The Drawing of the Three

moon,/Somebody better investigate soon. Not quite right, but it was close. Close.

'I may have gone insane,' she said.

7

The first words which came into Eddie's mind were If you think you've gone insane, Odetta, you're nuts.

Brief consideration, however, made this seem an unprofitable line of argument to take.

Instead he remained silent for a time, sitting by her wheelchair, his knees drawn up, his hands holding his wrists.

'Were you really a heroin addict?'

'Am,' he said. 'It's like being an alcoholic, or 'basing. It's not a thing you ever get over. I used to hear that and go 'Yeah, yeah, right, right,' in my head, you know, but now I understand. I still want it, and I guess part of me will always want it, but the physical part has passed.'

'What's 'basing?' she asked.

'Something that hasn't been invented yet in your when. It's something you do with cocaine, only it's like turning TNT into an A-bomb.'

'You did it?'

'Christ, no. Heroin was my thing. I told you.'

'You don't seem like an addict,' she said.

Eddie actually was fairly spiffy … if, that was, one ignored the gamy smell arising from his body and clothes (he could rinse himself and did, could rinse his clothes and did, but lacking soap, he could not really wash either). His hair had been short when Roland stepped into his life (the better to sail through customs, my dear, and what a great big joke that had turned out to be), and was a still a respectable length. He shaved every morning, using the keen edge of Roland's knife, gingerly at first, but with increasing confidence. He'd been too young for shaving to be part of his life when Henry left for 'Nam, and it hadn't been any big deal to Henry back then, either; he never grew a beard, but sometimes went three or four days before Mom nagged him into 'mowing the stubble.' When he came back, however, Henry was a maniac on the subject (as he was on a few others?foot-powder after showering; teeth to be brushed three or four times a day and followed by a chaser of mouthwash; clothes always hung up) and he turned Eddie into a fanatic as well. The stubble was mowed every morning and every evening. Now this habit was deep in his grain, like the others Henry had taught him. Including, of course, the one you took care of with a needle.

'Too clean-cut?' he asked her, grinning.

'Too white,' she said shortly, and then was quiet for a moment, looking sternly out at the sea. Eddie was quiet, too. If there was a comeback to something like that, he didn't know what it was.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'That was very unkind, very unfair, and very unlike me.'

'It's all right.'

'It's not. It's like a white person saying something like 'Jeez, I never would have guessed you were a nigger' to someone with a very light skin.'

'You like to think of yourself as more fair-minded,' Eddie said.

'What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common, I should think, but yes?I like to think of myself as more fair-minded. So please accept my apology, Eddie.'

'On one condition.'

'What's that?' she was smiling a little again. That was good. He liked it when he was able to make her smile.

'Give this a fair chance. That's the condition.'

'Give what a fair chance?' She sounded slightly amused. Eddie might have bristled at that tone in someone else's voice, might have felt he was getting boned, but with her it was different. With her it was all right. He supposed with her just about anything would have been.

'That there's a third alternative. That this really is happening. I mean …' Eddie cleared his throat. 'I'm not very good at this philosophical shit, or, you know, metamorphosis or whatever the hell you call it?'

'Do you mean metaphysics?'

'Maybe. I don't know. I think so. But I know you can't go around disbelieving what your senses tell you. Why, if your idea about this all being a dream is right?'

'I didn't say a dream?'

'Whatever you said, that's what it comes down to, isn't it? A false reality?'

If there had been something faintly condescending in her voice a moment ago, it was gone now. 'Philosophy and metaphysics may not be your bag, Eddie, but you must have been a hell of a debater in school.'

'I was never in debate. That was for gays and hags and wimps. Like chess club. What do you mean, my bag? What's a bag?'

'Just something you like. What do you mean, gays? What are gays?'

He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. 'Homos. Fags. Never mind. We could swap slang all day. It's not getting us anyplace. What I'm trying to say is that if it's all a dream, it could be mine, not yours. You could be a figment of my imagination.'

Her smile faltered. 'You … nobody bopped you.'

'Nobody bopped you, either.'

Now her smile was entirely gone. 'No one that I remember,' she corrected with some sharpness.

'Me either!' he said. 'You told me they're rough in Oxford . Well, those Customs guys weren't exactly cheery joy when they couldn't find the dope they were after. One of them could have head-bopped me with the butt of his gun. I could be lying in a Bellevue ward right now, dreaming you and Roland while they write their reports, explaining how, while they were interrogating me, I became violent and had to be subdued.'

'It's not the same.'

'Why? Because you're this intelligent socially active black lady with no legs and I'm just a hype from Co-Op City ?' He said it with a grin, meaning it as an amiable jape, but she flared at him.

'I wish you would stop calling me black!'

He sighed. 'Okay, but it's gonna take getting used to.'

'You should have been on the debate club anyway.'

'Fuck,' he said, and the turn of her eyes made him realize again that the difference between them was much wider than color; they were speaking to each other from separate islands. The water between was time. Never mind. The word had gotten her attention. 'I don't want to debate you. I want to wake you up to the fact that you are awake, that's all.'

'I might be able to at least operate provisionally according to the dictates of your third alternative as long as this … this situation … continued to go on, except for one thing: There's a fundamental difference between what happened to you and what happened to me. So fundamental, so large, that you haven't seen it.'

'Then show it to me.'

'There is no discontinuity in your consciousness. There is a very large one in mine.'

'I don't understand.'

'I mean you can account for all of your time,' Odetta said. 'Your story follows from point to point: the airplane, the incursion by that … that … by him?

She nodded toward the foothills with clear distaste.

'The stashing of the drugs, the officers who took you into custody, all the rest. It's a fantastic story, it has no missing links.