Cry Havoc

They touched in the gentle and private way that lovers do when words are too much or not enough. This was so different from Maggie. Maybe because Frank was so different. She felt older, more stable. There'd always been so much excitement with Maggie. Big melodramatic fights ending with one of them stalking out, then sheepishly coming back, and lots of great make-up sex. They learned a lot along the way, but with Gail it felt like Frank was taking what she'd learned and putting it to use.

Gail murmured, 'What would you say if I said I was falling head over heels in love with you?'

Frank continued caressing the warm skin. It was such a lovely distraction from the fear fluttering inside her chest.

'I'd say that was a wonderful thing.'

'But you wouldn't say you were falling in love with me,' Gail fished.

I couldn't, Frank wanted to say. Flirting with the thought was so much easier, and safer, than admitting it, than actually saying the words. Frank remembered Tracey tapping her on the chest.

'Maybe,' she hedged, 'I've already fallen.'

Gail didn't press for specifics and Frank was grateful. It was so much easier to show the doc how she felt. They made love softly and slowly, feeling each other's heartbeat when they returned to words.

'How's your hand?'

'Fine.'

Frank kissed the head against her chin, marveling at the range of emotions she'd had in less than twenty-four hours; her anger and curiosity as she picked up the thing in rags, the subsequent alarm and puzzlement when it disappeared, the shock and pain of the dog bite, relief in the hospital, and finally safety in Gail's bed. And again now in her arms. Safe harbor after rough passage.

And that was the thing Frank was dancing around. It wasn't the dog mauling her or the stitches nor the considerable blood loss. That was rough but not extraordinary. What made her want a safe haven was what she'd seen while she was sitting on her butt staring at the frenzied pit bull. The vision of the relic laughing in the Mother's voice had been frightening enough, but the clarity of the deja vu that followed was inexplicable and bordered on terrifying.

In the hospital she'd dismissed it as a brief but intense hallucination brought on by shock and stress. The explanation had worked for a little while, but Frank ultimately had to admit it was no hallucination. What she'd seen and heard had been real, as real as Gail in her arms. Not only that, the moment had felt as familiar as coming home at night and stepping into her house. That sense of normalcy, of time unfolding in its ordinary pattern was jarring. It scared Frank that a moment so intellectually alien could be so physically real.

Frank murmured into Gail's hair, 'What's predestination?'

'Hmm?'

'What's predestination mean? Like in psychic phenomena or religion.'

'Gee, let me think. I'm not used to theology quizzes in the midst of my afterglow.'

'What are you used to?' Frank grinned, tilting Gail's lips up for a kiss.

'Something more along those lines,' Gail said rolling onto her elbows. 'Well, the Christian definition is that God has ordained the future as well as the past. Everything that's happened to you, and is going to happen is writ in stone. Even who gets to be saved and who is damned.'

Gail said 'damned' with an eerie conviction.

'Do you believe that? About being damned?'

'No. Being damned is committing the same senseless actions over and over again. We do that right here on earth. People that don't grow and learn from their mistakes, that keep repeating them over and over and stay mired in their misery, that's hell.'

'What's heaven?'

'Love,' Gail said instantly.

Frank smiled, tucking the doc's bob back behind an ear.

'Everything's so simple for you.'

'It is now but that doesn't mean it didn't take me a while to get here. Why are you asking about all this?'

'I don't know,' Frank evaded. She hadn't told Gail about the freakish occurrences during the dog attack and didn't plan to. 'So basically predestination is fate. Do you believe in fate?'

'Actually fate was the Greek version of predestination. I think there were a couple goddesses responsible for determining human destiny. See? There's another word for you. Predestination, fate, kismet, karma—a rose by any other name is still a rose. Every culture has their belief in divine rule.'

'So you believe all that.'

'To a certain extent. I believe we choose the lives we're going to live and the choices we'll be confronted with. If we choose loving choices we grow and evolve. If we choose safe, comfortable choices, we stay stuck in our quagmires. They may be perfectly comfortable quagmires, too. A lot of us don't even know we're in them. I didn't, before the cancer.'

Another subject Frank was less than eager to talk about.

'You ever had a deja vu?'

'Yeah,' Gail nodded. 'Is that what this is all about?'

'They're kinda weird, huh?'

'I think they're fun. I can count on one hand how many times I've had them, but they're always so bizarre. It's like a veil gets pulled away and until it's dropped back into place we're seeing a world we're not supposed to know anything about.'

'What is it you think we're not supposed to know?'

'What happens when we die and before we're born.'

'Why aren't we supposed to know?'

'I don't think we're emotionally or intellectually capable of dealing with it. We're too enmeshed in our corporal comforts. I think cosmic truths go against our biological imperatives for survival.'

'I love it when you talk dirty. Could you say that in English?'

'Meaning our body and mind have evolved to keep us alive. Physically safe. It's a temporary situation, and inevitably we all lose. We all die. Our biological drives are counterintuitive to what our souls know—that our bodies are only temporary structures. They die, but our spirits don't. Our bodies are just rentals our souls use to drive from spiritual lesson to spiritual lesson.'

Frank had to laugh, asking, 'Why did I even open this can of worms?'

'I've been wondering that same thing,' Gail said.

The conversation shifted to mundane matters and for a while longer Frank was safely anchored at harbor.

22

Her family still teased her about marrying a man named Helms, but Jessie's sister never took part in that foolishness. Crystal was long on vision but short on humor, as serious most times as a bullet to the brain. The only time she loosened up was when she sipped tea in Jessie's cramped, sunny kitchen.

With a sharp eye Crystal watched Jessie add pinches of valerian and skullcap to the chamomile. She poured boiling water over the herbs and pushed the brew toward Crissie. Fussing with the strainer, as if that would make the tea steep faster, Crissie said, 'Marcus told me that poh-leece woman come by here.'

Always uncomfortable with words, Jessie just nodded. She marveled how one minute her sister could sound like a lawyer and the next like some old do-rag off the street. Crissie'd always had a way with words, easily mimicking her clients to put them at ease or testifying in front of a jury as if she had a PhD from a back-east college.

'What she axe about?'

Jessie lifted a shoulder in answer.

'I wasn't home. Wardell talked with her.'

Her sister's face clouded.

'Wardell!' she bellowed. 'Come in here right now!'

A moment later Jessie's husband loomed over the kitchen table. A big, loose-jointed man, he was as affable