was quite extensive; the new “Oriental” carpets
being not only reasonably priced but in some cases quite beautiful.
I chose a large, thick, rich looking one in deep reds, browns, and
blues with bits of pink and lavender here and there for highlights.
I’ve never enjoyed taking a long time shopping, and my
decisiveness seemed to please Flora. I told her then that for my
purposes, I preferred furniture covered in fabric rather than leather,
since I was seeking an atmosphere of informality rather than luxury.
She smiled slyly at me then and said that sounded like an excellent
idea but that there was one leather armchair she still wanted to show
me. I selected the two couches in a matter of minutes then; both of
the same style: one a bit longer and less puffy than the other, both
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with three cushions and with roundly scrolled, gracefully sloping
arms. I chose a cobalt blue (a dark, rich blue) fabric for one and a
cerulean blue (lighter with a greenish tint) for the other. Each had
matching love seats and I chose the puffier one in a deep red, the
other in rose. I then chose the armchairs for deep comfort: the first
one in a rose like the loveseat, and the second in dark brown leather
just as she suggested. The tables and lamps were a simple matter
then; those I chose had classic lines. The selection of mini-blinds
was also simple. I gave her the measurements I’d taken and chose
an off-white like the walls of the room. She explained that
installation was simple. The selection of large cushions at that huge
store was insufficient, however; there were only two I liked, both
reds, but she suggested a store not far from there that specialized in
such accessories. I suspected there would be a problem when I told
her just how soon I wanted all this delivered, but I was relieved
when she explained that since they had their own factory just
outside of Milwaukee, those pieces that required upholstering could
be ready quite soon, particularly if she put a rush on them.
Not once did Flora ask me anything about my specific
plans, and I was so pleased with the way she’d made everything
comfortable for me that after giving her my credit card, I asked to
speak to the store manager. She explained that she was the store
manager. That was even better, I said, since in that case I could
contact the owners and let them know what an excellent employee
they have. She smiled at me, gave me a card with the owner’s
name, and that, taking only a little more than an hour, was that. I
called a taxi from the store and arrived home very pleased with
myself. I climbed to the third floor, sat in my own comfortable blue
armchair by the window looking out over the garden, but did not
look out. I closed my eyes and flew over to the furniture store I’d
just visited and I circled it, swooping, several times. I had never
enjoyed shopping so much before, I realized as I glided back toward
my home, my cape streaming behind me. It must have been Flora, I
thought—and knowing how to fly so well certainly couldn’t have
hurt.
When Lois approached me by the window, I told her
everything I’d done, delighting in her lack of comprehension. She
did sniff at me oddly though, so perhaps she knew more than I gave
her credit for.
191
All this happened on a Saturday, one week after the
Saturday I said goodbye to Miranda. I did feel some regret that I
hadn’t gone back to the Farmers’ Market to buy another bunch of
God’s flowers, but supposed that the next week would do as well,
late in the season though it was. Putting it in perspective now, I
realize that the next week’s flowers were just the thing, in that
they’d be fresh and crisp the next day, Sunday, the day for which I’d
been preparing so enthusiastically. Much of that preparation may
not have appeared enthusiastic since it was unanimated and silent.
Most of it, in fact, took place sitting in my armchair by my garden
window, deep in the process of remembering, reevaluating and
reorganizing. I also looked at a few books, and took several long
walks; though on my walks I was frequently distracted by the sights
and sounds of things around me, the memories those engendered,
and my own private adventures as Butterman. After the third walk,
I concluded that these excursions were of value in and of themselves
and should be freed from the expectations of metaphysical research,
which, unbuttered, could get quite dry.
As the week passed, more and more of my time was spent
walking, but rather than choosing the more picturesque walks
through parks and along the lakeshores, I found myself attracted to
those spots where students were to be found. And it wasn’t long
before my walking was augmented by sitting, in places where
students congregated, like the Union Terrace by Lake Mendota, and
State Street. I felt I couldn’t get enough of looking at them and
listening to their conversations. My furniture arrived on Friday
morning, and within an hour was arranged in the big room
according to plan. The blinds were still to be installed, but I had
until Sunday to accomplish that. I had already purchased the
remaining cushions I required, most of these in bright colors. They
had already been scattered about the room, giving Lois a taste of
what was to come, though only a small one. She reacted to the large
pillows at first with suspicion before spending two days sitting on
one or another of them in a sequence that only she or another cat
could appreciate. It was only after two days that she seemed to have
chosen her favorites, perhaps believing that they were permanently
installed. Little did she know.
When the furniture truck arrived on Friday, Lois left the
house and did not venture back in until the truck had been gone for
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an hour, and then only while crouching close to the ground so as not
to be seen by the gigantic colorful pieces of furniture occupying the
formerly empty, but temporarily cushioned living room. Rather
than interfere with her exploration by sitting on one of the sofas and
encouraging her to jump up with me, I stood in the doorway and
watched. She seemed primarily concerned with sniffing at first; this
continued on for fifteen minutes, most of it spent in her feline
crouch. After this phase of reconnoitering was complete, she, by
keen instinct bred by countless generations of experience, found the
one packing slip I had not retrieved from the carpet, a sheet of paper
perhaps a foot square, and sat directly upon it, purred for a few
minutes and then fell asleep.
They arrived on Sunday evening at 7:00: the fifteen I’d been

counting on plus six more, none over the age of thirty, and most
under twenty-five. Those who’d brought friends apologized when
they saw the size of the room, but said that it had sounded so
interesting. I served soda; diet soda; and bottled water, flavored,
carbonated and non. I also had fruit, cheese and cookies on hand.
All who attended knew something of what it was about, some a
good deal, but as I’d expected and hoped, the evening began with
questions such as, “Just what is The Great Way?” and “Does having
no preferences mean not knowing good from evil?” The discussion
that followed was spirited, but with a sense of camaraderie and
mutual support. There was nothing contentious about it.
We eventually agreed that the Great Way was a life that was
harmless and without unhappiness, a life that knew serenity and
spread goodwill; and that this was indeed an attainable goal despite
contemporary cynicism. We concluded that having no preferences
meant accepting and embracing whatever circumstances one met in
ones own life, inwardly as well as outwardly—not accepting
injustice or cruelty against others. Of course, as is always the case
in such discussions, extreme examples popped up, and as usual,
given the topic, the name Adolph Hitler was mentioned. “Even in a
concentration camp?” a young man asked regarding accepting and
embracing the circumstances met in life. Having heard questions
like this so many times in the past, I answered it by saying that
indeed horrendous circumstances like that may be the greatest test
of the spirit, but that there is nowhere that a serene and loving
193
individual can be of more value than in the midst of such horrors. I
announced at the evening’s end that all were welcome to return in
two weeks, during which time I suggested that anyone who chose to
should look for practical examples in their own lives of the benefits
of overcoming preferences. I also told them to watch for something
new in next week’s “Isthmus.”
People didn’t want to leave. They said they appreciated that
I had no dogma to present, that I was looking for the most inclusive
approaches to harmonizing the spiritual and material life. They said
they loved my cat, that they loved my house. They asked me for
lists of books to read; I told them maybe later. They asked what
they could bring; I said nothing other than goodwill, that it was
quite important to me that they bring no gifts, no refreshments.
They asked if they could help me clean up; and I told them only if I
asked. They asked how many people they could bring; I told them
to use their discretion, that we’d work out those problems in the
coming weeks. And they eventually asked me how I came by
everything I knew. I expected this, and intentionally remaining a
little aloof, I told them the version of the truth best suited to their
age and experience. First, that what I knew was dwarfed by what I
didn’t know; and second, that when I was in my twenties I knew
about as much as they did, and that I simply kept pondering it and
working on it and grappling with it and that the addition of years of
experience did the rest. I mentioned no specifics, and did not go
into the incalculable value of not knowing, something it takes a
certain amount of living to appreciate—as in Miranda’s “The
sanctity of what we do not know.”
When they all eventually left, I sat in the new leather
armchair and asked Lois if she’d ever had a happier night. She
purred, to which I responded that I hadn’t either. After that I
cleaned up, something that seemed of a sacramental nature to me,
and didn’t stop smiling until I fell asleep, and perhaps not even then.
That night I dreamed of a great, pale green Luna Moth; huge, with
eye-like markings on all four wings and long graceful long tails on
the hind ones. At first I saw it fluttering outside my window, but
when I went to open the screen to let it in, I found there was no
screen there, so the moth entered my room where I sat then at my
desk. The night moth flitted about me; it hovered in front of my
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face, glowing like radium. All else seemed still, frozen in time.
The softest sounds of the radiant creature’s wings against the warm
summer air moved me. For a moment, I closed my eyes and
listened. The fluttering promised mystery, so I reached out to hold
it in my hands then, but it was gone, and I was downstairs in my
newly furnished meeting room, listening to the ringing silence that
remained after a crowd of some sort had left me there alone.
195
FREDA
FREDA
On Monday I went to the hotel and talked to Carl. I didn’t look up

the hours of the gun shop. Then I talked to Peepers. On Tuesday
then I had breakfast with Oscar and brought him back to the hotel. I
listened as Oscar and Carl talked and joined in to explain and
smooth things over where I could. I didn’t think of putting a gun in
my mouth. When I got back to my room on Tuesday afternoon the
phone was ringing. It was Jolene; she wanted to know how things
had gone with Oscar and Carl, and also said she had a message for
me. When I told her how the meeting had gone, she said she’d
never heard me sound that happy before. I said maybe she was
right. The thought of pulling my hands away from Rosie made me
feel sick, but I hadn’t thought of my head blown to bits for two
days. Then Jolene gave me the message.
Freda, from Madison, Wisconsin, had called her, she said,
and Freda wanted my phone number. Jolene told me she asked her
why she wanted my number, but that Freda had stammered then like
she wasn’t ready to explain and had finally said it was personal.
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This got Jolene to thinking, so instead of giving this lady my name
and number, she took hers and said she’d give me the message and
that I could call her back if I wanted to. She told me that Freda said
goodbye very meekly then, thanked her and hung up.
“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“You understand what?” Jolene asked.
“That she needs to talk to me.”
“Why? If it’s any of my business, I mean.” Jolene paused.
“Do you mean… you... know something about her?”
“I think I might,” I answered. But the truth was, I knew I
did, but didn’t want to let on—and not because I wanted to conceal
anything from Jolene, but because I had the feeling that if I talked
about it something would leak away from me. But again, like when
Oscar first called, I didn’t have to think. I just knew.
“So you’re going to call her?” Jolene asked.
“You’re worried about me, aren’t you?” I said.
“Of course I’m worried about you, Bernie Schmidt. What
do you think? I’ve seen you go from a shy, gentle, helpful man to a
deeply depressed and disturbed one and now back to a kind man
who doesn’t seem quite as shy as before. Don’t you see how I
might feel I’ve got a mental case on my hands—I mean as a friend.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.” I said.
“What?”
“I mean I know that’s how it must seem. I know that’s why
you’re worried, but I think I’ll be okay now. And I know you care
about me, and I know you’ve been good to me when I needed it, but
now I’m….”
“You’re what, Bernie?”
“Just fine,” I said. I was pretty sure I’d changed my mind
about murdering myself, so telling her I was fine wasn’t a lie, and I
didn’t feel too bad about not telling Jolene the whole truth of it.
She sighed. “Okay, Bernie. I’m not your mother—or your
daughter—I just want to caution you to take it easy with what you
feel, and what you feel you can do. So… keep in touch.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jolene knew more
about what I thinking than I realized. “You’re a good friend,
Jolene,” I said. “I hope I never let you down.”
“Thanks, Bernie… I guess. What do you mean let me
down?”
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FREDA
“Disappoint you,” I answered.
“Thanks, Bernie, but you could never disappoint me. Why
would you think that? I’m just hoping you’ll be happy.” And then
she said goodbye and hung up. Of course she didn’t know how
terribly I’d disappointed Rosie.
Then I dialed the number in Madison.
The phone was answered right away.

“Hello,” I said. “Is this Freda I’m speaking to?”
“Yes,” she said, “Who’s this please?”
I knew she knew who it was, but didn’t know if she knew
my last name. “This is Bernie Schmidt, I’m calling from Chicago.
I met you last Saturday under kind of bad conditions.” I tried to
sound as lighthearted as I could about that. “My friend Jolene told
me you wanted to get in touch with me. How are you doing? You
seemed upset that day of that accident.”
“I’m doing all right, I suppose,” she answered. She wasn’t; I
could tell that over the phone, but that’s the kind of thing people say
all the time. Then she went quiet.
“So,” I said, seeing no sense in not getting right to the point.
“An accident like that can bring up all kinds of other upsets, it did
for me.” That wasn’t the truth, but it didn’t matter.
“Really?” she asked. “I suppose it did for me as well.”
“It reminded me of a long list of losses and disappointments—
not that that accident was even serious, I only got a little wet, and I
sure don’t blame you, Freda.”
She went silent again. I didn’t think she could figure out what
to say. “So what do you do, Freda, up there in Madison?”
“I work for an insurance company.”
“Is that good work?”
“Yes and no. It depends on me… the kind of mood I’m in.”
“Freda,” I said, thinking she must be very smart to say a thing
like that, “sometimes I have a knack of knowing how people feel. Is
something bothering you? Can you tell me why you called?” I
knew this was putting pressure on her but I couldn’t figure out what
else to do.
“I called because I wanted to talk to you. And I thought I was
crazy until what you said just now. I’m not the kind of person who
calls strangers to cry on their shoulder. I’m a conservative person.”
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“So am I. But maybe not with feelings. Sometimes it’s good
to take risks.”
“Maybe,” she answered. “There’s so much, though. I wouldn’t
know where to start, and I feel embarrassed now. I’m really not
some kind of loony, calling you up like this.”
I knew I better talk fast or she’d close up on herself. “Freda,” I
said. “After the accident, I could tell more was upsetting you than
that fender bender, and I was upset too. I wanted to talk to you,
even then. I’m not a loony either. If it’s awkward to talk over the
telephone, why don’t you drive down to Chicago and we can have
lunch and go to the park?”
She went dead silent again. “I’m not asking you out on a
date,” I said, “if that’s what you think. We could meet half way in
between.”
“I’ve been scared to go out by myself,” she said, sounding stiff,
like she forced herself to say it. “I’m frightened of driving.
Yesterday I rode with a friend to work.”
I thought of Oscar’s voice that morning when I told him I’d be
glad to talk to Carl. “I can come up there,” I said. “There must be a
bus. I don’t have a car, but I enjoy a good bus ride. I really do.
So…”
“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Freda said.
“You didn’t,” I answered. “I suggested it and I have some time
off of work.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m an elevator operator in the Randolph House downtown in
Chicago.”
“O-oh. That’s a fancy place, isn’t it?
“Yes, but not too much. It’s not stuffy. Everything does
sparkle and shine there; even after all these years I notice that.” I
was hoping telling her about the hotel would put her at ease a little.
“Could you come up this weekend?” Freda asked all of a
sudden, sounding scared and brave at the same time.
I thought for a moment, but there was nothing to think about.
“I don’t see why not.”
It seemed then like Freda wanted to get off the phone very
quickly; it was like she wanted to say goodbye before anything
changed. I told her I’d check on the bus schedule and call her back
sometime later. She said she’d be home the rest of the day and that
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evening, but only in the evenings for the rest of the week since
she’d be at work. She sounded like she was worried I’d miss her. I
couldn’t think of anything cheerful to say though, except that I’d
call the bus station right away and get back to her as soon as I could.
If it hadn’t been for the good thing that happened with Oscar
that morning, I might have been wondering if I was the one who
was loony. But it was okay. I felt like someone put a good strong
floor under my feet, where there used to be just loose, creaking
timbers.
Like I said, when I first talked to Oscar on Sunday, I told him how
he’d have to talk to Carl, I asked him questions about his life, and I
made him assure me that he was serious about wanting that job
back. On Tuesday morning—that was before I talked to Freda on
the phone—Oscar and I had breakfast together at the O’Connell’s
near the hotel.
He seemed very nervous around me at first, which I took as a
good sign, meaning he was concerned about the way things turned
out. He was also wearing a clean shirt and a tie. At first, I talked to
him about buying a new alarm clock. We’d decided on the phone
the day before that even though he already had a clock, he’d been
sleeping through it, so he should buy himself a new one, signifying
a “new start,” and that it was very important than he pay for this
clock himself. That makes a lot of sense to me now, but back on
Sunday when I talked to him, I’d just that moment postponed my
own suicide, and was just operating on instinct. And thinking back
on it today, I remember feeling that I was really only postponing it,
not calling it off. It wasn’t till a while after I’d talked to him that
my fear began to give way. I mean my fear of being overwhelmed
by other people’s misery and my not wanting to be alive started to
give way to maybe helping someone instead.
After we’d talked about the alarm clock and a few other
practical things like keeping back up money for a taxi if he missed
his bus, Oscar looked at me across the table, like he still didn’t
understand.
“Why you want to help me?” he asked. “I’m nobody to you.
Not family. Not even the same blood.”
“Everyone needs to be helped every once in a while,” I said.
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“Yeah, sure, but why me?”
And then I started talking to him like I didn’t care how he
reacted, like I didn’t care if he thought I was some kind of nut case.
I looked him straight in the eye.
“I feel like I can see into your heart, Oscar, and I see sadness
and loss there that you don’t deserve because you’re a good, brave
person. And you know, I need to help you because I believe the
goodness in people is something that needs the help it could get.”
“You sound like a priest,” he said.
“Is that okay?”
Oscar nodded. “How’d you know about my little brother and
sister?”
Maybe it was just a lucky chance that my dream about brothers
and sisters matched up with his real life—I don’t know, but it did. I
didn’t tell him anything specific. This was a big moment for me in
my life. I never had any special talent. Even back in the Lutheran
Home, I never played the piano or the trumpet like some of the
other children did, and I was never good at sports or at my school
work. Abby said that I had a talent for loving her, and that’s true,
but that’s a different kind of thing. If Oscar’s situation wasn’t so
sad, I’d have been proud of myself.
“Sometimes I can catch other people’s feelings, so I knew that
you suffered that loss, but even if I didn’t know that, Oscar, I’d have
wanted to help you because I can tell you’re a good guy.” And I’m
not sure if that was entirely true, but it didn’t matter.
Then he just started in. “My little brother and sister died in an
apartment fire; I tried to carry them out, and I could’ve done it, but
the fireman dragged me away. I assaulted the fireman. I broke his
jaw. My father was a drunk, un pendejo, who fell asleep with a lit
cigarette and died in that fire, just like he deserved. Only my moms
and my big sister are still alive. Shit, I was fourteen.” Oscar had a
stony, frozen expression on his face, and I thought he was going
stop but he didn’t.
“My moms has always been the strong one in our house. But
my sister’s messed up. She’s twenty-two still needs to live at home
and be comforted like a baby. She works and all that, but she hasn’t
grown up since the fire.”
We talked for a while longer then, and I finally got Oscar to
admit that he was angry. I didn’t want to dig any deeper than that,
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though. I could tell he might never have admitted that before, so I
told him what I thought was true—I didn’t tell him why, but I told
him.
“You need to get some self-respect, Oscar. You already
deserve it for being so brave and wanting to hold down this job, and
if you manage to really do it, you’ll start to feel better about things.
Believe me, you will.” And then he cried a little. This was a tough
seventeen-year-old kid who’d spent time in a gang and in jail. He
cried right there in O’Connell’s.
After our talk, it wasn’t too hard to convince Carl to give him
another try. Oscar seemed sorry about the way he’d behaved toward
him earlier. He told him about the new alarm clock he’d just bought
at a Walgreen’s near the hotel and had right there in a bag; he told
him a little about the idea of it too; and then, on his own, he said a
little about needing to prove something to himself.
Carl didn’t want to hear that though; he said he wasn’t running
a group home, and the truth was I thought Oscar was trying to play
on his sympathy and con him a little, and that wasn’t a good idea.
But Carl agreed to a two-week probationary period, and then I said
that I was so sure that it would work out that I’d come off the
elevator and run the Hobart if Oscar didn’t show up. Carl thought
that was pretty funny and said Peepers would think so too, and I
said that it wouldn’t do Peepers any harm the run the elevator
himself for a few hours here and there if I was in elbow deep, and
Carl and I had a good laugh about that, seeing as we both knew that
Peepers would call a bellman to move a suitcase six inches rather
than pick it up himself. Oscar started to laugh too, but I gave him a
look to let him know that it wouldn’t be polite to laugh at something
that wasn’t his own business, particularly about the hotel steward
who he should show respect for. There were some things about
Oscar, some rough spots like that when it came to manners—but he
was still a kid.
I took the early bus from Chicago to Madison on Saturday morning

and arrived at 9:35. I told Freda not to bother picking me up at the
station, but she insisted on it, saying that going out to meet me
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wasn’t anything that frightened her. And anyway, she lived close to
the terminal.
When I left Chicago it was hot and sticky, but as the bus drove
northward through Rockford, Illinois and a place called Janesville,
Wisconsin, the day cleared and cooled, and as we pulled into
Madison, I saw puddles in the street.
Even though I’d looked in Freda’s eyes, I couldn’t have told
you much about what she looked like, except that her hair was going
grey and she wasn’t dying it to make herself look younger, and
that’s something I respect in a woman. But I got a good close look
at her before she saw me when she was standing there at the bus
terminal waiting. Like me, she wasn’t tall. She had nice, big brown
eyes. She was a little stout, also like me, but had a gaunt look on her
face—just a shade of that, not enough to make her ghoulish or
anything, but enough to make you wonder a little. I can’t say much
about clothes, but hers were simple but pretty, and she had on a
pretty necklace, little blue stones, small as Tic Tacs but each set in
sliver and joined together in a graceful kind of chain. It’s funny that
I noticed that. And I noticed that she’d had her hair cut too. It was
short now, showing more of her face.
Before I even said hello, she told me how kind it was of me
to come all the way up there on the bus. I tried to explain that I
really did enjoy a good bus ride. I realize most grown people don’t,
but there are a lot of things grown people don’t enjoy that I do—
particularly watching things go by and finding the patterns or
rhythms of them—but I didn’t bother telling that to Freda.
“I was thinking you must be hungry so early in the morning,
Bernie,” she said, “so I have a suggestion. We have a Farmer’s
Market here in Madison on Saturday mornings, and it’s right on the
Capitol Square only about a half a mile from here. If you’d like we
could walk over there where they have good coffee or tea or juice,
and good bakery too.”
“Like chocolate croissants?” I said.
“Yes. How did you guess? Do you like those?”
It was funny how a person could ask a question as simple as
that and appear scared about it, but she did. I told her I didn’t guess,
that last Saturday we’d been at the Farmers’ Market just before
we’d… seen her, and that the woman who she’d called to get my
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number had just bought a bag of chocolate croissants at the bakery
where we were parked.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, we don’t have to go there if you don’t
want.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’ll be good to stretch my legs.” I was
worried that might make her think I was just being polite about
enjoying the three hour bus ride, but I decided that if I had to be
walking on eggshells all day, it wouldn’t be fair to either one of us.
When we started walking down West Washington Avenue
toward the square, she said that she supposed she should start telling
me what was wrong. But she didn’t sound right saying that, and she
didn’t look right saying it either. It seemed like she felt she was in
some kind of psychiatrist’s office or something, or that the meter
was running.
I walked along and didn’t say anything for a moment. The
State Capitol Building looked very impressive as we approached it
walking down that broad avenue, but I didn’t mention that. I said
something that surprised me. “Freda,” I said. “I came up here
because I thought it would be nice to see you. If you don’t say
anything to me all day about what’s troubling you that will be okay
with me. You’re your own person and I’m not expecting anything
from you.”
Well, what do you know, just like with Oscar, she starts in
crying. “No, no, no, no, no,” I say. “I don’t mean for you to do
that.” And she takes some tissues out of a shoulder bag she’s
carrying and wipes her eyes. And then of all things I start to feel a
tingling in my private parts, which I suppose is natural, but I hope it
goes away.
“I’m feeling very emotional,” she says. “I’m sorry if I
embarrassed you.”
“No, no,” I said again. “It’s not that, it’s…”
“I lost my husband two years ago, and you sounded like him
just now, the way you were so patient.”
“I think patience is very important, but mostly with yourself.”
And that seemed to quiet us both down for the next minute or so.
But when we got to the square with all the people milling
around through all those vegetables and apples and cheese and
everything else they have in Wisconsin, Freda started to tell me that
since her husband died—he was only fifty-three—she felt like she’d
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become mentally ill. And then she started talking non-stop. He had
done nearly everything for her, she said, she’d only had a part-time
job, and that only to keep busy, but it turned out he hadn’t had much
of an insurance policy, and before she knew it she was working
fulltime and trying to manage her life. Her son who lived in
Arizona had shown her how to take care of her finances, how to
maintain her car, and the house she couldn’t bear to sell. And at
first the shock of it all was so great that she was numb and went
automatic, she said, and just did the things her son had told her
about, and then started going to work. But then when she started to
feel what she called “the fullness” of her loss, she started to lose
grip, to lose track of things—like the bills to pay, and upkeep of the
house, and the birthdays, and now things were starting to unravel at
work.
“Every time I try to pay the phone bill or the other ones or
some I’d never even known about, I think of every little thing about
how Howard did it. Like how nicely he’d put his suit jacket over
the back of the chair when he sat down at the desk, the way he
opened the drawers, the sound it made when he tore out the checks.
You know that little sound? And I just can’t bear to hear that little
sound because I miss him so terribly, but I feel like I’m a coward for
not being able to face those inconsequential things.”
Freda looked at me like she wanted me to say something, but
before I could, she started right in again. “But every time my son
calls me from Phoenix or my daughter up in Oregon, I tell them I’m
doing fine so as not to burden them any more than they already were
with losing their father and raising families of their own. You
know? So I feel like I’ve got no one to talk to.”
We were passing a table covered with big, sweet smelling
yellow candles. Again she looked at me, but just kept talking.
“...Because I was crying and ran into another parked car just a few
days before I hit you pulling out on Williamson last Saturday, but
no one had saw me hit the other car, at least I thought they hadn’t,
and I was so upset I drove away without leaving a note or
anything... ”
She was working herself up into a real lather, so I stopped her.
Funny, but just then we were standing by the stall that sold the
chocolate croissants, which seemed to keep popping up in my life.
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“There’ll be plenty of time to tell me all about it,” I said. “But
I know they run out of these chocolate ones early in the day, so if
you want one you should get it now.”
“I just like the plain ones,” she said. “I don’t know where
people got the idea to stuff them.”
I told her I’d never tasted a stuffed one so I was going to try,
since my friend made such a production out of getting some last
week. Freda insisted on paying and I didn’t argue with her about
that.
“Now we just need something to drink and somewhere to sit
down,” I said, trying to get her mind off her troubles for a little
longer. There was a coffee stand up at the next corner and just
across the street. I asked her what she liked to drink with croissants,
feeling all of a sudden like the host, and she said she was a coffee
drinker. I am too, so we went and bought cups to go.
“Do you like flavored coffee?” she asked, “Like vanilla and
hazelnut, because I don’t.”
I didn’t either, but what seemed important to me is that she was
willing to say what she didn’t like before finding out if I agreed with
her. Right then I knew she was brave, and thought maybe I’d tell
her that a little later, but the thought of that started me in tingling in
my privates again so I changed my mind.
We found a very nice place to sit in the sun on the lawn that
surrounded the Capitol building. I would have wondered if people
were allowed on that lawn, but there were others there too and no
one seemed to be chasing them off. Once we started eating and
sipping our coffee, she withdrew some, and I got the sense she was
embarrassed by how much she’d told me so quickly. The chocolate
croissant I was eating was one of the best things I’d tasted for a long
time.
We were both sitting on the grass, both of us with our legs
folded to the side. My knees wouldn’t go cross-legged any more
and I don’t know about hers. Along with her blue necklace she was
wearing grey pants and a light grey sweater that went with the grey
in her hair I suppose. She was a pleasant looking person. All her
features were soft, and if it weren’t for that gauntness, that
hollowness around her eyes, she would have been the kind of person
that made you smile. And then all of a sudden, she teared up again.
“Memories?” I asked.
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She nodded.
“You know what I think?” I said. “I think you’re very brave. I
was thinking that when you called me, a stranger, to talk about your
troubles; then once I got up here and listened to what you had to
say, I knew you were brave to open yourself to tell all that about
yourself, things that you were ashamed of.”
She looked like she wanted me to go on.
“I know what it feels like to be broken down by feelings,” I
said, not knowing where I was going with the thought.
Then she surprised me again. She took my hand, just one of
them with two of hers. “It bothers me to think of you being
unhappy,” she said.
“Me? Why?” I asked, taken completely by surprise.
“Because you’re so kind. You don’t deserve any unhappiness.”
“And you’re not kind?”
“I’ve always tried to be kind,” she answered, still holding on to
my hand, for her sake more than mine, I thought. I could say I’m
not used to people holding my hand, but that wouldn’t come near
what I felt about a strange woman holding my hand when
everything was so up in the air with me. Then words started coming
out of my mouth again, all of their own accord, as far as that can be
true.
“I know you’re going to be okay, Freda. It’s going to take a
little while, maybe. You just have to give yourself a chance to get
used to being who you are now. I don’t mean you have to get used
to living without your husband, or even living on your own—no, I
mean you’re a new person now, and you should notice that and pay
attention.”
“I never thought of that before,” she said, which didn’t seem
strange because neither had I. Then she asked if I could tell her
more about that, and I told no, I probably shouldn’t. I was trying to
disguise that I was just making it up as I went along. But she
seemed satisfied.
“Because that’s something I have to find out for myself,
right?” she said, which sounded true so it was a relief to me. Then I
started in again.
“You need to find out what the new you likes. You have to
give her a chance, and maybe slip those new things in instead of
your bad feelings, like what you’re afraid of and your doubts about
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yourself. I lost my wife twenty years ago, and I’ve never let myself
stop missing her, or feeling bad that she’s out of my life. But I’m
happy with what I’ve become—not bragging happy, just
independent.” And that was it. She finally let go of my hand, and
all I could do for a moment was stare: into her face, up at the
Capitol building, at the squirrels in the trees—it didn’t matter. Here
I was, Bernard Schmidt, an elevator man at the Randolph House,
and I was telling a stranger what to do with her life, and it sounded
like what I was saying was right.
Freda had a kind of glassy expression on her face, which made
me uncomfortable, so I stood up and surprised myself again by
offering her my hand. “We can finish our coffee while we walk.” I
said, feeling really like I wanted to run away, but that walking
would have to do.
She hadn’t said a thing. “Do you like vegetables?” I finally
asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Most of them. Don’t you?”
“Not many. I was brought up in an orphanage, what they call a
group home now, and they fed us canned vegetables every night. I
liked the corn, and kind of liked the green beans but everything else
was awful and I can’t bring myself to eat it, even when I know it’s
not the same as they made me eat when I was little.”
“So…” Freda said, looking at me in a way that made me
uncomfortable again. “You’re an orphan and you lost your wife
twenty years ago? Can I ask you how old she was?”
“Same age as me. She was forty-five. She died of cervical
cancer.”
“So you think about her a lot?”
“I do.”
“And you miss her a lot, and you’re sad?”
“I miss her a lot, and I know she’d understand why I’d be sad,
but she’d rather have me happy.”
“But how do you do that?”
“Just with simple things. Things I know I like. I like to watch
people’s faces when I walk in downtown Chicago. I like to watch
the traffic, just the colors of the cars and taxis, and the stop lights;
things that might seem foolish to other people. And I love to see
people in the hotel, all dressed up on vacation or on business. I love
taking them up and down… That’s what I do. I love to see the
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looks their faces when they notice that I stop my elevator exactly,
like to the fraction of an inch, at their floor in the hotel. Simple
things, nothing hard, ever. And things that would make anybody
happy, too, like that,” I said, pointing at two people sitting on the
lawn next to the Capitol. They were under a tree, and anyone could
see they were in love with each other. They were a beautiful
couple.
“See,” I said to Freda. “Look at them.” And as soon as we
both looked at them, they waved right back at us. And I was
surprised, and without looking at her, I knew Freda was surprised,
but we both waved back, just because they were so happy, and then
we looked at each other, kind of astonished, and we both blushed
because maybe we saw something about ourselves in that couple,
and then we kept on walking.
Neither one of us said a word. I don’t know what Freda was
thinking, but I know that I was thinking about how good life can be
when you get out of the way and give it a chance, and how grateful I
was that Marshall Fields was closed that late afternoon a week
before when the world seemed too much for me to bear.
We walked back to her house after leaving the Farmers’ Market.

She’d bought some green beans and some sweet corn to cook for
lunch, and we just chatted on that walk, which was a relief to me
after so much that was serious.
Right off, I saw that her house was probably too big for her,
and couldn’t help thinking that she could sell it for a pretty penny
and find a nice little apartment with no responsibilities beyond
cleaning and doing the dishes. I figured that’s what her son in
Arizona had told too, so I just admired the house even though she
complained that she was lazy when it came to dusting. It had a very
nice back yard, and that’s where we ate the sweet corn, green beans,
tomato soup and toast she made for lunch. We stayed in the yard
for a couple of hours talking about things that got more serious as
the time passed. She had a lot to get off her chest, and she did some
crying before it got too hot out and we went inside.
“You know,” she said, “I was always very good at home and in
high school, but I needed to get away, so I came to college here in
Madison, and I guess I wasn’t ready, because I got wild and got
pregnant and had to have an abortion and didn’t graduate.”
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Freda put her hands up on her head and closed her eyes like
she was going to cry, but she didn’t. “I can’t tell you how bad I felt
about all that,” she said, “how disappointed I was in myself. And
my parents made it all even worse. I was so young and I made a
mistake and they didn’t give me any support.”
But when Freda told me what happened next, it made me think
that maybe she was a fortunate woman, because before she’d even
left Madison to go back home, she met a man who turned out to be
her future husband. He was someone she loved, who didn’t judge
her, who was all she’d ever hoped for and her parents liked him too
because they thought he saved her. Freda almost laughed when she
said that.
But then she kept on talking, and for the most part, it was the
same thing over and over that she talked about. Just like with the
bill paying and the house maintenance, she talked about the lawn,
and about how her husband had kept it so nice and she was still
scared of the mower.
“Why don’t you hire a neighborhood kid to do the lawn for
you,” I said, “and then think of how proud your husband would be
of the way you were keeping it up, and how proud he’d be of your
taking charge, and then maybe how good it made you feel that he’d
be proud?” That’s what I said to her then, and that was similar to
quite a few other things I said that afternoon. “Why don’t you try
doing it this way and see if it makes you feel better, and if it does,
give yourself a big thank you for what you’ve done.” I repeated that
every which way it seemed to me, but I was frankly tired out by
around four o’clock and told her that there was a five o’clock bus
that I needed to take back to Chicago. I expected her to be reluctant
to let me leave after all we’d talked about but she was very gracious
instead and didn’t say another thing about her troubles that day.
When I was riding back home on the bus, I thought a lot about
how we’d said goodbye. We didn’t talk much on the walk over to
the terminal, and the bus was loading early when we arrived. I’d
figured out what I was going to say to her long before we got there
and I just came out and said it: “Now you call me whenever you
like, Freda,” I said just before I boarded my bus.
And she looked like she was completely taken by surprise, and
leaned her head toward me like she was looking more closely to see
if I really said what she thought.
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“What is it?” I asked.
She sighed like she was relieved. “I didn’t know if I’d be able
to talk to you again.”
“What did you think,” I asked, “that this was a visit from the
Pope?”
And she laughed at that, and then shook my hand and said
goodbye. And what I was thinking on the ride back home was that
that was the only time I heard her laugh all that day. And more than
that, too, because when I heard her laugh she suddenly seemed a
whole other woman to me. I mean she seemed like a woman to me,
not just a female person I might be able to help who made me
uneasy by holding my hand.
It was an eight block walk back to the Horatio hotel. I didn’t see
anything in the faces that passed as I walked across the loop—not a
thing. What’s going on with me, I was wondering? Why couldn’t
my mind settle on one thing or another? Everything had stayed the
same for so many years and now it was topsy-turvy, and by the time
I got back to my room, I couldn’t think of anything to do but get
right back on the telephone and call Freda up in Madison. I also
thought how weak and shameful I’d been pulling my hands away
from Rosie when she was so frightened on the corner of Michigan
and Washington that terrible day in my dream.
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SPEECHLESS
“Holy shit! Look at this, Gretchen! There’s another one!”
“If one does not count on the harvest while plowing,

Nor on the use of ground while clearing it,
It furthers one to undertake something.”
We should do every task for its own sake as time and
place demand and not with an eye to the result. Then
each task turns out well, and everything we do succeeds.
From Hexagram #25, Wu Wang/ Innocence (The Unexpected)

Translation from the Chinese and commentary by Richard Wilhelm,
rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes.
Gretchen was just waking up. I’d gone out for cigarettes and picked
up the new Isthmus—so if you’ve been paying attention, you’d
know that it’s Thursday.
“Gee!” Gretchen said. “Who’s putting this in here?”
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As in the first notice about the Great Way not being difficult
for those with no preferences, there was a web address at the bottom
of this vertical box in which it was centered. But I didn’t care; I
think I’d have preferred the quote standing entirely on its own.
That’s the way I took it—like a letter fluttering down out of the sky.
“I suppose you can find out, if you like,” I said to Gretchen,
realizing we were skipping our as you turn to me in a moment
forever that never again in the palest of blues will be routine for the
first time in days. I lit up a Camel and gave her her pack of
Marlboro Lights. “Just don’t tell me who it is. There’s a good
chance it’s some off-the-edge New Age cult trying to lure in
malcontent housewives and gullible high school dropouts.”
“You know, you could be a little more forgiving, Felix.”
Gretchen scowled at me. “It could be someone very sensible and
wise trying to attract like-minded people… like you. Or maybe not
you, because of the sensible part.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What would I do without you?”
Gretchen was still in bed, but she was sitting up. She was
wearing the extra large Brewers tee shirt we’d bought at the game in
Milwaukee and nothing more. I was hoping she’d flip that big blue
shirt up over her head and say something like “You’d be missing
out on this,” but no, that didn’t happen. In my experience, things as
brazenly sexy as that only happen in movies or books, or in life only
when one is least expecting them. What Gretchen did was quite the
opposite. She drew up her knees, still under the sheet, wrapped her
arms around them and leaned forward.
“You’d probably perish from this earth; that’s what you’d do
without me. Now stop being a ninny and tell me what you think
about this. I’m going to check this website out as soon as I can get
to a computer.” She held out the folded newspaper and shook it a
little.
“I think it’s one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard.
How’s that? And I never thought of it before—except in my one,
single published poem. You know, the one I said for you that first
night? ‘The Long Hunt in the Sun?’ But I never put those simple
ideas together before, and it’s so brilliant and obviously reasonable.
It cuts right through everything extraneously human. And my God,
Gretch, it’s the perfect pairing for the first one about no preferences.
I think I just found religion.”
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SPEECHLESS
Gretchen didn’t reply. She looked thoughtful, a mood, like
many others, in which she was strikingly lovely.
“It makes me want to dance, Sweetheart,” I said. “That’s how
happy I am with that. It’s news; that’s what it is, good news. Do
every task for its own sake with out an eye to the result? That’s the
missing link, Pinky, the missing link in the great Be Here Now
mystery. It tells you what to do with the Now. This is phenomenal
news, actually. That’s all this boy needs to live. I’m stoked!”
“I can see that, and you know what? You’re my hero, Felix,”
she said. “There can’t be another person in the world that reacts to
the truth as wonderfully as you do. I mean that. I suppose I want to
spend the rest of my life with you.”
Tiny little stars, silver and tinselly, came showering down from
the white ceiling of my room and dissolved before my eyes in
golden sparkles. Gretchen was smiling like a bride. I suppose I was
too.
“You’re speechless?” she asked.
I sat down next to her on the bed and put my arms around her.
I was speechless. My head was next to hers, my chin on her
shoulder, her blond hair was pressed against my cheek. She gave
me a little squeeze. “Felix?” she said, her tone curious. “A lady
likes an answer to her proposal.” So I nodded my head.
“Felix?” she said again, leaning back and taking my face in her
hands. “Do I take that as a ‘yes’?” I nodded again, rapidly. My face
in Gretchen’s hands was perhaps the most pleasant place my face
had ever been, but looking in her eyes did nothing to help me regain
my power of speech. I was liquid.
Then Gretchen started laughing. For me, at that moment, her
laughter was a sweet lyric aria, or the sound of a pastoral brook, or
bells. The love of my life had captured me with her eyes and she
was laughing me home. But I couldn’t even laugh. She started
kissing me then, as if to revive me it seemed, to bring me to my
senses, a place I had no desire to go, but apparently there was a
practical matter to be considered.
“Are you going to be able to walk me to this class?” she asked,
wagging an accusatory finger at me. “Or have I just proposed to an
invalid?”
Gretchen was taking only two classes this semester, these
toward her second graduate degree. She wanted to be sure of things
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before she committed herself full time to her ambition, which she
intended to keep undisclosed to the all academic cynics until she
was fully qualified to undertake it. Today’s class was her first and I
knew she couldn’t skip it. Suddenly my power of speech returned
along with my power of worry. “Of course I’ll walk you,
sweetheart,” I said. “But what will this do to, you know, my… my
decision?”
“O-o-oh, the poor dear can talk but can’t make decisions.
Mmmm,” she said, standing up and stroking my cheek. “Poor
dear…”
Then she opened her pack of cigarettes. I held out my lighter.
She inhaled deeply and blew the stream of blue white smoke over
my head. “I just had to tell you how I’ve been feeling,” she said. “I
gave no thought to… to the result. I didn’t know if you were going
to say yes, or no, or nothing at all—and actually all you did was
nod. And I don’t know what effect this will have when your rent’s
due. It’s a new ingredient in our pie, Sweetie. You take your time
and think about—maybe think it’s like World War II and I want to
be your bride before you go away, maybe never to return. I had to
tell you because it’s part of our reality now, but I’m not going to
hold you to anything, you know that. You can jilt me if you need
to, but if we don’t get out of here soon, we won’t have time for
coffee.”
Yes. Coffee. It was the idea of coffee that occupied my mind
momentarily as Gretchen slipped out the door to the bathroom, tooth
brush and paste in hand. Coffee, something I’d craved every
morning for… oh, seventeen years, maybe, and consumed freely,
mostly during the early parts of the day. But now it was something
different. Gretchen would soon return from the bathroom, dress,
and we’d leave my room without making the bed. Then, on the way
over to her class, we’d stop at Boston Blacky’s for some of the very
good coffee they served there. Then we’d drink that coffee as we
had on many recent mornings, but the difference today would be
that… And that was as far as my little brain would go. Of course I
knew the words that concluded that thought and also the bizarrely
contradictory ones that would necessarily follow. But, I was feeling
a lot like I believe a hamster must feel, or some other small brained
mammal, some other small brained but friendly mammal, and like a
hamster, or a gerbil, or maybe even a mouse, I’d feel perfectly
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content burrowing in the soft flooring of my cage or taking on the
captivating challenge of my wheel. There wasn’t much I could say
to Gretchen about that, though, but I assumed she’d remain pleased
with me as long as I remained a pleasant little mammal. People are
always aspiring to become greater than themselves and I’d never
wondered why before.
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BUTTERMAN AS POET
This new life as Past President of the American Metaphysical

Society and current bearer of the flowing yellow cape and great
yellow “B,” has its contradictory aspects. Just moments ago, for
example, when I prepared my morning coffee, rather than
RESPONSIBLY considering the order in which I’d approach my
morning’s tasks or concerning myself with the effect of caffeine on
my aging heart, I IRRISPONSIBLY sang (out loud):
“I-m-m-m going to make some coffee,
I’m going to make some coffee,
I’m going to make some coffee
To drink right down my throat!”
To accompany this ditty, I danced a little foot-stomping-dance

around the kitchen as I waited for the coffee to brew. What troubled
me as I danced and sang was not what an observer might think of a
supposedly distinguished gentleman behaving like a six-year-old,
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but rather the use of the future tense my song. Because the truth
was, I wasn’t “going to make some coffee,” I was already making
some coffee (to drink right down my throat.) It was dripping
through the filter as I sang. The problem was that, not being a poet
of any sort, I couldn’t fit the word making into the meter of the
song. It would feel rushed and awkward to sing: “I’m-m-m making
myself coffee, I’m making myself coffee…” or “Right now I’m
making coffee, right now I’m making coffee…” or even “Here’s
how I make my coffee…” The absurdity of “drink right down my
throat,” didn’t trouble me at all.
Now please understand that at the moment, these were serious
considerations, though serious seems not quite the right word, does
it? Maybe I should say absorbing or even perplexing considerations.
But those weren’t my sole considerations that morning in my
kitchen; I had others, also absorbing, though more intriguing than
perplexing, to wit: how to exemplify the relation between the two
sayings I’d printed in Madison’s weekly newspaper. I’ll call that a
RESPONSIBLE consideration.
Just for the fun of it (something I can’t remember the Past
President saying, though he must have on occasion,) I took my
coffee into my handsomely furnished living room and I settled
myself on the puffier of my two couches, the cerulean blue one.
(Though I’d been trying to make it a habit to refer to this large room
on the first floor of my house as the “meeting room,” the words my
“living room” recurred with persistent frequency.) It occurred to me
briefly that had something not interfered with my supposedly
inevitable death, I wouldn’t be sitting in this formerly bare room
now transformed into something as inviting as this. Needless to say,
I wouldn’t have had anything to sit with either. But that hardly
matters to Butterman, who’s unconcerned with the past and future.
He’s only concerned with fun. Call him IRRESPONSIBLE.
But perhaps that’s my RESPONSIBLE solution! Joy in the
moment, in “the task at hand!” It frees one from “preferences,”
since in truth, preferences arise only from memories of the past and
imaginings of the future. And that, certainly, is reflected the
concept of “not counting on the harvest while plowing.”
So, to sum it up and tie it in a nice bow: if someone were to
ask, I might suggest the following: That any person who (while
cleaning a bathroom prior to a party for most distinguished guests)
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can delight in scrubbing the toilet for 1) The renewed gleaming
whiteness of the porcelain, or, 2) The ideal of sanitized surfaces, or,
3) the joy of meticulousness itself, is indeed a person taking a sure
step on the “Great Way.”
Yes. Indeed.
Once my coffee was finished and drunk right down my throat!
I returned to the kitchen and opened the double doors beneath the
sink to reveal the dank and clammy storage space reserved for my
household cleaning agents.
Why, I thought, as I extracted the Ajax, the Windex, the
Clorox cleaning spray, and the sponges and scouring pads, why on
earth should these dedicated, hard working, citizens of my
household be relegated to such low end housing? Thinking about
the cabinet space in that kitchen and the distribution of foods, dishes
and pots and pans therein, I realized that with a little planning, a
change could be made, leaving the under-sink for only those things
(buckets, scrub brushes, used sponges, etc) that actually got wet,
thus honoring the hardworking citizen cleansers, many of whose
names end in “X”, with some IRRESPONSIBLE consideration.
That I felt great joy in this decision might serve as another example
for my distinguished guests, but then again, there was a balance I
wished to maintain to preserve an image of… of maturity? Of
dignity? Of sanity?
More significantly, though, there was a bathroom to clean.
The process took only fifteen minutes since the room was, in
fact, “a powder room,” the only bathtub and shower in the house
being in my own, larger second floor bathroom. Feeling in a
creative mood, I cleaned that too, a more demanding task that
actually left me a little tired. I went back down to the kitchen to
(temporarily) replace my cleaning supplies, I found myself thinking
that Miranda would be proud of me for cleaning the upstairs
bathroom as well as the one for my guests. I’d hardly thought of
Miranda for days. Not that I’d forgotten her; she hovered just
outside my consciousness as a sweet, reassuring presence. She
hovered there as a free floating smile, like that poem, “The Long
Hunt in the Sun.” A very nice arrangement, I thought.
Then Lois, the other significant female in my life, followed me
upstairs as she most always does when she meets in the kitchen, also
a very nice arrangement. She began behind me and finished ahead,
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BUTTERMAN AS POET
waiting for me at the top of the stairs. When I lay flat on my back
on my bed then, she looked up at me from the floor with a politely
inquisitive meow and an expended paw. When I answered that by
patting my stomach, she leapt with apparently little effort and
settled there in her customary sphinx position.
“So,” I said to her. “How’s life, Lois?”
She purred and looked beautiful to me, her symmetrical black
and white markings reminding me of the mysterious orderliness of
the natural world; her pink nose and startling long white whiskers
reminding me of nothing at all—nothing, not even that beauty needs
no qualification. Which reminds me of a creation myth in which
God is a child playing with Euclidian solids... or were those dice...
or were those stars... or brightly colored sofas and chairs arranged in
a cryptic pattern in a multitude of rooms, was that it...?
But apparently Butterman needed more coffee to “drink right
down my throat!” because before I knew it, I was awakened from
my unplanned morning nap by the telephone. Lois sprung up
instantly and disappeared down the stairs.
I answered the phone, regretting having lost a wisp of a dream.
“Hi, Mr. Guthrie, this is Gretchen…”
“…Oh, Gretchen. Hello. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“There hasn’t been any more trouble with that… old friend?”
“Oh, no. He’s vanished from my life. Never to return, I hope.
It’s funny you mention that because it seems so long ago even
though I don’t think it’s been a month. Things change.”
“Life does go on, doesn’t it? Even at my age.”
“O-oh, you’re not old.”
“You’re right, I’m not, but I could be if stopped smiling for too
long.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” Gretchen said. “I agree with that.”
I thought of telling her about the Sunday night meetings, but let
it go, preferring the attendance to be governed by those invisible
forces that operate outside my volition.
“So,” she went on, “I’ll try to come by some time soon to take
a look out back and do some late summer chores.”
“Wonderful. Whenever you like. It’s looking lovely out there
these days. Are you finished with your course work?”
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“Yes, but no. I’m thinking of landscape architecture, which
would mean quite a bit more school, so I’m taking a few classes to
see if I’ve got the gumption.”
“Gumption,” I said. “You don’t hear a lot about gumption
these days, do you?”
“I guess you’re right. I think I got it from my father… The
word, I mean.”
“I wonder what the root is. It’s a strange word, isn’t it?”
“It is. I like words. I’ll ask my friend who’s a poet. If he
doesn’t know, he’s got one of those dictionaries. Etymological or
Entomological, I’m not sure which. One’s bugs and one’s word
origins.”
“I have a friend who’s a poet, too. Maybe she’ll know. And I
think its Et.”
“I think you’re right. So… so we’ll find out about that,” she
said, sounding unusually happy. “And I’ll be over to clean up back
there soon, and I hope I’ll see you.”
I thanked her, told her I was glad to hear she was well, and that
it was always nice talking to her.
“You, too,” she said, and then “Bye bye,” and then I heard the
descending C, G, C of the doorbell chimes downstairs, as if scored
to sound simultaneously with Gretchen’s final “click.” The last
time I went downstairs to answer the door I found Gretchen
standing there with her brute of an old boyfriend. That was
something I could rule out. When I got down, Lois was staring at
the door, and as soon as I opened it she bolted out, startling both
people standing on my front porch.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was he supposed to go out? We’re sorry.”
“It’s no problem at all,” I said to the young woman who’d
apologized. I recognized her and the young man with her from the
Sunday night meeting. “Let me see…” I said. “It’s Rita, and… Oh
I’m sorry… It’s…?”
“Evan,” he said.
“Yes, Evan. You’re interested in Krishnamurti.”
“That’s correct,” he said as he extended his hand to shake
mine.
“And the cat’s a she,” I said. “Lois is her name. Did you want
to come in?”
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BUTTERMAN AS POET
“Is that okay?” Rita asked. “We were taking a walk and we
were so close but we didn’t think it was right to barge in on you, so
we weren’t going to. But we were so impressed the other night and
we saw the paper today and we’ve hardly been talking about
anything else since. So we just meant to knock and say hello.”
“We didn’t expect to come in,” Evan added earnestly.
Evan had a scholarly look about him. His rimless, round
glasses and trim appearance may have added to that impression, but
there was a fastidiousness to his speech and manner that backed it
up. Rita, on the other hand, seemed all heart. She’d been taken
with the idea of no preferences, and had spoken aptly and movingly
about the “Fool” card in the Tarot deck in that regard, intuitive
insight beaming from her eyes. I liked her. Her short red hair
looked as if she made no attempt to tame it.
I led them into the living room and asked them if they wanted
anything to drink. I had the impression that they did, but they
politely refused. “It’s all right,” I said, sizing them up. “I’m glad to
hear you were excited about last Sunday.”
But Rita didn’t look all right. “I’m sorry,” she said, sounding
sincere about it. “I feel like we’re imposing on you, so we should
probably leave.”
The two were sitting together on the puffy rose colored
loveseat. I didn’t feel at all like my old self—the accommodating
past president—but didn’t know just who was going to respond to
them, my RESPONSIBLE or IRRISPONSIBLE self. I sat down
in my leather armchair and gave them magisterial look.
“Just as I’d asked that no one bring refreshments to the
meetings here, and that no one help clean up,” I said, “I assumed it
was clear that I wasn’t expecting anyone to appear on my doorstep
until Sunday the 16th.”
As I said this, I saw the two of the visibly shrink in size as they
sunk back into the well stuffed piece of furniture. “Isn’t that what
you assumed?” I asked, looking first at Rita and then at Evan.
“We’re sorry,” Rita repeated, starting to stand. I held out my
hand, as much in an exercise of my surprising new power as a way
of keeping her in place. She sat down.
“You say you’re sorry, but then why did you knock?” I asked.
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I got the sense that Evan felt that Rita was taking too much of
the brunt of this. “It was a friendly impulse,” he said, bravely. “We
apologize if it was inappropriate. We really should leave.”
“It was inappropriate,” I said. “You read the Wilhelm quote in
The Isthmus today?”
“We did,” they said in unison, a little stunned.
“And have you heard the Zen story regarding what one should
do if one comes upon the Buddha in the street?”
Apparently they had not. “The story goes that if one finds the
Buddha walking in the street, one should kill him.” I paused for an
appropriately dramatic length of time. “In other words: be
independent thinkers; accept no authority greater than your own.”
They appeared to increase in size a bit, their looks at once
insightful and bewildered.
“So, why don’t I try again,” I said firmly. “Would either of
you like something to drink?”
They wanted to glance at each other but didn’t—bravely, I
thought. “I would,” Rita said, tentatively, testing the waters. “So
would I,” Evan followed.
“Good. Get it yourselves. I have quite a bit remaining from
last Sunday.”
As I watched these two earnest young people walk from my
living room into my kitchen, I stopped restraining my smile. The
Past President was lurking behind me, imploring me to explain that
I was simply following the principles I was trying to teach them.
But the past president was passé. If I was going to help guide these
young people—who probably had far more spiritual potential than
I—I might as well play the part: first of all, to toughen them up, to
give them the opportunity to come to their own conclusions; and
secondly, because it seemed like it was going to be a good deal of
fun. Acting. I planned to help them even keeping them a little off
balance was required. A BENEVOLENT consideration?
So once they returned—with no further explanations from their
new Master—I delivered a fifteen minute, no nonsense lecture on
the I Ching, after which they asked a number of intelligent
questions. By the time our talk ended, I liked them both a great
deal, and though they seemed a little frightened, I think they liked
me too. My heart, in fact, was leaping in my chest when I walked
them out to the front porch and said goodbye. As soon as I started
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BUTTERMAN AS POET
back up the stairs, Lois joined me and bounded on ahead. I think
that it would be fair to say that as I watched her climb and knew
how she’d be waiting for me up at the top I was in love with life
itself.
I like to think that my mother would have approved of my life as it

is turning out. By wishing for her approval I don’t mean to imply as
so many people do these days, particularly in public
pronouncements, that “she’s smiling down on me.” Whenever I
hear this regarding an athlete’s parent, or the parent of some other
hero or star, I get the impression that they—and all who share their
sympathies—believe, 1) that the deceased have nothing better to do
than approve or disapprove of the lives of their descendants, and 2)
that they are seated on bleachers in a huge celestial amphitheater
that provides an excellent view down onto earthly life, with close-
ups provided when necessary. I’ve already made it clear that this
past president of the American Metaphysical Society (a man well
versed in these matters) does not know whether such a traditionally
posited afterlife is an aspect of the truth or a hopeful fantasy, but
whatever the case, I have no intention of ever entering such an
amphitheater, even if a descendant of mine is inducted into one Hall
of Fame or another or receives a Nobel Peace Prize. There must be
better things to do without a body than exercising face muscles that
no longer exist. A JUDGEMENTAL consideration?
What I mean by feeling a need for my mother’s approval is that
I hope my present principles are resonant with those embodied in
her unusual life. I mentioned earlier that my mother’s shrewd
management of my father’s investments depended in part on her
astrological expertise, but there is something else I did not mention.
I suppose when introducing her to the reading public I wanted to
create an image commensurate with the respected position she held
in the spiritual community, just as I introduced myself as the
RESPONSIBLE Past President of the American Metaphysical
Society. And my mother was a wise, kind, sensitive, studious and
extremely knowledgeable woman; but she was also a very
successful high stakes gambler, and the undisclosed (but official)
astrological consultant to the Nixon White House.
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All this I discovered reading her diaries, which she bequeathed
to me at her death. Neither of these activities lent themselves to
much documentation. To this day I do not fully understand how she
concealed her considerable winnings from the IRS, though I
suppose her clandestine association with the Nixon administration
might have had something to do with that. I have her bank
statements and other records, which show irregular and inexplicably
large deposits, not corresponding to any earnings statements and
hardly in line with her personal astrological services. There are also
substantial monthly deposits over a period of several years, during
which time there are entries in her diaries detailing her government
work, with names mentioned familiar to anyone following the news
during that chaotic period in Washington. Apparently, her advice
was not carefully followed, not until the last, which concerned the
timing for the President’s resignation speech, something that
probably wouldn’t have been necessary if her earlier warnings had
not been dismissed by one white house aid as “paranoid hippie
bullshit.”
The Ford administration retained her services, though no one
ever contacted her, apparently either not realizing she was on the
payroll or what it was that she did. Only a week after the Carter
Administration moved in, she was contacted by an aid and
summarily dismissed. This may have been a bad move.
I’ve mentioned all of this because during the years after my
retirement from The Society I felt an unnamed uneasiness regarding
my wealth, having spent those years in private contemplation and
study. Since I have long deplored consumerism, I couldn’t accuse
myself of that; yet still I couldn’t help but feeling useless, despite
my understanding that we all serve the evolution of the cosmos even
if in ways unknown to us. My problem was, obviously, that I didn’t
know what to do. Now that I’ve discovered it, I can wholeheartedly
revel in my moderate wealth. True, I’ve only furnished one large
room, purchased refreshments, taken out two ads, and incurred
some computer related expenses, but the knowledge that I can
eventually spend what I need enriching the lives of those who may
go on to enrich others fulfills me as nothing else could.
It’s with these uplifting thoughts in mind then that I walk back
downstairs to the second floor bathroom composing the appropriate
bathroom song in my head as I make my approach. This song, like
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the coffee song, repeats the first line three times and culminates in
the fourth. An obvious IRRESPONSIBLE consideration. The last
line of this song, however (“To flush right down the drain,”) is
problematical, just like the last line of the coffee-making song,
though in this case the problem is that toilets do not, in truth, have
what we call drains. That’s the wrong word. So is chute. So again,
my poetic ineptitude forces compromise, which isn’t much of a
problem for me, straddling the cusp of two worlds, since the
RESPONSIBLE Past President is pretending not to hear and
IRRESPONSIBLE Butterman’s singing right along.
And that, precisely, is what I’ve become, a RESPONSIBLE,
IRRESPONSIBLE, possibly BENEVOLENT and possibly
JUDGEMENTAL man. Any other suggestions? FOOLISH?
UNSTABLE? HAPPY?
(FLUSH)
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THREE OF HEARTS
THE ELEVATOR MAN, BUTTERED
Today is Saturday, September 8th. I started back to work at the

Randolph House on Thursday. I also worked Friday, those being
two days of my new relaxed schedule at the hotel: Monday through
Friday, 8 AM to 4PM—weekends free. I suppose after all these
years I deserved a soft schedule. Peepers told me that if I’d asked I
could have had it any time I wanted, that I didn’t have to have a
fainting spell to reap the benefits of my service to the hotel. I’m not
sure if he was telling the truth, but he seemed happy I was back. I
guess Jolene had done a good job describing how ill I was, even
though she didn’t know the half of it.
I was very happy those first two days back at work, feeling
like it was better to be alive than dead, despite the risks. People even
noticed it; they said I looked “all lit up,” which I guess was true, for a
couple of reasons. The first was that Oscar had started on Tuesday
and Carl said he’d been “Johnny on the spot.” I asked him if he’d
said those words to Oscar, and when he said he didn’t, I told him that
227
was just as well because Oscar probably wouldn’t know what the
heck he was talking about!
I was also happy because of the way I was starting to see
people faces. It wasn’t like before when some of them were so wide
open that their lives burst out at me like a gale force wind. No, it was
more like some of them seemed open a crack, like a door with light
shining through, and if I wanted to I could peer in or not.
And I suppose the third thing that made me happy was that I
was coming back up to Madison to visit with Freda, who is a person I
feel like I understand and I’m glad is someone I can help. And like I
said, that’s also affecting me in a private way I haven’t felt for a long
while, having to do with hygienic matters, like they taught us to say
in the Lutheran Home. Feeling so good like I’ve been, the bus ride up
here was very pleasant for me; the air around me seemed to get
sparklier as we headed north into Wisconsin. When we made our
plans, I said that since it was going to be a Saturday again that she
didn’t have to meet me at the bus terminal, but that I’d like to meet
her at the Farmers’ Market. So we planned that we’d each be at the
State Street corner of the square at 10:15. I decided on that particular
time so I’d be able to walk there from the bus terminal and be able to
shop around a little to get something for Freda. It took me a while to
find the flower stand I was looking for, but I did find it, and when I
told the woman there I was the one, two weeks ago, who told her that
her flowers looked like they’d been picked from God’s garden, she
said she told some of her customers about that and that everyone
thought it was a wonderful thing to say. But before we even talked, I
saw the flowers I wanted to buy. They were on stalks: light green,
pearly pink, and the softest yellow, like cream. They were
gladioluses, the woman told me, and I bought a bunch of the three
colors mixed.
My heart was thumping in my chest when I walked up to
Freda. I don’t know about other men my age, but I felt awkward
with that, and I tried to ignore the feeling when I told her I picked
some flowers especially from God’s garden for her, because God
wanted her to be happy. The part about God wanting her to be
happy just slipped out, I never thought of saying that. And I haven’t
given God much thought in my life; it’s always seemed to me the
goodness in people is the best we have to work with, and that God,
if there is such a thing, doesn’t matter much. But like a lot of other
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people, I think, I’ll mention God like I did to Freda just then without
meaning anything religious, just something otherworldly or all-
powerful.
Freda lit up when she saw me there with that bouquet of
flowers for her, and I thought she might be feeling this was some
kind of a date she was being taken on. That idea made me blush,
enough so that she noticed. And she still hadn’t said anything, so it
probably seemed to her that just seeing her there was enough to
make me blush. Then she blushed too, which made it all kind of
funny. I knew she was going to hug me then, which was fine and
also not fine, so in order to avoid it, I put the bouquet in her hand.
That didn’t stop her though. She hugged me, holding the flowers
off to the side, and she whispered in my ear that I was a sweet man.
“It’s another beautiful day we’ve got,” I said.
She tilted her head and gave me a suspicious smile.
“You’re a very shy man, aren’t you? For having so much emotional
insight, you’re very shy yourself.”
I don’t know if I was a little wary or even more
embarrassed. “You don’t want to say that to a shy person,” I said,
and she laughed.
I know I was red as a beet by then, but I kind of chuckled
and looked right at her.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’m sorry I laughed. It just
popped out. I’m not a teasing person. And these are the most
beautiful glads I can ever remember seeing. I didn’t know they
came in these colors.”
“Do you want to get coffee again and some rolls like last
time,” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “And then I can tell you how well I did
this week.”
So we walked over to the coffee stand, the one that was
nearby the place where they sold the croissants, and we each got the
same as we had the week before, which was something we laughed
about even though there really wasn’t anything funny about it.
Once we sat down on the grass in between the crowd of moving
people and the State Capitol building, she started talking a blue
streak. She went on and on about how much happier she’d been
during the week because of the new way she’d started thinking of
herself. She said she’d been thinking of herself as a newly born
229
person, just like I’d suggested, a new person who had the chance to
discover what it was that she really and truly liked.
I couldn’t help thinking that she must be exaggerating some,
because I know people don’t change all that quickly, but I didn’t
want to spoil her enthusiasm. And there was no doubt that she
looked better, brighter; some of the worry in her face was gone.
She talked all the way through the coffee and the rolls,
telling me about some sad experiences too, mixed in with the all the
good news, then she mentioned how well groomed I was with my
nails manicured and hair cut so neat, and how nice and conservative
my clothes were, too; and then she asked me if I’d let her cook
dinner for me that night. I didn’t answer right away, but she was
never at a loss for words, so she asked me if I had a favorite food.
“I have a favorite dessert,” I said. “Pumpkin pie.” But I told
her she was going to have to narrow it down a little for me if I was
going to tell her a dinner I really liked.
“I’m not a gourmet cook,” she said, “but I make a good pot
roast. I even have a recipe for a quick one, and I roast pork with
rosemary and thyme, and I fry chicken—I’ve got a deep fryer. And
I cook prime rib, and spaghetti and meatballs, and beef-barley soup
and corned beef and cabbage and chicken and dumplings...” And
she started to laugh because she was going so fast, but that’s where I
stopped her. Chicken and dumplings.
Then all of a sudden she looked shy herself, even a little
afraid, and I knew why.
“Just so you know,” I told her, “I’ll never say I’ll stay here
or have dinner with you to spare your feelings.” But by the time I
finished saying that I was as warm inside as an oven, so I changed
the subject.
“Do you already have the chicken or should we buy one of
those fancy organic ones they sell here?” I’d never said anything
like that in my life before. She stood up and took my hand to help
me, even though I didn’t need any help.
“Let’s buy one here,” she said. “The free ranging kind.
They get to peck wherever they want to, and they taste much better
than the kind that are raised in boxes and never see the light of day.
And I’ll get some fresh green beans, I think those’ll go better with
chicken and dumplings than sweet corn. Now you have a choice,”
she said as we started around the square to the chicken stand. “We
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can have chicken and dumplings like a stew, with carrots in there
too, or I can make a roast chicken with dumplings on the side and
gravy. Or, if you like, we can have a salad, and…”
I was happy listening to her talk about cooking dinner. The
chicken stand was quite a ways away from us, and when we realized
that, we wondered if we should have walked the other way around
the square. But what was the hurry? Freda asked. And there wasn’t
any. We hadn’t gone much farther then when a coincidental thing
happened. Just like it was the week before, we saw those same two
people sitting on the grass: the fella who looked to be in his thirties
and the pretty younger blond woman. They were sitting on the
grass under the same tree. And just like last time they had their
arms around each other and were smiling at us when we noticed
then. So Freda waved at them and I did too, and of course they
waved right back. This time, Freda suggested we walk over and
introduce ourselves. I didn’t want to; that’s not the kind of thing I
usually do, but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing the old Freda
would do either, so I said okay, it would be nice to introduce
ourselves—but just then the young couple started in kissing and we
chuckled a little and turned away.
Once we had all those groceries with the chicken needing to
be refrigerated, we decided to go back to Freda’s house and drop
them off. It was a beautiful day and once we got there it seemed a
shame to stay inside, and Freda said that with me visiting she might
feel sure enough of herself to take us someplace in her car. So I
asked her where we’d go.
“Well,” she said, like she was thinking about it. “We could
go to a mall. We’ve got some nice ones here.” But then she said
that wouldn’t be taking advantage of the good weather, would it?
And I said it wouldn’t, and I laughed and told her that I was
the kind of man who only liked to go shopping when there was
something I needed to buy; and she didn’t laugh, but smiled and
said she understood because her husband was like that, too.
Then she suggested that we could go out to a State Park or a
County Park and walk around there; and that idea I liked, so she was
off to the kitchen saying she’d put the chicken and some things in
the slow cooker before we left.
But things didn’t turn out the way we expected. We hadn’t
driven all that far from her house, a mile or so, when I noticed how
231
jumpy she was behind the wheel. She wasn’t driving carelessly, but
she was nervous; she wasn’t comfortable. I asked her if it was
working out okay, or if she wanted to stop for a while or even let me
drive a little, and she said no, it would be okay, but then she pulled
over and parked. She didn’t say anything at first; she just stared out
the windshield at the traffic coming and going down the street, and I
didn’t think I should say anything either.
“I’m not going to be able to drive all the way to that County
Park,” she said in a very sure and steady way that surprised me.
“But I have another idea. We can go to the Arboretum; it’s only
around five minutes from here, and we can walk around there as
well as anywhere else. It’s a very beautiful place...”
“Do you want me to drive over there?” I asked.
“No, Bernie,” she said, still sounding very deliberate. “That
far I can drive.”
And I thought she’d made an excellent decision, but I didn’t
say anything in case it didn’t work out. And she did seem nervous
again driving there but there were no real problems; from the
passenger seat, the short drive through busy streets felt normal.
We have a large Arboretum outside of Chicago that I’d
visited once years ago, and though this one wasn’t as large, it’s
planted right there in the middle of the city. I’d never known of
anything like it. There was a forest and a lake and open fields and
marshland, and there were trails weaving every which way through
it, so it was like being in town but very far away at the same time.
We parked in a little circle just off the road through it, and when
we’d set off a downhill trail made up of long, broad steps with logs
for risers, I told her how impressed I was with her decision. She
didn’t say a word back to me about it though, and that’s funny
because she’s a woman who’s never short of things to say.
We spent a few hours walking the trails of the arboretum;
making small talk mostly. By the time we left, I knew that she was
more at ease than when we first arrived. I could tell by the way she
drove back to her house. It was like she hardly noticed she was
driving at all.
The dinner was as good as I expected it to be, and so was the

pumpkin pie. Freda was a gracious hostess.
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“You know, Bernie,” she said to me after we washed the
dishes, “you don’t have to go back tonight. You can stay here with
me.”
What happened to me then was something I wouldn’t feel
right talking about, but just then I wanted to see Freda naked, even
though I still felt like a married man; and then what I said wasn’t
even true, that I needed to go back to Chicago on the late bus.
` “Are you going to come back next Saturday?” she asked.
And I said, “That’s something you can count on,” which
seemed the best possible thing for both of us to hear. I tried to think
of putting a revolver in my mouth and pulling the trigger, but all I
could think of was a little plastic gun.
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THE SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE
“Just a second,” Gretchen,” I said. “You wait here. I’ll be back.”

It was Saturday again, and we’d been sitting on the Capitol
lawn by the Farmers’ Market for a while already. Gretchen was
ready to go home when I set off around the square to buy something
for her. This was the third day since Gretchen had proposed to me,
and the first that I’d fully regained my powers of reason and
speech—a statement that may sound like an exaggeration, but I
assure you, is not.
On the first day, Thursday, the day the quote about “not counting on
the harvest while plowing” appeared in The Isthmus, Gretchen and I
stopped for coffee as planned and I’d walked her to class. I was
silent on the walk, as your typical hamster would be, unable to
combine the images of pledging myself eternally to her (something I
wanted to do from the top of my head to the end of my little hamster
weenie) and fulfilling my own pledge of independence which she
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claimed lay at the root of her love for me. I could not focus on
those images simultaneously (but what little rodent can?) It helped
a little when I remembered that she’d said she loved me because I
was brave, and bravery, I knew could entail a variety of actions,
even surrender. But Gretchen had raised the stakes with her
proposal, because it was not a loosely framed sentiment, but an
actual invitation to marriage, to a legally binding marriage
ceremony.
“A… a wedding?” I had asked the next morning, Friday,
after we’d lain in bed awake silently for fifteen minutes, again
having skipped our morning routine. These were the first words I’d
spoken since early the day before.
“No,” she said, “not in a church or a hotel or anything like
that. Not now at least, not with everything so up in the air. I was
thinking just a little formality at City Hall, and then a nice dinner
afterward.”
“A last supper?” I asked.
“Very funny,” she said.
I didn’t say much else for the rest of Friday until I said
goodbye after walking her to work. That’s when I hugged her and
told her that I thought no man had ever had the love of a woman so
fully devoted as hers, to which she answered that she was sure it had
happened before, though probably not often. That’s what I’d meant,
anyway, but saying it that way wouldn’t have brought the slight
moistness to her eyes that had moved me even more. And I had to
wonder then as I walked down the stairs from the restaurant and out
onto the square, just what her parents must be like to have
participated in the upbringing of a woman who could love so deeply
that she’d pledge herself to someone who might leave her, and love
him for that as well. It sounded operatic. City Hall?
When she returned from work on Friday night, I still wasn’t
talking much, but we made love so passionately and completely it
hardly seemed that we were two separate entities by the time it was
all over. I felt as if I’d known what it was to be her, fully and
deeply, and she said she felt the same of me, and there can be no
greater mutual joy than that. Anything frivolous, anything
capricious or reckless about our romance was washed away that
night, in our sweat and in our tears. We slept unmoving in each
other’s arms. When I awoke the next morning, I felt complete—in
235
that I could speak and think clearly again—and that the course of
the future seemed clear because I finally believed her, and believed
in her, entirely. It was in a state of sleepy adoration that we made
love again, very early, just as the sun was rising. She spoke of the
kind of child we could create then, were we to put this love to a
purpose, and I told her I had no secrets and she told me that my life
was shining through my face. And then I asked her if she wanted to
hear about the violets and she did, so we did that, too.
And then I got up and wrote her a poem. It was just there,
waiting in the wings. All I had to do was write it down.
I find you on a bridge, bleached

white timbers, dry and smooth like clay.
Barefoot, you are standing there,
you point across to planets,
they are rising, big as fruit.
I’ve brought a basket with me, filled
with peaches, plums and apricots; we eat them
sweetly, juices running down our necks and chins.
Leaning on a rail, your hands
run smooth across it as I lick you clean.
Last night I dreamed I found a shell

And followed, curling through its chambers
Past the whisper of forever;
There too I found you,
And now without a question,
You take my hand and lead on across.
The moon, a crescent face with ancient,

wizened features, sets. No stars rise.
Kneeling in the grass you bow your head,
your eyes have taken on the indigo;
the whippoorwills are silent, and the bells,
and the flutes. Your hair, like water,
flows into the darkness. Beneath the bridge,
a dark boat parts the water gently.
The rubies have descended into earth.
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THREE OF HEARTS
The pool we’ve found is deep, violet and still.
Smooth round stones, grey-white, cool and silent,
wait forever in the darkened greens around it.
Treetops enclose us, they hardly stir.
You are resting, crosslegged in shadow.
I see you brush away a wisp of hair—
nothing more is needed. I slip across
and tell you I remember this from another time:
the dragonflies, the violet pool.
I tell you I have no secrets, you say
my life is shining through my face.
Your fingers in my hair,
I search the chambers of the shell.
The blues give way to black. A whisper,
and we disappear.
I call it “Twilight.” Gretchen tells me to read it again. Then she

says it makes her want to make love. Then she tells me to read it to
her every night before we go to bed. A bedtime ritual. I say that
sounds like a good idea to me. Then she says maybe we can get
some peaches, plumbs and apricots so I can lick her clean. I say that
sounds like an even better idea.
Later that Saturday morning, we talked of the future in hopeful

detail sitting happily on the Capitol lawn. We had talked of it
playfully, though, not seriously, and certainly not counting on a
harvest of any sort. Then I told her to wait for me there, that I had
something to do, even though I knew she wanted to leave. But the
ten or twelve minutes it took me to make my way around the square
proved frustrating and spoiled my fun. The object of my search was
nowhere to be found.
“What’s wrong, Tweet?” Gretchen said, as I walked up to
her.
“I wanted to get you some of those flowers, those beautiful
glads that woman was carrying, but there weren’t any. There
237
weren’t even that kind in any colors at all. I’m so sorry. I wanted
to give you those as a gift.”
“O-o-oh, thank you, Sweetie, those were beautiful, and it
was so nice that you tried to find them.” Gretchen stood up. “But
we really have to go,” she said. “I need a nap before work tonight—
you probably do too even though you don’t have to go anywhere.”
At which she took my hand and led me away. I watched us leave as
in a movie about two lovers who dared. After a lingering close-up,
the camera backed away as we left the square until we we’d become
tiny specks moving east on the isthmus between the two lakes,
Mendota and Monona—tiny specks but still distinguishable, still
discernable among the careless tumult of life around us.
We were nearly back at her house when she first spoke.
“So are you going to do it now?”
“Uh huh,” I said. “It all seems very simple, and it’ll
probably work.”
She looked at me then, buoying me up with her smile. I felt
able. When we arrived at her place we brought the telephone into
her room. The Great Way is easy for one with no preferences. It
works both ways. Gretchen sat cross-legged on her bed and looked
at me. She was my audience. I adored her. I dialed.
A woman answered whose voice I didn’t recognize. “Good
afternoon, Bernardo’s Restaurant and Café.”
“Hello,” I said. “May I please speak to Bernardo?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Yes,’ I said with some hesitation. “My names Felix Kotka
and I worked there as Maître d’ until just recently.”
“Yes, sir,” the receptionist said, recognizing either my voice
or my name.. “Mr. Bellini just left, five minutes ago.”
“So… When will I be able to reach him?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not expected back for two
weeks. He’s gone to Europe.”
“You’re sure of that?” I asked. “I mean the two weeks part.
He won’t be back before that?”
“No, sir. He’s expected back on the Saturday the 28th. I’ll
be glad to take a message for you and have him call.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. May I ask who’s managing
the place with him out of town?”
“Mr.Pendwicki. He’s the…”
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“I know. I know Scott. Thanks very much.”
I didn’t even look at Gretchen before I made my next call.
“Hi, Clare… This is Felix again.”

……….
“No, I didn’t catch him. I missed him by five minutes.
What’s the story, anyway?”
……….
“Oh, Jesus. I guess I should be sorry. But two weeks?”
……….
“Oh, I know I didn’t say anything about a time limit…
There isn’t one, and it’s going to be fine, I’m sure.
……….
“No. I don’t feel you misled me. You had no way of
knowing. And anyway, you can mislead me whenever you want.
And I hope the same’s true for me.”
……….
“Okay, I will. Thanks, Clare.”
……….
“Me too. Bye.”
I sighed.
“Clare says ‘Hi,’ Gretch. Bernardo’s mother died and he’s
gone back to Italy and won’t be back until the 28th. He’ll be in
Milan, and a hell of a lot of good that’s going to do me. So… I
suppose I need another plan—to follow another of my non-
preferences. I missed him by five minutes. Can you believe that?
Five fucking minutes. Is that fate or what?”
Neither Gretchen nor I had any money to spare. Gretchen’s
roommates had already expressed dissatisfaction with my
occasional overnight presence in their apartment. I’d heard from
Clare that Bernardo had felt my loss more acutely than he’d
expected; that he didn’t care for the job himself, and that many
customers had asked after me. She said he’d probably welcome me
back, and her judgment was sound. I’d also felt confident that as
soon as I’d apologized, he’d give me a cash advance to cover my
rent. He’d always been very generous with me. It had all seemed
zipped up in a tidy little package. I’d counted on an ample harvest.
239
Gretchen looked a little shaken. “A blessing in disguise,”
she said, not very convincingly.
“It’s going to have to be. Let’s show up at City Hall first
thing Monday morning, okay?” I said, which seemed to perk her up
a little. “And then we’ll borrow a car to move my pictures and
lamps and worthwhile books and things for you to keep over at your
place, so by next Saturday there won’t be anything there I won’t
mind leaving behind.”
But Gretchen still had a concerned look, one I’d seen a few
times during the last few days when I was silent. “My life is so
easy,” she said. “You’re the one taking all the risks.” And she’d
said that before, in the same words.
And in a way, I was taking a risk. The chance that I could
remake myself in a matter of a month seemed slim. The challenge
of taking my restlessness and arrogance and transmuting it into
acceptance, into an outlook that clung to “no preferences,” seemed a
lot to expect from myself, but I had no choice. None. I’d learned
more of value in the past weeks than ever before in my life, and I
couldn’t unlearn it. Once I was presented with the key to living
more fully, I couldn’t possibly toss it away. I could never view my
impatience or my arrogance the same way again. I could never
justify it again. I could accept it as a way I felt, and let it be just
that. But it’s one thing to have patience with one’s own selfishness
and weakness, and another to let them take charge. That would be
stupid, and it would be unworthy of me and even more so of
Gretchen, because none of my new understandings could have ever
penetrated my pride if it hadn’t been melted away by her love for
me. That’s the story. But I really wasn’t taking a risk.
“No,” I said to her. “Sorry to disagree with one so clever,
Dearie, but you’re wrong there. About risk, I mean. I’m not taking
one. Do people die from trying to live in the moment? From
trusting in the universe? From loving each other? I suppose there’s
the risk of going mad from failure. Who knows? Maybe trying to
be patient with a humdrum job would turn me into a raving lunatic;
and maybe you’ll become clinically depressed because your beloved
husband has taken to roaming the streets in rags and raging against
the unfairness of life. But we’d probably get a grip before either of
those got that far. We’re not really risking anything, Gretchen,
we’re investing in what we’re doing. And maybe it seems like I’m
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investing a little more than you are because I’m older, but that’s
crap too, because we’re both investing all we have to offer for our
happiness. So as long as we keep making love and one or another
of us keeps making encouraging little speeches to the one who
needs it when they need it most, we’re going to be fine. Whaddya
think?”
“That I’d like to have a picnic after we get married Monday,
but we’ll have to see a weather forecast to make sure it’ll be nice.
Will you read me that part of the poem about the picnic basket
again?”
I find you on a bridge, bleached

white timbers, dry and smooth like clay.
Barefoot, you are standing there,
you point across to planets,
they are rising, big as fruit.
I’ve brought a basket with me, filled
with peaches, plums and apricots; we eat them
sweetly, juices running down our necks and chins.
Leaning on a rail, your hands
run smooth across it as I lick you clean.
It wasn’t bed time, and I only read the beginning of the poem, but
as far as we were concerned, it had its desired effect.
Later that Saturday night, as we were walking back from her work, I
told Gretchen my bus stop story, the bus stop I used to wait at every
morning when I worked my early shifts at the Cafe. It seemed like I
waited there for several years, though it was only one. I remember
watching the dawn in all the seasons there, and how grateful I was
for that shelter in the winter on windy mornings at 6:00 AM. Of
course I never knew who it was that drew the red line on the metal
bench in the bus shelter and who inscribed it so interestingly, but I
wasn’t surprised when I saw it. I was, after all, living on the near
east side of Madison at the time, the source of great irreverent
creativity.
But by the time we got back to my house, the subject had
changed to our plans for Monday, a day when the weather was to
be, in the words of a local meteorologist, seasonably warm and
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clear. Earlier in the evening I had asked my old friends (and
Gretchen’s new ones) Clare and David to be our witnesses, an apt
choice for a civil wedding with David already an attorney and Clare
in her last year of law school, and were debating whether to ask
them to join us on our picnic. After I told them our plans, they
called me back suggesting that we have our picnic alone in a lovely
room they’d provide for us in the nicest old hotel in Madison, but
we were still undecided. It felt like we’d been through a lot that day
and we fell asleep, skipping our newly planned bedtime routine, and
hardly managing to say good night.
I woke at six, exhilarated. So exhilarated that I only spent a
few minutes gazing at sleeping beauty there next to me, her hair
again fanned out on her pillow. I kissed the top of her head, but I
could barely wait for the coffee to brew, and once it had and once I
lit my first Camel, my fingers were on the keys. I must have dreamt
the whole thing again, planned it for that day, poised on the brink as
I was with the secret and the invitation:
The Palest Script on the Slightest of Scraps
Two-thirds of the way along the bench

in my bus shelter, someone in the neighborhood
has taken care to stencil a wavy red line
with the words “Logical Limit” alongside it.
The smaller third of the bench I assume
to be the one beyond that limit, and it is there
now that I sit while waiting for my bus at dawn.
It has been weeks now I have waited there,
and though my life has hardly changed, the line
remains, and will remain:
And I know that
there is only goodness here, in this darkening
as July unfolds and folds its dawns ever
later into the fullness of the trees, each day
paler as I watch and wait. For this is the quintessential moment,
the dawn of a thousand birds, where all false tales
of past and future shrink away, and though I
have been told of evil, it is a dream that speaks,
and dreamers who weep:
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And if I love them
I will tell, for there is no pain or folly here,
but only in future and only in past, and only
so in dreamers and in dream. And if I love them
I will tell them in a thousand ways of forgiveness
and beg them to wait and stop forever
in the goodness of time.
Even yesterday,
returning home, I searched my mail for news
among the shells of moments dying in the breath
of their inception, for there will be dancing
the Wedding of Only and Forever, and singing
of these thousand birds and dawns
that have borne them. Again today
when I return I will sift through circulars
and letters, through cobwebs at the door, through
dust on wooden stairs among the shadows of your
dreams and mine, for the message will be couched
in secret, the announcement in the palest
of scripts on the slightest of scraps: for it is you
who will also sing at the Wedding of Only and Forever,
difference dissolved: you again, alone in the goodness of Dawn.
your yesterdays and tomorrows unfolded in the fullness of trees.
“What does it mean, the end?” Gretchen asked after reading it

through a few times.
“I know what it means, I feel what it means, but I’m not
sure if… I wholly understand it? If I can back it up? It’s beyond
logic, that’s just the point. That’s why I sat beyond that line. But I
have a feeling it’s true, out beyond us somewhere. It means that if
there can be such a thing as the Wedding of Only and Forever, the
wedding of the particular and the infinite, difference will dissolve
and all will be one—everything—and it won’t be just my dawn
anymore. It will be your dawn, everyone’s dawn I’m writing about
and everyone’s yesterdays and tomorrows.”
“It will be our wedding tomorrow.”
243
“It will, and the poem’s about us, too, about what we’re
really doing, secretly, what no one knows but us. How we’ve
committed to transcending ourselves, right, goofy? Offering
ourselves up to a mystery, really.”
“You’re going to be a famous poet someday, my Sweet
Tweet.”
“Not if my poems require a paragraph of explanation, I
won’t.”
“No,” Gretchen protested, “I had a feeling for it, how inside
became outside at the end. It’s okay if something mystic like that
gets explained. It’s not that way with the others poems you’ve just
written... The way you cling to me certainly needs no explanation.”
“And how would that be, baby?”
“The way you cling to me?”
“That’s right.”
“You cling to me like a sure stone path run wi-i-i-ld among
cathedrals of birds.”
“You said it, baby.”
“No, sweetie boy, you did. And just what was that that you
tell me? Remember, about secrets?”
“You mean that I have no secrets?”
“Uh huh. And me?”
“You say my life is shining through my face.”
“That’s right, and what happens then?”
“You mean: Your fingers in my hair, I search the chambers
of the shell?”
“Uh huh. And then, baby? What then?”
“The blues give way to black. A whisper, and we
disappear.”
“Yeah. You wanna disappear again?”
We shopped for four. We decided to take Clare and David up on

their offer of a hotel room, but not until the four of us had picnicked
together. Knowing Clare for a few years through the restaurant
scene, and David hardly at all, Gretchen had to do a job convincing
me that she wanted to share part of her wedding day with them. At
one point I had told her that of anyone I knew, those two were the
most likely to understand our commitment to each other; and she
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used that as ammunition to badger me into believing that she wasn’t
merely acceding to my wishes to invite them.
All we bought was Champagne, but two bottles of that. We
had just enough money left for some French bread and cheese which
we’d pick up the next morning. We managed to get through the
better part of the day without discussing my approaching
employment problem, a concrete problem that seemed about as long
a stretch from anyone’s yesterdays and tomorrows being unfolded in
the fullness of trees as you can get—but then again, maybe not.
When Gretchen and I went to secret the Champagne away
in the big communal refrigerator in the kitchen of my house, we
found Tina drinking tea at the kitchen table, that same kitchen table
I wiped a piece of ham on less than a month earlier before being
punched in the stomach and writhing on the floor. Could that be?
Was that me?
“Hi, Tina,” I said. “Have you met Gretchen?” That seemed
the polite thing to say. And I also felt great goodwill toward Tina, a
pleasant side effect of being madly in love. I knew, though, that
they had met in the hall more than once.
“We haven’t been formally introduced,” Tina answered.
“Nice to meet you, Gretchen—in the kitchen rather than coming or
going from the bathroom.” Did I detect a note of annoyance in her
tone? I wasn’t sure. Gretchen apparently didn’t.
“I know,” she said. “That’s a little embarrassing. You must
think I live in there.”
Tina laughed. “I was thinking the same thing. That
shower’s the best thing about this house.”
I’d already turned away and rolled my eyes, but Gretchen
kept up her chummy chatting. After I put the brown paper shopping
bag, folded to disguise its contents, on the back of my shelf in the
fridge, I started for the door but had to wait while Gretchen and Tina
finished talking about aromatic oils. It made me kind of hot
thinking about the two of them applying oils to each other, not a
possibility, but lovely concept which I let sink in for a moment.
Once Gretchen had followed me back upstairs but before we were in
my room she whispered, “I can’t believe you actually rubbed meat
on that woman, Felix.”
245
“I didn’t rub meat on her. Jeez! I rubbed it on the table in
front of her. And where did you think I rubbed it on her? On what
part of her body, for Christ’s sake?”
“On her arm?”
“On her arm? Above or below the elbow?”
“Below, I guess. I thought you rubbed on the inside of her
forearm.”
“You thought I rubbed meat on her the inside of her
forearm! That would be a lot more intimate than on the other side,
the hairier one.”
“I guess you’re right. That would be an intimate place to
rub a piece of meat.”
“How could you consider marrying a person who did a
thing like that?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it.”
“You hadn’t? So what kind of person am I committing
myself to here?”
By this time we were inside my room. “Maybe a careless
one, come to think of it,” Gretchen said. “I probably should have
considered it. Little things like that can affect the destiny of great
men.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have been able to consider it if I’d
done that, smarty, because the woman would have charged me with
assault and I probably would’ve done time for it and never had a
chance to fall in love with you.”
“Oh, how life hinges on such a delicate balance,” Gretchen
said. “And speaking of that, I need to make a phone call and I don’t
want you in the room. So go to the bathroom, or back down to the
kitchen to talk to Tina, or outside.”
Would it be possible to tell Gretchen I loved her too often? I
wondered before I took the chance and said it again. Obediently
then, I went downstairs, and then outside and sat on the small front
porch. Tina saw me pass the kitchen and poked her head out. “You
have a nice girlfriend,” she said. “She’s a lovely person.”
It was as if her punch to my stomach were suddenly and
stunningly retracted, leaving only warmth to rush into the vacuum
left behind. “Thank you. That’s very nice of you,” I said, filled at
that moment with such an unreasonable amount of love that, had I
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not been concerned with another possible assault charge, I would
have kissed her.
It was over an hour later and getting dark when Gretchen returned
with an armful of flowers.
“Since you couldn’t get them for me, and since according to
today’s poem…you know: mine is yours?” she said, looking at me
expectantly. “These are from Mr. Guthrie’s garden,” she said, “and
once you snap out of it and get me a vase, I’ll show you what else I
got.”
What she also got was a fifty dollar bill, a post-season
bonus, her employer had called it. She called it “A wedding
present.”
“Did you tell him?” I asked.
“No. I didn’t have to. I think he operates on a higher
level.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “I’ll take you over to meet him some day.”
“That would be nice,” I said, putting the flowers in the
center of the table. “Maybe we could learn something from him.
Oh, by the way, I asked him if I could use his computer, but then I
couldn’t remember that website. So I guess we just don’t know.”
At noon on Monday, September 9th, Gretchen and I were married by

a Judge named John Goodfriend. My other good friends, Clare and
David were also in attendance. Gretchen hadn’t stopped smiling
since we got up. She wore a creamy yellow dress I’d never seen
before. I wore sharply creased white linen slacks and a soft grey
silk shirt. We were a beautiful couple; we knew that without being
told, and told we were: by the Judge, by his clerk, by David and
Clare, and by other couples waiting to be married themselves.
From the City-County building we drove in David and
Clare’s antique Volkswagen Beetle to Wingra Park, where we
picnicked on blankets under a willow tree next to Little Lake
Wingra, the friendliest of Madison’s three lakes. I’m quite certain
247
that light was streaming from my eyes the entire time; it was from
Gretchen’s, and when I asked Clare if this was true, she confirmed
it. We ate French bread, cheese, ripe pears and peaches, chocolate
truffles, and drank copious amounts Champagne (our friends had
brought two more bottles) without feeling any effects from it.
Sailboats went past us on the lake. Gulls flew above; ducks swam
nearby. Insects approached but kept their distance.
Happy people wandered past us as we toasted: each other,
our lives together, all flowering members of the vegetable kingdom,
the poetry of Dylan Thomas, cirrus clouds, our children and their
children and theirs as well, the sanctity of devotion, the flutter of the
night moth’s wings, the “Isthmus Sage,” the bubbles rising from our
Champagne glasses, the wedding of Only and Forever, all
nicknames—particularly Ninny and Tweet, the songs of Cole
Porter, The novels of Tom Robbins, the Upper Midwest, all the
Simpsons—particularly Lisa, the enduring power of faith, the Great
Lakes, the sculpture of Michelangelo, Bach’s left hand, the color of
Gretchen’s hair, the paintings of Vermeer, the game of baseball, the
Beethoven Symphonies—particularly the Fourth, the bubbles
continuing to rise from our Champagne glasses, the sacrament of
marriage, the transformative power of landscape, the seven colors of
the visible spectrum—particularly violet, and art for art’s sake.
Then I recited “Humble Citizen of the Mystery.”

Turn to your father and your shadow,
Your mirror and beloved;
Honor death and turning,
Yet never hear a voice
A crystal clearer than your own.
Turn for guidance to the stars,

To ancient virtue, prudence, folly,
Honor gods and words of gods,
Yet never know a vision burning
Brighter than the guise
In which the world appears to you.
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THREE OF HEARTS
There is nothing beyond this:
Every moment is a wedding
And a wedding and a child.
“It means that every moment is itself and something more

than itself at the same time. It contains a mystery, which is also the
future.” I said when Clare asked me what the end meant. When she
still didn’t seem sure, I jumped up and did a stupid little dance.
That seemed to clear things up.
We were wafted then, in as much as an antique VW Beetle
can waft, to the Edgewater Hotel, where our friends had rented us a
luxurious room with a commanding view of Lake Mendota (the
largest of Madison’s lakes, and for a lake its size, not at all
unfriendly.) After they exclaimed about the room and we promised
to name our children after them, they left us to ourselves—perhaps
more completely to ourselves than we’d ever managed before,
which seemed only appropriate on that day. We then spoke at
length about the importance of remembering the day and all its
details, and must have fallen asleep in the process. It was nearly six
in the evening when we roused ourselves to order room service
coffee. It was perfect. We’d be up all night.
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THE HOURKEEPER, BUTTERED & TOASTED
THE HOUR KEEPER, BUTTERED

AND TOASTED
It was Saturday morning. 7:35 Saturday morning, to be precise, and

I’d been lounging in my comfortable living room—taking pleasure
in it. I had already been on the two blue couches (cobalt and
cerulean) of different springiness, and had just settled myself into
the rose colored and cushier of the two love seats. Being out of
coffee, I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to sing my coffee making
song. The Past President, of course, never ran out of anything; he
was compulsively well-stocked. And that I’d run out of coffee
today didn’t indicate a trend of carelessness on my part; it was an
isolated incident, but being the man I’d become, it did afford me the
opportunity for a new song:
I-i-i-i-i-i’ve run right out of coffee,

I’ve run right out of coffee,
I’ve run right out of coffee,
So I have none to drink!
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THREE OF HEARTS
A song that had no syntactical inconsistencies or linguistic artifice I

could detect—other than the right in “I’ve run right out of coffee…”
but that I attributed to alliteration. I knew that eventually I’d have
to go to the store to stock up on coffee, probably to Boston
Blacky’s, a coffee house in my neighborhood that sold French Roast
coffee that had me spoiled. The very thought of going there started
me off on: “I-i-i-i-i-m going to buy some coffee…” but the
compositional problems the last line of that one posed cut my
singing short. There’d be plenty of time before I went to buy
coffee; I wasn’t about to wither from lack of caffeine, and an
unstructured day awaited me.
I did have one thing in mind, however, which was to read
through the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching (“The Book of
Changes”); to read all the original ancient Chinese text to be sure,
and as much of Richard Wilhelm’s commentary as possible.
At the age of thirty, I could recite all sixty-four
hexagrams—so named since each is comprised of six lines stacked
one above the other. The lines are either solid — or broken - - ,
representing yang or yin respectively. I could recite all “The
Judgments,” which are the meanings of the Hexagrams, each
representing one of sixty-four archetypical situations or stages of
change. I could also recite “The Images”: more symbolic and poetic
explanations for the meaning of each. And finally, I could recite
“The Lines” of each Hexagram (all 386 lines,) these the qualities
attributed to the six varying aspects of these symbolic situations.
Each Hexagram has six lines, just as:
If one does not count on the harvest while plowing,

It furthers one to undertake something.
is the “Second Line” or in other words, the second of six aspects of

the situation known as “Innocence, the Unexpected,” the 25th
Hexagram.
In light of my next meeting, and in order to maintain my
inscrutable, sage image, I felt I should demonstrate a casual but
dazzling familiarity with the text, so some review was in order. And
besides, looking back through my worn copy and rediscovering
things I’d forgotten sounded like fun.
251
So I went upstairs, brought the old yellow book back down

and opened it up randomly before I began at the beginning. As an
exposition of sixty-four typical stages of change, the I Ching was
designed to serve as an oracle, a means of divination, or more aptly,
a mirror for anyone wishing to find their place in the greater flow of
circumstances. There are formal ways of tapping into this, but the
book works informally as well—like simply opening it up. I opened
to the Hexagram “Modesty”, and in particular, The Image of that
hexagram:
Within the earth, a mountain:

The image of MODESTY.
Thus the superior man reduces that which is too much
And augments that which is too little.
He weighs things and makes them equal.
Considering the way my life was turning out, that was right on the
mark, I thought as I sat back down on the rose colored loveseat in
my newly augmented living room. But the synchronicity of the
moment may have gone beyond even that, because just then,
precisely then, without having called, written, e-mailed or even so
much as knocked, Miranda, red hair aflame, came bursting through
the front door.
“Horace! My, oh my!” she declared. “This is beautiful!
Whatever came over you?” she declared.
“Good morning, Miranda,” I said, as deliberately as I could
manage. “Nice of you to pop in. I thought you’d be in Boston by
now.”
She came over and gave me a hug. “You’re not happy to see
me?”
“Happy? Is there a compound of happiness and surprise?”
“Amazement?”
“Yes, that’ll do, and it looks like the same’s true of you?”
“I’ll say!” she said. “Have you been secretly married? To a
woman who likes to entertain?”
“No. I’ve been entertaining, though. Earnest young
aspirants. Sit down, will you?”
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“No-o! You’ve done it? Already? That’s fantastic. How?
Who? When?” But rather than sitting down she’d begun to prowl.
I started to tell her the story of the mystic announcements
and the meetings but had hardly begun when she interrupted me.
“What about the walls?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to put
anything on these walls?”
“I was thinking about it,” I answered.
Miranda was walking from one end of the room to the other.
I was back on the cushy loveseat watching her. “But let me tell you
about…”
“Thinking about it?” she broke in. “What are your
thoughts?”
“Fine arts prints,” I said. “Colorful. Simply framed.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I was putting it off. I actually thought you
might be able to help—somehow I imagined that. Odd, isn’t it? I
don’t want anything down here as formal as upstairs—nothing
baroque or renaissance. I was thinking of the impressionists,
maybe. Lots of landscapes. Maybe lots of Monet—the haystack
series, even, the Houses of Parliament. But… ”
“No, Horace. Not in this room. This is not an impressionist
room. That would be sappy. You want…” she continued to prowl,
but more slowly. “You want the moderns, I think. You want
Matisse. You want Picasso. You want Chagall. And Kandinsky,
and Klee, and Mondrian. You know we can go on line and select
the prints right now? We can have them delivered, framed and
ready to hang. There are lots of sites and thousands and thousands
and thousands of prints. I’ve wished I had a house to furnish so I
could do this.”
“You feeling quite at home here?” I asked.
She laughed and took off her shoes. “What do you think of
those choices?”
“You don’t want to hear about my newfound role of
mysterious guru and about my devoted followers?”
“Not with blank walls, I don’t.”
It seemed I had no choice. “Okay,” I said. “Yes to Matisse.
You’re right. Bright and splashy. That’s just the spirit. Picasso,
maybe, except not the grotesque ones. I can understand a hideous
painting portraying a hideous war, but that’s about where it stops. I
253
think he’s way overrated; I think he foisted ugliness on the public to

satisfy his ego. Some of it’s like “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
But he has attractive paintings, too. Let’s get some of those. And
definitely Chagall. And I love Kandinsky—wild Russian
abstractions are good, and I like Klee’s little world. But I’ve got no
use for Mondrian. What is it, tri-colored geometry? That’s sterile
to me. I like that Italian… the one whose name I can never
remember. Who died young and painted those beautiful long
necked nudes?”
“Modigliani?”
“Yes, I love those.”
“Most men do. So, it’s simple: Matisse, Picasso, Chagall,
Kandinsky, Klee, Modigliani… anything else? What about Miro?”
“Sure, Miro’s fine. How many prints are you thinking of?”
“Enough to make the walls an outstanding part of this
already outstanding room.”
How could I disagree? “Now can I tell you about what’s
happened here in your absence, Miranda?”
“Over coffee.”
“I’m afraid I’m out of coffee.”
At this Miranda joined me on the loveseat. “So we’ll have
to go out and get some, won’t we? Let’s go to that Café again. The
one downtown. But then we’ll come back here and go on line and
start choosing the collection. And then…”
“What?”
“Have you given any thought to the empty dining room?”
I shook my head.
“And the entire second floor?
“Are you sure you need coffee? You’re positively electric.
An electric pixie. And how is it you arrived so early? Have you
been driving all night?”
“No, father, I haven’t been driving all night. And I do need
coffee. You’re mistaking the joy of reunion for a caffeine buzz,
Horace. You should be flattered that I take such an interest in you,
not accuse me of immoderation. And don’t call me a pixie.”
“Fine. It won’t happen again,” I answered. “But how did
you manage to get here at this time?”
“I was hoping to get here last night, but I made a mistake
the way I came around Chicago and got muddled in a horror of
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THREE OF HEARTS
Friday rush hour traffic. If I’d taken the right roads, I’d have been
here last night just in time for bed, but as it happened I only got as
far as someplace with the odd name of Janesville. I’d been driving
all day and I was getting very sleepy; I was practically nodding off
behind the wheel. And you see, I’d always associated Wisconsin
with my friend Jane who’s lived here all her life—and there I was,
I’d just entered Wisconsin and I was in Janesville. It gave me a
touch of the willies, which you know I never get, so I took that as a
sign that I was compromised, and pulled into the next motel. And I
was up bright and happy, and it was only an hour or so here.”
“Any interest in telling me why you were anxious to come
back?”
Miranda gave one of her looks. “If you must have an
answer, I suppose it’s that my unconscious knew that Butterman had
found his way into a furniture store. But I think your flattery
receptors are impaired. It must be all that meditating. We’ll have to
cure you of that.”
I told her I agreed, and then about the Hexagram
“Modesty”—about reducing that which is too much and augmenting
what is too little.
“Really,” Miranda said. “That reminds me of that passage
in the Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ You know, where the baritone sings that
beautiful aria about God making the crooked straight and the rough
places plain?”
“I always thought that was the Christian version of The Law
of Karma.”
“Well, that too, I’m sure. You are a very comprehensive
thinker, Horace... But you say you opened the book to that passage
before I came in?”
“Moments before.”
“And has it occurred to you...”
“Yes, it has, Miranda?”
“What?” she said, coyly.
“That you reduce what is to much in me and augment what
is too little.”
Miranda beamed: an unmistakable pixie beam. “Making
your crooked straight, you mean. Very good, Horace. I was hoping
I still did that.”
255
It was a fifteen minute walk down to the cafe, during which I

presented her with a condensed version of the events of the last few
weeks. She made me go to lengths about Butterman in the furniture
store, and spoke approvingly of the way I’d made my decisions and
how I’d comported myself. She also complimented my
arrangement of the furniture. When she told me she wanted to see
the announcements, I told her that if she hadn’t been so impatient I
could have shown them both to her at the house, but that we could
still pick up the issue with the Wilhelm quote at any store on State
Street. Then I told her about the surprisingly large turnout at the
first meeting, and the delightfully earnest and insightful group of
young people who’d shown up at my door. By the time we arrived
at Bernardo’s Café, I’d already outlined the discussion we’d had
about ‘The Great Way,’ and she was studying the new
announcement in The Isthmus. As luck had it, we were seated at the
same table in the window overlooking the street as the first time
we’d been there. The other window table was occupied as was
every other one visible in the restaurant. We popped right into
place. When I commented on the coincidence, she scoffed. “What
do you expect after those flowers? It’s the God’s Garden effect.
That’s what we should call it when incidents coincide for us, don’t
you think?”
This was her second casual use of ‘we,’ and that, along with
her remark about trying to be here just in time for bed, was having a
felicitous effect on me. She looked lovely sitting across from me
there with her enchanted face, her red hair and her dark blue eyes
gleaming like sapphires. Her neck was long, not Modigliani long,
but long and graceful, her hands delicate, and as I recalled the small
compact breasts beneath her shiny green blouse were nippled with
pink rosebuds. This clearly wasn’t the same man who’d sat across
from her weeks earlier; I’d been awakened, aroused in more ways
than one, and I laughed.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re laughing at, you
wicked man?”
“No, never. But you are looking beautiful, Miranda. How
old exactly are you now? Thirty-five?”
“Close enough. And you’re looking well for a man of what
is it, nearly forty?”
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I found myself staring across at her then, gazing maybe,
through an ether, through a viscous atmosphere alight with dazzle
and sway. And it seemed then that it was not merely one prodigious
event that had brought me here to this; that it wasn’t just that my life
had been spared or saved or had slipped through a death trap—real
or of my own imagining—but that it had also been the accumulation
of myriad little happenings, like grains of sand in an hourglass. But
that wasn’t quite right either, they weren’t grains of sand that had
accumulated, they were these bits of dazzle that I saw now filling
the air. “Are you staying?” I asked Miranda.
“If I’m invited.”
I leaned across the little table toward her, feeling the divine
embrace of happiness and idiocy. “Then it’s true love, is it?”
She laughed. “My, oh my! Yes,” she said. “It’s true love.
I recognize it.”
“You do?”
“Of course. You don’t suppose I haven’t felt it before, do
you? For you, and then for others, but true love, unlike lightning,
can strike in the same place twice.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that,” I answered. Then
after a pause: “Miranda? When I was young someone asked me if
I’d heard Beethoven’s late quartets, and when I told them I hadn’t,
they said “how lucky you are!’ So you see what I’m getting at?”
“No. You’re going to have to spell it out, Horace.”
Just then a waitress arrived, apologized for not getting to us
sooner, and asked what we’d like. We told her we wanted coffee
and those sticky sweet things, and she smiled at us like she knew we
were… in love? I had to say that to myself a few times before it
stopped sounding ludicrous. But then Miranda was waiting for an
answer about the Beethoven, and smirking a little.
“Do you know Beethoven’s last string quartets?” I asked.
“No, Horace, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Then you’re lucky too. I’ll play them for you. And
wouldn’t you say it’s lucky to be a man my age who’s just
discovering his real self and life and who’s also in love?”
All signs of smirk gave way to a beaming smile and shining
eyes. “We shouldn’t be here,” she said. “Shall we get a room, or do
you think we can make it back to your place? Can we hail a cab?”
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“Don’t you wish we had a tape of ourselves together in

1978 so we could watch it and see the seeds of everything that’s
happening now?”
“The seeds and the thorny husks enclosing them?”
“Those too.”
“I’m an astute observer, Horace. I can play most of it back
from memory.” She looked across at me with a beguiling smile.
“Like what you said to me when we awoke the first morning we
were together in that apartment of yours in your narrow little bed
where we had to sleep like conjoined twins?”
“Which was…?”
“Which was ‘Miranda, has anyone ever told you you slept
beautifully?’”
“I said that?”
“Yes, just before you told me that every other woman you
knew snored. You were a piece of work, Horace.”
“I thought I was just shy.”
“Oh, you were, most often. It was when you tried to break
that mold that you faltered.”
“Tell me something else,” I said. “Something hopeful.”
Miranda shook her head, but then waved my alarmed
expression away.
“I think what attracted me to you so was that you were such
a paradox, Horace, such a darling trapped inside a shell of formality.
To me, you were transparent, and I was flattered by the way you
struggled to let yourself out. You never really did, but that didn’t
matter to me at the time; I probably wouldn’t have been free enough
to embrace you fully if you had. You see, I acted like a free spirit, I
tried to be spontaneous, but in my own way I was as far from myself
as you. What amazes me is that something in both of us made that
crazy pact of honesty. You know, how we’d be together only
insofar as we could remain ourselves? What nonsense, what self-
deception; we couldn’t be ourselves! But what brilliant intuition at
the same time, what prescience! It was almost as if we knew this
time was surely coming. Isn’t that wonderful… that life’s like that?
Is that what you meant about the tape of us back in ’78?”
“And aren’t you glad I didn’t die,” I said. “That something
artful and impetuous intervened?”
“I am,” she said.
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“Miranda? I do love you.”
She looked at her watch, and then slantwise back at me.
“Twenty-four years, a few months, a few days maybe and an hour or
two— Of course I’m just guessing—that’s how long it took you to
finally say that? I love you too, Horace. Okay? Good. So now that
that’s over with, what about getting a room?”
“I have a lovely room,” I said. “We’ll be there soon.”
We were locked in a gaze when our coffee and gooey
things arrived. “I-i-i-t’s time to drink our coffee…” I sang softly
across to her. “It’s time…”
She looked slightly incredulous as she too her first sip, but I
stopped singing and took a sip of my own. I wondered then if a
man could change too fast, if he could damage himself, like with too
much exercise or too stringent a diet. But if there would be damage,
it was inevitable, because there was no turning back.
Given the robust state of my health and spirit at sixty, it’s my

intuition that I have a good twenty years remaining of life as we
know it. I realize that estimate may be flawed, that my record
regarding life span estimates is hardly the best, but still the vastness
of that expanse of time impresses me, particularly when I remember
myself at forty. I shudder at the thought of that caricature of a man
whose judgment was based on such a dearth of experience. To
others, apparently, I seemed a normally reasonable, moderately
mature man, as reasonable and mature as they saw themselves to be,
I’ll assume. But if that’s what they thought, they were wrong about
me and probably about themselves as well. Today I wonder how I
could have lived when I was forty, how I could have walked around
and talked and interacted with others in such a state of abject self-
ignorance.
How, for instance, could I have been so unaware of the
effect I had on others? How could I not have realized that modesty I
so often expressed was anything more than a mask for my
conviction of spiritual superiority? And how could I have believed
that didn’t show? Who was I kidding? And who was I kidding
when I claimed to have a retiring nature when I was frightened that
getting too close to others would expose me for the insecure man
that I was? And how could I have lived believing that my strength
and position gave me any rights to dismiss the feelings of others?
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Like the feelings of that young man who worked in the Society
library whom I accused of incompetence? Can there ever be reason
to say that to someone without an expression of support as well? Or
the overweight girl who worked in the kitchen? Who did I think I
was? A competent man? A competent man who’d not yet learned
the world was a reflection of himself?
But really, how do I differ from the physicists of twenty
years ago or forty or sixty, those intellectuals whom I deride for
claiming over and over that this time they definitely had found the
smallest particle, or the doctors who over and over have been so
God awful certain that their most recent study had led them to the
best possible diet for healthy living? And what is it that I don’t
know now that I’ll know in twenty years? What about these
thoughts themselves will I find embarrassing or shortsighted or
prideful? Maybe I’ll find it absurd that today, when so wholly in
love, that I’m still moved to reflect back on what a miserable wretch
I consider myself to have been, rather than extolling the eyes and
heart of my beloved who’s sitting across the table from me at this
very moment? Maybe I’ll find it negligent that I’d not recited
sonnets to her loveliness, her cleverness, her charm, her forgiving
view of life. And I hope that’s true. I hope I grow into that. That
will make it much easier going for the next twenty years:
proclaiming my love in any and every way to whomever it applies
and singing stupid songs about household tasks, bathroom
procedures or anything else I choose, whenever it seems apropos.
“That’s how an old man should live, don’t you think so,
Miranda?”
“Don’t I think what?”
“Ha, ha, ha, hahahahahaha!”
“What, you crazy old fool? What?”
“‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…?’”
“Do you know that poem?”
“Just that line.”
“Do you know who wrote it?”
“Shakespeare?”
“No, sexist. A woman wrote that. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Do you want to hear how the whole thing goes?
“Of course.”
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Miranda took a sip of coffee and struck a pose.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I like the middle part best.”

“This part?
‘I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise…’”
“Um hm,” I answered, taking a sip of coffee and a bite of
my sticky bun. “‘To the level of every day’s most quiet need...’” I
repeated.
“That’s my favorite too,” Miranda said, glancing at my
nearly empty cup and empty plate. “Are you finished? Are you
ready to go?”
“Isn’t it grand how things work out, how certain things can
fall in place so strikingly, like our God’s Garden effect? And don’t
you sometimes wonder about the coincidence we never see or
recognize?”
“I do, Horace.”
“And isn’t it grand, too, that there’s enough goodness in the
unexceptional, on “the level of every day’s most quiet need” that can
sustain us along with the extraordinary?”
“Yes, dear. Are you finished yet?”
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“And do you ever wonder what affect our thoughts and

feelings have upon the microcosms with in us?”
“Horace?”
“And what about animals, Miranda? What about Lois, my
cat? But you know, now that I love you, knowing the mind of my
cat isn’t quite so important any more...”
“Horace?”
“And now that I love you, I don’t feel quite such a need to
operate an elevator. But think of this. Being an elevator man: being
able to rise to the level of every day’s most quiet need! What do you
think of that?”
“Horace!”
“And have you ever wondered how King Wen and the Duke
of Chow wrote the I Ching? How they figured it out? 3,000 years
and it still works?”
“Horace!”
“And do you ever think that trees are such contented beings
that they have no need to wander the earth?”
“Horace! You’re doing this on purpose!”
“You’re right, I am. And you can’t hail cabs in this
provincial capital. I’ll go call one. It should be here in minutes.”
And then, perhaps for the first time in my adult life, I
winked.
“The long hunt in the sun,” I said as I got up to go to the
phone, “will not have led you here until I find my heart as well.”
“You sure about that?” Miranda asked.
“I am. I AM SURE!” I said, and winked for the second
time in my adult life.
Then I realized I’d forgotten to get more of “God’s
Flowers” for the next meeting. But so what?
Then on the way to the phone, I did a little dance, stamping
my feet, twirling and snapping my fingers with my arms extended
high above my head. People in the café clapped. (Everyone except
the Past President, who actually wasn’t there.) Then I took a little
bow. In all four directions. Yes, it was as simple as that.
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THE ELEVATOR MAN, UNWRAPPED
Freda told me she wanted to take me someplace nice for breakfast,

and somehow that sounded like the kindest invitation I’d had in
years. Just that. A simple invitation. Not to go to Niagara Falls or
the top of the Empire State Building or Hollywood or anything—
just someplace nice for breakfast. It made my heart flutter. And it
was nice place; cute, I think you’d call it. Freda said it had been one
of her favorite places in town for years. We were seated at a table
with a view out the window by a very nice hostess, and a little later
an even nicer waitress came over and took our breakfast orders.
“So I suppose you’re going to invite me to all the others,
too? Your other favorite places?” I said after the waitress left. “It
seems like I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Wisconsin.”
But she looked embarrassed when I said that. She must
have taken it wrong, and that isn’t surprising for a person who’s
been used to blaming herself for everything. So I explained that I
really meant I hoped to keep coming up to see her: this made her
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smile but me blush. But it’s funny how things happen sometimes,
like they’re part of a script or a story, because just then I heard
someone say something at the table right next to ours. It was a
woman whose back was to me who was talking to a man, I think.
She said, “True love, unlike lightning, can strike in the same place
twice.”
I don’t know if she made that up or if it’s a quote from
someplace, but hearing that much nearly shocked out of my pants.
I’d never realized that was true, and it was like a puzzle piece that
suddenly fit right into my life. Because I guess I’d never thought
this might be my second true love until that morning. I don’t know
if Freda heard what that woman said or not, but I kept it to myself
like secret message and started talking about how nice it was to sit
and look out the window from behind those nice green café curtains
on that shiny brass bar, and how good those omelets were we
ordered. And I felt like a page was turned in my life.
After we finished breakfast, Freda asked me if I was tired of
going to the Farmers’ Market. I said that I wasn’t tired of it at all,
so we set off towards it. It was just down the street; The Capitol
Square was only two blocks from Bernardo’s Café, which happened
to be the name of the place we were. When we were walking, I
asked her if she thought we’d see that nice looking young couple
again, the ones that waved to us from the same spot the last two
weeks, and she said she thought we probably would, and we decided
we’d introduce ourselves this time for sure.
But it turned out we didn’t see them after all. We saw all
the other things there, though; things that all looked familiar to me
now—all the vegetables and flowers and bakery and honey and
such. And I chatted with a few of the friendlier vendors who I’d
seen before, including the woman with the flowers that seemed so
beautiful to me that one sad day. Talking to those people made me
begin to feel at home in Madison. But we didn’t stay at the market
all that long, just long enough to buy some sweet corn for dinner.
We left because Freda asked me if I’d be interested in going
to the University Dairy Barn, a place right on campus, in the middle
of town, she said, where there’re cows living—where they’re
milked and taken care of. I didn’t quite know what she was getting
at until she told me that her uncle had a dairy farm right across the
river from Minnesota where she’d spent her summers, and that the
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University Dairy Barn made her feel at home. I’ve never had much
interest in farms, I’m not sure if I’d ever been on one, but of course
I said yes, I’d like to give that a try. Then she asked me if I minded
getting cow manure on my shoes. I told her that in sixty-four years
I’d never been asked that question before, and she thought that was
very funny and said I was a prize. That’s when I noticed that nearly
all the gaunt shadows were gone from Freda’s face.
Before we even got into the big barn I was surprised
because I smelled something I liked, not what I expected when I
was about to go into a barn full of farm animals. It was a tangy,
spicy smell, which Freda told me was silage, a kind of fermented
feed they give to the dairy cows. It didn’t smell so nice once we got
into the big barn though, which must have held seventy-five cattle.
There was a little radio playing pretty loud and there were a couple
of people in there tending to the cows and doing other things done
in a barn, chores, I guess, but these people didn’t seem to mind us
walking right into the middle of things. And that’s where we were,
in the middle of things. We were on a walkway no wider than a
sidewalk right down the middle between the hind ends of cows who
were lined up there on each side of us, one right next to the other. I
could see that they were held in place by stanchions that went
around their necks. As soon as we started walking along there,
Freda began to go on about Holsteins and Brown Swiss and how
they used to have Guernseys because of the high butter fat that was
now out of fashion—but all I was aware of was the occasional
PLOP! that landed not too far behind us or in front of us, and the
occasional PSSSSS! that splashed there in the place she called the
gutter. And for the life of me, I couldn’t see how a person could
walk calmly through all that with the awful mess and the cow’s rear
ends and their big udders and their tails whooshing around and all.
“C’mon Bernie,” she said, laughing again and taking my by
the shoulders and pushing me right in front of her down the middle
of the walkway. “I’ll take you around by the heads.”
And once we got past the business ends of all those cows
and turned down the narrow track where their heads were and their
feed was piled, it all of a sudden seemed like a very different
place—it didn’t smell any different, but it sure looked better. There
were some twenty black and white heads all bending down and
chewing, but as soon as Freda said the word “Bossy” loud enough to
265
be heard over the radio, each and every head turned and looked
down toward us—twenty pairs of big brown cow eyes. And I was
surprised and happy at the same time by how pleasant and gentle
they looked, that whole line of them there. Once we started to walk
along down the line, most of the cows got back to the business of
eating, but some kept looking up at us.
“See how sweet they are?” Freda said, holding her hand up
in front of one of the huge heads and then slowly moving it down so
she could scratch it between the ears. The cow was looking right as
me, and when I looked into its eyes, I saw more than just two big
brown eyeballs staring back at me—and you can believe me when I
say that.
There’s no way I can explain what I felt from that animal.
Most of all, that animal had a goodness in it that filled me so full I
might have drowned. It wasn’t kindness, or sympathy, or
friendliness, it was a different kind of goodness that cow had, one
that didn’t have a name—it just made you feel love for it; big, wide
love, bigger than human love. I felt like I’d discovered life on Mars
when I saw what was behind that cow’s eyes, and I suppose I forgot
myself and forgot that I was standing with Freda there, someone
who knew all about how to act around cows, because it had bent
back down and was going at its feed again when I leaned over it to
pet its neck. I do remember what happened next: the cow raised up
its head, maybe to see who it was leaning over it, but I understand
now why it’s not a good idea to lean over a cow like that, because
when the top of its hundred pound head snapped up and met my
little human chin, I saw bright sparkles in front of my eyes and
nothing else.
I was out cold on the spot. But I guess it was just for a
second. Freda said I went down on my heinie and then slumped
over forward like a rag doll before I popped back up again looking
bewildered.
That part I don’t quite remember. I do remember a
tremendous fuss being made over me, even though I knew right
away that I wasn’t hurt badly. My jaw ached but I was relieved that
I hadn’t bitten my tongue, because of the way that hurts for so long
afterwards. I didn’t have a headache, so even though Freda and the
people who’d been tending the cows protested, I stood right up.
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I said, “Wasn’t it funny to see an elevator man from a fancy
hotel in the big city who’s never even been on a farm get k.o.’d by a
cow?”
And I did think that was funny. I always laugh on those
America’s Funniest Home Video Programs when people fall down.
People falling down is funny. I wished we’d had a video of that; we
might have won the $10,000. And finally then Freda smiled and
even laughed a little, and said that as long as I was all right it was
very funny.
I wanted to keep walking down the rest of the row of cow’s
heads, but the people in charge said they thought I’d had enough
and something else about insurance which is what I expected them
to say, so our visit to the University Dairy Barn was cut short.
When we got back to Freda’s house, she served ice tea for
us, and I was sitting on the comfortable blue couch in her living
room sipping that when all of a sudden I felt like the flood gates had
opened up inside me. Maybe when I was knocked out, something
broke loose inside me.
I told her about Oscar and the dreams I had about Oscar
with his brothers and sisters, and about what I saw behind the eyes
of the woman with the umbrella who was hurrying along that day,
and all about Rosie who thought I was her priest and the terrible
dream I had about her plight and how she was dumped out of that
truck that was so real I was sure it was true, and how I betrayed her
by pulling my hands away. And I added in about the way I knew
what that woman felt in the truckstop when she heard about that fire
that burned everyone on that bus.
She seemed stunned at first.
“So what about me, Bernie?” she said. “Did you see my
sorrow too? That day of the accident?”
“Yes. That’s true,” I said, because that was all I could say;
and like I expected, she took it hard.
“So I was just another… person? Another… charity case?”
“I can tell you right off that that’s not true, but I understand
if you don’t believe me,” I said. “But think about it, Freda: I’m
telling you about this. I think maybe that cow knocked enough
sense into my head to realize that since I liked you so much it was
time to tell you about everything that’s been happening to me.
Everything—you see, because after twenty years of nothing
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happening, in the last month it feels like everything has happened
including meeting you which feels the best of all.”
I was waiting for the blush to rise up in my face but it
didn’t. “Okay?” I said to her. “You want to hear the rest of it, too?”
She was still looking very fragile, but she said she did want
to hear. She probably didn’t expect to hear about my almost
blowing my brains out. And that was the first time then that I
connected meeting her with my life being saved. All that time I’d
been thinking about Jolene and the chocolate croissants that
someone else bought, but never Freda who kept us right there in
Madison long enough for Marshall Fields to close. I had her to
thank as much as the person who bought the last chocolate croissant
and baker who made just so many of those croissants that day and
everyone else who bought them before the last one was gone.
So I told her the whole story: about how at first I was just
troubled; about how Jolene said I might be having a religious
experience; and then about how Jolene and Jack brought me to
Wisconsin where she thought I could relax and recover, but then
how I’d had that one dream that convinced me I wasn’t strong
enough to cope with it anymore, that it was an affliction and not a
blessing, and how I decided I’d rather be dead than live with that
burden any longer. And even though it was hard to say out loud, I
told her about the Men’s Store at Marshall Fields in the sporting
goods department where they sold guns, and that I was planning to
put one in my mouth.
Freda stood up from where she was sitting when I said that
and ran to the bathroom. I didn’t want to listen but I think she threw
up. She didn’t come back for some time then and when I went to
knock to see how she was doing, she said she was okay but didn’t
want to come out yet, so I went back and sat down. As sorry as I
was about upsetting her, I was glad that I’d told her the truth about
myself, because if I hadn’t, I’d have a secret eating away at me.
That only makes sense, but I wondered if I’d told her the right way,
if maybe being knocked silly by that cow had led me to do
something rash. But I hadn’t told her about the cow yet, about how
much I loved it, about how there was something about it so worthy
of love—mine and everyone else’s.
Then I went back to the bathroom. “Freda,” I said through
the door, “I’m going to go out for a little walk. I should be back in a
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half an hour or so. So if you want to come out of there, there won’t
be anyone in the house. I think you’ll feel more comfortable that
way.”
But I guess I was wrong, because she opened the door right
up then and hugged me. I didn’t know what to say to her because I
didn’t know how she was feeling. I wanted to be sure I didn’t leave
anything out though, so once we went back in the living room, I did
tell her about the cow, which started her laughing, of all things. I
was worried about her crying. And then she started doing that, but
there I was, Bernie Schmidt, sitting on a couch in a woman’s house
with my arm around her and her all schooched up against me.
“I won’t ever tell you less than the truth,” I said. “That’s
what I did before, even though I knew it might upset your
feelings—and I think that should probably be a good thing to know,
the kind of thing that might make you happy. But after things
worked out so well with Oscar, I realized that my life might be
worth living after all because I could help someone I knew and was
concerned about. Then when I came up and visited you, I felt even
better. But before long, everything went and changed perspective
on me, and nothing seemed as important as being with you. And if
that somehow got taken away—you, I mean—I’d be as fragile and
breakable and heartsick as anyone could be. But things have
changed so fast I can’t be certain about anything quite yet. I’d like
it if I knew what I had for my own and that it wouldn’t disappear or
die on me or become too much for me to bear. But just like you,
I’m not quite used to my new self yet.”
And it seemed to me, all of a sudden just then, that my new
self felt something like that clear blue sky I’d already forgotten
about.
Then Freda said that we were going to be just fine.
That’s what she said, “Bernie, we’re going to be just fine,”
and her telling me that started me off talking about what it was like
before the Severson’s, when I was little and growing up in the
Lutheran children’s home.
“I never knew any different,” I told her. “I never knew my
mother or father, so that it wasn’t as terrible as most people think—
the way people react, at least, knowing what a home life is for
children and imagining that being taken away. It was still hard for
me, though. It was hard trusting anyone, because I remember there
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was a lady there who I used to go to when I was scared or hurt or
being picked on, and then without much explanation I can
remember, she was gone and there was another lady in her place.
The new lady tried to be kind and understanding—everyone there
did—but she didn’t know me, she didn’t know what foods I liked or
what kids I liked or which ones I was scared of, and sometimes she
smelled funny. So that bothered me.”
It was funny, but I hadn’t thought of that lady in all these
years, and then I started talking about other things I never really
thought before. I think it must have been because I was knocked on
the head. Old memories came loose, like they were pouring out.
Kind of like having a screw loose.
“Once I got a little older,” I told Freda, “I worried a lot.
You see, it wasn’t long before I got to be friends with some of the
younger children; I kind of took care of them. They liked to follow
me around. They were like my little brothers, and I was scared I
was going to lose them, so I always held their hands and took them
with me where I went. You see, I was scared they would be taken
away from me. I even dreamed about it.
“And I worried a lot about no one understanding me, of
being alone with no one to help me or even listen. I worried that the
second lady who smelled different would go away and there would
be no one to comfort me anymore. I worried about that a lot.
“I was scared of Hell too. I had this crazy picture in my
mind of being on some kind of elevator that took me down there,
but I couldn’t get back up. Funny, isn’t it now? That I operate an
elevator. I never thought of that before.
“I was scared of being taken away by strangers, too, who
weren’t kind people; I think I used to cry about that at night. And I
used to imagine about being driven away with those strangers to a
different city where people spoke Chinese. But you know what
scared me most, Freda? Being lost. We were all scared of that.
Being lost and alone in our own big city, Chicago, the one we lived
in, lost without bus fare or a dime for the telephone in a
neighborhood with unfriendly people. We talked about that a lot,
we wondered if anyone would help us get back to The Lutheran
Home, even at night when it made me scared to go to sleep for fear
of what I might dream.”
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I didn’t say anything for a while until I remembered what
I’d started out talking about, even though it didn’t seem the same
any more and a long time ago that I said it. “All those things
bothered me,” I said, “and probably more that I’m not remembering
just now, but still I didn’t feel like I was missing anything, Freda. I
didn’t, really, because the things I didn’t have were the same as all
the children I grew up with.” But I wasn’t so sure I meant that
anymore.
Freda looked concerned. I didn’t tell her what I’d said
made me feel dizzy just then, and that’s just as well because it went
away.
She said that it made her sad to think of me as lonely little
boy with no mother though, and I told her it made me sad to think of
it too—now it made me sad, but not then. Then Freda told me what
she was frightened about when she was young.
“Mostly,” she said, “I was scared of ‘The Creature from the
Black Lagoon’ coming up out of the lake near the bottom of their
back yard. Coming up with seaweed all over it and looking in over
my windowsill. And sometimes, Bernie, I was afraid my parents
would abandon me with the babysitter—Mrs. Fry. I thought she
was mean. And I was afraid of being picked on at school, too.”
I could tell she was trying to think of things to tell me so it
wouldn’t seem like her life was perfect while I was forgotten in an
orphanage. She was trying to try to think of more things that scared
her, but I interrupted.
“It’s all right, Freda,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.
You can tell me your childhood was happy. My life as a child was
okay, it really was. I turned out okay.”
Then all of a sudden we just looked at each other there on
the couch and smiled, because all the pressure was off. And then
she said it again: “Bernie,” she said, “we’re going to be just fine.”
And there was something about the way she said that that
made me feel like I didn’t have to say or do even one more thing,
because she’d taken the wheel. She could do it. It made me feel
like I was in a car and I could just fall asleep, fall asleep and let her
drive for a while, a feeling I hadn’t had for a very, very long time.
As far as sleeping is concerned, I did sleep at Freda’s house that

night. Freda slept on her bed and I slept on the couch, which
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seemed the right thing to do at the time. But in the middle of the
night, Freda came and sat down next to me on the couch, and she
put her hands underneath my undershirt and asked if I’d like to
come to bed with her. Her hands were so soft and were rubbing up
and down on my chest. It felt just like Abby touching me there
then, and all heated up as I was, I suddenly sobbed.
“You want to come up tonight, Bernie, or wait until we
know each other better?” Freda asked.
Her face was right up next to me when she said that.
I know it takes a long time for people to change for good; but it’s
possible. Sunday morning was as happy as can be, in the simple
kind of way I like best. It was like when Freda told me she had
someplace nice she wanted to take me for breakfast, except that this
time she made a big pancake breakfast for us in her own kitchen,
and touched me on the shoulders and neck every time she came over
to the table. About the most important thing that happened to me
recently was how I felt when I looked in that cow’s eyes, and by the
time that morning came around, I’d completely forgotten about that.
After breakfast we went out for a long walk downtown.
Freda reminded me of how we’d seen a man doing a dance as he left
out of Bernardo’s Café the other morning, and she asked me if I
could do that dance. I laughed and said no, I didn’t dance. But said
she did, so she went and imitated that dance that man did. I
watched her, right there, dancing on the sidewalk under a clear blue
shy, not shy at all. I was happy as can be. So that’s how it all
turned out. As simple as that.
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THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY

APPEAR
We did stay up all night on our wedding night, Gretchen and I,

carefree and frivolous, luxuriating in our rich accommodations: the
hotel bar; the restaurant, the sauna; the big pier on Lake Mendota;
and our own cushy room, abusing our room service privileges and
selecting shamelessly from the dizzying selection of cable stations.
We also took a few walks, late night and early morning, during
which Gretchen repeatedly assured me that she was only following
the example of her own parents, who had married secretly and lived
together for months before informing her grandparents. She told me
it wasn’t at all odd, that she’d call her parents as soon as things
“sorted themselves out a little.”
“By which you mean…?”
“As soon as we find out what’s going to become of you,
Tweets.”
It should be noted that by the time our marriage had been
consummated, Gretchen had already begun to call me, variously,
Ninny, Pinhead, Tootsie, Silly, Sweetie, Tweetie, Tweet, Tweets,
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THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR
Nitwit, Dunderhead, Lamebrain, Lulu—and of course, but only
occasionally because I disapprove, cat-man. I, on the other hand,
called her Blondie, Birdie, Goofy, Pinkie (which made her laugh),
Sweetheart, Dearie, and Love ’o my Life. On the evening
described, Blondie insisted that her parents would love me, that I
was an embodiment of the ideals they themselves had been unable
to practice in full, and that when the time came, she’d take me back
to Iowa where I’d have a home away from home—or just a home
depending on how things turned out.
My own parents were less relevant, father was already long
gone to whatever Las Vegas Hotel he supposed the afterlife to
consist of, and I spoke to my semi-intelligent mother (Mildred the
Cat) most often only on her birthday when I called her. She’d
become quite withdrawn in her later years but didn’t seem unhappy,
living with other oldsters in Arizona. She might have wished I’d
notified her before I got married again, but given the choice, I’d
rather leave her somewhat deeper in the dark than lie to her about
what I was doing in my life. I didn’t miss her company, yet still, I
wouldn’t want to distress her. But when Gretchen spoke of home
in Iowa, I waxed nostalgic for a dining room table with a gingham
cloth spread with bowls of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy
and biscuits, all surrounded by fresh faced, homey relatives. No, she
corrected me; it was more like two middle-aged intellectuals, maybe
a little high, with Theloneous Monk on the stereo and Thai takeout.
I told her that would be fine too.
When we checked out of the Edgewater the next morning,
we were blessedly exhausted. Blondie didn’t work that night and
she skipped her class so that we could go back to my real life room
and sleep.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could dream together?” Gretchen
said as we headed up the hill from the Edgewater toward The
Square.
“I heard once that if two people fell asleep looking in each
other’s eyes that would happen,” I told her. “Sounds too simple to
be true, doesn’t it?”
“We can try,” she answered, sounding very hopeful.
“Between now and Saturday.”
“But there’d got to be more to it. Maybe if we make a
pledge, a pact...”
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“How would we do that?”
I shrugged. “Spit on your hand.”
Blondie didn’t hesitate. Then I spit on mine and we shook
hands.
“That should do it,” I said.
Even though Gretchen was very enthusiastic about it all the way
home, she was literally asleep once her head hit the pillow, so I
dreamt by myself as usual. When we woke, we went down and
scrounged around in my quarter of the refrigerator trying to find
something to eat. We could only come up with a few bagels, but as
luck would have it on our second day of wedded bliss, Gretchen’s
new dear friend, Tina, appeared, saw us eating plain bagels and
offered us cream cheese and even some orange juice. When
Gretchen told her we just got married, Tina actually squealed.
The rest of our week was like a honeymoon on a precipice.

“Do you think any couple has ever been as anxious as we
are after their wedding?” Gretchen asked me that first night once we
got in bed.
“Lots of them, Gretch. Think about all the terrible
circumstances people can be in. During war time, or illness, or
running from the law...”
“But ours is different. Our principles led us into danger.
It’s brave, romantic anxiety we feel...”
“You know, that sounds kind of stupid.”
“You’re right, tweetie, it does. Forget it. But I’m still
stressed.”
“Me too. Let’s try that eye thing.”
Again it didn’t work: this time because we couldn’t stop
laughing.
I’d arranged with Clare and David to borrow their car to
ferry my lightweight worthy possessions over to Gretchen’s, where
they had the impression I’d be staying. Before I could dissuade
them of this idea, they told me that David’s sister and a friend were
coming from Santa Barbara on Saturday and staying with them in
their tiny apartment for four or five days. I didn’t say a thing.
Not having giving proper notice of my departure, I didn’t
expect to be refunded the security deposit on my room, despite
275
leaving the place nicely furnished. So it looked to me like when
Saturday did come along I’d indeed be close to penniless—on my
own, that is. My wife, my better half, the distaff side of the family,
would have pennies of her own which she’d be anxious to share, but
I’d have to see about that. I was focusing on the safe, grassy side of
the precipice where I was blazingly in love with marriage.
Gretchen, too, was amazed that the two of us had found, recognized
and married each other in the space of a month. Our life together,
with all its vagaries, even teetering on the edge as it was, was at
once perilous and grandly secure for us.
It didn’t elude us that perhaps our heightened feelings of
refuge in each other were brought on by just that condition of peril,
but this was no time for second guessing. We looked forward to
waking together with our Ritual of the Violets, to having breakfast
together, to walking to Gretchen’s class, to meeting afterwards, to
lunch together, to walking to L’Etoile together—every facet of our
routine was elevated to a minor sacrament. And we did that every
day, until eventually we were both fragile projections of ourselves,
our hopes and fears indistinguishably entangled.. And then it was
Saturday, the 15th of September.
We say goodbye to my room early in the morning and walk to

Gretchen’s carrying some papers and poems, a few books, and an
umbrella. It is a still morning and a cool front has moved through,
wiping away the clouds. The day has a hushed singularity about it:
it seems that any spoken thought will send waves through the
tranquility of the atmosphere, washing and resounding through the
city, startling birds from trees. And we willingly comply. We
protect the world with our silence; but then with a sudden burst, a
siren wails round a corner in the tumult of a fire truck’s roar, filling
the street with shattering mechanical thunder. Then,
unceremoniously, as if there’d never been a paradise, anything can
be said, anything spoken, disturbing nothing, and with no meaning
of any consequence. Breakfast at Gretchen’s is toast and jam. We
don’t go to the Farmers’ Market. We’ve already made my plan.
When Gretchen goes to work, I’ll head out with her feather-light,
sky-blue sleeping bag strapped on my back with a few things more
in a pack: a pad of paper, pens, a toothbrush, a comb, a change of
underwear, socks—that’s all. When I’m tired that night, I’ll go to
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the homeless shelter at the big church on the square. And maybe,
Gretchen and I say, I’ll have written something; maybe I’ll have
been frightened, or maybe I’ll be seeing things in a new way; maybe
I’ll be bored. Maybe they won’t let me in.
It’s difficult to know how to spend the day. We finally
decide to read aloud to each other. We prop ourselves up on pillows,
shoulder to shoulder in Gretchen’s cinnamon flavored bed. She
reads from Willa Cather: “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” I read
Hesse’s “Siddhartha”—the whole thing. It takes all day. On the
walk to work under the cool, cloudless sky, she says, “You’ll call
me first thing in the morning, won’t you?”
“Let’s make it three in the afternoon,” I say. “Like the first
time, okay? Let’s wait until three and see how we do. Remember?
I was commanded to do that, and I did it until poetry intervened.
We’ll see if that happens again. All right? We’ll be fine,
sweetheart.”
It was then that I saw my wife years hence, standing there,
at fifty, maybe, her smartly hawk-like look no sharper but more
refined, instilled with a dignity, a remove; she is taller, fully in
command, yet with eyes an even softer brown: A mistress of all
within her parcel of nature’s domain. She is looking at me with a
smile that says I told you so; there was never any doubt.
“Felix?” she says.
“Um hm.”
“Where were you just now?”
“Just lolling in the eternal present, sweetheart—the future
face of it. Your future. When you’re a grown-up goddess. You
looked fine, by the way. Hadn’t gained a pound. Nothing to be
concerned about.” I tried to smile her I told you so; there was never
any doubt smile, but felt for some reason looked somehow ironic—
like Daffy Duck. “You’ve never called me Daffy,” I said. “That’s a
good name; I’d like that. I love Daffy.”
She gave me a gentle goodbye kiss. “I’ll try to work it in,”
she said. “But I thought Daffy was gay.”
“I think he is,” I said. “But I don’t see why that’s a
problem.”
“You’re a very brave man.”
She gave me a second kiss.
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I watched the door close behind Gretchen as she climbed the long
staircase up to L’Etoile, and around the time I imagined she reached
the top I realized I was standing in the middle of NOWHERE.
Yes, I was there, on the square, downstairs of the restaurant
where my wife worked, the same square that just this morning had
been the venue for a Framers’ Market we did not attend, but
meaning seemed drained from my surroundings, insubstantiality
reigned.
These were ghosts of buildings, of trees, of buses, of earnest
Madisonians. As I walked away from the door, I gazed down at the
sidewalk, jokingly, to assure myself that I still cast a shadow, which
of course I did. And that, quite simply, the reassurance of my own
shadow, reminded me that nothing around me had changed, but that
I’d gone and done it, that I’d finally stepped free. I wasn’t quite
ready. The closest thing to me was a mailbox, which I bent over
and hugged; it had the same cool reassurance of the stoplight pole
that had saved me from madness only weeks before. A young man,
dressed like a banker or a lawyer, looked at me with a typically
shallow scorn, as if imported from a TV sitcom. “It’s a great mail
box we’ve got here. Don’t you think?” I said, looking him right in
the eye, just what he’d wanted to avoid, and did, hurrying off,
looking down at his shoes as if there were something important
about them he’d forgotten.
My shoes were probably more important than his, anyway.
Half my life depended on my shoes now. Just yesterday when I was
writing those last two poems, there was a bathroom down the hall I
could go to; there were books I could pick up and read, or put down,
or rearrange; there was a bed I could lie down on; there was a chair
whose angle to the light I could adjust; there was a floor to sweep or
even wash. I was enclosed; my options were discrete, familiar.
Now my options were two: to walk or to sit. There might have been
a few others as well; I did have bus fare, enough for coffee or
another pack of cigs, but walking or sitting was what it all
eventually came down to. My new life. And my shoes were in
good shape. So I decided to walk and then sit. Brilliant! I headed
for the Union Terrace, one of Madison’s most popular outdoor
attractions. On the lakefront with its round umbrella tables: part
study hall, part café, part bar, hang-out, place to feed the ducks,
watch the sailboats.
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It was about a fifteen minute walk, and my happiness
quotient (trust in self, plus focus in moment, minus any physical
discomfort) was in the high nineties—wind chill and heat index not
being applicable on this fine September day in the upper Midwest.
The sights and sounds and smells of State Street, that Madison
domain of students and tourists, delighted me. It was the students in
particular whom I loved; I’d resolved more than once that if I ever
became one of those elders who claimed that the music the young
people were listening to was trash, that I’d have myself summarily
incinerated. At one point, though, as I was strolling past a multiply
pierced and tattooed couple at an outdoor table of a coffee house, it
entered my mind that I’d like to write a poem while sitting at a
similar round outdoor table at the Terrace. That foray into the
future was all it took to trigger a precipitous dive in my happiness
quotient (HQ), but my wellbeing was reestablished when I returned
to the immediacy of watching the faces that passed me to see who’d
return my smile. It just goes to show. The poet in me even said
something about that once: “Smiling is wider than wishing is
deep.”
Once on the terrace, I purchased one cup of coffee, which I
drank slowly with my sleeping bag and backpack on the seat next to
me as I gazed off into Lake Mendota with its sailboats and kayaks,
only blocks from our luxury honeymoon accommodations at the
Edgewater. Only blocks, maybe five, but a far greater distance in
light of my new life. During my residence at that table, my solar
plexus was occasionally clutched with the notion of what an ideal, if
not classic, opportunity this would be to write a poem. Maybe it
was my experiences of the last month, but more likely those of my
entire life that gave me the sweet freedom to ignore such grappling
from below: since this was, after all, an ideal, if not classic
opportunity to write nothing at all! So I inhaled, recalling what now
seemed an epiphany of my youth (though it was only a week past)
that inhaling was all I ever needed to look forward to, all I required
to satisfy my concern for the future; that I was an automatic mystery
machine. I stayed there breathing until the first stars appeared, my
HQ soaring..
Before I left, a man alone at the next table spoke to me
through the semi-darkness. He was gazing out over the lake. The
outdoor light behind him made it impossible to see his face.
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“It’s the kind of night that makes you good to be alive, isn’t
it?”
“Particularly when you’re in love,” I offered.
“What a coincidence!” he said, but at that I heard a
woman’s voice call out from some where behind us. “I’m over
here,” she said, at which the man stood up, said good night and
walked off into the night.
Feeling like everything was somehow settled then, I got up
myself, strapped my lightweight burden back on my back and set
off back toward the square. I’d heard I could get a meal at the drop-
in shelter at the church, which may or may not have been true, but I
wasn’t hungry. I was actually feeling full—not with food, though
I’d had a big lunch, but with buoyancy; I was packed to the gills
with it. If there was ever a time to attempt a flying dream while
wide awake, this was it, maybe even ideally so—but the thought
itself brought on a wishing pain in my solar plexus, securely and
uncomfortably nailing the idea down and killing it.
So I didn’t fly, and decided not to go to the shelter. I kept
walking; not far, just over to James Madison Park, also on Lake
Mendota and not far from Gretchen’s house, and the sight of our
first kiss. My plan was to get comfortable there, perhaps lay back
propped up on my sleeping bag and pack, and look at the lake and
the sky until I was tired enough to sleep right there.
Funny how it was, though, once I was settled in my
contemplative position, I found there was nothing I wished to
contemplate, nothing I wished to observe. A memory did pop into
my head, from wherever memories pop, but as far as I could tell, it
came unheralded.
Gretchen and I had been sitting in L’Etoile after hours on a
Monday night. We were alone. Odessa was upstairs in the office
again, and the two of us were talking at a cozy table by the big
windows overlooking the brightly-lit Capitol building on the square.
Gretchen already knew that I loved her, but we were still starting
out.
“What do you think happens after we die?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I think I’m going to like it. What about
you?”
“I think this is it.”
“You mean we’re dead now?”
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“No, that’s not quite it. But I don’t think dead is anything
like we think. It might as well be this. It might be this.”
“Gretchen! That’s not satisfactory! That’s disturbing.”
She smiled, lustrously, despite her still-black eye. “I like
thinking everything’s inside out, Felix. I’ve been doing it since I
was a little girl. It lets me see the truth. That’s how I recognized
you.”
“How? By pretending you were dead?”
“No. By pretending you were.”
But it was a little too bright where I’d planted myself, and all I
really wanted now was to sleep, deeply; and that, I told myself,
would be more easily accomplished in a quiet corner I saw across
the park. So I walked over to a very dark place near some bushes,
rolled out Gretchen’s sky-blue sleeping bag with my nearly empty
backpack inside down at the foot of it—for safety’s sake, just in
case—and closed my eyes.
As I started to fall asleep it occurred to me that I’d been
seeing everything backwards, that I’d been reading a book upside
down, or was it a pillow I was reading? Whatever it was, when read
correctly, it stated unequivocally that it wasn’t my own life that had
been so graciously and lovingly and essentially augmented by
Gretchen, but the contrary.
The story I was living was the story of her, the story of
Gretchen, whose life I was augmenting, whose completion, whose
goals, whose destiny I was helping to fulfill. I’d had it backwards.
It wasn’t a pillow, it was a sweater, and I’d put it on inside out. Of
course! It was such a simple thing; I couldn’t imagine how I’d had
it wrong all this time. I’d tell her as soon as I got back from the
laundromat—but she’d come with me, hadn’t she? Wasn’t it her
laundry we were doing? Weren’t her things what this was all
about? Hadn’t I finally got it right?
The next thing I knew, I’d fallen and was sliding on the ice. It’s
surprising how quickly one can come to one’s senses, though.
There were three of them. All drunk. All frat boys, or would-be
frat boys, big bulky ones, maybe even UW football players. Two of
them had yanked the foot of Gretchen’s sleeping bag out from under
me, and the third one was getting me wet. For an instant I thought
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he was actually pissing on me, but then I knew it was beer, cheap
American beer, even, a bottle of it empting itself on my neck and
shoulders as he howled. They were all three howling, with laughter,
drunken laughter with a piteously unaware quality to it. I tried to
get up then, but the one with the beer bottle seemed to want to hold
me down, ripping my shirt and flopping me over on my face, but
then: “Sorry, piss-ass homeless jerk!” he blurted out, the “Sorry,” I
understood to be referring to my shirt. He didn’t look back as he
charged off after the others who were dragging the sleeping bag and
its contents behind them, whooping and hollering as they went as if
they were dragging the robe of a dethroned king.
“Hey, you stupid, thick-necked fuckers!” I called out after
them, but I didn’t have the inclination or energy to say much more.
Being attacked in one’s sleep is exhausting. I walked down
to the strip of beach, took off my torn shirt and washed it in the lake.
I also took off my socks—my shoes, the shoe’s on which I’d been
relying, were lost in the bottom of the sleeping bag—rolled up my
pants, waded in a bit and scooped water to wash the beer off my
face, out of my hair and off my shoulders and chest. That revived
me some, but when I’d been flopped over, my face had hit the
ground hard and my left eye was now swollen and sore. I noticed
that only when the cold lake water touched it.
Then I thought of the Hindus who made their ablutions in
the Ganges, and everything changed a little. As I continued to
scoop up water and bathe myself in it, my anger, which had already
begun to diminish, evaporated in the cool air. And that would be
my only problem: it was hours till dawn and I might be cold. But I
wasn’t cold yet. I was washing away my sins; or I was bathing in
the waters of life, which probably amounted to the same thing—or I
was washing away the sins of the frat boys; it really didn’t make
much difference. Once I sensed that my shirt and I were relatively
free from the stench of American factory beer, and my soul and I
were free from the taint of my anger and pride, I walked out of the
lake feeling somehow undisturbed despite the probable blackness of
my eye.
I found another dark place by some bushes on the other side
of the small park where I sat down on the grass, my hands around
my knees while my shirt lay spread across the bushes to dry in the
slight breeze. It took a while to find a comfortable way to sit; I had
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to change positions frequently, and eventually lie down with my
head propped up on a little pile of dirt I’d made for it. Before I fell
asleep, I remembered what my friends and I did, driving in that
white Lincoln convertible.
I woke up with the sun, a stiff neck, and a damp but no longer
dripping shirt. It occurred to me then that there was an all night
laundromat just a few blocks away; and there, for some of my
pocket change, I bought myself twenty minutes in an orange plastic
chair watching my torn shirt tumble dry, and people too, and early
downtown Sunday traffic. I also had the opportunity to see my face
in a mirror After the dryer had obligingly finished its work, I found
that my shirt still smelled Miller or Coors or whatever crap those
dolts were drinking: but that one, I knew, I had coming.
There was going to be a lot to tell my wife about: the other
man in love, life inside-out which was her life—and it wasn’t yet
seven o’clock.
I admit I felt a little uncomfortable walking around the city
barefoot with my torn shirt, black eye and stinking like a collegiate
bar, so I lay low, hanging around the park and the student
neighborhood around it where I wouldn’t look too terribly out of
place. Happily, I wasn’t concerned about my embarrassment; I
didn’t blame myself for it; maybe someday I’d get over feeling
conspicuous, but it was too much to expect on the first day out.
And I think is was this, this allowance I made for my own
discomfort, that buoyed my spirits back up to ninety degree range
again—and if, as when calculating the wind chill or the heat index,
your realize that without the ten to fifteen percent embarrassment
factor, my adjusted HQ would exceeded one hundred. Well! Here
you have one unbelievably happy man!
It was around ten o’clock that this happy (though in theory
even happier) man dared to sally forth from side streets and
shadows and entered mainstream life. Disreputable looking though
I was, I walked straight to the Square where I sat on a bench directly
below the second story window of L’Etoile where Gretchen had
been that Tuesday night. Symmetry! The bench was warm with
sun and I listened to the church bells ringing from that same church
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I planned to visit the night before, and which I may be visiting well
into the future.
Since I’d already spent many joyful hours with my then-
future-wife sitting on benches and on the grass by the Capitol there,
the Square itself had become a hallowed place in Madison’s
geography for me. And even though I’ve never been a champion of
ceremony, I decided that since I found myself so conveniently here
on this my first full day of freedom from the demands of the
conventional world, that I’d say a little something to myself to
commemorate the occasion.
A number of things came to mind, some of them words
attributed to myself, and some to others, like the Isthmus Sage. But
none of them seemed quite right; none of them captured the feel of
the time. There was only one thing that did seem appropriate as I
sat there on Sunday morning, and that was what had occurred to me
so strikingly the night before: that I’d been wearing the sweater
inside out; that this was not my story, but Gretchen’s. I was playing
a part in Gretchen’s story. But that wasn’t quite it either. Not that
alone. So what was it? Was it that in the end all difference
dissolves? Perhaps, but then I recalled something I’d written a few
years earlier when I was in love with the poetry of ee cummings. It
was also one of those things I’d written above my means as I so
often did, but it said what I wanted, and it was the best I could do.

For the jewel hidden in the leaves
(Which is also your heart)
Will not have led you here
Until I find my heart as well.
And this is a mystery.
And never again, my fair friend,
Never again in the long sun
Will I search for you, nor you for me,
For I will have found you (you will have found me)
In my heart.
Maybe that explains how it can possibly be that there’s really only
one heart; how my life can really be about Gretchen, because
sometimes, in a very real way, you may also be me, or you may be
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my love, or you may be your own love, or anyone’s love—and that ,
my fair friend is a mystery; a mystery that suits this unreasonably
happy man as perfectly as can be. It’s just fine. Not complicated at
all.
And so, pleased as I was with my commemorative thoughts,
I selected my walk option, stood up and headed off towards State
Street. Once I arrived, I’d walked only a little over two blocks
when I saw Kyle coming toward me with his sign held high:
“THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR”
“I’ll say,” I said to myself as I approached him, wondering

if even he understood that as fully as I now did at that moment.
I noticed that the lamination on his placard had cracked or
peeled off at one place and that moisture must have seeped in,
because the R on APPEAR was streaked and little faded. Kyle was
dressed as usual; his clothes threadbare, disheveled. Not that
different then me—at least he had shoes. His appearance was
typical; his look blank, glazed. But when I approached more
closely, his eyes flashed with a glimmer of recognition—he had,
after all spoken to me; he had even read my poem and commented
on it.
But a glimmer of recognition was all I was in for that
morning, that was clear: perhaps because it was Sunday; perhaps
because the State Street crowd was not typical and he’d drawn more
attention to himself than usual.
Kyle was standing stock still, like a statue, and a noble
one—not so much a Statue of Liberty as a Statue of Functional
Bewilderment. I was standing next to him. Across the street two
people sitting on one the comfortable State Street benches were
staring at Kyle, looking both wondrous and concerned. They
looked familiar. A dapper elderly man and a woman, a little
younger, with graying hair, both on the short and stocky side. I
thought I recognized them from someplace, but having worked in
restaurant business as long as I had, there was nothing surprising
about that—people looked familiar all the time, though these two
seemed to be looking at me as well as Kyle.
285
But also quite close to me, standing next to Kyle, were two
more people whom he seemed to have stopped in their tracks.
These were a tall, thin, patrician looking gentleman and a shorter
but no less impressive red haired woman of brilliant intensity. They
too stared rapt at Kyle’s pronouncement.
Maybe it was because I felt I resembled Kyle that morning,
barefoot and wearing a torn shirt reeking of beer, or maybe it was
because I’d once spoken to him, or maybe because I’d seem him so
many times on the street, but I felt a certain proprietary feeling for
him as we stood there together. So when I glanced back across the
street and saw the slightly bewildered stocky couple still staring
across, I waved at them; and when they tentatively returned my
wave and started to walk in my direction, I called out, pointing up at
the sign, “It’s true, you know. It’s true.” And then turning to the
other couple, who now looked even more astonished by Kyle, and
me, and God knows what else, I said the same thing to them.
“It is,” I said. “It’s true. Thing’s aren’t as they appear.
They’re not,” I repeated, feeling that in saying that I’d somehow
fulfilled my commitment to the cosmos as it presented itself to me
at that moment.
So I left them standing there to work out their own
conclusions, and set off down the street, barefoot and full of
promise—particularly when I saw a “Dishwasher Wanted” sign in a
long established Greek restaurant across the street and just down the
block from Bernardo’s.
That was a great piece of news, maybe even great enough
to break through that only structural element of my day. Great
enough to cause me, impetuously, to give in and call my one true
love before the agreed upon time of three in the afternoon.
Or maybe it was the other way around: maybe it was she
who needed me to call. After all, I had been seeing things inside
out; this was her story—a snapshot of Gretchen as a young
woman—not me. That possibility along with a breakfast signal
from my stomach quickened my pace and sent my right hand deep
into my pocket for the correct change as I approached the phone
booth down the street.
But something told me to look back toward Kyle then, and
when I did, I saw that the couple who’d been sitting on the bench
had joined the distinguished one across the street and both were
286
THREE OF HEARTS
attempting to speak to Kyle, or maybe not, because it looked like
they were speaking to each other, and then it seemed they might be
looking back at me. But I couldn’t be sure, because by this time I
was too far away to tell, and wasn’t overly concerned, because I,
Felix, was as unreasonably happy as any impetuous upper-
Midwestern young man can ever hope to be. That’s ever. It’s as
simple as that.
287
GRETCHEN
GRETCHEN
Gretchen Hollis—Journal entry

9:00A.M. Sunday, September 16, 2002.
When I first met Mr. G. last year, we had a long talk sitting on a
bench in his back yard. He was interviewing me but it seemed more
like we were just having a good conversation. We were talking
about how important it is for there to be beautiful things in the
world. I suppose he wanted to see if I felt that way before he
entrusted me with the care of his garden. I told him that I believed
that beauty had the power to transform people or at least to bring out
the best in them; and he said he agreed, and that he believed that it
was beauty and only beauty that could transform people and bring
out the best in them: beautiful ideas, beautiful emotions, and
beautiful order among things—that beauty could serve as a kind of
“truth check.” I’m glad he pointed that out because it changed my
perspective a little. It also got my attention and made me want to
continue our conversation, and that’s when he said something else,
288
THREE OF HEARTS
something that struck me much more deeply, though I’ve only
recalled it a few times when I was falling asleep or by myself, and
haven’t even remembered to tell Felix about it.
Mr. Guthrie was still talking about beauty, and he asked a
me question that someone had asked him once; he asked if I’d ever
wondered if we were only tools, and that our lives were great
statues, etched outside of time, and that here, as one day follows the
next, we chip away, a tear, a dream, a love at a time—but at statues
of what? Or of whom? And what strikes me so strongly today is
how much that says about Felix, because Felix is no ordinary man.
It’s not just any one of his qualities, but the whole of him and more
that inspires me, and that’s not necessarily tangible or even
something that can be named. He’s chipping away at a magnificent
statue, something invisible, but it’s made from everything I hold
dear: it’s made of honesty, nobility, of romance, of bravery, of great
art. And that idea has an even wider compass, because feeling as
vulnerable as I do this lonely morning with no idea where or how
my sweet new husband is, it inspires me to imagine what it must be
that Felix and I are chipping away at together, what we’re creating
out our brave love; and I wonder what it can be, and even what
effect it has. Our love is so powerful, I wonder what it does, or has
already done.
And that takes me out of myself and makes me feel more
secure. Still, I truly hope that my dear cat-man is roused by another
poem or one of his loveable, unruly passions and decides to break
the bonds of constraint and call me earlier than three this
afternoon—maybe even soon? Maybe even now? I’m no one to
say, but it feels to me like that would put everything in perfect
order, like that would be a perfect end to this little piece of our lives.
289

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A NOVEL BY RICHARD BOROVSKY

WHAT LOVE DOES

“Believing in Mind” (Hsin Hsin Ming) by Seng T’san, Third

THE TOP FLOOR 1

THE TOP FLOOR

I’m flat on my back, contemplating the end of my life, which should

My bedroom is the only room on the third floor. It is a long room; it

THE HORATIO HOTEL

“Hey, Kathleen,” I say, calling her over to the mâitre‘d station

HORACE, THE HOUR KEEPER

There is a desk perpendicular to the back wall of my long bedroom

Having mentioned that my mother was an ardent student of

I’m still at my desk staring out my window when my doorbell

I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by the raised voices of

Except for my monthly visits to my old cousin Lydia who resides in

The long hunt in the sun

I read through it a few times. I printed it out and returned to

The long hunt in the sun

will not have led you here

BERNARD, THE ELEVATOR MAN

What I dream is that I’m Oscar, or someone who was Oscar, or is

When I woke up I knew why Oscar was so angry, or why someone

When I wake up in my chair by the window my right hand is

FELIX, THE ARTISTE

I remember being very, very friendly with some people I didn’t

Humble citizen of the mystery,

Turn for guidance to the stars,

Humble citizen of the mystery,

And I like those last two lines because they’re enigmatic,

Her eyes at the window are filled with a tree

Her eyes at the window are lost in a tree,

Her eyes at the window are lost in a moment:

Pretty fucking good, I say to myself. Sweet and ripe! But

A rose-white city on a distant shore,

I wake up feeling pretty good, maybe because I fell asleep early. I

It takes about twenty minutes to get the reservations arranged so that

THE HOUR KEEPER, INSUBSTANTIAL

On Saturday morning I called my Aunt Lydia to make sure she was

I didn’t know anything about my Aunt Lydia’s past lives, except, it

THE ELEVATOR MAN, AS ROSIE

“Do you ever go out of downtown Chicago, Bernie?” Jolene asked

Jolene and Jack’s cottage was on Crescent Lake the town of

People called me Rosie once I crossed over. I crossed by holding

I pulled my hands away. Then I woke up in the bedroom of Jolene

THE ARTISTE IN LOVE

“You do something to me, something that simply mystifies me,

I was up at seven, with the opening theme of the second movement

And one by one the notes descend

I sat, dizzy, on my hall floor for only another minute before

I spent Wednesday with my books and my calculations, and at night

“THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY APPEAR,”

So I decided to do it. I didn’t see Crescent Lake out my window, all

SEVEN DAYS WITH GRETCHEN

SEVEN DAYS WITH GRETCHEN

Heart fluttering violently at 2:59 PM. Dial again at 3:00

On the brightful tuning of this song

And one by one the notes descend

It does. It plays in pearls. She says she hopes I never

Long walk then, small talk, big talk: restaurants, friends—

Wake at 6:00 AM, feeling like poet. G. is Sleeping Beauty: hair

Though I cannot tell you why,

Like in a love story, I place the poem on the pillow next to

Long day. Awaken afraid. Brood for an hour before G. stirs.