venue to which she’d acquired a season subscription. During intermission she’d purchased one of Lake’s CDs. Of all the songs on it, Gurney found the one he was listening to now, “At the End of My Time,” by far the most depressing.
There once was a time
When I had all the time
In the world. What a time
I had then, when I had
All the time in the world.
Lied to my lovers,
Chased all the others,
Left all my lovers behind,
When I had all the time
In the world.
Took what I wanted.
Never thought twice.
Had the time of my life
When I had all the time
In the world.
Lied to my lovers,
Chased all the others,
Left all my lovers behind,
When I had all the time
In the world.
No one’s left to lie to,
No one’s left to leave,
In this time of my life
At the end of my time
In this world.
Lied to my lovers,
Chased all the others,
Left all my lovers behind,
When I had all the time
In the world.
When I had all the time
In the world.
While Lake was crooning the final maudlin refrain, Gurney was passing between his barn and pond, with the old farmhouse just in sight beyond the patch of goldenrod at the top of the pasture. As he hit the player’s “off” button, wishing he’d done so sooner, his cell phone rang.
The caller ID displayed the words REYNOLDS GALLERY.
Jesus. What the hell did she want?
“Gurney here.” His voice was all business with an edge of suspicion.
“Dave! It’s Sonya Reynolds.” Her voice, as usual, radiated a level of animal magnetism that could get her stoned to death in some countries. “I have fabulous news for you,” she purred. “And I don’t mean a little fabulous. I mean change-your-life-forever fabulous! We have to get together ASAP.”
“Hello, Sonya.”
“Hello? I’m calling to give you the biggest gift you’ve ever been given, and that’s all you can say?”
“It’s good to hear from you. What are we talking about?”
Her answer was a rich, musical laugh, a sound as disturbingly sensual as everything else about her. “Oh, that’s my Dave! Detective Dave with the piercing blue eyes. Suspicious of everything. As though I were-What do you call it? A ‘perp’ like on TV? As though I were a perp-that’s what you call the bad guy, right? As though I were a perp giving you a fishy story.” She had a slight accent that reminded him of the alternate universe he’d discovered in the French and Italian movies of his college years.
“Never mind ‘fishy.’ So far you haven’t given me any story.”
Again that laugh, bringing to mind her luminous green eyes. “And I’m not going to, not until I see you. Tomorrow. It must be tomorrow. But you don’t have to come to me in Ithaca. I’ll come to you. Breakfast, lunch, dinner-anytime tomorrow you want. Just tell me what time, and we’ll pick a place. I guarantee you won’t be sorry.”
Enter Salome, dancing He still had no final name for the experience. Dream missed all the power of it. It was true that the first time it happened he was in the process of falling asleep, his senses disconnected from all the shabby demands of a disgusting world, his mind’s eye free to see what it would see, but there the superficial resemblance to common dreaming ended.
Vision was a larger, better word for it, but it, too, failed to convey even a fraction of the impact.
Guiding light captured a certain facet of it, an important facet, but the soap-opera association polluted the meaning hopelessly.
A guided meditation, then? No. That sounded trite and unexciting-the opposite of the experience itself.
A living fable?
Ah, yes. That was getting closer. It was, after all, the story of his salvation, the new pattern of his life’s purpose. The master allegory for his crusade.
His inspiration.
All he had to do was turn out the lights, close his eyes, put himself in the infinite potential of the darkness.
And summon the dancer.
In the embrace of the experience, the living fable, he knew who he was-so much more clearly than he did when his eyes and heart were distracted by the glittering trash and slimy cunts of the world, by noise, by seduction and filth.
In the embrace of the experience, in its absolute clarity and purity, he knew exactly who he was. Even if he was now, technically, afugitive, that fact-like his name in the world, the name by which ordinary people knew him-was secondary to his true identity.
His true identity was John the Baptist.
Just thinking of it gave him gooseflesh.
He was John the Baptist.
And the dancer was Salome.
Ever since the first time he’d had the experience, the story had been all his, his to live and his to change. It didn’t have to end the stupid way it ended in the Bible. Far from it. That was the beauty of it. And the thrill of it.
