Stone Junction

The mind is the light of the shadow it seeks.

When they finished making love, Daniel and Jenny rolled onto their backs on the blue silk comforter and let the light, warm rain fall on their bodies. Daniel had never felt so clean.

A half hour later, without a word, they began gathering their soaked clothes. Jenny shook the rainwater off her straw hat. The unraveled cascade of rainbow threads was plastered into a dull rope. She took the silk between her circled thumb and index finger and stripped it from soaked to damp with a smile that snared Daniel in its sweet contentment.

But Daniel didn’t smile when he picked up his possibles sack. Something wasn’t right. The Diamond had doubled in weight – either that or the buffalo-skin pouch had soaked up a gallon of water. He wanted to take the Diamond out and examine it, but he couldn’t risk implicating her. He’d decided to ask her if she’d mind waiting for him in the car while he attended to some necessarily private business, when the moon vanished and the rain stopped.

Jenny had thrown the wet comforter over them both. She put her hand on his chest, right over his heart, a fingertip barely brushing his nipple, and whispered, ‘Let’s pretend we’re a double ghost, two spirits who have become each other – not become one, you understand, but two who have created a meeting point through which their forces join.’

Daniel slipped his arm around her waist and held her closer. He asked softly, ‘You want to play for pretendsies or for keeps?’

Jenny murmured, ‘You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that. But Daniel, look at us: naked lovers whispering sweet nothings under a soaked silk blanket in scrub-sage, having met an hour ago under false identities and true hearts. We’re fools, Daniel, fools trying to perfect their foolishness. We’d be unfaithful to ourselves if we didn’t imagine something for our double ghost to do.’

‘I love the way you talk.’ Daniel nuzzled her wet hair.

‘So what should we pretend?’

‘Whatever your heart desires,’ Daniel whispered.

‘No,’ she said, so sharply Daniel pulled away. ‘We have to imagine it together. That’s the fun of it, the importance.’

Daniel understood exactly what she meant, understood how the solitary imagination could not imagine itself. Maybe that was what Volta had been trying to tell him.

‘Let’s pretend,’ Daniel said, ‘that our double ghost has been temporarily blinded by pleasure. Without looking, it must find a red Porsche with Jenny and Daniel’s imaginary daughter asleep in the back. They have to rely solely on their other four senses, their instincts, and their joined imaginations.’

Jenny said, ‘And if they find the car and daughter, their joined ghosts will separate into their seats, but they’ll remain naked, driving the lonely road as outlaw Lovers of Fortune until the moon sets. They’ll only talk to each other if it’s necessary to keep the junction open. Otherwise, they’ll be silent, trying only to imagine each other and what the morning might bring.’

‘Free to imagine anything,’ Daniel added.

‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Anything.’

‘You are Fortune,’ Daniel told her.

Jenny said, ‘My name is Jennifer Raine, Susanna Rapp, Goldie Hart, Emily Dickinson, Malinche, Cabeza de Vaca, Cinderella, Lao-Tzu, Mia, Longshot, Daniel Pearse.’

Daniel’s laugh was muffled by the draped comforter. ‘Do you guys have all your clothes gathered up so this ghost can begin searching?’

‘I’ve got my hat and shoes. I’m going to leave my dress where it fell.’

Their mutual ghost floated silently back to the highway. Without speaking, Jenny folded the blanket while Daniel wrung his buckskins out and stashed them under the Porsche’s front seat with the powder horn. He kept the sack with the Diamond at his feet. Jenny slipped in behind the wheel and started the car. They were both naked, sheened with rain. Daniel glanced in the back at Mia. Her eyes were open, but locked on some distant point within herself.

‘Jenny,’ Daniel said, ‘Mia’s in a trance.’

With her eyes on the road, Jenny nodded. ‘I know. I think she’s out searching for something, something I don’t understand. Even imaginary daughters have lives of their own.’

Daniel said nothing.

Jenny turned to him. ‘Do you know what Mia’s doing, what she’s after?’

‘No. I have no idea. But I can try to reach her if you want me to.’

Jenny thought a moment. ‘Only if you want to.’

Daniel tried to imagine himself entering Mia’s mind. Instantly a sense of danger seized him. The danger was formless yet he could discern a shape, a vague configuration of a face. Daniel concentrated on drawing features from vague suggestion. Volta. Daniel was stunned.

‘Tell me,’ Jenny said. ‘I want to know.’

Daniel said, ‘I saw the face of a man named Volta. Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘I do, intimately. He retrieved me from a coma one time, entered my psyche. Maybe he’s trying to again, and it’s being magnified through Mia, because we’ve joined our imaginations. Or it may have been sheer projection on my part, a reflection off the wall of mirrors protecting Mia’s trance. But my impression from Volta’s image was danger, real danger. Do you see or feel anything like that?’

‘No,’ Jenny said, ‘but I feel it in you.’