Stone Junction

Four: FIRE

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

—Shakespeare, Macbeth IV.i

The mind is a full moon rising in a warm spring rain.

Daniel felt lighter and lighter and lighter, despite the rain soaking his buckskins, despite the Diamond in his sack that seemed to be gaining an ounce every fifteen minutes, lighter and lighter until he thought he might actually rise with the moon. He stood where his ride from the Reno Shell Station had left him. The old guy had apologized for not being able to invite him for the night, but space was cramped what with the granddaughter and all, and Ma wasn’t much on strangers.

Daniel had been sorry, too. The granddaughter was no toddler but a drop-you-to-your-knees smoldering redhead about nineteen years old. Daniel had gathered from the old guy’s brief conversation while waiting for the women to return from the restroom that she had been sent to her grandparents’ desolate ranch because she’d gone boy-crazy in Santa Rosa. Twice in the course of the ride he’d pressed his hand against the cab’s rain-streaked rear window in an unconscious attempt to touch her hair. He’d been sorely tempted to vanish, go sit on the dashboard, and just watch her. He’d resisted, cursing his strength.

Now, as he watched the moon rise, he tried to imagine what she was feeling miles away, and he received a sensation of alien pleasure, the friction between pressed thighs as the old truck seat vibrated down the dirt road. The sensation made him feel lighter yet.

Blinking against the rain, he watched the blurred moon rise with a majestic inevitability so erotic he wanted to vanish. He sensed a powerful and mutual receptivity slowly opening in the warm, moonlit rain, a rain so warm for a Nevada April the old guy had said he damn near couldn’t believe it. Daniel believed it. Daniel believed if he vanished he could rise with the moon, float up through the top of his skull and join the moon’s constancy, its fastness, its light. He was gathering himself to vanish when a low sexual growl snapped his focus.

The cardinal Porsche shot past in a blink, but one blink was sufficient for a glimpse of the striking woman at the wheel. Stop, he thought, as the rain-smeared glow of taillights faded.

When the car was almost out of sight, he caught the sudden brightness of brake lights. Daniel ran toward the car, hoping his glimpse of her hadn’t been some rain-blurred moonlight mirage.

The mind is a mirage with real water.

When he reached the passenger door and bent to look inside, her loveliness took his breath away. The door was locked.

She leaned across the seat – to unlock it, he hoped – but only rolled the window down a crack.

She examined him a moment then said, ‘Are you Jim Bridger?’

She might as well have said, You’re in love with me now.

‘No ma’am, I’m not,’ Daniel said with the drawl of an old beaver- trapper, ‘but I knew the Bridger boy when he was greener’n a mountain meadow. Fact is, he an’ that worthless John Fitzpatrick left me in the mountains to die. I’d gotten chawed on somethin’ pitiful by a she-grizzly. The Mountain Code is to stay till you’re sure, but the Bridger boy and that Fitzpatrick fool was in a tizzy about some marauding Indians nearby, so they left me for dead. That wasn’t so bad, but they took my rifle and my possibles with ’em. Had to live on what the wolves left on buffler carcasses, and had to fight the damn buzzards for that. Had a broken leg and back tore raw, so I had to go it on my hands and knees. Made pads out of dried buffler hide. Two hundred fifty miles to Fort Kiowa and the only thing that kept me going was revenge. You shoulda seen that Bridger boy’s face when he spied me crawling through the gates, like I was nightmare turned real, come to collect.’

The woman bent closer to the crack in the window. ‘Did you kill him?’

Daniel, bending close to hear the question, caught the scent of cinnamon on her breath. ‘No, ma’am, I didn’t. Revenge is a powerful lure till it’s time to pull the trigger. Then it’s thin justice, weak murder. Don’t get me wrong, now. I didn’t kill ’em, but I didn’t forgive ’em either. Well actually, I forgave the Bridger boy some. He was a tenderfoot, hadn’t grasped the fine points of the Code. He went on to be a genuine mountain man. Ol’ Gabe – that’s what he come to be called. Fitzpatrick, though, he stayed worthless, and unforgiven.’

The woman said, ‘When was this?’

Daniel squinted up at the moon. ‘Musta been eighteen forty-five, forty-six – sometime close.’

‘That was a hundred and forty years ago.’

Daniel smiled at her. ‘Only if you keep track real close.’

‘But you couldn’t have been alive then.’

Daniel squatted so they were at eye level. He said, with careless conviction, ‘Ma’am, I can be whoever I want to be as long as I know who I am.’

‘Get in,’ Jenny said, unlocking the door.

Daniel obliged.

Jenny watched him as he slid in and settled, then asked, ‘Do you know the DJ? Guy on the radio?’

‘Ain’t much for this modern stuff, but I did hear a guy named David Janus on a program called “Moment of Truth,” all about the mind, and this David Janus sounds like he lost his oars in some swift water, if you follow my drift.’

‘What did he say about the mind?’

Daniel, taken aback, was slow to reply. ‘Lots of things, but I guess the nut of it would be that the mind is everything you can think about it.’

Jenny nodded. ‘The DJ. When did you hear him?’

‘Let’s see. Two nights back, comin’ into Reno.’

‘I knew he was around,’ Jenny smiled. ‘I’m supposed to meet him at Jim Bridger’s grave in eastern Wyoming.’

‘You might find a Fort Bridger there around the Green River, but they didn’t bury ol’ Gabe where he belonged. Shipped his body home to Saint Louie. I don’t know, but I think it’d be hard to rest easy on city ground. All that bustle and traffic and chatter.’ This piece of information from his youthful reading had particularly moved him.

Jenny looked at him appraisingly. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Name’s Hugh Glass, ma’am.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jenny said. ‘Take off your foxy cap.’

Daniel removed it, turning to face her.

They looked at each other, both afraid they were going to start trembling.

Jenny said, ‘You’re a kid like me, barely twenty.’

‘My name’s Daniel Pearse.’ He felt light-headed speaking his own name.

‘I’m Jennifer Raine,’ Jenny said. ‘Susanna Rapp if anyone should inquire.’

‘Am I to take it we share outlaw status in the culture at large?’

Jenny cocked her head, smiling, the rainbow tassel on her hat sliding across her left shoulder. ‘And am I to take this radical change in diction and voice as an indication of candor?’

‘Please do,’ Daniel said.

Jenny said, ‘I’m not sure what I am. I escaped from a mental hospital in California and won about two hundred thousand dollars last night on three rolls of the dice and here I am, no longer sure where to go. But it’s odd – just before I saw you staring at the moon, I was thinking about what I am. Not who – I’ll be working on that one for a while – but what. What I am. For now I’m an apprentice poet and I’m a Lover of Fortune. Not a Soldier of Fortune. A lover. And I suppose that’d make me a borderline outlaw.’

‘You forgot something else you are,’ Daniel said.

Cautiously, Jenny said, ‘What?’

‘A mother. Unless you’ve kidnapped that child bundled in back.’

Jenny stared at him, stunned by terror and relief.

Afraid he’d offended her, Daniel said quickly, ‘If you’re offering me a ride – and I want you to – let’s agree to respect necessary secrets.’

Jenny reached over and lifted his left hand into hers, pressing it softly between her palms. ‘She’s my daughter,’ Jenny said huskily, ‘but Daniel – she’s imaginary. She’s my imaginary daughter. How can you see her?’

‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. He thought he would faint. She squeezed his hand harder. ‘I saw her swaddled in that lovely blanket when I got in the car and I still see her now. Certainly I have a strong imagination, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before.’ Then he remembered that he could see a spiral flame inside the Diamond when he was invisible, and added, ‘Well, there is one similar.’

‘You can imagine my imaginary daughter? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. But probably only because you let me.’

Jenny released his hand and reached for her door handle. As she opened the door, she glanced back at Daniel and said, ‘C’mere, sailor.’

He followed her about twenty yards away from the car into the scrub-sage desert. She told him to stop. He did. She walked another ten yards then turned around to face him. She kicked off her four-leaf clover shoes. Took off her hat and shook her dark blond hair, the color of sugar just before it burns. She said, ‘Tell me what you see,’ and turned around, deftly unzipping her dress down the back, gracefully shedding it with a wiggle of her hips.

Over her shoulder Jenny said urgently, ‘Daniel, what do you see?’

‘I see,’ Daniel began, his voice quavering, ‘a scar at the base of your spine, shaped like a lightning bolt, and I see a beautiful woman, her shoulders wet with rain, who I want to hold in my arms so bad I can’t keep my voice from shaking.’

Jenny turned around.

If it weren’t for the Diamond’s weight, which seemed to be gaining an ounce every five minutes now, Daniel would have lifted off the earth. He watched her delicately touch herself, the moonlit whiteness of her exposed inner thigh, rain dripping from her tight nipples. He saw the nakedness beyond her flesh. Her eyes promised what they might know together: fearless hunger, fearless trust. He wanted to meet the offer with all of himself, heartbeat to heartbeat, breath to breath. Though he felt his assent with a serene clarity, light without shadow, he was speechless.

Jenny wasn’t. She nodded toward the Porsche and told him, ‘Bring Mia’s blanket.’

When Volta arrived home he cleared the living room of every stick of furniture except a long low maple-top table and a cushion to sit on while he worked. He put the goldfish’s bowl directly in his line of sight on the far side of the table. He finished listening to various messages – nothing urgent – and turned off the tape deck. He gathered a pen and pad of paper and began to compose his letter of retirement from the Star. The tiny goldfish was darting wildly around the bowl.

On impulse, Volta leapt up and ran to his bedroom. He returned a few minutes later, wearing only his old magician’s robe, indigo silk randomly patterned with small golden stars, the phases of the moon emblazoned on the back and up each sleeve. He sat cross-legged on the cushion and cupped the goldfish’s bowl in his hands. The goldfish was circling around the glass edge of the bowl, but now less frantically. The fish kept slowing as Volta watched. With a flick of its tail, it swam to the center of the bowl and stopped, suspended, fins barely shimmering. Volta could feel the Diamond grow denser in Daniel’s mind.

The mind is the light of the shadow it seeks.

When they finished making love, Daniel and Jenny rolled onto their backs on the blue silk comforter and let the light, warm rain fall on their bodies. Daniel had never felt so clean.

A half hour later, without a word, they began gathering their soaked clothes. Jenny shook the rainwater off her straw hat. The unraveled cascade of rainbow threads was plastered into a dull rope. She took the silk between her circled thumb and index finger and stripped it from soaked to damp with a smile that snared Daniel in its sweet contentment.

But Daniel didn’t smile when he picked up his possibles sack. Something wasn’t right. The Diamond had doubled in weight – either that or the buffalo-skin pouch had soaked up a gallon of water. He wanted to take the Diamond out and examine it, but he couldn’t risk implicating her. He’d decided to ask her if she’d mind waiting for him in the car while he attended to some necessarily private business, when the moon vanished and the rain stopped.

Jenny had thrown the wet comforter over them both. She put her hand on his chest, right over his heart, a fingertip barely brushing his nipple, and whispered, ‘Let’s pretend we’re a double ghost, two spirits who have become each other – not become one, you understand, but two who have created a meeting point through which their forces join.’

Daniel slipped his arm around her waist and held her closer. He asked softly, ‘You want to play for pretendsies or for keeps?’

Jenny murmured, ‘You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that. But Daniel, look at us: naked lovers whispering sweet nothings under a soaked silk blanket in scrub-sage, having met an hour ago under false identities and true hearts. We’re fools, Daniel, fools trying to perfect their foolishness. We’d be unfaithful to ourselves if we didn’t imagine something for our double ghost to do.’

‘I love the way you talk.’ Daniel nuzzled her wet hair.

‘So what should we pretend?’

‘Whatever your heart desires,’ Daniel whispered.

‘No,’ she said, so sharply Daniel pulled away. ‘We have to imagine it together. That’s the fun of it, the importance.’

Daniel understood exactly what she meant, understood how the solitary imagination could not imagine itself. Maybe that was what Volta had been trying to tell him.

‘Let’s pretend,’ Daniel said, ‘that our double ghost has been temporarily blinded by pleasure. Without looking, it must find a red Porsche with Jenny and Daniel’s imaginary daughter asleep in the back. They have to rely solely on their other four senses, their instincts, and their joined imaginations.’

Jenny said, ‘And if they find the car and daughter, their joined ghosts will separate into their seats, but they’ll remain naked, driving the lonely road as outlaw Lovers of Fortune until the moon sets. They’ll only talk to each other if it’s necessary to keep the junction open. Otherwise, they’ll be silent, trying only to imagine each other and what the morning might bring.’

‘Free to imagine anything,’ Daniel added.

‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Anything.’

‘You are Fortune,’ Daniel told her.

Jenny said, ‘My name is Jennifer Raine, Susanna Rapp, Goldie Hart, Emily Dickinson, Malinche, Cabeza de Vaca, Cinderella, Lao-Tzu, Mia, Longshot, Daniel Pearse.’

Daniel’s laugh was muffled by the draped comforter. ‘Do you guys have all your clothes gathered up so this ghost can begin searching?’

‘I’ve got my hat and shoes. I’m going to leave my dress where it fell.’

Their mutual ghost floated silently back to the highway. Without speaking, Jenny folded the blanket while Daniel wrung his buckskins out and stashed them under the Porsche’s front seat with the powder horn. He kept the sack with the Diamond at his feet. Jenny slipped in behind the wheel and started the car. They were both naked, sheened with rain. Daniel glanced in the back at Mia. Her eyes were open, but locked on some distant point within herself.

‘Jenny,’ Daniel said, ‘Mia’s in a trance.’

With her eyes on the road, Jenny nodded. ‘I know. I think she’s out searching for something, something I don’t understand. Even imaginary daughters have lives of their own.’

Daniel said nothing.

Jenny turned to him. ‘Do you know what Mia’s doing, what she’s after?’

‘No. I have no idea. But I can try to reach her if you want me to.’

Jenny thought a moment. ‘Only if you want to.’

Daniel tried to imagine himself entering Mia’s mind. Instantly a sense of danger seized him. The danger was formless yet he could discern a shape, a vague configuration of a face. Daniel concentrated on drawing features from vague suggestion. Volta. Daniel was stunned.

‘Tell me,’ Jenny said. ‘I want to know.’

Daniel said, ‘I saw the face of a man named Volta. Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘I do, intimately. He retrieved me from a coma one time, entered my psyche. Maybe he’s trying to again, and it’s being magnified through Mia, because we’ve joined our imaginations. Or it may have been sheer projection on my part, a reflection off the wall of mirrors protecting Mia’s trance. But my impression from Volta’s image was danger, real danger. Do you see or feel anything like that?’

‘No,’ Jenny said, ‘but I feel it in you.’

‘Probably with reason,’ Daniel agreed.

Jenny said evenly, ‘I have a feeling it might be a secret, but I’d like to know what’s in your pouch.’

‘I can’t tell you. If I did, it could put you in danger for no reason.’

‘I appreciate your regard,’ Jenny said, ‘but we’re always in fatal danger. Life couldn’t be great without it.’

With all the directness he could muster, Daniel said, ‘Jenny, I love you.’

‘Ohhh.’ Jenny half giggled, half moaned. ‘You sweet-talking boy. But love us, too, Daniel, what we are together.’

They were silent for seventy miles until Jenny, already braking, smiled and arched her brow. ‘Again?’

Daniel sighed. ‘Jenny, I have to tell you that in my past, my sexual past – which hasn’t been extensive – I’ve never been able to have an orgasm with the same woman twice.’

Jenny, pulling off the road, said, ‘You can’t cross the same river twice.’

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Daniel said.

‘I change. You change. Change changes. Why be afraid it won’t stay the same? It’s not supposed to. Even if you have to be crazy to appreciate how great that is.’

‘A woman named Charmaine said I loved myself more than those women.’

Jenny opened her door and stepped out naked. The warm rain had turned to a misty drizzle. She reached into the back for the folded comforter. ‘Come on, sailor,’ she said to Daniel, a playful sultriness in her tone. ‘Let’s cross the river. I’ll bet you love against fifty thousand dollars we can cross that mighty water again, me and you, together.’

Love won going away. Far away.

So far away that Daniel realized he was in danger. When they floated back to the Porsche, Daniel hefted the pouch. The Diamond had almost quadrupled its weight without changing size.

They drove the next forty miles in silence. Daniel leaned back, trying to imagine what was happening with the Diamond. He was afraid to look, afraid to ask Jenny to pull over so he could take it out on the flats for a private glance. He sensed what he’d see: the Diamond preparing to open. Quickly, with a joy-shredding certainty, Daniel’s choice was becoming a decision between Jenny and the Diamond.

The mind, Daniel remembered, is neither either nor or.

The mind is a box canyon.

Daniel squeezed Jenny’s bare shoulder. She turned at his touch, smiling questioningly. Daniel pointed to the side of the road.

‘Again?’ she said, delight overwhelming her attempt at mock incredulity.

‘I want to marry you,’ Daniel said. ‘Here and now.’

Jenny was already pulling over.

As they coasted to a stop, Daniel said, ‘You bring the bridal suite, I’ll get the ring.’

They walked out naked in the sage desert, the folded comforter under Jenny’s arm, the possibles sack slung over Daniel’s shoulder, free arms around each other’s waists, until they found a clearing in the brush. The mist that eddied in the moonlight was brighter now that the rain clouds had dissolved. Jenny spread the damp silk comforter in the clearing, smoothing it out with her hands. The lightning-bolt scar at the base of her spine gleamed in the moonlight. Daniel knelt behind her and kissed her scar, startled and aroused by its heat on his lips.

Jenny turned to face him, her eyes burning with tears. ‘I don’t care,’ she said passionately. ‘I don’t care if you’re real.’

‘Do you care if it’s so dangerous it could kill us both?’

‘Life is great.’

‘Well then, dearly beloved,’ Daniel intoned, slipping the Diamond from the possibles sack, ‘with this ring I do thee wed. May I now kiss the bride?’

Jenny, staring into the Diamond, muttered, ‘In a minute.’

They both stared into the Diamond. Daniel saw immediately the glow was more brilliant – not brighter, really, but sharper. He needed to vanish to see inside.

Jenny put her hand on his thigh. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

Daniel looked at her and said as plainly and directly as he could, ‘I love you.’

Jenny threw back her head and laughed at the moon.

Perplexed, Daniel said, ‘That’s not what you wanted to know?’

Jenny stopped laughing, but couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head. She lifted the Diamond from his hands and placed it gently at the head of the comforter, the Diamond’s light and the light of the moon shimmering on the pale blue silk as if it were a pond in a high mountain meadow.

Jenny turned back to Daniel, on his knees facing her. She put her arms around him and pulled him close, whispering, ‘I do. I do. In sickness and in health. In life and death. Madness and folly. Till we part and after we part and right here and right now. I do.’

‘I have to tell you some things.’

‘No you don’t,’ Jenny promised.

‘I can vanish,’ Daniel told her, hoping she’d understand that he did have to tell her, that he owed her the honor.

‘Don’t vanish,’ she murmured against his shoulder, her tongue tracing his collarbone. ‘If you vanish, I won’t be able to feel you inside me, I won’t be able to feel those things we can only feel together.’

Daniel said, ‘There’s something there I need to know, something I’m meant to understand.’

Jenny released her embrace and in the same motion eased backward on the comforter. Her eyes held a glint of playful challenge. ‘Daniel, I want you to seek whatever you think you need to find, see whatever you’re meant to behold. That’s what marriage is all about. But first, Daniel, before you ride off on your beautiful white charger, dragons to slay, maidens to save, grails galore, I want to be sure you understand the basics.’

She turned on her side and patted the comforter. When Daniel lay down beside her, she touched his cheek. Her voice thick, Jenny said, ‘Do you understand that?’

‘Yes,’ Daniel moaned, closing his eyes.

‘Look at me, Daniel,’ Jenny said forcefully. ‘Look in my eyes. Do you see me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. ‘I don’t know who I see anymore.’

‘If you can’t see me, Daniel, you’ll never see yourself.’ Jenny slipped her arms around him. ‘Come on. We’ll look for each other.’

Daniel held her tightly. He smiled at her, and suddenly, finally, he relaxed. ‘Mrs Pearse, it will be the joy of my life to consummate our marriage, but I must ask you first for another vow: If something should happen to me, if I vanish and don’t make it back right away, I want you to take the Diamond – your wedding ring – and drop it in any large body of water you choose. Or anywhere it’s unlikely to be found. It’s stolen. They’ll kill you to get it back. Don’t show it to anybody.’

Jenny whispered fiercely, ‘Done. Now let’s imagine something real – each other.’

Slowly at first, bathed in the light of Diamond and moon, blurred in the drifting tatters of mist swirled by their cries, they imagined each other, the forks of a river joining for the plunge to the sea.

When they’d quit laughing and trembling and crying and kissing, Jenny said, ‘I rest my case.’ She curled against him, head on his chest.

Daniel squeezed her close, but he wasn’t there. Even with his eyes shut he sensed the Diamond’s light intensifying. He had to trust her understanding, trust himself. He looked over his shoulder at the Diamond, focused on its center, and vanished.

The Diamond didn’t.

But for a moment Daniel thought it had vanished with him. He could see the flame inside, but it wasn’t the spiral flame he’d always seen before. As if compressed by the Diamond’s growing density, the flame condensed toward the center, tightened to a single whirling point, the visible tip of a solar vortex, heat so intense it vaporized bone. But Daniel had no body to burn.

He hurled himself toward the spinning center. And as he was swept across the threshold, sucked through the vortex and into the solar furnace, spilled into the Diamond Forge, Daniel learned what he was meant to know.

He was a god. He was Hermes, Thoth, Mercury; the prophet Hermes Trismegistos. He had accepted birth to refresh his compassion for the human soul.

He felt joyously released. He’d made it back! The Diamond was his door out, love the key that opened the lock. Above as below. Stone junction. He blessed his mother for allowing him her womb, for letting him father himself. He heard her scream inside him, ‘Run, Daniel!’ but there was nowhere left to go, no possible escape. He blessed his teachers, his friends, his lovers – Jenny especially, Jenny his wife. He heard Volta chanting deep within him, ‘Life, life, life, life.’ He blessed Volta for his wise help, though he knew Volta wouldn’t understand. Roaring upward in the solar vortex, Daniel laughed. It was all life. No levels or dimensions. Not even the gods could escape. He crossed his arms on his chest, closed his eyes and let himself go, vanishing into the Diamond-Light forever.

Volta sat cross-legged on the floor, the goldfish’s bowl cradled in his hands, his imagination locked on Daniel. He felt Daniel enter the Diamond, the joy of his surrender. Volta cried out softly, ‘No, Daniel. Oh no, poor Daniel.’ Another beautiful, deluded spirit consumed by powers mistaken for his own. Gently, Volta set the bowl on the table. The goldfish began languidly finning around the bowl.

‘Ahhhhhhh,’ Volta sighed, ‘go.’ Daniel had made his choice, if it could be called a choice, if a raindrop chooses where to fall, a river to flow. Grant Daniel his choice and mourn his loss. Live by life and remember the dead. Volta stood up and walked briskly to the door. He needed the clean night air, the real moon and stars.

When Volta opened the door, Shamus pointed a pistol directly between Volta’s eyes. They both froze. Shamus held the pistol in his good hand. A small automatic. Cocked. Shamus’s scar-twisted hand was lifted to his ear, its tucked thumb forming a crude mouth.

His voice calm and even, Shamus said, ‘Walk slowly backward into the house, keeping your arms outstretched at shoulder level, fingers spread and palms facing me.’

Volta stepped carefully backward to the center of the room. Shamus followed, keeping his distance, pistol steady on Volta’s forehead. He kicked the door shut behind him.

Volta sagged when the scarred hand shrilled in Shamus’s ear, the voice utterly different from Shamus’s own, ‘Make him naked. Naked.’

‘Take off your robe,’ Shamus ordered Volta.

‘No,’ Volta said.

‘Kill him,’ the hand urged. ‘Now. Not another word.’

‘Do it,’ Volta agreed. ‘Then you’ll never know who betrayed you. I expected, given your work with Jacob Hind, you might decipher Alex Three. You were quicker than I anticipated.’

‘Watch him!’ Shamus’s hand warned.

‘You admit you tipped the CIA?’ Shamus said coldly.

‘Yes. Reluctantly, by request.’

Shamus hissed, ‘Fucking Daniel.’

‘I gave my honor that I wouldn’t reveal my source.’

‘You did, huh?’ Shamus sneered. ‘What honor could you possibly have, snitching us to the CIA?’

‘I was forced to act on extremely short notice. The CIA was the best choice.’

‘Who told you?’ The pistol shook in Shamus’s hand. ‘You tell me or I’ll shoot off little pieces of you until you do. All I want from you, Volta, is what I deserve – the truth.’

Volta looked past the gun barrel into Shamus’s eyes. ‘Annalee betrayed you.’

Shamus went blank. His ravaged hand screamed in his ear, ‘Kill him, kill him, kill him – he’s fucking with your head!’

Volta spoke directly to Shamus, who was staring at him, shocked. ‘I’m sorry, Shamus. I believe everyone deserves the truth, but I promised Annalee I would never tell anyone, never, unless my life depended on it. I told her I wouldn’t die to protect her betrayal.’

Shamus stared at Volta, ignoring the scarred hand muttering in his ear. Volta calmly met Shamus’s gaze. Shamus blinked rapidly, his lips drawing back in a sickly grin. A muscle twitched sharply in his cheek, and again; then, as if the spasm had ignited his nervous system, his entire body began to jerk. Volta sensed Shamus knew this was the truth. Though Volta believed Shamus deserved the truth, he also understood that this was a truth Shamus couldn’t survive. As Volta perfectly understood, that meant he wouldn’t survive it either, not unless he could shock Shamus into paralysis or sense. But clearly, there were two Shamuses, the hand that held the gun, the other hand hideously disfigured by molten silver.

Shamus’s face contorted. ‘Never!’ he screamed. ‘No!’

Volta said softly, ‘The truth.’

‘It’s a trick, a trick, a trick, a trick,’ the hand yammered in Shamus’s ear.

‘I know it is, goddammit!’ Shamus yelled at his hand. Shamus began to pace tightly back and forth, keeping the gun trained on Volta. Shamus and his hand were muttering, but both were so low and garbled Volta couldn’t make out a single word. He looked for a lapse in Shamus’s awareness, a point of escape, a move to make. Failing that, he could try to strike one clean, shattering blow to Shamus’s psyche that would make him accept the truth. The longer Shamus paced, growing more careless with the gun, the more Volta liked his chances.

He liked them a whole lot less when Shamus quit pacing and slowly raised the gun until the front bead locked solidly on Volta’s forehead. Sneering, Shamus said, ‘You cold bastard. You heartless piece of shit. Do you think I’m stupid? I know Daniel was the traitor. He tipped you, you tipped the Feds – keep it tidy that way – and now, out of your legendary sense of honor, you are protecting Daniel. It’s an excellent ploy, really. You admit you snitched us to the CIA, but claim it was at the request of a fine, brave woman who is – fortunately for you, heartbreakingly for me – dead. Dead by the treachery of her own son, and the corrupt accomplice of his future mentor who foresaw great possibilities for such a poisoned soul. If I’m interpreting the few whispers I’ve heard correctly, your prize graduate of the black arts has now betrayed you. I always sensed that in Daniel – a feeling that he would only find forgiveness in oblivion.’

‘He has,’ Volta said. ‘But he wasn’t seeking forgiveness. He was seeking beyond sin and forgiveness, and he didn’t return.’

‘Oh my,’ Shamus said derisively, ‘how convenient. Now the only two people who could have told you are––’

Volta cut in sharply, ‘Shamus, think clearly. Daniel is dead. Why wouldn’t I tell you what you need to believe, that it was Daniel who betrayed you? Why?’

Shamus’s hand babbled wildly in his ear, ‘Don’t fall for it he’s fucking your head he has moves and outs and smarts don’t match him don’t let him…’

Shamus, his puzzled gaze locked on Volta’s face, said, ‘Why?’

Volta said, ‘Because the only way you’ll heal is through the truth. And because I respect you, and because I’m now free to help. Annalee betrayed you. That’s the truth.’

Shamus held the bead on Volta’s forehead. ‘You cruel son of a bitch. You know you’re going to die, and even though it makes no difference anymore, you won’t leave what I have left of her undefiled.’

‘I have proof,’ Volta said.

‘Blow the fucking scum away!’ the scarred hand squealed. ‘Do it now! Don’t listen. Don’t. Don’t.’

Volta continued, his voice calm, precise: ‘Annalee called me an hour after she’d left your apartment on the day of the planned attempt. Her call came in on a gold-access number, and every gold-access call is automatically taped. The tape is in this room, in a narrow vault behind the mirror to your right. There’s a tape deck on the table behind me.’ He paused, then added, ‘If you want the truth. If you have the spirit to bear it, as I have, for years.’

‘Okay,’ Shamus said with confidence, ‘I’m going to call that bluff.’ He seemed oblivious to his hand’s frenzied drone-chant in his ear, ‘Nonowdoitnownonowdoitnownonowdoitnownonowdoitnow…’

‘My compliments,’ Volta said, ‘on an intelligent choice. Your only hope, Shamus, is to accept the truth.’

‘Hey,’ Shamus spit, ‘I’m calling your bluff, remember? And if I’ve caught you, you lose. One piece of your body at a time, or five clips – whichever comes first. So where is this tape?’

‘In a vault behind that mirror. Lift off the mirror and press the nail it hangs on – three long, four short. The vault door will open. The tape is coded AGAPE. I’ll get it myself if you prefer.’

‘Very slowly,’ Shamus murmured, indicating the mirror with a slight movement of the gun barrel.

Breathing deeply, Volta opened the vault as Shamus covered him from ten feet away, his disfigured hand still hovering at his ear, but silent now, as if it too were watching. As soon as the vault door sprang open, Shamus ordered, ‘Now step away from the vault, move ten feet to your right along the wall, and then I want you to assume the position against the wall. You die if you twitch.’

Volta calmly spread his legs and stretched his hands over his head, supporting the weight of his leaning body.

He heard Shamus run the gun barrel down the boxed and stacked cassettes, scanning the codes. There was a sudden silence when he found it.

‘I’d be glad to put it on the deck,’ Volta offered. He felt helpless leaning against the wall.

‘Don’t move,’ Shamus warned. ‘Don’t even jiggle.’

Volta listened as Shamus crossed to the desk and inserted the cassette.

‘Don’t do it, you stupid fucking sentimental fool. You weak-willed, self- pitying failure. Yellow, spineless whipping-boy idiot of such heroic, soaring dreams. Give me that gun. You make the decision; I’ll execute it.’

Shamus handed the gun to his ravaged hand and then punched the play button on the deck. He moved ten feet from Volta, his back inches from the open vault.

On the tape, a phone rang seven times before Volta answered, ‘Yes?’

ANNALEE: A woman will plant a bomb at an alley between Livermore warehouses at Las Postas Avenue this evening. She must be stopped. She will have a child with her. The child must not be harmed. If the woman is arrested, the child must be cared for. No one––

VOLTA: [cutting in] Annalee, I can’t pretend this is an anonymous call.

ANNALEE: Then I want you to promise me with all your soul that you’ll never tell anyone who made it. Never. Even if you have to die.

VOLTA: Annalee, I can admire what you’re trying to do, even if it’s too late for safety; I admire your love for him that you would risk yourself to preserve its possibility; but it’s nonetheless a betrayal of his trust, a necessity that might have been forestalled if you’d called when he first returned. I’ll honor your secret as completely as I can, but I will not die for it.

ANNALEE: Fine, yes, as far as you can. But stop me from planting that bomb.

VOLTA: I assume it’s diversionary. Livermore? Plutonium?

ANNALEE: Just stop me. And if anything happens, take care of Daniel.

VOLTA: I’ll try, Annalee. That’s all I can do.

ANNALEE: Do it.

The tape clicked off.

Volta, face to the wall, couldn’t see Shamus’s reaction, so he said what he felt: ‘I’m sorry you had to hear it, Shamus. I know it’s painful.’

‘Painful?’ Shamus laughed wildly. ‘That fake? That cruel, cowardly, chickenshit fake? Who was it, one of the legendary AMO mimics? Maybe even this Jean Bluer I’ve been hearing about? Fuck, you can hear the splices! It isn’t even close to her voice. I remember her voice. I remember her laughter and skin! Proof? Bullshit! Truth? Here, Volta, turn around here, I’ll show you the fucking truth.’

Volta turned to face Shamus. When he saw the gun in Shamus’s scarred hand, Volta knew he was about to die.

Shamus wailed, ‘You want the truth, huh, the whole truth and nothing but, and not any of your bullshit lies?’ He grabbed the mirror leaning against the wall and thrust it toward Volta, holding it up for him to see his face. ‘There! That’s your truth. Look at it! Look! Look at yourself! Look at what you are!’

Volta met himself on the surface of the mirror. He looked into his own eyes. No escape. He lifted his head and met Shamus’s gaze. ‘I know who I am,’ Volta said.

The bullet hit Volta above the left eye, the impact snapping his head back as it blew away the back of his skull. He staggered for an instant, took a stumbling step forward, swayed as he gathered his last living breath, and then, just as Shamus lifted the mirror to shield himself, Volta drove his fist through it, shattering the glass. A splintered shard sliced the carotid artery an inch below Shamus’s left ear, and another nearly severed his scarred hand at the wrist.

Volta wanted to stay on his feet, to walk outside and watch the moon and stars as he died, but Shamus – howling, blinded by glass slivers – shoved him backward. Volta collapsed against the table, sending the goldfish bowl smashing to the floor.

Shamus, his spurting wrist pressed against his shirt, his other hand clamped against his neck, staggered along the wall until he found the door, fumbled the knob open with his blood-slick hand, and lurched outside.

Volta lay dead face down alongside the table, his arms stretched out slightly above his head, the spreading pool of blood just touching his fingertips.

Spilled free of its shattered bowl, the tiny goldfish flopped on the oak floor, trying to fling itself back into the lake, the spherical river. A last wild leap carried it to the edge of the pooling blood. The goldfish thrashed itself upright, then, its back shining above the shallow pool, half squirmed, half swam through Volta’s blood, splashed up the shallows like a golden salmon battling upriver to spawning grounds, its movement mirrored in the sinuous waves spreading in its wake, fought on across the surface, to shimmy at last up the star-flecked, moon-spangled sleeve of Volta’s magician robe.

Still naked, the silk comforter pulled snugly around her, Jenny stared into the Diamond. She hadn’t seen him actually enter it – in fact, she’d been drowsing when she’d realized he had left – but she knew that’s where he’d gone. She wasn’t sad she’d helped him on his way. No difference between dream lovers and real lovers like Longshot or the mangled love of Clyde. Love was what you made, then what you could make of it. Abandoned on her wedding night. Widowed at consummation. She looked into the centerless, sourceless light of the Diamond and decided she’d wait for Daniel till dawn. If he’d rather vanish than settle down with a crazy woman and an imaginary daughter – fine and farewell. The love they’d made was real even if he wasn’t. Any man who kissed her scar was always free to go. And so was she.

When the first sunlight touched the Diamond, Jenny slipped it carefully back in the possibles sack, slung the comforter around her, and walked back to the Porsche. She decided to believe Daniel’s information: Jim Bridger’s grave was in Saint Louis. Perfect. She could try Longshot’s sludge-reaming cure, continue on to Saint Lou, fall in love with the faithful, fascinating DJ she hoped was real, and then, if Daniel hadn’t showed up, get rid of the Diamond. After looking at it most of the night, Jenny decided she didn’t like the Diamond. Too perfect. Lifeless. As she opened the car door, Jenny felt a strong suspicion that the Diamond wasn’t real, another illusion, a mirror to hide behind.

When she opened the Porsche’s door she immediately sensed what her eyes confirmed: Mia was gone. ‘That rotten son of a bitch!’ Jenny said. ‘Fuck you and burn you and leave you alone in the Big Alone.’ Daniel had taken Mia with him, wherever the hell they’d gone.

Rage vented, Jenny considered two other possibilities: perhaps Mia had followed him freely; or maybe Mia had been his guide. Mia could have imagined him in her trance. Made him bring the Diamond. Get her mother lost in rapture and slip her mind for a different life. Her own imaginary daughter running off with her dream lover!

She laughed. She wished them happiness and good fortune.

When Smiling Jack’s third straight-access call to Volta went unanswered, he caught a plane for the Coast. He could have asked a number of Alliance members closer to Laurel Creek to check on Volta, but he felt he should do it himself. Volta had never failed to return a straight-access call. If Volta was dead, Jack would know which secrets to protect.

As Smiling Jack stepped out of his rented Ford at Laurel Creek Hollow, he smelled amid the light fragrance of the blossoming apple and plums in the orchard the stench of rotting flesh drifting through the house’s open door. Jack tried to steady himself, clearing his mind so he could discern what had happened and what needed to be done.

Despite the sprayed splatters of blood on the porch, he checked the house first. He had tried to prepare himself but was still shocked to see Volta’s body face down in the gelatinous pool of blood, a whining swarm of flies clustered in the ragged cavity the bullet had blown in the back of his skull. He wanted to drag Volta from the coagulated mire of his blood to spare him the indignity of being seen like that. But Smiling Jack left him lying and methodically began to examine the room. The open wall-vault. The smashed mirror. The tape box next to the player. The heavy trail of blood leading out the door.

Jack wanted to hear the tape, but instead he followed the blood trail out to the porch, across the yard, then downhill toward the river. Smiling Jack would have bet his customized Kenworth against a sheet of one-ply toilet paper that he’d find Shamus Malloy dead within a quarter mile. He would have won by a hundred yards. Shamus’s body, the slashed wrist of his deformed hand clamped to his sliced neck as if the blood could pass between the wounds, was curled at the base on a majestic Douglas fir. Jack carried Shamus’s body up the hill, leaving it at the edge of the trees.

Jack listened to the tape three times before he erased it, then looked at Volta’s body. To Jack’s mind, once Volta had agreed to help her stop the theft, he had drawn his line in exactly the right place: He would honor her secret, but he wouldn’t die to protect treachery, no matter how lofty its cause. Volta had drawn his line precisely, honored his promise to the point of exposing himself, then honored himself at the threat of death by giving Shamus the truth. And died for it. There are no lines you can draw against an unbearable truth.

Smiling Jack carried Volta’s body to the kitchen and covered it with a sheet. Then he went down to the barn to make some calls.

He called Dolly Varden first. He wanted her there as quickly as possible to help with Volta’s remains. He made the other calls, then took a shovel from the tool rack and began digging a grave for Shamus.

Dolly, exhausted from the all-night haul from Portland, arrived at dawn. They cut off Volta’s blood-stiffened magician’s robe and had silently begun bathing him when Dolly said, ‘Holy shit. This for real?’

Jack didn’t see it. ‘What?’

‘This.’ She lifted Volta’s arm slightly, pointing to his wrist. ‘Unless old age is eating up my brain, it looks to me like a baby goldfish glued to his wrist here.’

Jack came around for a closer look. ‘Yeah – a baby goldfish. Don’t know about being glued, though. Its own slime or maybe some blood – that could make it stick.’

Dolly looked at Jack. ‘So, what do think? Scrape it off or leave it on.’

‘Leave it, I reckon. Volta always said, “Trust what’s there.”’

‘I’ll go for that,’ Dolly said.

When they had finished bathing Volta’s corpse, Smiling Jack slung him awkwardly over his shoulder. With Dolly leading the way, he carried him down to a shady alder flat along Laurel Creek, right above where it began its steep drop to the river. They left him face up in a clearing, arms folded on his chest, as Volta had requested years before.

Smiling Jack and Dolly continued on to the creek, stopping at a slow, deep pool. They stripped off their clothes and, with lung-cleansing whoops, plunged into the cold water.

THE SECOND NOTEBOOK OF JENNIFER RAINE MAY DAY

My name is Jennifer Raine.

I have come to an end I recognize but haven’t begun to understand. I left St Louis this evening without a destination. For the last two weeks I waited faithfully at Jim Bridger’s grave, entertaining myself with hopes, dreams, wishes, fantasies, yearnings, and the last of the drugs I brought from Reno. I’m glad they’re gone.

The DJ never showed. Daniel never came back. I can’t imagine Mia anymore.

I think Daniel may have been the DJ. I know he kissed my scar. I know what passed between us was us, a warm-rain moon waltz, everything joined and hurled at the stars. I know I imagined Mia, but Daniel was real, real enough to imagine me.

I kept the Diamond until today. I was convinced that Daniel was and is real and that the Diamond was not. I never looked at it once. But I did pick it up in its sack and caress it, because everything round invites caresses. Every day the Diamond seemed to lose weight, grow lighter but not smaller, and then I got scared that if I kept it, it would gradually exhaust itself, collapse into emptiness, and Daniel could never find his way back.

The Diamond, in an odd way, was all I had left of us, yet I didn’t believe it was real. So this evening at sunset I carried the Diamond out to the center of a bridge over the Mississippi River. I married Daniel. I honor vows, keep my promises.

I slipped the Diamond from the sack and looked into it as deeply as I could. I wanted a sign, a vision in the crystal ball, something to keep. I saw nothing, felt nothing.

I opened my hands and let it go. I watched it fall, utterly certain it would hit the water and sink without a ripple, like a breath entering the air.

The Diamond hit the river like a comet, half the Mississippi erupting in a geyser, a magnificent fountain turned golden by the setting sun.

I don’t know a fucking thing. That must mean I’m finally sane. And that’s an excellent place to start going crazy again.