Stone Junction

  Over her shoulder Jenny said urgently, ‘Daniel, what do you see?’

  ‘I see,’ Daniel began, his voice quavering, ‘a scar at the base of your spine, shaped like a lightning bolt, and I see a beautiful woman, her shoulders wet with rain, who I want to hold in my arms so bad I can’t keep my voice from shaking.’

  Jenny turned around.

  If it weren’t for the Diamond’s weight, which seemed to be gaining an ounce every five minutes now, Daniel would have lifted off the earth. He watched her delicately touch herself, the moonlit whiteness of her exposed inner thigh, rain dripping from her tight nipples. He saw the nakedness beyond her flesh. Her eyes promised what they might know together: fearless hunger, fearless trust. He wanted to meet the offer with all of himself, heartbeat to heartbeat, breath to breath. Though he felt his assent with a serene clarity, light without shadow, he was speechless.

  Jenny wasn’t. She nodded toward the Porsche and told him, ‘Bring Mia’s blanket.’

  When Volta arrived home he cleared the living room of every stick of furniture except a long low maple-top table and a cushion to sit on while he worked. He put the goldfish’s bowl directly in his line of sight on the far side of the table. He finished listening to various messages – nothing urgent – and turned off the tape deck. He gathered a pen and pad of paper and began to compose his letter of retirement from the Star. The tiny goldfish was darting wildly around the bowl.

  On impulse, Volta leapt up and ran to his bedroom. He returned a few minutes later, wearing only his old magician’s robe, indigo silk randomly patterned with small golden stars, the phases of the moon emblazoned on the back and up each sleeve. He sat cross-legged on the cushion and cupped the goldfish’s bowl in his hands. The goldfish was circling around the glass edge of the bowl, but now less frantically. The fish kept slowing as Volta watched. With a flick of its tail, it swam to the center of the bowl and stopped, suspended, fins barely shimmering. Volta could feel the Diamond grow denser in Daniel’s mind.

  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.’

  ‘Probably with reason,’ Daniel agreed.

  Jenny said evenly, ‘I have a feeling it might be a secret, but I’d like to know what’s in your pouch.’

  ‘I can’t tell you. If I did, it could put you in danger for no reason.’

  ‘I appreciate your regard,’ Jenny said, ‘but we’re always in fatal danger. Life couldn’t be great without it.’

  With all the directness he could muster, Daniel said, ‘Jenny, I love you.’

  ‘Ohhh.’ Jenny half giggled, half moaned. ‘You sweet-talking boy. But love us, too, Daniel, what we are together.’

  They were silent for seventy miles until Jenny, already brakin
g, smiled and arched her brow. ‘Again?’

  Daniel sighed. ‘Jenny, I have to tell you that in my past, my sexual past – which hasn’t been extensive – I’ve never been able to have an orgasm with the same woman twice.’

  Jenny, pulling off the road, said, ‘You can’t cross the same river twice.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Daniel said.

  ‘I change. You change. Change changes. Why be afraid it won’t stay the same? It’s not supposed to. Even if you have to be crazy to appreciate how great that is.’

  ‘A woman named Charmaine said I loved myself more than those women.’

  Jenny opened her door and stepped out naked. The warm rain had turned to a misty drizzle. She reached into the back for the folded comforter. ‘Come on, sailor,’ she said to Daniel, a playful sultriness in her tone. ‘Let’s cross the river. I’ll bet you love against fifty thousand dollars we can cross that mighty water again, me and you, together.’

  Love won going away. Far away.

  So far away that Daniel realized he was in danger. When they floated back to the Porsche, Daniel hefted the pouch. The Diamond had almost quadrupled its weight without changing size.

  They drove the next forty miles in silence. Daniel leaned back, trying to imagine what was happening with the Diamond. He was afraid to look, afraid to ask Jenny to pull over so he could take it out on the flats for a private glance. He sensed what he’d see: the Diamond preparing to open. Quickly, with a joy-shredding certainty, Daniel’s choice was becoming a decision between Jenny and the Diamond.

  The mind, Daniel remembered, is neither either nor or.

  The mind is a box canyon.

  Daniel squeezed Jenny’s bare shoulder. She turned at his touch, smiling questioningly. Daniel pointed to the side of the road.

  ‘Again?’ she said, delight overwhelming her attempt at mock incredulity.

  ‘I want to marry you,’ Daniel said. ‘Here and now.’

  Jenny was already pulling over.

  As they coasted to a stop, Daniel said, ‘You bring the bridal suite, I’ll get the ring.’

  They walked out naked in the sage desert, the folded comforter under Jenny’s arm, the possibles sack slung over Daniel’s shoulder, free arms around each other’s waists, until they found a clearing in the brush. The mist that eddied in the moonlight was brighter now that the rain clouds had dissolved. Jenny spread the damp silk comforter in the clearing, smoothing it out with her hands. The lightning-bolt scar at the base of her spine gleamed in the moonlight. Daniel knelt behind her and kissed her scar, startled and aroused by its heat on his lips.

  Jenny turned to face him, her eyes burning with tears. ‘I don’t care,’ she said passionately. ‘I don’t care if you’re real.’

  ‘Do you care if it’s so dangerous it could kill us both?’

  ‘Life is great.’

  ‘Well then, dearly beloved,’ Daniel intoned, slipping the Diamond from the possibles sack, ‘with this ring I do thee wed. May I now kiss the bride?’

  Jenny, staring into the Diamond, muttered, ‘In a minute.’

  They both stared into the Diamond. Daniel saw immediately the glow was more brilliant – not brighter, really, but sharper. He needed to vanish to see inside.

  Jenny put her hand on his thigh. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  Daniel looked at her and said as plainly and directly as he could, ‘I love you.’

  Jenny threw back her head and laughed at the moon.

  Perplexed, Daniel said, ‘That’s not what you wanted to know?’

  Jenny stopped laughing, but couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head. She lifted the Diamond from his hands and placed it gently at the head of the comforter, the Diamond’s light and the light of the moon shimmering on the pale blue silk as if it were a pond in a high mountain meadow.

  Jenny turned back to Daniel, on his knees facing her. She put her arms around him and pulled him close, whispering, ‘I do. I do. In sickness and in health. In life and death. Madness and folly. Till we part and after we part and right here and right now. I do.’

  ‘I have to tell you some things.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ Jenny promised.

  ‘I can vanish,’ Daniel told her, hoping she’d understand that he did have to tell her, that he owed her the honor.

  ‘Don’t vanish,’ she murmured against his shoulder, her tongue tracing his collarbone. ‘If you vanish, I won’t be able to feel you inside me, I won’t be able to feel those things we can only feel together.’

  Daniel said, ‘There’s something there I need to know, something I’m meant to understand.’

  Jenny released her embrace and in the same motion eased backward on the comforter. Her eyes held a glint of playful challenge. ‘Daniel, I want you to seek whatever you think you need to find, see whatever you’re meant to behold. That’s what marriage is all about. But first, Daniel, before you ride off on your beautiful white charger, dragons to slay, maidens to save, grails galore, I want to be sure you understand the basics.’

  She turned on her side and patted the comforter. When Daniel lay down beside her, she touched his cheek. Her voice thick, Jenny said, ‘Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Daniel moaned, closing his eyes.

  ‘Look at me, Daniel,’ Jenny said forcefully. ‘Look in my eyes. Do you see me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said. ‘I don’t know who I see anymore.’

  ‘If you can’t see me, Daniel, you’ll never see yourself.’ Jenny slipped her arms around him. ‘Come on. We’ll look for each other.’

  Daniel held her tightly. He smiled at her, and suddenly, finally, he relaxed. ‘Mrs Pearse, it will be the joy of my life to consummate our marriage, but I must ask you first for another vow: If something should happen to me, if I vanish and don’t make it back right away, I want you to take the Diamond – your wedding ring – and drop it in any large body of water you choose. Or anywhere it’s unlikely to be found. It’s stolen. They’ll kill you to get it back. Don’t show it to anybody.’

  Jenny whispered fiercely, ‘Done. Now let’s imagine something real – each other.’

  Slowly at first, bathed in the light of Diamond and moon, blurred in the drifting tatters of mist swirled by their cries, they imagined each other, the forks of a river joining for the plunge to the sea.

  When they’d quit laughing and trembling and crying and kissing, Jenny said, ‘I rest my case.’ She curled against him, head on his chest.

  Daniel squeezed her close, but he wasn’t there. Even with his eyes shut he sensed the Diamond’s light intensifying. He had to trust her understanding, trust himself. He looked over his shoulder at the Diamond, focused on its center, and vanished.

  The Diamond didn’t.

  But for a moment Daniel thought it had vanished with him. He could see the flame inside, but it wasn’t the spiral flame he’d always seen before. As if compressed by the Diamond’s growing density, the flame condensed toward the center, tightened to a single whirling point, the visible tip of a solar vortex, heat so intense it vaporized bone. But Daniel had no body to burn.

  He hurled himself toward the spinning center. And as he was swept across the threshold, sucked through the vortex and into the solar furnace, spilled into the Diamond Forge, Daniel learned what he was meant to know.

  He was a god. He was Hermes, Thoth, Mercury; the prophet Hermes Trismegistos. He had accepted birth to refresh his compassion for the human soul.

  He felt joyously released. He’d made it back! The Diamond was his door out, love the key that opened the lock. Above as below. Stone junction. He blessed his mother for allowing him her womb, for letting him father himself. He heard her scream inside him, ‘Run, Daniel!’ but there was nowhere left to go, no possible escape. He blessed his teachers, his friends, his lovers – Jenny especially, Jenny his wife. He heard Volta chanting deep within him, ‘Life, life, life, life.’ He blessed Volta for his wise help, though he knew Volta wouldn’t understand. Roaring upwar
d in the solar vortex, Daniel laughed. It was all life. No levels or dimensions. Not even the gods could escape. He crossed his arms on his chest, closed his eyes and let himself go, vanishing into the Diamond-Light forever.

  Volta sat cross-legged on the floor, the goldfish’s bowl cradled in his hands, his imagination locked on Daniel. He felt Daniel enter the Diamond, the joy of his surrender. Volta cried out softly, ‘No, Daniel. Oh no, poor Daniel.’ Another beautiful, deluded spirit consumed by powers mistaken for his own. Gently, Volta set the bowl on the table. The goldfish began languidly finning around the bowl.

  ‘Ahhhhhhh,’ Volta sighed, ‘go.’ Daniel had made his choice, if it could be called a choice, if a raindrop chooses where to fall, a river to flow. Grant Daniel his choice and mourn his loss. Live by life and remember the dead. Volta stood up and walked briskly to the door. He needed the clean night air, the real moon and stars.

  When Volta opened the door, Shamus pointed a pistol directly between Volta’s eyes. They both froze. Shamus held the pistol in his good hand. A small automatic. Cocked. Shamus’s scar-twisted hand was lifted to his ear, its tucked thumb forming a crude mouth.

  His voice calm and even, Shamus said, ‘Walk slowly backward into the house, keeping your arms outstretched at shoulder level, fingers spread and palms facing me.’

  Volta stepped carefully backward to the center of the room. Shamus followed, keeping his distance, pistol steady on Volta’s forehead. He kicked the door shut behind him.

  Volta sagged when the scarred hand shrilled in Shamus’s ear, the voice utterly different from Shamus’s own, ‘Make him naked. Naked.’

  ‘Take off your robe,’ Shamus ordered Volta.

  ‘No,’ Volta said.

  ‘Kill him,’ the hand urged. ‘Now. Not another word.’

  ‘Do it,’ Volta agreed. ‘Then you’ll never know who betrayed you. I expected, given your work with Jacob Hind, you might decipher Alex Three. You were quicker than I anticipated.’

  ‘Watch him!’ Shamus’s hand warned.