#43-The Calm Before
Dinner came in a box passed out on the tour bus; the vegetarian option was peanut butter and jelly. I gave Darryl half my sandwich. The last stop of the evening was at the Lincoln Memorial, that pseudo-Roman temple where the immense statue of Lincoln sits enthroned like Jove, at once sad and serene. As I studied the inscriptions, Darryl stood at the top of the steps and declaimed the Gettysburg Address. His deep sonorous voice, black suit and lanky frame earned him a round of applause from the other tourists on our bus.
“Your first public speaking success,” I commented, as we settled back into our seats.
“I didn’t know I could do that.” Darryl grinned. “If the presentation doesn’t go well tomorrow, maybe I can find work as a Lincoln impersonator.”
“You’ll be fine.” I felt a pang as I said this. The Washington office had no need for flakey women with tits who saw ghosts.
The tour bus stopped at several hotels, including the one my travel agent had booked. While Darryl oversaw the offloading of all our garment bags, I went to check in, feeling both guilty and deliciously naughty at deceiving the hotel clerk, who probably did not give a rat’s ass if I was by myself or bringing in a...
“Which would you rather be: my gigolo or my boy toy?” I asked, once the bellhop had departed with his tip.
“I’m your bodyguard,” he said, “Your brother made that clear.”
“Oh. What did he say that second time?”
“It starts with: ‘Keep that murdering bastard away from my sister.’ I take it he was referring to Jerry?”
“Yes.”
Darryl filled his lungs and released the captive air again. “Your brother takes your word for it.”
“He is my mother’s son,” I explained. For some reason moisture came into my eyes.
“Who did Jerry kill?”
“His little princess. Xenia Madison Taylor. Future President. Don’t ask me why. She was barely two and couldn’t tell me.”
“Jeez Louise,” said Darryl, “I don’t like the thought of a man like that in the same universe with my pregnant sister, much less in the same building.”
“He’s an actor. In front of witnesses, especially other men, he won’t do anything. All of his crimes are committed where he perceives himself offstage. Your insomniac brother Richard is in that same building.”
“True. And her husband Mark won’t leave her side.” Darryl relaxed. “Your brother said in total: ‘Keep that murdering bastard away from my sister. Keep her away from him. She won’t back down. She’s not afraid of dying. Each time she opens the gate for a departing spirit, she’s sharing her own death. I don’t care how rich, or how important, or how smart you think you are, you aren’t worthy of her unless you are willing to put your life on the line for her the way she does for the rest of us. You keep her safe or answer to me.’ You heard what I said to him. What he said about your spiritual vocation, is that accurate?”
“He states the obvious. Obvious to me, I guess,” I said, “but yes, spirits that lose their own way can use mine. My body fears dying, but my spirit knows the gate. My grandmother used to call the gate ‘her dear old friend’ and I know why. What’s wrong?”
Darryl had buried his face in his hands. He came up for air. “I always considered myself both rational and deeply spiritual. But two and a half years in a Japanese monastery didn’t even bring me enough self-knowledge to recognize the idiot that looks back from the mirror.”
“Yeah, and my tits aren’t all that great either. They are just the first ones you’ve seen since you left the monastery,” I transferred out of my chair to his lap. “You had an idea last night that I liked. Do you suppose—?”
Given that my boyfriend and I were equally inexperienced, I didn’t have any particular expectations. I hoped touching would change the mood, give us a giggle or two and keep Darryl distracted from the thought of his impending speech. And that was how it started out. We traded button for button, and then pleasure for pleasure.
“You can’t keep Dixie down,” I observed, wiping my mouth on a hotel towel. This time, he’d bucked like a young colt on a spring day. I was pleased that I had pleased him. The dark shadows of memory, of being forced to perform oral sex on my rapist had hovered but not rained on the parade.
“You’re beautiful. Come here.” He patted the pillow and I lay my head next to his. He kissed my eyebrows and started down. His hands started anywhere and wound up everywhere. At first, the feeling was like another round of the same, a pleasant buzz, a pebble rolling off the mountain, insignificant. But his hands kept cycling back to the places where he found the most response and as his touch became more focused so did the response. I could feel the beginning rumbles of the avalanche but I couldn’t stop it. When he put his mouth on me again, I laughed, I cried, the mountain shattered.
That should have been enough. But he didn’t stop. His fingers traced the same path where I had been hurt long ago and the volcano blew the top off the mountain, tsunamis destroyed whole nations and I writhed, hardly able to breathe, but not in pain. Not pain, but truth, and the truth in this bitter dance of spirit and matter was I had no independence, or choice, or any say whatsoever. I was enslaved to him. The worlds of spirit and matter lie as close together as lovers engendering a child, one entering the other to give rise to new life. Our bodies—our bodies wanted that…I wanted the little girl with Darryl’s eyes and my vision…I wanted him, that long lean body and the questing ardent spirit, both together, now, in this tiny slice of forever.
But Darryl rolled out of my bed, into a cold shower. When he returned, I wept as if my child had died; we got warm together; we slept. Morning came too damn soon: Friday, the day of Darryl’s speech. We woke; we meditated. I’d let my practice lapse badly this week. When Darryl rose, threw on sweats and laced his trainers, I remained, sitting, letting the dust settle so that I could see clearly with my inner eye. But all I could see was Darryl running, his long legs spurning the ground, his head bare to the winter chill. I let my out-going breath erase him, filled my lungs and he bucked beneath me like a spring colt, fountaining warm and salty within my mouth, until my outgoing breath erased him once more.
This was going to take serious work.
“I wept when Master Reggie rode away,” said Susan Freedman, “taking Ben with him. Can you tell me which one I wept for? The man who had me or the man I never had?”
“I know he’ll have to leave,” I told her, “He’s not mine to keep. But tell me which one was he: Reggie or Ben?”
“He’s the one who put me in the ground,” said Susan. She faded.
Remembering the fractured skull I’d held in my hands, I couldn’t bear sitting any longer. I got up, went to the window and pulled back the curtain. My eye picked out Darryl jogging back. I could see him from the limit of visibility. I could pick him out of a crowd of pedestrians by his height and the way he moved. I watched him jogging back, his movement loose and easy, dancing and dodging to maintain the rhythm of his moving meditation against the stream of pedestrian traffic. I knew his face would be composed, his eyes aware, taking in the world and radiating back compassion. Steam rose from his naked head and the rising sun tried to turn it into a halo.
I rubbed my temples. “Jeez Louise,” I said, “I am in so much trouble now.”
