Raincrowâs. Lee had lost his license a while back, permanently this time, and (I was assured) would have no further need of the VW. I gave Pickett six hundred for it and figured if I got a mile per dollar out of it Iâd still be ahead.
I had made a quick round of the ballroom and come back for a moment to the acrylic, getting set to leave, when it happened.
I have no idea how long it lasted. But I know it had been going on for some time when my own consciousness started filtering back in: dull clouds shot with light, bright threads, bright segments.
The painting was no longer there before me. I stood looking down through a rainswept window at the street. Someone stood behind me, almost touching.
âYouâre apart from me tonight,â she said, and I turned to look at her. Hair cut short, boyish. Crimson lipstick and a T-shirt that fell to midthigh. âIn some other kingdom?â
âI donât mean to be,â I said as she moved into the embrace that waited for and fit her precisely. The heat of her skin sliding against my own.
The connection did not end there, not for a while.
Slowly I surfaced, at once a part of their coupling and divorced from it, observer, intruder, and when at last it was over, their bodies falling wordlessly beside one another on the bed there, the painting before me once again here, I must have felt much the same sense of loss and quiet sadness as they. It bore up like a wave beneath me, bringing thoughts of Gabrielle, of my recent and more distant past, of the solitude enclosing us all.
Fragmentary impressions, scraps of othersâ memories and othersâ thoughts, still clung to me: what had washed up on my shores.
27
So I drove out of the Rodeway Inn parking lot, out of Cross, with a biography forming, like images swimming up in a developing tray, ghostly at first, gradually, almost imperceptibly more substantial.
That biography, those memories, thus far were only images, images unaccompanied by words or understanding, images without referent. It was like being in a country whose language you know not at all. Or like being inside someone elseâs dream.
âIâ was from farmland. A skittering impression of jade-green hills and deep-blue sky, the smell of damp hay, manure, compost, pollen, decay. Nights rimmed about with the sound of locust and crickets.
Then the sudden descent of cities, still photography giving way to cinema, everything speeding up, wheeling by, shooting away. A procession of women, university years, fine meals and wine in out-of-the-way, recherché cafes, hollow-eyed men peering out from dark doorways and from beneath bridges.
And beneath it all, a terrible undertow of despair, an emptiness whose rim âIâ often approached though âIâ never looked fully in.
There was, with each woman, each bright moment, a strong sense of place as well. Hotel rooms mostly, the occasional pension, park or public square. Once a monastery of cloistered stone corridors damp with condensation.
So: âIâ traveled often, âIâ liked women and music and plain, freshly prepared foods. âIâ preferred coffee so black and thick that Balzac would have passed it up. âIâ swam whenever possible in icy waters. âIâ was a man of discipline and exacting, though personal, principle.
And âIâ circled like a hawk my erratic flight south, this foolâs voyage, this floundering, freewheeling march from sea to dark sea.
28
It broke every rule, of course. But that, in a way, is what the agencyâs all about.
In flight training, for combat situations where you find yourself momentarily confused and unable to make split-second decisions, itâs drilled into you over and over just to do something, anything, to start a sequence of events. And that pretty much defines us. Weâre the agency that does something .
I remember one time in the sixties some government body or another informed
I had made a quick round of the ballroom and come back for a moment to the acrylic, getting set to leave, when it happened.
I have no idea how long it lasted. But I know it had been going on for some time when my own consciousness started filtering back in: dull clouds shot with light, bright threads, bright segments.
The painting was no longer there before me. I stood looking down through a rainswept window at the street. Someone stood behind me, almost touching.
âYouâre apart from me tonight,â she said, and I turned to look at her. Hair cut short, boyish. Crimson lipstick and a T-shirt that fell to midthigh. âIn some other kingdom?â
âI donât mean to be,â I said as she moved into the embrace that waited for and fit her precisely. The heat of her skin sliding against my own.
The connection did not end there, not for a while.
Slowly I surfaced, at once a part of their coupling and divorced from it, observer, intruder, and when at last it was over, their bodies falling wordlessly beside one another on the bed there, the painting before me once again here, I must have felt much the same sense of loss and quiet sadness as they. It bore up like a wave beneath me, bringing thoughts of Gabrielle, of my recent and more distant past, of the solitude enclosing us all.
Fragmentary impressions, scraps of othersâ memories and othersâ thoughts, still clung to me: what had washed up on my shores.
27
So I drove out of the Rodeway Inn parking lot, out of Cross, with a biography forming, like images swimming up in a developing tray, ghostly at first, gradually, almost imperceptibly more substantial.
That biography, those memories, thus far were only images, images unaccompanied by words or understanding, images without referent. It was like being in a country whose language you know not at all. Or like being inside someone elseâs dream.
âIâ was from farmland. A skittering impression of jade-green hills and deep-blue sky, the smell of damp hay, manure, compost, pollen, decay. Nights rimmed about with the sound of locust and crickets.
Then the sudden descent of cities, still photography giving way to cinema, everything speeding up, wheeling by, shooting away. A procession of women, university years, fine meals and wine in out-of-the-way, recherché cafes, hollow-eyed men peering out from dark doorways and from beneath bridges.
And beneath it all, a terrible undertow of despair, an emptiness whose rim âIâ often approached though âIâ never looked fully in.
There was, with each woman, each bright moment, a strong sense of place as well. Hotel rooms mostly, the occasional pension, park or public square. Once a monastery of cloistered stone corridors damp with condensation.
So: âIâ traveled often, âIâ liked women and music and plain, freshly prepared foods. âIâ preferred coffee so black and thick that Balzac would have passed it up. âIâ swam whenever possible in icy waters. âIâ was a man of discipline and exacting, though personal, principle.
And âIâ circled like a hawk my erratic flight south, this foolâs voyage, this floundering, freewheeling march from sea to dark sea.
28
It broke every rule, of course. But that, in a way, is what the agencyâs all about.
In flight training, for combat situations where you find yourself momentarily confused and unable to make split-second decisions, itâs drilled into you over and over just to do something, anything, to start a sequence of events. And that pretty much defines us. Weâre the agency that does something .
I remember one time in the sixties some government body or another informed
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