A Ship Made of Paper

[2]

Once they were in the woods, the remains of the afternoon light seemed to shrink away.The shadows of the trees—a shocking number of which had fallen over to the ground from the weight of last month’s sudden snowstorm—seemed to pile on top of each other, one shadow over the next, building a wall of darkness.Once, there had been paths through the woods, made by the herds of deer, or left over from the old days when there had been enough money to maintain and even man-icure the Richmond holdings.But the October storm had droppedthousandsof trees and the paths were somewhere beneath them, invisible now.Daniel and Hampton could not take two steps without having to scramble over the canopy of a fallen tree, or climb over a trunk, or a crisscross of trunks, slippery with rot.And where there weren’t fallen trees there were thorny blackberry vines that furled out across the forest floor like a sharp, punishing fog.

The evening was not a success.After Kate’s story about Leroy, the silences became prolonged.When Kate ordered an after-dinner cognac, neither Iris nor Hampton ordered anything, putting Daniel in the position ofhaving to order a cognac for himself, which he feared might create the impression that he and Kate were both heavy drinkers.As soon as Kate drained her snifter, Hampton announced that they had promised their baby-sitter an early night, and it was over.

In the car, Daniel and Kate do not speak.Daniel has the car’s cassette player tuned low.Etta James singing“Love’s Been Rough on Me,”then Buddy Guy doing“HoldThat Plane.”WhenAlbert King’s“I Found Love in theWelfare Line”comes on, Kate rouses herselfout ofher torpor and hits the offbutton.“No singing Negroes, please.”

“Fine.Whatever you like.”

“Are you feeling like Herman Melville, darling?”Kate asks, her breath rich and fermented.

“Am I?”

“‘In the soul ofa man there is one insularTahiti, full ofpeace and joy, but encompassed by all the horror ofthe half-lived life.’Did you have a little peek atTahiti and now you have to go home to your half-lived life?”

Daniel remains silent.He doesn’t want to argue with Kate, doesn’t want to spar with her, to feel the flick and jab ofher.He is content to be driving and thinking about the various little gestures Iris made during the dinner.He thinks about what she ate.He thinks about how she had refolded her napkin at the end ofthe meal and placed it next to her plate, good as new.He thinks about her expression as she listened to the oth-ers speak, a quality ofappreciation and grace, as ifher mind lapped up information like a cat with a bowl ofmilk.He thinks about how she con-tinually turned her wedding ring around her finger, as ifit might be im-peding the flow ofher blood.She had been wearing that perfume that he had come to associate with her—Chanel No.19.Afew weeks ago, in the city, he had gone to Saks and sniffed thirty tester bottles before finding which fragrance was hers, and then he bought a small bottle and kept it in his desk at the office.May I help you? May I help you?The clerks on the main floor had kept trying to make themselves available to him.But they couldn’t help him;nobody could.

“Feel my forehead,”Kate says.“I think I have a fever.”

He touches her with his fingertips and then the palm ofhis hand.A jolt ofremembered love goes through him.The car drifts left, the tires bite at the gravel at the side ofthe road.“You’re warm.”

“I’m dying.”

She closes her eyes and their silence reasserts itself.

”Did you have an okay time tonight?”Daniel asks.As his sense ofguilt increases, his tolerance for silence decreases.He knows he’s just blather-ing, but she did seem to like Hampton.She who likes no one.

“Not really.It felt like work.”

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself,”he says.“You and Hampton—”

“Fuck me and Hampton,”Kate says, and turns her face away from him, as the two-lane blacktop turns into a narrower dirt road that leads to their secluded old house.They drive past a neighbor’s rolling fields, a pond ringed by weeping willows.A pebble driveway leads from the road to their house, and as the stones crunch beneath the tires, Kate opens her eyes.Their car’s headlights shine on the red wreck ofthe baby-sitter’s car.

“I hope Mercy treats children better than she treats her car,”Daniel says.He turns offthe engine;the lighted windows in their front rooms shimmer before them.

“Why did you tell that story about that little boy?”he asks her.

Kate sits up, rubs her eyes with the heels ofher hands.“Did you like that story?”

“I never heard ofLeroy before.I thought I knew about every boy who ever passed through your life.”

“I think what I was saying was Leroy and I could never be friends.”

“Why? Because he was black and you were white?”Despite everything, he allows himself to feel indignant.He thinks Kate’s white south-ern girlhood is asserting itselfin a highly unpleasant way.

“Be glad I didn’t tell the story ofwhy we left NewYork City, how you were scared to death ofevery black person you saw.”

“Why would you ever say anything like that?”

“Because it’s true, you were.”

“My life was threatened.And the people who made the threat were black.I overreacted, I admit it.”

“You were scared to death.”

“Let’s just drop it,”Daniel says.“I’m over it.”He opens the door to get out, but Kate catches him by the arm.

“Ifit’s any consolation to you, the marriage won’t last.”

“What marriage?”

“Iris and Hampton’s.He’s on edge all the time, looking for little slights against his dignity.She wants to live in a world where a little spilled water is just an accident, not an incident.”

Inside, Mercy Crane is on the phone, which she hangs up without a word ofgood-bye as soon as Kate and Daniel come in.

Kate goes up to check on Ruby.Daniel pays Mercy and locks the door.

He goes back into the living room to gather up the half-eaten bowl ofra-men noodles and the can ofSprite she has left behind.He sees something poking out between the sofa cushions—a half-full pack ofCamel Lights, with a book ofmatches squeezed beneath the cellophane.He tosses them onto the table, hoping for Mercy’s sake her parents don’t smell the smoke in her hair.Her father’s a cop and her mother teaches at a Christian ele-mentary school;both are known to be strict and unforgiving.

After clearing Mercy’s little mess, he falls back onto the sofa and lights one ofher cigarettes.When he moved in with Kate, she asked him not to smoke around the baby, and he went with the program and quit al-together.But now he would like to taste tobacco and inhales deeply, blows a smoke ring, and watches it make its way like a jellyfish through a shaft oflamplight.Then he hears Kate’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

“I don’t have a temperature,”she announces.She’s already in her nightgown.

“You’re probably just tired.You should go to bed.I’ll bring you up some orange juice.”

“You’re smoking?”she asks.“You’re actually smoking in the house?”

Just then, the doorbell rings.Daniel flicks the cigarette into the fireplace and goes toward the door, his heart racing, as ifthis might really be Iris.Kate stops midway down the staircase.Daniel shrugs at her and opens the door.

“My car won’t start, Mr.Emerson,”says Mercy.

”Oh no, poor you!”His voice is booming, as would be expected in a man who has just, against all odds, been offered a means ofescape.“I’ll drive you home.”He realizes how eager this sounds, and so he adds,“I’m just no good at automobile repair.Ifit doesn’t involve a gas can or a jumper cable, it’s out ofmy league.”

“I could stay here, ifthat would be easier,”she says.Her voice is plaintive.“I could sleep on the couch.Ifyou wanted, I could make Ruby breakfast in the morning and you and Kate could sleep late.”

“It’s okay,”he says.“It’s really okay.”

For the first couple minutes ofthe drive back to town, Daniel and Mercy don’t exchange a word.Daniel rolls the window down.There’s a faint smell ofskunk in the air.

“I’m really sorry about the car,”Mercy says.

”I hope you can get it running again.”

“My brother’s home from theArmy.He can fix it, for sure.Is it okay ifwe come over in the morning?”

“Ofcourse.”He slows down.There are dark, luminous eyes peering from beneath the trees at the side ofthe road.Deer.You never know if they’ll come leaping into the path ofyour car.

“Both my brothers are in theArmy,”says Mercy.

”So, are you the youngest in the family?”

“Yeah.”She sighs, fidgets in her seat.He can tell:she is getting ready to ask a question.She circles it like one ofthe deer tramping down the tall grass.“What rights does a teenager have?”she says.

“About what?”

“What ifa teenager wanted to move out or something? Do you ever do that?As a lawyer? Sheri Nack said I should ask you.”

“Does Sheri want to leave home?”Sheri is a doughy, dog-collared girl who looked after Ruby a couple oftimes—until Kate started noticing liquor was disappearing.

“Not really.”

“But you do.”

“Yeah.”

They are almost in town now.The houses are closer together.A gas station.A plant nursery.The Riverside Convalescent Home.A little empty vine-covered cottage that once was a real estate office—Farms and Fantasies—run by a guy fromYonkers who turned out to be a drug dealer.And then, the blinking yellow light that hangs on a low drooping cable a few hundred yards from the village itself.A soft rain is falling and the wind is picking up, swinging the yellow light back and forth like a lantern held in the hand ofa night watchman.

“There are lawyers who specialize in family law,”Daniel says.

”I don’t know any lawyers, except you.”

“What is it you want, Mercy?”

“I want to move out.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.I’ve got to get out ofthere, Mr.Emerson.I’ve got to get away from them.Maybe get my own place.Maybe I could be a nanny orsomething.”

“Seventeen’s a little young.Can’t you wait a year?”

“Ayear?”The cold light ofthe streetlamps leaps in and out ofthe car, flashing on her face, with its furious, hopeless expression.

Before he can think ofwhat to tell her, they arrive at her house.It’s a small yellow one-story house, with a steep set ofwooden stairs leading to the front door.The porch light is on and two moths fly around and around it, as ifswirling around a drain oflight.

“Are you all right, Mercy?Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m all right.”

“Are you safe?”

“I’m okay.”

“Ifyou want to come in to my office, and talk about it, you can—anytime.You don’t need an appointment, it doesn’t have to be a big deal.

You can just come in and we can talk.”

“Is there any kind oflaw for me?”

“There’s something called the Emancipated MinorAct.”

She’s silent for the moment.Daniel has for the most part suppressed his own adolescence, and he finds it difficult to project himself into what exactly it feels like to be Mercy’s age, to be in that jumble ofmisery and helplessness, hormonal energy and sheer lassitude.

“There’s case law,”he says,“in which the court has required parents to pay for rent and food for emancipated minors.”

“You mean they’d have to pay for me even ifI moved out?”

“It’s not really my specialty.I’d have to look it up.”

“I guess I’d feel really guilty,”she says, smiling for the first time.

”Guilty? Why?”

“Well, they’re my parents.I don’t want to hurt them.”But the smileremains.

“You don’t have anything to feel guilty about.You have a right to make yourselfhappy.You’re not obliged to stay where you’re miserable.No-body does.”

She nods quickly.She’s heard enough.She opens the door on her side.The light comes on in the car and she glances back at Daniel.

”Thanks, Mr.Emerson,”she says,“really, thank you.”And then, right be-fore she slips out ofthe car she puts her arms around him and touches her forehead against his chest.

Daniel waits until she is safely in her house, though he wonders ifher house is really safe.She opens the front door and waves good-bye, and a moment later the door is closed and the porch light goes offand every window in her house is opaque.

He backs away from Mercy’s house and onto Culbertson Street, the beams ofhis headlights filled with fluttering moths.He turns on the ra-dio, as ifthe voice ofreason might be broadcasting from somewhere on the dial, but there are only love songs, urging him on.

He tries to pretend to himself that he has no idea where he is going next.But after a minute or two, he must admit that he’s heading toward Juniper Street, where Iris lives.All he wants is to look at her house— once—and then he’ll be able to return to his own, he’ll be able to walk up the stairs to the second floor, tiptoe into the bedroom, disrobe, slip into bed next to Kate, close his eyes.

A few moments later, he’s in front ofIris’s house.TheVolvo station wagon is in the driveway;every window in the house is slate black.It means they are asleep.In bed.Together.Daniel’s hands tense, he lowers his head until his forehead touches the steering wheel.Go home,he says to himself.

Yet a competing inner voice also weighs in on the matter, a sterner, hungrier, more focused selfthat he has somehow managed to keep at bay for his entire life, and this voice wordlessly wonders:All around you life seethes, grasps, conquers, and here you are, thirty feet from what you desire most and all you can do is quake, all you can think about is Go home.

He pulls away.He switches on the radio.Van Morrison singing“Here Comes the Night.”

Upstairs, in bed, Hampton sleeps in his customary pose ofnoble death: flat on his back, his legs straight, his toes up, his arms folded across his chest, his fingertips resting on his shoulders, his face waxy and unmov-ing, his breath so silent and slow that sometimes it seems not to exist.

He dreams ofthe train.He is getting on in NewYork, at Pennsylvania Station, presumably on his way up to Leyden.TheAmtrak conductor who directs him onto one ofthe cars looks familiar, a white guy, the guy who is always on Chambers Street selling souvlakis and hot sausages from his steam cart.Here you go, Mr.Davis, the conductor says, gestur-ing to an open door.Steam pours up from the tracks, onto the platform.

Hampton walks through the steam and steps on the train, and he won-ders why the man has called him Mr.Davis.Has he mixed him up with somebody else, or is that just the conductor’s idea ofa black name?

In the dream, Hampton is wearing a Hugo Boss pin-striped suit, a Burberry raincoat, with the lining, a scarf, gloves.The train is hot.Every-one else is dressed for summer;most ofthem seem to know each other.

Perhaps they are some club on their way to a lake somewhere.He is sweating.He feels sweat in his eyes, feels it rolling down his ribs.Oh my God, he thinks, and presses his elbows in, as ifhis armpits were the source ofthe most terrible stench.He scans the aisle for an empty seat.

And he notices a few rows to the rear a couple ofblack men, real back-country, old school all the way, one dressed in overalls, the other in a yel-low velvet double-breasted suit and a purple shirt.They are passing a bottle ofbeer back and forth and laughing at the tops oftheir voices.

Hampton does not even want to make eye contact with them, but they make it impossible for him to ignore them.Hey, man, come on over,says the one in the velvet suit, and Hampton has no choice but to march over to them and say,You’re not just representing yourself on this train, you know.And as soon as he says this, he notices his mother, sitting primly on the other side ofthe aisle, with her hands folded onto her lap.She purses her lips and nods, as ifto commend his job well done.

Next thing, the train has started and he is sitting beside a white woman, who seems to have moved as far from him as the seat will allow.

She leans against the window as ifthe train has taken a sharp turn.He continues to keep his elbows pressed against his ribs.He thinks,I wish they’d turn the air conditioning on,but not only is the air conditioning not working but the reading lights are sputtering offand on.He looks out the window.They have left the tunnel.The late afternoon clouds lie along the horizon like broken stones, red, orange, dark blue.The river is dark lavender, the prow ofa rusting tanker parts the waters in a long lumi-nous chevron.Beautiful, beautiful,he thinks.And then he says to the white woman,My stop is an hour and a half from here.She smiles at him grate-fully, she knows he is trying to reassure her.I’m just going to close my eyes for a few minutes,he says.She looks at him, and then shakes her head.Is she warning him not to?

And then he sees Iris.Like everyone else, she is dressed for warm weather.She is wearing a sleeveless blouse, shorts, sandals.She is walk-ing right past him, carrying a bottle ofclub soda and a bag ofpretzels from the refreshment bar.Somehow, he knows he must not say anything to her.She sits in a seat three or four rows back.She is traveling with a white man, who looks familiar.He takes the bag ofpretzels from her, tears them open, but before either ofthem can eat one ofthem they begin to kiss, passionately.First one long kiss and then another and now the white guy is practically climbing on top ofher.Desperate, Hampton turns to the woman next to him.Get a load of that,he says to her.And as soon as he says this to her, she claws at his face with her long fingernails.

He awakens, frantic with confusion and anxiety.He is not used to nightmares;normally, he isn’t even aware ofhis dreams.It takes him a mo-ment to realize that he is safe, at home.He props himself up on his elbow to guard against falling back to sleep—that world, that terrible dream world ofthe train is still there, waiting for him to tumble back in.He forces his eyes open, looks to Iris’s side ofthe bed.It’s empty, the sheet in her space is cool.He is about to call out to her but then he sees her, stand-ing at the window.She is wearing a baggy pair ofmen’s boxer shorts and a once-redT-shirt from which most ofthe color has been bleached.

There is a glow out there, rising up from the headlights ofa car.

”Iris?”says Hampton.

She turns quickly.“You’re awake,”she says.

The light in the window is caught in the back ofher hair.He can’t make out her features, but he senses from her voice and posture that he has interrupted her, or startled her.“Who’s out there?”he asks her.

“No one.”She turns, looks out again, as ifto check her own story.

“No one.”

“I just had a nightmare,”he says, reaching his hand out to her, beckoning her to bed.He knows that he should not be so commanding—Iris has even told him as much—but the gestures ofthe favorite son, the always-sought-after man, come from the deepest part ofhim.To change these things would be like changing his voice, it would take constant vig-ilance.She finds him arrogant, but he doesn’t feel arrogant.It just seems to him that his being found attractive is a part ofthe natural order of things, and when Iris resists him, or is slow to respond, it irritates him, not because he is a potentate and she is his lowly subject, but simply be-cause a mistake is being made.

The sight ofthose long, outstretched fingers illuminates Iris’s nervous system with a rage that ignites like flash powder.She wonders ifshe ought to hold her ground or go to him.Sometimes she has the energy to resist him, but each time she does she enters into the conflict with the knowledge that it will extend through the night.

Hampton switches on his reading light.His cranberry-colored pajamas are streaked with night sweats.He sits up straighter, arranges his pil-lows, and then reextends his reach for her.

“Are you okay?”she asks.

He pats the sheet on her side ofthe bed, indicating where he wants her to be.Sometimes she thinks about the men who have wanted to go to bed with her and whom she refused, the good men, handsome, clever, large-hearted men, and how strange it is that life would deliver her to this point:treated like a little dog who is being beckoned to hop up onto the sofa.

Okay, ifthat’s how he wants it.She bounds across the room, leaps onto the bed, falls forward onto her hands and knees, facing him.Then, completing her private joke, she lets her tongue hang out and she pants.

He counters with excruciatingly contrived tenderness.He strokes the side ofher face.“We have to sleep,”he whispers.

This is night language, code;somewhere in the blind, improvised journey ofmarriage, sleep has come to mean sex.It has come to mean let me lose myselfwithin you, let me begin the fall into the silent heart ofthe night between your legs.“Are you tired?”has become an invitation to make love;a loud yawn and a voluptuous stretch ofthe arms are sup-posed to function the way once upon a time his coming behind her and pressing his lips against the nape ofher neck did.

She continues to pant like a dog, until his frightened, confused expression is replaced by a frown.She takes her place beside him.She lies flat, she feels her blood racing around and around, as iflooking for a way to leave her body.Each time it makes its orbit around her, she feels warmer and warmer.

“I can hardly wait for you to finish your thesis and for us all to move back to NewYork,”Hampton says.This is meant to be a kind ofsweet talk, signifying that he misses her, that he cannot carry much further the burden oftheir weekly separations.But Iris knows what he isreallysay-ing:I hated those people tonight.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,”she says.She’s tempted to go back to pretending to be a dog, but she thinks better ofit.She feels his long, hard fingers closing around her hand.He lifts her right hand and very care-fully, emphatically, ceremoniously places it on his penis, and then he presses down on the back ofhis hand and lifts his hips up, as ifrespond-ing to her, though he is only responding to himself.

She pulls her hand away from him—but before he can complain, she rolls over, drapes her leg over him.Lifting herselfup on her elbow, she looks down at him and says,“Pretend you’re raping me.”

“What?”

“Don’t hit me or anything, but rape me, really really rape me, tear my clothes offand force yourselfinto me.”

“Are you serious?”

She nods yes.

”Iris,”he says, in a fatherly, admonishing tone.But her request has already had its effect on him.His hardness feels urgent, brutal.He grips the band ofher shorts, gives it a tug, waits to see what she will do.

Iris rolls onto her back, she lifts her chin, closes her eyes.She is about to be erased, obliterated, but on her own terms.

“Who should I be when I do this?”he asks.His throat is dry, his voice has a small fissure running through it.

She feels herselfsoftening at her center, the way a peach will ifsomeone has dug their thumb in, softening, beginning to rot.“You’re just you and I’m me,”she says.

“This is strange,”he says.

”Shhh,”she answers.“Come on.It’s all right.”

She has a sense ofhim as completely under her command.She is controlling the situation, him, the night belongs to her at last.But then he surprises her.He tugs her boxers down, fast, with something expert and irrefutable in his movement—just one long pull and they are around her knees.And then before she can even take a breath he turns her over swiftly and a little cruelly, and then the weight ofhim on top ofher presses her nose and mouth into the mattress and all she can think is, Jesus, he is really going to do this to me.

Daniel comes home, closes the door quietly behind him, and tiptoes with exaggerated care across a minefield ofsqueaking floorboards.He is like the henpecked hubby in a cartoon, sneaking back home after a night’s carousing.He sits on the steps, takes offhis shoes, and ascends to the sec-ond floor in his stockinged feet.

Knowing it will only increase his agitation, in some hapless way courting the self-torture, he looks in on Ruby.His love for Kate’s child has taken on the harrowing qualities ofa crime in the planning stage.She is the night watchman in a store he is going to rob, she is going to be in harm’s way.He has a dream ofhis own happiness, and ifhe is lucky enough to one day attain it, bold enough to seize it, man enough to keep it, that joy will be paid for, at least in part, in Ruby’s tears.

Her bedroom is so dark he cannot see her, but he hears her slow breathing.He feels a kind ofthud in the center ofhis consciousness, as if he has just knocked something down to the carpet in the dark.

As he feared, Kate is waiting for him, fiercely awake.Her pillows are stacked up to support her back and she rests her head against the wall, exactly in the center ofthe bedposts.She has wrapped her arms around her chest and she flutters her fingers on her upper arms.Instinctually, his eyes scan her bedside table:a stack ofbooks, a little tape recorder for the taking ofher own dictation, a little blue Chinese bowl holding a United Airlines sleep mask and foam rubber earplugs, and—what he was look-ing for and what gives him the sour pleasure ofa hypothesis con-firmed—a bottle ofzinfandel, in which she has made quite a dent.

“I’m sorry,”she says.

”For what?”

“For giving you a hard time, in the car.”It seems she means to be somehow repentant, but her words are delivered with a little tremor of sarcasm on the edge, though he is not sure who is being mocked—he for being so touchy, or she for behaving badly?

“It’s all right,”he says.“It’s fine.”

“I had no right.”

“It’s okay.It’s just…youknow.Talk.”He feels as ifhe is evading her conversation, she is the bull and he is the matador.

“I would like to apologize,”she says, her eyes narrowing.“And I would like you to accept my apology.”

“You did nothing and said nothing that needs an apology.”

She shakes her head, amazed at the depths ofhis treachery.

”You won’t even give me that?”she asks.

”I wouldn’t know what I was giving.I really have no idea what this conversation is about.”

She takes a deep breath, pours herselfa little more wine, a scientifically minute portion that splashes at the bottom ofher tall glass.“Daniel, I have this terrible feeling about you.No, sorry, not about you.Sorry.

But about what’s happening to you.”

“It’s late,”he says.“I’ve had a long day, we both have.Tomorrow’s Saturday, we can talk tomorrow.”He has peeled offhis socks and now he is stepping out ofhis trousers.For a briefmoment he has allowed himself to wonder what it would feel like ifhe were getting undressed to get into bed with Iris Davenport, and now that the thought has presented itself he cannot get rid ofit.It just flies around and around within him, like a bird that can’t find the window that let it into the house.

“It’s already tomorrow and I want to talk now.It’s no big deal, I just want to ask you a question.Is that all right? One teeny-tiny question? Or maybe not teeny-tiny, maybe more medium-sized.”

“You’re sort ofloaded, Kate.”

She doesn’t mind his saying this.“Do you believe in love?”

“I don’t know.No.Yes.I don’t even know what you mean.”

“O.J.believed in love.Even though he’s lying about killing his wife, in his heart he knows he did it, and he might even think he did it for love.”

“I don’t believe in killing, ifthat’s what you mean.”

“You know,”Kate says, pouring herselfmore wine, less judiciously this time,“people think thatloveis what’s best in each ofus, our capac-ity tolove,our need forlove.They think love is like God, and they wor-ship their own feelings oflove, which is really just narcissism masquerading as spirituality.You understand? Ifwe say that God is love, then we can say that love is God, and that gives us the right to all these chaotic, needy, lusting, insane feelings inside ofourselves.We can call it love,and from there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to calling it God.But here’s a thought.What ifGod isn’t love?And love isn’t God?What ifall those emotions we call love turn out to be what’s really worst in us, what ifit’s all the firings ofthe foulest, most primitive part ofthe back brain, what ifit’s just as savage and selfish as rage or greed or lust?”

“I don’t know, Kate.It sounds sort ofcounterintuitive.”

“Intuition?What is that?We intuit what we want to intuit.We never intuit things that are against our interests and desires.Maybe intuition is just one ofthe many ways we have ofelevating desire, making it some-thing mystical rather than base.Did you ever think ofthat?”

“No.”

“Love has become some insane substitute for religion, I think that’s what’s happened.And in this country it’s pounded in on us at all times, every radio station, everyTV station, all the magazines, all the ads, everywhere, it’s like living in a theocracy, it’s like living in Jordan and people are shouting out lines from the Koran from the top ofevery mosque.Love, love, love, but what they’re really saying is:Take what you want and the hell with everything else.We’ve even changed the Bible to go along with this new religion.When I was a kid, people used to read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as being about charity—it used to be faith, hope, and charity, remember charity? the humility ofthat?—but now they’ve changed the translation and it’s not charity at all, it’s love.

Big old encompassing love, spreading all over everything like swamp gas.

Love is like a crystal ball, you gaze into its cracked heart and you see what you want to see.It’s really scary.It feels like the whole culture has gone insane.”

Daniel is sure that the best thing would be to remain silent, he has recited to himself his own domestic Miranda rights, but he cannot resist saying,“I haven’t gone insane, Kate, ifthat’s what you’re implying.”

“I know you haven’t, and I don’t think you will.I really feel as ifI’ve found a kindred spirit in you.And this isn’t intuition, or some mystical crapola about our being cosmic twins, or that it was written in the stars, because, let’s face it, that’s not how life is, life’s a bunch ofaccidents, senseless.We improvise, we keep it together.But with you, it’s more.It feels nice.And that’s why ifI were a betting woman, I’d put my money on us.I think we’ll always be together.”

He’s silent.Surely she doesn’t expect him to comment on this.

”We may have our hard times,”Kate says,“and we may have to take breaks from each other, maybe long breaks.But I don’t think we’ll ever be free ofeach other.And not because we’re the most romantic couple in the world, or anything like that.It’s a mysterious connection, a fuck-ing mystery…”She laughs.“Or a not-fucking mystery, or maybe a fucking-once-in-a-while mystery.Who knows? But I was sure ofit from the first time I met you, I just never told you.”

She’s silent and Daniel realizes he must say something.“Really?”

“Yes.I thought to myself, I’m never going to get away from this guy.”

“Did you want to?”

“And then I thought, And he’s never going to get away from me.”She rolls away from him but then slides over, pressing her hindquarters against his hip.“And I feel even stronger about it now.I just feel so grate-ful.I’ve got you, and Ruby, and my talent, and what’s left ofmy looks.”

She presses herselfharder against him.“I know what you’re thinking.

She’s drunk, she’s drunk.Once again.But I’m not.I was, maybe.Back at the restaurant, with those terrible people.But I’m sober now, and mean-ing every word.I couldn’t get drunk ifI tried.”

“Have you been trying?”Daniel asks.

He regrets saying it.It sounds so put-upon, so long-suffering.But the words are out, there’s no way to take them back.He waits for her reply, already devising how he will defend himself.But the plans aren’t necessary.He has not hurt her feelings, he has not irritated her.She is breathing deeply, and a few moments later her breaths deepen with a lit-tle aural fringe ofsnore.

Outside, an owl screeches in triumph.From farther away comes the manic whoop ofcoyotes.The colder it gets outside the more the crea-tures ofthe night seem to celebrate their catches, the triumph ofhaving survived another season.The world belongs to those who can satisfy their hunger.The rest are food.Even the stars in the sky shine out the story oftheir own survival.