…why…
…to swallow back the pain, like cats when they’re sick they swallow back the sickness, and they’re better, they just don’t let it lie there on the floor, they take it back inside and make it part of themselves, and when he’d gone I did it, I lapped up the dust like a cat laps up sickness until my tongue was gray, and…
…did the pain stop…
…yes, no, yes, for a while, but it’s always there, always coming up again, always thick and gray forever, and I have to keep lapping up more and more, and is it you, really, please, please tell me, is it you…
…
…please oh please…
…
…is it you, I need your voice, I never knew the voice would feel so hot, is it you, tell me…
…yes…
…oh God take it away, please, give me a color bright without pain, please…
…yes.…
…oh, oh, I…
…listen…
…I will, I will…
…picture the man who attacked you…
…I can’t, I…
…he’s old, jaundiced, his gray hair and ragged, his face a map of hollows and sorrows, of wrinkles and evils, his clothes are rags, his heart is rags, his teeth are gone, his gums are the color of blood, and his eyes are blue, watery, weepy, do you see him…
…yes, but…
…watch…
…he’s… dissolving, cracking, cracks are spreading all over him, and his skin, it’s flaking and…
…and what…
…light…
…watch…
…he’s beginning to glow, to glow from inside the cracks, and the light…
…what’s happening with the light…
…it’s… coming into me, shining out in beams, shining into me…
…cleansing, pure…
…yes, and he’s gone now, only light filling me…
…how do you feel…
…I don’t know, different, I feel different…
…stronger…
…yes…
…strong enough to leave, to start over, to begin to live a new way, a new life…
…but where…
…you must leave…
…how…
…leave this place, you must leave now, soon, and find another place, a small town, the country, white houses and farms, and there you will be beautiful, you will open, a flower, your heart full, your body clean and sweet, and you will breathe new air, new thoughts, and love…
…love…
…love will take you, lift you, heal you, and you will forget the basement, the pain, you will forget it now, you will never think of it again, and when there is the beginning of that old pain, not the thought of it, only the beginning, the bad feelings, the fear, you will hear my voice and know that only the joy is real, do you feel the joy…
…yes, yes…
…and never listen to another voice, only his voice is real, is joy…
…I won’t, I promise…
…and your beauty will be a perfume, a thought, a knowledge, a fire, and you will give only to one, to one who sees that beauty, whose touch will treasure you, whose heart will know your heart, and when he comes to you, my voice will confirm him, will feel your knowledge and will say his name…
…love…
…yes, love forever, love for now, and he will take you deep and darling into the heartland, into a color bright and painless…
…love…
…leave now, now, and seek your new home…
…but…
…I will be with you…
…always…
…yes, always, now go…
…I’m afraid…
…into light, go into light, into the promise of joy, go…
The girl backed away, her face perplexed but radiant. ‘I… I’ve got to go.’ She smiled. I’m sorry, I really have to.’
Sexula laughed nastily.
‘Here!’ The girl reached into her shopping bag, took something out, and pressed it into Mingolla’s hand: a plastic base atop which the holographic figure of a bearded man in a white robe walked around and around, his hands clasped in prayer. He thanked her, but she had already started for the door, walking fast, breaking into a run as she pushed out into the street.
Ludy said, ‘Don’t got the twenny get outta the lobby.’
Sexula rubbed against Mingolla, saying, ‘Ain’tcha got some way of provin’ you a vet?’ And he remembered everything now, his memory jogged by the exercise of power. He was lost, lost in America, in sadness and confusion, and when he found who he was looking for, although they had won, they would still be lost, without plan or purpose, without even any understanding of what had been won. Ludy began demanding the twenty, and Sexula told Mingolla that if he couldn’t get it together she was going to leave, because vet or not she wasn’t about to do it in no alley, and Mingolla stared through the glass doors into the country of his birth, into an animated mural of gaud and dissolution that seemed at once foreign and familiar, into painted faces and unseeing eyes, wondering what to do, while the tiny Jesus circled constantly in his hand…
* * * … Izaguirre’s office walls faded in, and Mingolla jumped up from the chair, still sick and feeling more lost than ever in the winded silence of the hotel. His thoughts whirled, trying to comprehend what had happened. It had been so real! The future… that’s what it must have been. Yet there had been so much that smacked of hallucination. The way his thoughts had gone, the distortions. And the thing with the girl. Hearing her thoughts, answering them. But the most unbelievable thing had been his treatment of her. He’d recognized his paranoia and confusion. But that calm, compassionate soul, he hadn’t recognized that person at all. No, it had to have been a hallucination. He’d tell Izaguirre about it in the morning, and… On second thought, maybe he’d keep it under his hat. Just in case it had been both a hallucination and real.
The sea was glowing streaks of aqua, light purple, and brown over sand, kelp beds, and muddy shallows. Combers bright as toothpaste broke over the coral heads, and beyond them, the water was choppy and dark. Crabs
