A Gesture Life

7

IT IS THE MORNING of my leaving and who should arrive to pick me up, bouqueted with lilies, but my friend and realtor and the likely future executor of my estate, Ms. Olivia Crawford, C.R.S. She tells me someone from the hospital left a message on her machine last night, to alert her that I was to be discharged today. She is almost certain that Renny Banerjee was the caller, though of course working through a third party, some nurse or assistant with a crowingly high-pitched nasal voice.

I don’t inform Liv that it was in fact I who asked that someone to call — that someone being Nurse Dolly, who is one of those people who can seem insulted by any query whatsoever, and is thus naturally excellent at keeping secrets — not because I’m bashful for having requested her help, but because Liv herself looks deliciously intrigued by the idea that Renny Banerjee might be coming around again, perhaps finally regretting his decision to change every last one of his door locks. I don’t wish to dissuade her from this suspicion, as Renny himself, stopping in on his way home last night, all but admitted to me that he’s been driving by Liv’s office at odd hours, as well as her condominium, to check whether someone else’s car might regularly be there.

Matchmaker I’m not, and yet it gives me a shimmering, pearly gleam of joy to think of the two of them together again. Renny with his flashing, wicked grin and disarming bouts of tenderness, and Liv, of course, just being herself, a one-woman corporation and salvage crew and instant remodeling service, all in one.

“Now, Doc,” she says, setting the immense bouquet on the rolling tray at the foot of the bed. “I brought this up solely for the purpose of letting everyone know how completely recovered you are. I don’t believe in flowers only when you enter the hospital. You need even more lovely arrangements on getting out.”

“From the grand looks of that bouquet, it may seem that I am ‘getting out’ forever.”

“Doc!” she gasps, as if the idea were some awful, blaspheming joke. “You’re always making it seem that I want you gone. Really. You’re so awful these days! And cruel.”

“It’s the hospital, I think.”

“Well, it’s great timing, then, that I’ve come for you.” As she flutters about like a hotel maid, and not looking the least bit odd in her slimming Italian blazer and silk scarf with the stirrup pattern, I realize what it is about her that I have always revered. Liv Crawford is helplessly, perhaps even morbidly industrious. She has already tidied up the room and made the bed, placing my hospital gowns in the plastic hamper in the bathroom and wiping down the surfaces with the used towels. All this because it is there to do, the same way she entered the ruined family room of my house and saw what was needed and lighted up the touchpad of her cellular phone, to call forth restorative good order. She’s come with pictures of the renovations, all disarmingly, exactingly right. In a few minutes she will escort me out and drive me back swiftly to Bedley Run and show me the door to my prime vintage home, every last tint and scent of offending smoke steam-cleaned from the carpets, from the drapes, from the antiqued upholstery of the chairs, the place in showcase, immaculate, pristine and classic condition, appearing just as though I have not lived there every day for the last thirty years of my life.

And I think how strange (as well as lucky) it is that Liv Crawford is also the only person I could have called for such a task, whether I wished to or not.

“Hey, Doc, are these take-home slippers?” she now asks me, lifting a flattened baby-blue terry pair from beneath the bed.

“Whatever you think.”

“They’re sweet, in a downmarket sort of way. You can use them outside, before and after your swims.”

“Yes, I can. Dr. Weil, however, is afraid my shingles will worsen with the chemicals.”

“That’s his malpractice premium talking. He’s not a dermatologist, so what does he know?”

“Physicians must all have broad, sound training.”

“Maybe you do, Doc, but I’m not so sure about Larry Weil.”

“He’s told me he’s a graduate of the Yale Medical School.”

“So what!” Liv cries. “The man plays golf four times a week. Two handicap, or so Renny used to tell me. Now how good a doctor can he really be?”

“He’s perfectly fine,” I say, feeling as though I’ve been his only defender. The nurses have also been harsh critics, as was Renny Banerjee the other day. And yet I’ve witnessed nothing to suggest that he’s anything but a competent, knowledgeable physician. He is a good doctor, I am sure, but not what they call gung-ho, or else inspirational, in the way some are. What is obvious, unfortunately for him, is his somewhat stereotypical physician’s mien, the stiff brush of his manner, the prickly tongue, that put-out-ness that is rarely endearing in a man so young, all of which is no doubt due to his frustration (as he’s often expressed) that he works in this sleepy upcountry hospital instead of in a big-city research and teaching institution with his own lab assistants and grant writers and ambitions of scientific glory.

I remember how I was when I was his age, heady with the quiet arrogance of a newly minted officer, feeling wise and capable and in command of any contingencies. Though not a true physician, I had been fully trained in field and emergency medicine in order to aid and sustain my comrades, to save them whenever possible, fulfilling my duty for Nation and Emperor. And while I was grateful for being part of what we all considered the greater destiny and the mandate of our people, I had hoped, too, that my preparation and training would be tested and confirmed by live experiences, however difficult and horrible; and more specifically, that my truest mettle would show itself in the crucible of the battlefield, and so prove to anyone who might suspect otherwise the worthiness of raising me away from the lowly quarters of my kin and reveal the essential, inner spirit that is within us all. And yet still I have always wondered if training or rearing tells more than the simple earth and ash and blood from which we come, or whether these social inurements eventually fall away, like the moldering garments of the dead, to reveal the underlying bones.

Liv Crawford, I have a feeling, would contend that neither is the case; it is what one does, right now, in the very fact of the act, that she champions. I like to hope that this is not simply the realtor modality. And the right now for her, thank goodness, is the business of getting me home.

“Ready, Doc?”

“Yes, Liv, I think so. Liv?”

“What, Doc?”

“I want to thank you for your efforts on my behalf. I am truly grateful.”

“Don’t start like this, Doc, or you’ll get me misty.”

“But I must tell you. Dousing the fire, helping to pull me out, the house renovations. Your coming today. I could not have asked a blood relative to do any of these things.”

“The office head put me up to it,” she says lamely, trying not to look at me. “She wants the exclusive someday. She’s already written on the board that it’ll be the listing of the year.”

“But you must know that the house would be no one’s but yours to sell.”

Liv smiles, almost shyly, obviously having difficulty with self-admissions of generosity and kindness. Of course she’s known. But she too much likes — and depends on — the blustery cover of commerce.

“You know me, Doc. I never take anything for granted. Not until closing. And even then, I make sure to read everyone’s signature and date. Make sure it’s right on the line.”

“Perhaps I ought to leave it in my will, that you’re to sell my house.”

“You’re being morbid again, Doc. But you know, it’s not a bad idea,” she says, perking up to her old self. She’s able to eye me now. “Of course I don’t have to say that I wish you would live forever. But”—and she pauses—“I do think I’ve made it clear that I believe I’m the agent to list your beautiful home someday, and I hope all the time that I’m that lucky woman. But there’s not a bone in my body that wishes that day to come any sooner than never.”

“I thought sharks don’t have any bones,” says a familiar voice, and I see it’s Renny Banerjee coming through the doorway, a sly expression on his smooth chocolate face.

“Ha, ha,” Liv can only answer, taken aback and also, subtly and obviously, tickled by his presence. This is an expected surprise.

Renny, surveying the room, says to me, “I asked at the desk whether you had left, Doc, and they said they didn’t see how, with all the flowers still arriving.”

“We’re on our way out,” Liv replies tersely, pointing to the giant lily bouquet. “That one’s yours, Mr. Banerjee. If you so please.”

“I please.”

“Thank you.”

We thus march out as three, Liv with my bag over her shoulder and two smaller arrangements, one in each of her hands; Renny hardly apparent behind the lilies; and I ambling under my own power, having already refused two offers of a wheelchair and nurse, the latter walking along with us anyway. I don’t tell anyone — including Dr. Weil, when he came earlier for a pre-discharge exam — about the strange burning in my chest that I awoke to this morning, an ever-angry tingle that feels to be webbing my lungs each time I breathe in tiny, almost electrical bursts. As we first gain the hall, I think there’s a chance I might actually fall down. But I steel myself, for though it would be perfectly pleasant to stay indefinitely (and idle with Veronica Como), I don’t want the messiness of further diagnoses and tests and proposed courses of treatment — in a phrase, the complications of complications. Simplicity seems all, or at least my expectations of it, which are my house and morning swims in the pool and my strolls down to the village, to view all the good people and shops.

At the ground-floor elevator bank, we come out and there is Mrs. Hickey, waiting to go up to the children’s ICU. She greets me with warmth. I ask the heavyset nurse if she’ll excuse us for a moment, and she complies with a hard grunt. Renny and Liv don’t know Anne Hickey, of course, and don’t pause on their way to the automatic doors. They hardly said a word in the elevator, only the four of us in the car, though I caught them gazing at each other quite intently if not lovingly, at least as yet; and so I tell them to go on to the parking lot, where I’ll catch up to them soon, and they exit, murmuring, a mini-procession of my flowers.

Mrs. Hickey is nicely dressed in dark pants and black shoes and a short, woolly red jacket. It could be a church day, from her appearance, though I can see it is probably her attempt to maintain an optimism and order in her days, for both Patrick and Mr. Hickey. She looks slightly haggard otherwise, circles about her eyes, with the pallor that comes from lack of sleep. But she smiles kindly and takes my hand and we sit on a bench in the waiting area.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t come visit before you left. I tried, but you were always resting or with the doctor, and I didn’t want to drop in unexpectedly.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry about,” I say, feeling remorseful already. “I’m the one who’s sorry that I didn’t have a chance to visit with your son while I was here. I could go up with you now—”

“Please, Doc, your friends are waiting for you outside. And I see you’re not moving so quickly. Not like usual, anyway. Maybe you can come back, but only when you’re feeling yourself again.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” she says, trying to reassure me. “Besides, Patrick has hardly been awake the last few days. He’s had much better weeks. I know he’ll feel better soon, and when he does I’ll call you right away.”

“Okay, that’s a deal.”

“You bet it is,” she replies, still holding my hand, and quite tightly. She looks down into her lap, and suddenly I realize she’s crying.

“Mrs. Hickey,” I say, crouching closer to her. “You must hold on as best you can. It will be very difficult, but you have to, a little longer. Your son is counting on you.”

She nods and whispers, “Yes, he is.”

“The doctors will find a heart for him, and soon enough Patrick will be home, playing in the store.”

“I hope James is around for that,” she says, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve. “He’s been terribly angry of late. I haven’t seen him for days, and I don’t know if he’s even been in to see Patrick this week.”

“Is it the money problems with the store?”

“It’s always money problems. But they’re mostly over now. He’s really decided to give up.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s going to give everything back to the bank. The whole building, the apartments, the store, everything. We haven’t paid the mortgage in some months, you know, because of Patrick’s bills. Business has been slow anyway. It has been, truthfully, ever since we bought the store from you. We only have about a month of insurance left. A few days ago we had a fight, and it was terrible. He said he wished they’d find Patrick a heart or not, and I went crazy. I asked him what he meant by ‘a heart or not,’ and he said we couldn’t go on like this anymore, waiting for something that might never come, and maybe not work anyway, with the hospital costing us fifteen hundred dollars a day. I asked him if he really thought that way and he didn’t answer. Then I told him to get out.”

“It was a natural response.”

“I know, but now I wish I hadn’t. Sometimes, Doc, for a second, I’ll think that way, too, but I don’t want to admit it. James has been so frustrated with the business these last few years. It’s never really worked for us. Then Patrick got sick and everything fell apart. We’re losing everything, and I don’t blame James for saying those things. He’s under so much pressure. He was wrong to say it. But even I can’t blame him anymore. I don’t. Am I an awful mother, Doc? Am I horrible?”

“You’re nothing of the kind, Mrs. Hickey.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she says, letting go of me now. Wisps of her light hair fall down over her temples and brow, and from this angle she reminds me of the obituary photograph of a younger Mary Burns, the clear, high sheen of the skin, the tender brow. “You’ve always been kind to us, and I hope you know that I appreciate it. James will, too, someday, when all this is over. We’ve just had bad luck with the store and he blames you for it, though there’s no reason why he should. You sold us a nice business and it seemed like the next day the whole economy went sour. Somehow James has this crazy idea in his head that you sold us a lemon, that you knew the business would only get worse but made out as if otherwise. But even if that were true, I say we should have realized it ourselves, caveat emptor. I don’t know why I’m getting into this except that nothing seems good for us these days, and I guess it would be nice to hear that it’s all a run of bad luck that has to end soon.”

“That must be what it is,” I tell her, not wanting her to think ill of the store. “Bad luck can come but it cannot last, either. I know this myself. You do what you can under extreme circumstances, perseverance your only goal. After the difficulties, you can begin again, but you must put behind you what has occurred. Like your husband’s words, for example. They were spoken under great duress, which makes people most unlike who they really are. We talk of people rising heroically in times of adversity, but I think that’s rarer than we’d like to believe. I’m sure Mr. Hickey is remorseful for his thoughts about Patrick, just as deeply as you are. The task now is to forgive and forget.”

There is silence between us, not so much because I’ve said anything profound or true but that we’ve gone much further in the conversation than either of us had anticipated. We both nod, trying to say how we appreciate the moment, although it pains me to think that the Hickeys have discussed the possibility that I might have made misrepresentations when I sold them the store in a neat and ordinary sale-by-owner. The last thing Mrs. Hickey needs is to wonder if I have had a part in their lamentable slide into misfortune, rather than focusing on the care and well-being of her son, and supporting her deeply stressed husband. With Sunny Medical Supply, I can say that I had no reservations at all of their prospects, except of course their own inexperience in general and Mr. Hickey’s stubbornness in particular. Mr. Hickey can always contend that keeping certain contracts with the area hospitals was in fact an impossibility, given the immense buying power of the national franchises which had recently opened, and that I purposely overstated the relationship and loyalty I’ve enjoyed with those hospitals. But I’ve gone over this ground too many ways, and each time I conclude just as Mrs. Hickey has, which is that not only should one always be wary when buying into a situation, but once committed, graciously accept all realities.

Which, presently, is that I should find Liv’s metallic green Saab and so make my way home. Mrs. Hickey offers to walk me all the way to the parking lot and to the car itself, but I refuse, saying how I’m disturbed that I’ve already taken time away from her son. Again I shudder with the thought of having to see him with her there, her mother’s presence somehow an added burden to me, as if she might spy something damning in my face. She escorts me instead to the automatic doors, and we make tentative plans again, contingent upon this and that, all of it contigent still upon Patrick and Patrick alone, and the sad and peculiar notion of waiting for a heart.

One realizes, of course, what it will mean when a heart does arrive, that another young boy or girl has come to an awful end, and it makes me think again how the conservational laws apply to human beings and their endeavors as well as to energy and matter, and that for us, those laws are often ironical and cruel. I recall Fujimori posting me from Borneo, where he and Enchi had been assigned, writing about our friend’s death. I still have the letter and read it sometimes for no burning reason.

“We could not find much of his body, Jiro. It was simply not present anymore. A corporal found a thumb some sixty meters from the spot where Enchi was last standing, but there had been others who were badly hurt and we couldn’t be sure if it was his. He was the only one killed, somehow. There was nothing left of him. Nothing else of shape, just tiny bits of flesh on the ground and most awfully, up in the branches of the trees. The shell must have landed right between his feet, and he disappeared. The night before, Enchi had been going on and on at the officers’ club, drunkenly, of course, about living here forever in this tropical paradise. He was obviously talking against his fear of death but he was doing so with great feeling and humor, and to a man we wanted to believe him. Later that night, after a service for him and then drinking alone, I walked past the spot. It was perfectly normal, having been cleared earlier. But I heard a rustle and I looked up into the trees directly above, and in the light of the moon I could see the tree limbs filled with small birds, what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of them. They were happily picking at the leaves and branches, and rather than feeling horror for our good Enchi, I began to bellow like a cow, and I almost fell down.”

Fujimori possessed a dark sensibility, which wasn’t always easy for me to appreciate. If I met him today, I’m not sure what I would say to him except to offer the standard greetings and inquiries about his work and spouse and family. It’s not that I would feel cold toward him, but his personality was such that he always made you consider the oddest aspects of events and happenings, and so you never felt fully comfortable saying the most innocent things, for worry how he might interpret or reobserve them. For example, I have to consider how he might cast his eye on me now, after having spoken to Mrs. Hickey and once again excused myself from spending time with her dying son. How might he describe me as I step limpidly across this wide parking lot, holding a fading bouquet of my own? What would he say if I told him I had never married, and that the girl I adopted had decided to run away rather than live with me in comfort? And would he devilishly ask why I had been so careless with the fireplace in my most precious home, as if I’d wanted to bring everything down in a self-made conflagration?

The sun has come out from a break in the clouds, and Liv has retracted the convertible top to her brilliantine emerald car. She and Renny are sitting in the front seats, backs against their doors, conversing civilly and politely, without their usual gesticulations. I slow down almost to a halt, the pace surprisingly comfortable for me, this inching septuagenarian shuffle. This is the first instance I’ve had of feeling my age, which does not seem so beleaguering a notion but rather a strangely comforting one, as if a voice inside me is trying to proclaim, I accept. I accept. It’s the way one relents when walking the last half-mile of a hike in light rain, to taste the sweet of the water on your face, and not just feel its chill. Why senescence should not have its hidden charms….

Renny Banerjee smiles wide now, and though I can’t hear what they’re saying, it’s clear they’re getting along, with Liv extending her hand across the center armrest, drawing invisible curlicues on the shoulder of his bucket seat. The back is a gaudy parade float of lilies and carnations and roses in varying states of bloom and wither. He sees me approaching and immediately gets out and skips around the car, taking my forearm to guide me to his seat. Liv thanks him and turns on the ignition, and Renny neatly hurdles the fender behind her, snuggling himself into the backseat nest of petals and stems.

“So, where am I taking you, Mr. Banerjee?” Liv says blithely.

He answers, “I thought we were going to lunch, after dropping off the Doctor.”

“Who said anything about lunch?” she says, quickly turning around.

“You did, going on about the new decor at Sffuzzi’s. I thought you were sending me a message that I should take us out.”

“Isn’t he arrogant, Doc?” Liv replies, telling me more than asking. She’s ignoring Renny, her eyes set low. “He implicates himself in everything.”

“I’m like you that way, Liv,” Renny murmurs from behind me, a sudden warmth softening his voice.

“I guess you are, Mr. Banerjee.” Liv sighs, backing the car out. She puts it in forward gear and we begin to pull away. “Too bad for you.”

From the hospital to home, it’s a straight shot to the northeast on the narrow, curbless two-lane that snakes in tight up-and-down turns beneath the overhanging trees. The dark green canopy is rafter-like over us, a shimmering, tattered vault of cover. Liv keeps asking if we should stop and put up the roof of the convertible, as there is a fresh edge to the air, the sky depthlessly clear, but it feels so good to me, the rushing air and the speed of the open car and the oaty tang of just-cut grass. I know again why I favor it so much here, how I esteem the hush of this suburban foliage in every season, the surprising naturalness of its studied, human plan, how the privying hills and vales and dead-end lanes make one feel this indeed is the good and decent living, a cloister for those of us who are modest and unspecial.

The road routes to an old divided parkway that is faster and tighter still, and then, in a three-mile stretch, becomes the main commercial route of 3A, the signposted six-lane strip of the town of Ebbington. Liv has been taking us forth at a brisk clip, confidently riding the yellow line, but now it’s halting traffic and four-way intersections and the rattle and hum of engines; though she’s irritated and Renny’s nodding off, I don’t mind the sudden heat and exhaust and crowd. I can’t help but notice, too, that beyond the expansive parking lot to my right, there sits the bulbous, tri-domed structure of the Ebbington Center Mall, its stucco facade stained dark along the top in large, creeping patches, the spindly trees infrequent in the mulched-bark landscaping, the whole thing looking weathered and faintly marine, floating in its blacktop sea.

When it was built, there was much fanfare and optimism, and I remember reading an editorial in the local paper about how important the Ebbington Center Mall would be in bringing new vitality to the area, enticing the shoppers (especially the affluent ones in Bedley Run) to stay here with their money, rather than trek down to the city. I myself received numerous solicitations from the mall management, special inducements and incentives to relocate my store as a “founding tenant,” but even as some of my fellow merchants left the old village, I took heed of the comments I’d casually hear around town from the country and tennis club set, the matrons and well-heeled young mothers, that they never went over to Ebbington and would certainly not start now. This instant, unwavering judging did bother me a little, as it naturally made me wonder what thousand other predeterminations had been made, and kept to. Still, I remained at my spot on Church Street, and proceeded to watch the mall go up and grandly open to balloons and flags and enjoy the initial flush of good business, and then, in good time, settle in to its Ebbington-land destiny of steady dwindle and decline.

This being the place, apparently, to which Sunny has returned.

And so I look there now, with the impulse of asking Liv to turn into the lot, simply to drive slowly past the columned entrance, to peer at the scant activity inside. Originally there were plans for sixty or more shops, as well as a few large department stores like Macy’s or Bloomingdales or Sears to anchor the bi-level wings, but the major chains weren’t interested in a lower-middle-class hamlet forty miles from the city with no major highways running near its borders. So after failed attempts by lesser retailers, there are now huge yellow banners on each end of the building, courtesy of the temporary (two-week) tenants, a clearance “wholesaler” of brandless electronics and a discount Christian bookseller, their wares hastily set out on long, folding-leg tables, with pricing by the bunch. The smaller retail spaces are only two-thirds filled, the square-foot rents now around half the price originally quoted to me. Just recently, the grand indoor waterpool leaked one night and left in its wake a dusty, fungal odor that all the pizza and enchilada and chicken stir-fry of the food court can’t seem to mask. Obviously I haven’t been there since speaking to former Officer Como the other day, and I’m having trouble conjuring my former daughter even setting foot in such a place (self-styled anti-capitalist as she was, or at least, anti — Sunny Medical Supply), much less being a manager of a women’s better-clothing store. And if all of this is true, I wonder now about the little boy who was mentioned by Officer Como, where he is staying while his mother works, and with whom, whether it’s the whole day that he’s with someone else, and again I want to tell Liv to tap her turn signal, get over to the entrance lane for the mall.

But I do not. I just sit quietly in the glove-leather seat and watch as the traffic light turns from red to green, and she lets up on the clutch to sling us forward off the line, and we are running, following Route 3A again as the stores and filling stations and kiosks gradually thin out, the horizon coming visible, the golden, burnished woods rushing back, dense and stately in their towering solicitude as we reach the kempt, rolling country of Bedley Run.

Renny Banerjee, perhaps inspired, too, by the glittering canopy, is talking now about this town of ours. We’re gliding on the narrow two-lane road toward the old part of the village, the edifices of the dark brick town fire station and the turreted stone post office (once a mill) nobly guarding the entrance. But he’s going on somewhat bittersweetly, not at all in a way meant to perturb Liv, who everyone knows is the first champion of this place. It seems he’s had a few displeasing experiences around town in the last few weeks, despite the fact that he’s lived here for nearly ten years.

“I don’t know what it is,” he says, pulling himself forward between our seats in front, “but I’ve been getting the most annoying comments lately, around the village. I’m confused. It seems everyone has completely forgotten who I am.”

“Everyone but me,” Liv sighs.

Renny squeezes her shoulder appreciatively. “Really, though. Have you noticed anything odd, Doc?”

“Not myself. At least I don’t think so.”

“I guess not, for someone like you. You’re beloved. But I have. Even at Murasan’s. Not-quite-funny jokes.”

“What do you expect at that awful smoke shop?” Liv cries out. “They’re a bunch of mean old geezers. Sorry, Doc, but it’s true.”

“I suppose they can be a little acid,” I answer. I myself had been cutting back on my visits to the shop in recent months, as I’d decided to curtail my pipe smoking to one bowl a week instead of my longtime three or four; but also, I’ve been finding that the conversation there, which is usually entertaining and vigorous, has been somewhat sodden of late, as the fellows have been preoccupied with perceived “changes” in the character of the town and area, changes that Renny has obviously been compelled to address.

“Last week I’m there to buy cigarettes, just an in-and-out, and old Harris, who’s sitting in his usual spot in the corner, says something about the millions of new smokers in the Third World. I turned around and he just waited. I asked him if he was talking to me and he said he was interested to know what I thought about the situation. I told him I had no opinion and got my change and was about to leave when he said, ‘People don’t even care about their own anymore.’ Then the next day I’m walking by the duck pond in the park when I approach these two mothers with their strollers. One tries to hide, whispering something, and they quickly turn away like I’m about to mug them or steal their babies. Suddenly I don’t know what the hell’s going on around here. I mean, hey, I want to know, since when did I become the randy interloper?”

“It’s because you’re darker during the summer,” Liv says matter-of-factly, evidently bringing up an old topic of discussion. She turns to me, smiling. “It’s a fact.”

“This is different, Liv,” Renny insists. “And for the record, Liv darling, I’m always this dark. You should know. But it never mattered much before. Now people like Harris and Givens are talking about the ‘direction’ of the town. How the shop owners aren’t like they used to be, your average middle-class Italian and Irish folk. I guess except for you, Doc.”

“I guess so, yes.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t really heard a bigoted word from anybody. Just ‘observations.’ There’s every sort of merchant in town, the Viet people who bought the cleaner’s, the French-speaking black couple at the old candy store.”

“So what?” Liv exclaims. “People aren’t allowed to talk about who runs the businesses in their own town? What’s next, Renny? Will I not be able to even say you’re Indian anymore? Or that Doc Hata is a noble Japanese?”

“Of course not,” Renny answers. “But why this should somehow be of the most interest, I don’t know. Most people could say anything they want in this regard, and I wouldn’t blink. You know that’s always been my view. But it seems to me the mood has changed around here. I don’t know if it’s this recession and that people are feeling insecure and threatened. Bedley Run was never an over-friendly place, but at least it wasn’t completely unwelcoming. Now I’m not sure. The worst part is that I’m beginning to think I should have realized this long ago, and that I’ve been living for years inside an ugly cloud.”

“You can be so dramatic, Renny!” Liv says, guiding us into the old village proper, the shops and boutiques lined up in a comely bend of a row, one of those fine doors once mine. “Two little incidents in the same week and all of history has changed. So am I included in all this business, too, retroactively?”

“Of course not. I’m talking about something different. Try to tell her, Doc. I know you’ve always been happy here but at least you can partly understand what I’m describing, yes?”

“I believe I do,” I say to them, though unsure of why, and now sensing, too, how physically close we three are, even in the open car. We finally pass Sunny Medical Supply on the other side of the street, its window hazy and unlighted, with nary a glint of activity. “It’s true that at times I have felt somewhat uneasy in certain situations, though probably it was not anyone’s fault but my own. You may not agree with this, Renny, but I’ve always believed that the predominant burden is mine, if it is a question of feeling at home in a place. Why should it be another’s? How can it? So I do what is necessary in being complimentary, as a citizen and colleague and partner. This is almost never too onerous. If people say things, I try not to listen. In the end, I have learned I must make whatever peace and solace of my own.”

“But is this a situation that’s okay with you, Doc?”

Liv throws up her hands at this, the leather-wound steering wheel for a lengthy moment subtly playing on its own. “Sure it is! Come on, Renny, can we please move on now to other topics?”

“This one is interesting enough.”

“Okay then. Fine. Let’s look at the Doctor’s situation. He’s not in too rough a shape, having lived in this town. Bedley Run, after all, is not Selma. He’s recently had some trouble, but that was just a little fire. Otherwise, he lives in a gorgeous house in the most prestigious neighborhood, and he’s enjoying the high golden hour of a well-deserved retirement, for having been a business and civic elder and leader. This from anybody’s view. I could argue that in fact, Doc Hata is Bedley Run. He is what this place is about. Not the doctors and investment bankers and corporate lawyers who have ample cash and want sudden privacy and the airs that go with it. Though they’re my clients and I love them, I have to say they mostly have it wrong and Doc Hata has it right. You come to a place like this, Renny; you don’t make it yours with money or change it by the virtuous coffee color of your skin or do anything but welcomingly submit and you’re happy to do so. Because look. Take one look at this street. The tumbled sidewalk and shabby-chic shops. It’s all simple and beautiful and proportional. It has just the right amount of history, which, for the record, is welcoming and not. It’s the place you want to arrive at, forever and ever.”

“I once thought forever,” Renny says tightly. “That’s what I thought, and it was probably because you said it just like that.”

“Everything is still the same,” she answers him, curling her hand back to cup his cheek. “It will always be the same, if I have anything to do with it.”

We glide to the end of Church Street, going past the yarn shop and the bead and millinery store and the cleaner’s Renny mentioned, whose Vietnamese owners I met only recently when I went around soliciting donations for the local boys’ and girls’ soccer league, which I have long and enthusiastically supported. The couple at the cleaner’s didn’t seem to understand, staring at me stonily and wondering why I would be requesting such a thing, to give me money for others’ children to play. I did not attempt to explain how this could benefit them in the end, as I believed it had benefited me and my business, at least in feeling and reputation. The man and his wife, their faces shiny from working the clothes press and extractor, did not say no or ask me to leave; they did not reply much at all, and we three stood there in the heavy, almost tropical, starch-laden air of the shop, waiting for something to happen.

On Mountview Street the trees are just of that color and scale Liv is talking about, and though it has been but a few days, the pleasing bulk and hang of the limbs makes me homesick for what lies in wait over the first rise of the street, and I feel doubly sorry for my carelessness in overstoking the fire. Liv is perfectly right in describing to Renny what store of happy goods I possess, my house and property being the crown pieces. And though it does occur to me as somewhat unfortunate that this should be so strictly true, I cannot help but feel blessed that I have as much as I do, even if it is in the form of box hedge and brick and paving stone. There is, I think, a most simple majesty in this, that in regarding one’s own house or car or boat one can discover the discretionary pleasures of ownership — not at all conspicuous or competitive — and thus have another way of seeing the shape of one’s life, how it has transformed and, with any luck, multiplied and grown. And as we approach I can already see the red maple I planted in the front yard the first days I lived in the house, a mere sapling that has widened and vaulted up to be much larger than it should be, its surprising increase mirroring, I suppose, everything else I’ve invested in the last thirty years — the values of the property itself, the blue-chip stocks I bought intermittently, the store and building I sold to the Hickeys, whatever I put time or money into ballooning inexorably, magically, to great reward. It seems I have always been fortunate to be in a certain provident time and place, which must be my sole skill, and worth, and luck.

Liv slips the Saab gently into the driveway, and Renny lifts himself from the backseat before I can open the passenger door. He’ll bring the bags and flowers, Liv announces, and the two of us will go directly inside. She wants me to see the work they’ve done, she can’t wait to see what I think.

The keys (hers?) are in the door and she swings it open with ceremony. The lights are all on and there are flowers in the foyer and kitchen and on the hall table. There is music playing, an étude of Chopin from one of the many classical records Sunny left behind, its sober phrases leading me to the family room, the site of the trouble. I see there is a neat stack of split wood in the vacuumed and polished hearth, and that the Berber carpet is new and the same top brand as what was there before the accident, the curtains also having been replaced, as has the singed wall board above the mantel. The whole room has been repainted in the exact shade of pastel moss green Mary Burns once chose for me from a special home decorator’s palette book, the window mullions, too, damp-dusted and sparkling, and the tile floors sheened. Everything appears fresh and vibrant but unmistakably familiar, of certain and actual living.

Which strangely haunts, because as Liv Crawford guides me through the rooms pointing out the distinguishing features of the renovations, I have the peculiar sensation that this inspection and showing is somehow postmortem, that I am already dead and a memory and I am walking the hallways of another man’s estate, leaning into rooms to sniff what lingering notes of his person may remain, the tang of after-shave or slivers of soap, the old wool of his coats and leather shoes, the dust and spice of the cupboards. And I notice, too, the spareness of the rooms aside from the major furnishings, the few photographs showing him among groups of five or six in business attire or settings, and none including anyone who looks like him, distantly or otherwise.

This is my very house, my Mountview house in Bedley Run, understated and grand and unsolicitous of anything but the most honorable regard, and despite how magnificently Liv Crawford has directed its exacting restoration, I cannot escape feeling a mere proximateness to all its exhibits and effects, this oddly unsatisfying museum that she has come to curate for this visitation and the many that will someday follow. I cannot blame her, for there is nothing to assign blame about. It is the case that I have not been a man who has cultivated the relations that would make such a homecoming full and sanguine and joyous, and if anything occurs to me it is deep-felt gratitude to Liv Crawford and to Renny Banerjee as well, not only for the work and the ride home and the help with my things, but for the simple fact that they are present, walking the floors, pulling knobs, speaking and moving and filling the house with the most pleasing, ordinary reports.

Anyone, too, can glimpse through the wide doorway how they are lingering over each other in the kitchen, leaning up against the island counter from either side, and though Liv keeps asking to heat up the casserole dish of chicken cacciatore that she’s brought for me, I insist that I can do it myself, so they might feel free to leave and go out together and do whatever they may. Liv and Renny are in their early forties, neither having ever married, and though they’re certainly attractive people, it could also be said that they are approaching a critical time of middle age, when they should make clear decisions about their living situations. Whether they continue to live alone or not isn’t my interest, as I don’t have purpose or reason to hold a general opinion, but I do believe that they should choose one path without reserve and stay to it until the end.

I think the source of my trouble with Mary Burns — or her trouble with me — is that although I had decided to be a lifelong bachelor, I kept finding myself straying in both thought and deed, even so much as wondering aloud to her one night if she should sell her house down the street and move her things into mine. We were sitting intimately in the family room, enjoying, in fact, a fire and our customary pot of tea. When I spoke the words she had to stop sipping and put down her mug. Her usually placid expression broke open first in shock and then pleased wonder, and I knew I had slipped most horribly. In the ensuing quiet I already sensed that cold pitch of gravity and dissolve, as though something was dying in a corner of the room, invisibly and wordlessly. I didn’t actually retract my suggestion, then or in the following days, nor did I repeat it, simply hoping instead for a gradual expiration. Of course, the whole thing did expire, and without further discussion, and almost exactly in the manner one would have wished.

“Hey, Doc,” Liv calls out, in an airy voice provisional and solicitous, “I finally remembered something I meant to ask you about.”

I enter the kitchen again from the family room. Renny is making ready to leave, putting his wallet and keys back into his pockets, while Liv is lifting the white casserole dish into the wall oven. The cacciatore (from Di Nicola’s Deli) will be my dinner, along with a demi-bottle of Valpolicella and chocolate-dipped hazelnut biscotti, wrapped in picnic cloth and tucked by Liv into a wicker basket. I don’t normally drink red wine, but tonight I am feeling particularly curious and unfamiliar to myself, and all I can do is try to recall if I even have a corkscrew somewhere in this house, left over from long past evenings of mirth and company.

“I’ve always meant to ask you, Doc, about the piano in the family room. I had a man look at it to make sure it was all right. It’s a beautiful piano. I see it every time I pop in but I’m always going on about something else. It’s fairly old, isn’t it? I mean almost antique.”

“Yes. I bought it a few years after I bought the house. It was used, about thirty years then, so now it may qualify as an antique piece.”

“I should have figured that you played.”

“I don’t.”

“But I’ve heard you play, haven’t I, Doc? The last time we were all at Renny’s condo, before Christmas a couple years ago, you played a song on his upright.”

“Perhaps fooling around, but not playing.”

“You were playing! You played, and we sang. “Good King Wenceslaus,” wasn’t it? You’re a natural entertainer. I remember you added all these wonderful notes. Everyone wanted you to go on, but you were too modest.”

“I don’t remember playing. I haven’t played at all.”

“You had a bit of the punch that night, friend,” Renny says. “We all did.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Someone may have had to drive you home.”

“It’s hard to believe.”

Renny says to me, “I wasn’t all there myself. Neither was Liv, if I’m right about anything. She was calling herself Party Girl that night.”

“And you were Party Boy,” Liv fake-scolds him, as it seems certain things are coming back into remembrance. “But anyway, you were great, Doc. You just sat down without a word and started playing. That was the first night we ever met, and when you told me where you lived, I pictured the house right away, the beautiful Tudor with the slate pool. I knew we’d be friends. I knew we’d all be friends.”

“Okay, Livvy, let the Doc settle in now,” says Renny firmly, turning to pat me on the shoulder. He does it with great kindness, enough to make me feel a tinge paternal. “You must be happy to be home. I’m glad you are. If you need anything, you be sure to call. I left my number on the refrigerator. I’m sure you have Liv’s. Really, call about anything.”

“I had them put up new smoke detectors, upstairs and down,” Liv breaks in. “They’re hard-wired so you don’t have to worry about batteries going dead. The flue was cleaned, too. It’s all ready to go. It’s a big, old-fashioned hearth and you can build a big fire in there.”

“Too big, I suppose.”

“Well, you’ll be careful, I know,” she says, naturally pecking me on the cheek, though it’s the first time she’s ever done so. She looks as concerned as I’ve ever seen her. “I’ll stop by tomorrow, if you want. I’ve stocked the refrigerator with a few basics but we can pick up whatever else you’d like. You have all your prescriptions?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I know you’ve managed all these years by yourself, Doc, but it’s nice to have a hand after spending time in a hospital. How are your shingles?”

“The shingles?”

“Your condition…”

“Oh, very mild now. I’m recovering quickly.”

“Okay then, we’re going,” she says, gathering her bag and cellular phone and pager, and motioning to the foyer to Renny as though she were urging him, and she says again, “Goodbye, say goodbye, Renny.” Then all the leave-takings are exchanged, the reminders reminded — of the fireplace and the oven and the new locks on the doors — and in a small caravan we all move to the foyer and open the door to the warm late afternoon light and in three breaths they are in her car and they are gone.

Upstairs, in my bedroom, I take off my clothes and change into a pair of swim trunks, the ones I was wearing at the time of the fire misplaced somewhere at the hospital. I fold myself in a heavy terry robe and descend the stairs barefoot, smelling the tomatoey, garlic-laden chicken warming in the oven. Following Liv’s written instructions, I’ve set the timer for forty-five minutes at 325 degrees, and I open the wine (having found a brass corkscrew, a gift from Mary Burns) to let it “breathe,” though this certainly makes no difference to me. The time is just past four in the afternoon, and the leaves are petaling down from the treetops to float across the surface of the pool water like a fleet of tiny, colored punts and rafts. I don’t dive. The water is cool, bracing and fresh as with the first morning’s swim, and I’m surprised by my strength, or the strength the water seems to lend me.

For years I would never enter water that was even slightly cool, being accustomed to the shore in Singapore and Rangoon, the tropical, bath-like waters of the Andaman Sea. In the days before the war began to go badly, my comrades and I would take trips to the beach on our leave days, to swim and play volleyball and eat fresh-caught sea porgies and spiny lobsters and eels. The natives had been instructed to prepare them with a tiny ration of shoyu and the local palm wine, an attempt intended to make us feel comfortable but which unfortunately served more to remind us of Japan than anything else, and our immense distance from it. There was (for the others) much drinking, of course, and then the usual exploits of the balmy, lanterned evenings, singing folk songs at the stars with girls who hardly knew how to speak our language.

I used to swim after sunset on those occasions, the water placid and unrippled as I pulled my way through it. I could hear the laughter and joking of my comrades, and sometimes the strained, rote blandishments of their companions, the awkward attempts at flattery and passion which seemed unbearable to me, sober as I was. But as I swam I sometimes listened for the other ones, those girls who didn’t make much noise or speech, wondering at their quiescence as they lay beneath the palms of the shore, the snorting and grunting of men skipping out over the surface of the water in soft reports. Down the shoreline I would go, in my usual steady crawl, and each time I’d lift my face for air I glimpsed the limp strings of lights and the kerosene torches and the arm-in-arm straggles of youthful soldiers, joyously barefoot on their way back to the base, overfilled with wine and the mercies of fallen women.

Once, in admonishment, I mentioned to Sunny what could happen to young women who strayed from the security of their families, how they would inevitably descend to the lowest level of human society and be forced to sell every part of themselves, in mind and flesh and spirit.

“Is that so?” she answered.

“Yes, it is.”

“And how do you know so much about it?” she muttered, continuing to fold her clothes from the dryer. She had returned from the Gizzi house, to stay only briefly before moving on, this time out of town completely. There had been an incident at the house, a stabbing, in fact, a week or so after I made my visit there. James Gizzi had been the victim and was in critical condition at the county hospital. His friend, the black man named Lincoln, was accused of the crime and had not been arrested, having fled Bedley Run.

I said, “I witnessed many things during the war.”

She visibly paused at the notion, which was new to her, and had to refold a blouse before placing it on her neat stack of things.

“You must heed me on this, Sunny. I have seen what can become of young women. It is often unpleasant. Perhaps even more so these days than during wartime. The newspaper is filled with stories of awful happenings in the city, where girls are tricked and abused. You’re going to live down there, you said.”

“For now,” she answered limply, going back to her laundry. “I’ll probably move on.”

“Where will you stay? How will you support yourself? You’re only eighteen and you have no skills or experience. You’ll need to work. I can’t give you enough money to support you forever.”

“Don’t give me any then. I don’t want it.”

“But how will you manage? I’ve always provided everything for you. I’m not saying this to criticize. It is simply the truth. You haven’t lived on your own. These past few weeks, for example, you’ve been under the care of others—”

“I haven’t been under anybody’s care,” she said stiffly, her voice sharpening. She pulled the rest of her clothes from the dryer in a bundle. “You know where I’ve been.”

I didn’t answer her.

“You were by the house, I bet, weren’t you?”

“I have no interest in watching you degrade yourself.”

“But you came around, all the same.”

“I was in the area and wanted to speak with you about coming back home. I should have known it would be a mistake.”

Sunny carefully balled up a pair of red socks, her face quiet. “When did you come?”

“On just one night. There was a party. But I assume there are always parties.”

“Where was I?” she asked, not looking at me directly. I sensed she was feeling vulnerable, even ashamed, the latter emotion something I had rarely seen in her, and this took strong and sudden hold of me. She said in a far-off voice, “I must have been there.”

“I did not find you,” I quickly told her. “I looked around the house. There were many people, and I saw things I would not wish to see again. But I did not find you.”

Sunny didn’t pursue this line, and I was glad, for although my aim was to warn her of the disastrous life that lay ahead if she departed so young and unsupervised, I couldn’t bear to revisit the scene of that room at the Gizzi house, with the dull yellow lights and the two men and the piqued want of the faces. I had left before being subject to the sight of her being fully embraced, enjoyed by the kneeling man, and yet it was that moment’s picture of her pleasure and enthrallment that lingered with me, the expression she bore for the man who knelt there, the careless, open mouth, the hips turned out, the cord of her neck like an exposed wire.

“You never talked about the war,” she said, now finished with the folding. She didn’t seem to want to leave the cramped laundry room. And there was a willingness and interest in her tone that softened me. This was in the period after the Vietnam War, when the young people weren’t so quick anymore to denounce those who fought, but began to consider the grim and terrible price all involved must have paid.

“It’s strange to think of you as a soldier,” Sunny said softly. “I can’t imagine you in a uniform, with a rifle.”

“I only carried a pistol,” I told her, seeing the chance to engage her. “It was an officer’s revolver, which I never shot, save a few times for practice. I was no good, you know. I never hit anything.”

She smiled at this, freely. “You still have it?”

“No, no. I think it was lost during a maneuver. And everyone had to surrender their weapons at the end of the war, so I wouldn’t have it anyway.”

“I thought you might have hidden it in your closet.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In one of those lacquered boxes,” she said innocently. “Up on the shelf. There are so many of them, I remember. I saw them when I was little.”

“I never showed those to you,” I said.

“That’s true,” she answered, somewhat sheepishly. “I snooped one day. One day, that’s all. I opened one of them, and there was a piece of cloth folded inside.”

“A what?”

“A piece of cloth. I think it was silk. It felt like it. It was shiny, and a little tattered, I think. I thought it was someone’s, or used to be. Like a woman’s scarf, though it was completely black.”

“It wasn’t,” I snapped at her, annoyed by the picture of her going through my things. “I don’t know where you learned to do things like that.”

“I’m sorry, but I used to explore sometimes, when you were at the store all day. I thought you knew.”

“I certainly did not. In any case, it wasn’t a scarf. It was a flag. From the war.”

“Fine,” she said. “No need to get upset now.”

“I’m upset,” I told her, “because what if I had stored a pistol there, or something else dangerous, and you had found it? What if something terrible had happened?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but it’s like you, isn’t it? You’ve always been smart enough to know better, Sunny, and yet you’ve always had to push right up to the limits of others.”

“Here we go, huh?” she said, stuffing her folded clothes into the white plastic basket.

“Yes, here we go,” I answered, following her out and into the kitchen. She sat down at the table, the basket at her feet, almost waiting for my lecturing. This was often her stance, not slamming her door on me or departing the house, but rather defiantly sitting there and half-submitting, too, as if taking medicine from a doctor whose diagnosis she didn’t quite believe.

“I’m happy that you decided on your own to stop living at that house. But you should have come to that decision earlier, certainly, or never gone there in the first place. Your willfulness will get you hurt someday. I think you know this, and yet you persist.”

“I persist,” she said darkly.

“Please don’t mock me. You are eighteen years old and you can show adult comportment and respect, the same I have always tried to show to you, even when you’ve been so troublesome.”

“I’ve been more trouble to myself than to you, but I know you can’t believe that.”

“I do believe that!” I said, my errant loudness surprising both of us. “This is my point precisely. You persist in behavior, despite your own knowledge of what is good for you and what is not. You must have known what leaving here and staying at that house would result in.”

“You don’t know the half of it….” she said sharply, the color falling from her face.

“I know enough!” I replied. “I know, for example, that you were often the only female in that entire place. I know what kind of men frequented there. Officer Como and her colleagues have records on a good number of them. When I heard of James Gizzi getting stabbed, I was almost sure that you had been hurt as well. Luckily, this wasn’t so, but your fortune cannot last for long. This path is reckless, and doomed.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry anymore. I’m out of there, and tomorrow I’ll be out of here. I’ll be on my way.”

“Is that man hiding down in the city? This Lincoln Evans? Are you going to meet him?”

She seemed surprised that I would know his name. She said, “It’s none of your business. And I wouldn’t tell you if I was going to see him. You’d just tell Officer Como, anyway.”

“That man is a fugitive! He’s an attempted murderer.”

“It wasn’t his fault!” Sunny shouted.

“How can stabbing someone in the belly not be his fault? How is this possible?”

She turned away in her chair and for a moment did not speak. Suddenly I felt afraid for her, and she said, “He was protecting me.”

“From James Gizzi? Why?”

“Just forget it.”

I said, “This is what happens when you offer yourself so freely.”

“I never gave myself to that shit,” she said, her voice breaking. “Never. And don’t you say I did. It was his house, but I never wanted anything from him. I never let him touch me. He’s disgusting.”

“What was Gizzi doing to you? Please, you should tell me.”

“It was in the morning,” she said, not looking at me. “Lincoln was out getting breakfast. I woke up, and he was holding down my arms.”

“What are you saying? You didn’t say anything to the police. There was no mention of anything like this.”

“Why would I bother?” she rasped. “Your cop friends all think I’m a whore, and they’d do anything to get their hands on Lincoln. They don’t want to hear that he was helping me.”

“Did Gizzi…did he hurt you?” I asked her. “I’ll alert Officer Como, if this is true.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said, picking up the laundry basket. “It’s over. Nothing like that is ever going to happen to me again. I’ll kill myself before it does, I swear.”

She stood up and hefted the basket and went upstairs. I would have suggested something then, that she stay a little longer before moving on, that I’d be happy to close the store for the weekend if she wished to do some shopping for clothes or other things I might provide for her, but she spoke those last words with such a finality and resolve — like a grown woman, in fact, charged and righteous — that there didn’t seem the appropriate moment and space in which to offer anything myself. I was simply shocked and outraged by what she had implied, but even more, if I’m to reflect fully, I felt the drug of fear course through me, and with it the revisitation of a long-stored memory of another young woman who once spoke nearly the same words.

Sunny stayed that night at the house, though not in her bedroom. I hadn’t touched or disturbed a thing in there, not her many hairbrushes, not her books or records or her posters, in fact I hadn’t even cleaned or vacuumed, as I thought I should wait for her return. But instead of her own bed she chose to pull down from the closet some old quilts to make up a floorbed, spreading them three high in the family room in front of the fireplace. I sat in one of the wing chairs, somewhat to the side of her. She lighted a fire, which she always liked to do, and sat down before the small flame, blowing on it and feeding it with newspaper and kindling. When she was young, she would ask me nightly if we could light one, even when the weather wasn’t cold enough to do so, and often I would oblige her. She could spend hours in front of it, letting her face and limbs grow hot to the touch, and I would have to ask that she move back, for fear of her getting burned. She never wanted to use the fireplace screen because it dulled the heat, and that night of her brief return to the house, she pushed it aside as well. I used to lecture her on the dangers of flying sparks, reminding her that even one fiery mote could set a house ablaze, but she never seemed to hear me, only propping the screen to one side, happy to shield but a small corner of the room.

It is ironic, of course, that I should have been the one who caused a near-conflagration, and put my beloved house in danger. But as with everything else, I have begun to appreciate — perhaps like my old friend Fujimori — the odd aspects of things, unsettling as they may be. Take this pool, for instance. I’ve always esteemed the dark stone inlay, not the painted blue surround that one sees so clearly from the sky when landing in most any American city, the azure rectangles and circles beside the dotted houses. The water in mine appears nearly lightless, whether in bright sun or dusk, and the feeling sometimes is that you are not swimming in water at all, in something material and true, but rather pulling yourself blindly through a mysterious resistance whose properties are slowly revealing themselves beneath you, in flame-like roils and tendrils, the black fires of the past.