Mission to America by Walter Kirn

no fixed pattern in themselves. Whatever young-ladyness I'd seen in her I must have added for my own purposes. Now that mask was misting off. Even her skin, regarded honestly—seen with cold and legal eyes, not lust's whatever-I-need-here eyes—looked wetly plump and nursery fresh. And the harder I stared, the more babyish it got—not only the skin but the entire specimen—until its young freshness flipped over into ancientness and I was alone in a bad Wyoming bedroom with some kind of flippery sunless jelly porpoise that had just finned its way up onto the sand.
    â€œI'm getting away.” This was gallant, in such a place.
    â€œDon't. I want you to teach me.”
    â€œI'll leave some books.”
    â€œI saw you with your phone. It has a number.”
    â€œDon't think that way, Sherri.”
    â€œSo write it on my arm here.”
    My floating mind, my prompter, saved me then. No books, it commanded. Your number is in those books.
    â€œYou can't even fly but you always try,” she said.
    I interpreted this as grudging odd Wiccan permission to organize for a few seconds before I bolted. As I buttoned my shirt and pocketed my tie, rolling it up beforehand, which was pushing things, Sherri lay on her back in her slivery black crotch strip and sleeveless half T-shirt with the dancing elephant and stretched out her arms so her fingers touched the headboard.
    â€œLook how long I am. I'm a tree,” she said. “I'm a thousand feet tall, with roots and limbs and buds. I draw up the waters and bear them to the sky.”
    I opened the door to the hall and looked around for Karly and my partner. They'd gone off. I heard Wiccan love music playing, low and churning. I turned back to Sherri, who was sitting up now, brushing her hair out with her back to me as though facing a beauty mirror that wasn't there.
    â€œThe worst thing is that you upset the woodland balance. The stag hath had its pleasure and its romp, while the doe receiveth naught.” She pointed her hairbrush handle at the window. “Look at that,” she said. “You seeing that?”
    I couldn't because Sherri blocked my view. I hoped her scripture voice had had its say. The notion that I'd romped was overdone. I'd scampered some, but so had she. She'd scampered all over me, in fact.
    â€œThe neighborhood watch guy is taking down your license plate. I hope he didn't peek inside my room and see your buddy with my little sister.”
    The word “little” overburdened my mind. Somehow I managed to fashion a departure by calling forth an immensely peaceful memory of standing in a buffet line at a Church lunch, loading my paper plate with three-bean salad. Everyone was there, my entire town, my family, even the Seeress, propped up in her wheelchair drinking red punch from a yellow paper cup. I was young, maybe ten, and was wearing a clip-on bow tie. My pockets were heavy with interesting rocks I'd found.
    I was back in the van when I let the memory pass. My partner was at the wheel. We'd made it out. I seemed to recall him opening his wallet and putting money into Karly's palm as a sort of panicky last courtesy. Or maybe she and Sherri had required it. They'd been Andromeda's children at the end there, nothing Wiccan about them. Elder Stark's stance, after we were free, and set to be free of Wyoming in two hours, was that we should have known they'd change and that in many ways we had known, especially once they'd pursued invisibility. Since I hadn't recovered enough for a debate yet, I let my partner's side be the one and only side, whether it was true or not. I had to admit, though, that if he'd argued a different side, I would have taken it myself.

Elder Stark was describing the
doctrine of Preexistence, that life-out-of-time when the soul puts on its armors, chooses a body, a family, and a fate, and then plunges mindfirst, like an otter from a ledge, into the cold water of the world. His presentation was