5

When we awoke the next morning we snuck our eyes open to search around for any telltale signs of deterioration. The already merciless New Orleans summer sun blasted through green-and-blue-striped curtains that aspired to being opaque, but which didn’t stand a chance. Our temperature inside was tolerable at the expense of the compressor already running continually for the day. It was almost comfortable in this world of also-rans: nearly ample bed, just about clean room, almost safe world.

And it was almost time to get up. We both lay on our backs, naked, in full view of the other’s body atop the conservative white sheets of the almost imaginative oak decor. We were darting our eyes everywhere except toward each other’s face, both of us frightened we’d see sudden acne or scars looking back. We lay in morning panic, the price we paid for evening pleasure. With great bravery, I ventured out into the danger of direct vision. My eyes met with hers and hers with mine.

I gasped at who I saw looking back. She seemed to do the same. Petrified, we heaved out whimpering denials of our predicament as we clawed away from each other, the two of us slinking to either side of the bed. I misjudged slightly and hit the wooden floor with a thud. Hit it hard. This knocked some sense into me, especially when I heard her laughing at my maneuver. My head popped up again over the side of the bed.

We weren’t different. We had just exposed each of ourselves to morning face. My hair was disheveled, giving me that sort of crazy look. Her make-up was smeared and her hair was worse than mine, so I naturally had seen wilderwoman.

We broke out in warm smiles when we each saw the other relieved by the same old face gazing in return, even if unkempt. I rubbed my knee which had taken the brunt of the impact. Coping with the pain, I pivoted my way back into bed next to her.

“We did it,” she whispered, “we had safe sex.”

“Yes,” I said and beamed back at her as the clouding of my panic-vision lifted to see her beautiful face still unchanged under the old mascara and blush. Her green eyes never closed the whole time she kissed me on my stubbly cheek, my eyes similarly checking her out—just to be sure. Such was the insurance of a wide-eyed kiss. She then sat up briskly, ready to get out of bed. I myself could have stayed there all day, which was always one of my famous, reasonable options; she finally arose first, me being the typical lazy man that I was. I just lay there, regarding her lines, poise, and naked beauty. She made no effort to drape herself in anything but just continued out of my bedroom door, down the hall, and then out of sight. It reminded me of Ana’s promenade when I had first seen her on the beach, except that this was in reverse. I enjoyed this aspect just as much. A moment after she was hidden from my ogleview, I heard the shower water begin. I could also hear the grating turns of the alternating rusty faucets as the temperature was adjusted, occasionally accented by a clanging pipe in the wall behind my headboard.

As she returned, one hand dripping water from satisfactory warmth assessment, she put on an impatient frown.

“Are you going to join me in the shower, or what?” she asked. When one is dating, I’ve always postulated, one is always ready for co-ed showering. It is the very nature of dirty people with dirty minds.

I held her hand, the wet one; and so we walked side-by-side. This made our stroll to the bathroom somewhat awkward, as the width of the paneled dark hall hardly afforded the breadth of two people at the same time. As we entered the small, ceramic-tiled bathroom, the steam had already converted it into a misty world. This was very strange, because although all I may have looked like to her was me, my features somewhat hazy through the humidity, she on the other hand could have been any of the Anas/Avas/Abbys. I strained to look at her through our cloud for the reassuring nose I had grown to depend on. But then I pretended for a moment, as if seeing—as if about to shower with—Ana, my first encounter with the girl of my dreams. I suppressed this infidelity as I reached for Abby and held her. She nudged me out of my embrace with her, which suggested our move to the tub that was the floor for our shower. We were mindful of our step, because the tub, although modern, did not have a textured bottom. The water was perfect.

Cleaned and overcleaned in frothy foolishness and fun, we practiced safe sex again until the hot water failed. At that point, the cold shower did what it did best.

We each carefully stepped out, helping the other.

“That was fun,” she said to me.

“Yea, it really was. Good, clean fun, yessiree. Boy, you know, I think I’m already dirty again.”

“Get dressed,” she commanded. She grabbed my hand and led me back to the bedroom.

We dressed together. The clothes were almost stylish. She wore a beige blouse and a skirt of red and brown plaid. I was reduced to wearing a silly orange jump suit with a long zipper down the front. It wasn’t flight school surplus, either—it was fashion!

“Abby?” I called to her softly.

“Yes, Ace,” she answered, regarding my attire. Her response was sharply articulated, which was in contrast to my gentle tone. She snapped to attention and saluted. “What time does your sortie leave, sir?” I looked myself over, up and down, unable to deny the paramilitary theme. I stifled my amusement, even though I realized she was a pretty funny girl.

“What—” I said, running my hand on the zipper from my neck to my crotch, “Is my flyyyyyyyy open?” I laughed at my own joke as she walked toward me and embraced me. I could tell that she loved that I made her laugh, too.

“What was it, baby?” she finally addressed me seriously, whispering into my ear. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I’d like to go with you to Dr. Landry’s.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she warned. She pulled a little away from my ear to look into my eyes as she spoke. “You saw the look he gave you. You know how he must feel about you, leading me astray as you have.”

“Well, then I think it’s about time he learned to accept me. We don’t know how long you’re going to be tied up with this business, and I think I should start, at the very beginning, to go with you. Unless, of course,” I paused for the effect of caution, “you wish to go anywhere in this world alone.” She looked back at me. I knew by her expression that I had made my point.

“You’re right. Of course,” she agreed, “I don’t want to go anywhere here alone.”

We took Abby’s car, now a green Volvo station wagon. The luggage rack carried mysterious cargo that was covered with a dusty brown tarp. Abby said she wasn’t interested in what lay under it, for she feared the embarrassment of what her former self here might be hauling around. It was strung up pretty well, preventing me from stealing a peak, since we were rushed for time.

Dr. Landry’s office was in the hospital itself. St. Luke’s was a monstrously large urban place, a multi-storied collection of haphazardly connected wards, halls, and storage areas. In past layers it was more colorful, friendlier. But this was distasteful, like bad medicine. By standing there and looking right up its front you could tell which parts were added to which parts at different times by the differing gray scales of its components; parts added not as merciful expansions, but as begrudged catch-up necessity. It must have loomed ten stories over Claiborne Avenue, surrounded, like a noose, by a fortuitous superimposition of several overlying near-miss interstate ramps. Claiborne Avenue was a good place to put this hospital, because this street, known as “crack-up alley,” was famous for its car wreck rate. St. Luke’s, I’m sure here, as in past worlds, boasted one of the largest trauma centers in the Southeast.

But this version was also an anachronism, as it still held psychiatric rooms in a hospital center which was mainly for illnesses of the body. The psychiatric service here had apparently not yet followed the chic wave of progress by isolating itself in specialized suburban centers that grew beautiful trees as well as beautiful minds that. I guess that’s just the way it was in this world.

“O.K.,” she rehearsed out loud for my benefit, “I was depressed because you and I broke up, and then I externalized my disappointment with you to the whole world. How’s that sound?”

“How the hell do I know?” I said. “But I think shrinks love all of that talk about externalizing and projecting stuff onto others and all. Hell, try it. The worst thing he could do is make you take that scan.”

The tarp flapped in the wind as we drove. I was the one doing the driving. On the right side of the road I might add. That was different but do-able. Her calm from her careful rehearsal slowly became replaced by anxiety, I could tell.

“Relax,” I said, trying to reassure her, but my careless lapse in concentration was corrected when I jerked the wheel, remembering to stay right. For some time we were on Tulane Avenue going the opposite way from where we really wanted to go, because now with this “keep right” reticulation we were trapped in a “No Left Turn” impasse which the street had become. Ultimately I was able to reverse direction and seek St. Luke’s the awkward way with a series of right turns. I then was able to take my left when I cut across from a side street. It was interesting to see how Tulane Avenue had changed with my most recent slides. What used to be a Cinerama theater was now the Pussy Willow XXX Skin Flick Movie House. Even Eddie’s Burger Nirvana had changed. We passed it as we were getting closer to the turn onto Claiborne that I needed. I even saw him silhouetted through the window as we went by. It was still called “Nirvana,” but I had to figure it had been demoted in quality to at least beef limbo. Once on Claiborne, it was easy to approach the hospital—all that was needed was to aim for it. Landing there was a bit more difficult. I began and then continued to circumnavigate St. Luke’s, getting closer and closer to it each time. At one point I found myself in Colosseum traffic when I was ferreted away from the hospital toward the Superdome. It too wore grays in disagreement with its more varied hues I’ve known.

“Oh, that scan,” she grumbled. She looked up at the stoic stadium that was different to her as well. “I just want to get this finished. I want to restart life again, even here.”

This surprised me.

“Why, Abby,” I said teasingly, all flattered with myself. She squeezed my hand, which told me I was right to feel flattered.

“You can’t park here,” said the ruddy man in the black uniform who had approached us only as far as he had needed so as to be heard. He then turned away again.

“Well, why not?” I asked him, shouting from my car window. He stopped, somewhat aggravated, and then he resumed his walk back our way.

“Why not? I’ll tell you why not,” he said. I could tell by his temperament that he had been out in the sun all morning. “It’s because these places are reserved.”

“Reserved?” I asked. This was strange. I had never heard of such a thing, except for the President—people like that.

“That’s right, reserved. The doctors have to be assured they can park. Don’t you think they gotta park?”

“Sure,” I agreed, “but...”

“Rocky,” Abby suggested, “when in Reme...”

“Rome,” I corrected. “O.K., O.K., we’ll move.”

“Then thank you,” said the man. Had he been slightly more curt, I might have even thought he was being sarcastic. Now tightly nestled into adjacent St. Luke’s traffic, I drove around the block of the hospital for a few minutes until I found a parking place that seemed to go unchallenged. On the wall above the parking places we shared with other lucky patrons was a sign which read, PLEASE LOCK YOUR CAR—NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR STOLEN GOODS. “This is indeed a terrible world,” I said out loud to myself. Abby just tightened her grip on my hand in response to my observation.

“Cope,” she said. “That’s what the sane do here.”

We entered this large building via a main lobby entrance. We passed dry and overgrown former reflecting pools to get there.

Finally there were colors: I could still see that volunteerism was alive and well by noting the red and white of the Candy-Stripers. Also, we walked this somewhat friendly entrance until we found a green colored trail on the wall that read PSYCHIATRY. It was jammed together with stripes of other colors and other disciplines, but soon travelled on alone by itself as we followed its path to Dr. Landry’s clinic.

Just before opening the door, Abby gave me one last squeeze of her hand, and I returned the good-luck gesture. Upon entering the waiting area together, we stood there awkwardly, eyeing all of the possibilities for seating arrangements. I looked for any two chairs which were not near anyone looking too terribly crazy. I spotted two such seats for us and led her to them. Although the multicolored plastic chairs in this room were situated along the periphery such that all there could observe all there, I stared at nothing. I felt like I was on an elevator and was crowded much too closely with people I really didn’t wish to be near, looking at the closed doors as the floors clicked away bringing me closer to escape from this telepathic claustrophobia.

We sat for the longest time. I couldn’t believe we actually had an appointment and that we were made to wait this long. Especially in a doctor’s office. I checked the clock on the wall and sputtered when I realized forty minutes had gone by. Abby was dutifully quiet the whole time and shushed me with each of my exasperations.

“You’re the one who insisted I come, remember?” she whispered with a retributional I-told-you-so.

She was right, so I clammed up. We sat there only another additional moment when a nurse finally opened the door to invite Abby into the area beyond it.

“I’d like to come, too,” I said.

“Oh, this isn’t for the visit with Dr. Landry yet,” the nurse informed me. “This is for the urine and blood work.” She said this loudly enough for everyone to take notice. This is when I first saw all of them: I took notice that everyone took notice. Abby too, so she blushed. Now she was the one sputtering. All eyes remained fixed on her, eyes that we were sure were trying to imagine her bodily fluids in lascivious rituals. She reddened more deeply in her embarrassment. Next she dealt with the surprise of having to actually render such effects.

“Urine and blood,” she murmured to me in prosecution. “Great.” She reluctantly arose and walked toward the nurse who stood at the door of a long hallway. All of the eyes followed until the door closed behind them, leaving me alone to sit out there with, I guess, these nuts of all kinds. Imagine that! I was in this terrible world that was nuts itself and sat in a confined area with the people this world considered nuts. I’d be lucky if I didn’t get mauled—didn’t get my skin ripped off just for the fun of it. I surely hoped these fruitcakes had been taking their medicine. Anyway, I was sure Dr. Landry would find out Abby hadn’t taken hers after getting a look at the urine and blood.

(“That’s not all you haven’t been taking,” he would later say to her when we would ultimately be sitting together in front of his desk in his office.)

Out in the waiting room, I finally studied my fellow detainees. There were three middle-aged men, an elderly woman, and a young girl. It was terrible of me, but I fantasized horrifying scenarios for each of the men based on their unusual facial mannerisms and defects. Man number one had obviously been rejected by the very last woman in New Orleans before perching himself atop St. Louis Cathedral to pick off many of the others who had previously spurned him. Yes, those military tattoos told me he knew how to deliver those rounds. Man number two had obviously stabbed his mother several times because of an overcooked steak. Man number three either had killed several children or was considering it. I stopped, embarrassed by my violent imagination. Was I beginning to fit in here? Actually, not here. Certainly those crimes wouldn’t be appropriate, I guessed, for several more layers. I looked at the young girl, possibly sixteen or seventeen, pretty with black hair, brown eyes, and dressed all in black. Her brooding eyes met mine. Her wrists identified her as a cutter.

“How come you’re here?” she asked me from across the waiting room. The three middle-aged men flipped through magazine pages impatiently. The elderly woman just stared at me with a look of generalized objection.

“My girlfriend’s here,” I replied.

“Oh,” she responded. “How come she’s here?”

“She couldn’t cope with all of the terrible things in the world—but she’s much better now.”

“Oh,” she said again.

“And you?” I asked back.

“I’m troubled youth,” she answered.

“So what’s troubling you?”

“No. I’m not a troubled youth. I am troubled youth. I am one of the terrible things in your girlfriend’s world.”

“Troubled youth? Is that like being an angry young man?” I asked.

“I’m not angry. The world just sucks,” she proclaimed. Could this be another slider?

“Exactly,” I agreed to her commentary on macrocosmic suction. “Do you ever slide to different worlds?” It was a bold question, but I just had to know. In any case, they were all disturbed people here, and so boldness and outrageousness would get lost in the background.

“Yes, I slide to different worlds, but only when I do shit,” she answered.

“You do shit, do you?” This was not aesthetic. A sweet young thing, troubled notwithstanding, coprophagic?

“You know...shit,” she explained. “My drugs.”

“Oh, drugs.” Why was I relieved? “Why do you do drugs?”

“I told you. Because the world sucks.”

“Yea, but they already give you drugs here for that.”

“Not like my drugs, Mister.”

“Sounds like, then, this is an attitude problem,” I suggested naively, but boy this ticked her off.

“Up your ass, Mr. Attitude! Mr. Parent! Where’d you get your clothes, anyway? A rummage sale?”

“At least my clothes have color,” I responded.

“Black is my color,” she snapped, ever so right.

“Leave him alone, you little ingrate witch,” said the elderly woman whose face I now noticed had one side sagging. “Look at all those fancy black clothes. You’re probably a devil-worshipper, huh?”

Holy Topeka! Devil-worshipping, I thought. That was the most obscene concept I had ever heard of.

“Hey,” the girl shouted, “don’t knock anything till you know what you’re talking about.”

Jesus, I thought.

Things were beginning to get kind of rowdy as a different nurse slid open a window that looked somewhat like a confessional window. She cast a silencing glance that mysteriously made both the young girl and the old woman look into their laps, seemingly in penance.

“Are you...Rocky?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I answered, eyes wide to accept direction.

“Please walk through the door and join Miss Bentley.” That was Abby, formerly Ana Brand, formerly Ava Brantly, now Abby Bentley.

“Bye, Rocky,” the troubled youth said sarcastically with a sneer just for me when I opened the door as instructed. I stopped just long enough to give a parting shot.

“So, Morticia or whatever your name is, when you go to confession at devil worship, do you, like, have to confess all of the good things you’ve done?”

“There’s good and bad in everything,” she snapped back, almost rehearsed. “It’s the people who assign the categories, and most of them aren’t really qualified.”

“What?” I said incredulously.

“Of course it don’t make no sense,” butted in the old woman with the sagging face, “she takes drugs.”

“Good and bad drugs, I suppose.” Then, “Actually, black is the absence of color—the absence of anything. And you wear it well.” This was my final gesture to the girl before closing the door to her and to her raised middle finger. I was led down a paneled hall to a room where Abby was sitting. Her chair was one of two in front of the desk of Dr. Landry, who wasn’t there yet.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Urination I’m used to,” she complained. “Blood-letting is still a little awkward for me.” She made a face that alluded to her stomach. “I feel a little queasy, a little nauseated. I guess it was the blood.” I reached for her hand and then held it all the while as we sat in our two matching chairs at the desk. She was quiet during this time, probably just suffering from her queasiness. Her hand was a little clammy.

“I found the waiting room a little ill-tempered,” I said.

“You didn’t meet the woman drawing the blood,” she answered, pressing her hand against the Band-Aid on the bend of her arm.

Dr. Landry was very proud of his desk, it seemed. It was wood of some soft, light brown variety and spotlessly clean, not a misplaced paper in sight. The desk calendar that served as blotter sat unblotted. To the right of it was the black multi-line telephone, a couple of the buttons blinking gratuitously as they always seem to be doing on multi-line telephones. To the left of the large central calendar was a jointed double picture frame. I reached over Abby to grab it.

“Rocky! Don’t!” she cautioned. Undaunted, I looked at both of the five-by-sevens in it. In one was a picture of an attractive brunette woman’s face. She wore kind of a perfect model’s smile, her hair was picture-perfect, and the lighting was perfect as well, indicating a professional photographer’s work. Dr. Landry’s subject, captured in this way, was probably just as perfect in this picture as the face that had originally come with the frame. The other picture was definitely a snapshot. It was Dr. Landry, falling to the autumnal leafy ground under the weight of four of (apparently) his laughing children, all boys.

“Dr. Landry doesn’t seem to live in such a terrible world, does he?” Abby asked rhetorically, hopefully. I replaced the double picture frame on the desk. We sat quietly.

He finally came in about ten minutes later. This was the first time I was able to get a good look at him. I had only seen him briefly when Abby had been discharged that time. The discharge was to my care, so it was, for him, under doubtful circumstances. Now, however, he looked more accepting. He was a light-skinned man, tall—about six-two—and his demeanor was learned: he sat behind his desk and cupped his authoritative hands together on his calendar mat and studied us with dark eyes through his thick glasses. We waited for him to start.

“I saw you once when Abby had been discharged, Mr. Reber,” he finally said after a time. Mr. Reber—that was me. “So you’re her Svengali.”

“Hardly,” I answered, whatever a Svengali was, which I figured couldn’t be nice. My tone wasn’t threatening or defensive—more or less an amused tone. A nice tone. An un-Svengali tone.

Abby gave her rehearsed speech:

“I know living life, as it is, is tough, and that things are always changing. But Ralph—I mean Rocky—well, I owe him an apology. I guess I kind of made it sound like he was the cause of my thought disorder; but Dr. Landry, it was me.”

Hell, I was convinced, the way she used her hands when she spoke. I made myself look contrite. Dr. Landry leaned back in his tall, leather swivel chair, interested to hear more. She continued.

“If anything, he’s helped me see things right. I’m better, really. I don’t think I need that brain scan.”

Dr. Landry just looked at both of us, his fingers intertwined in a prayer-like gesture on his desk top. He was apparently holding back something. Finally he began.

“You’ve apparently been feeling so good about things that that’s why you stopped taking your anti-depressant.

“Is that O.K.?” Abby asked guiltily. “I must tell you I’m spiritual, religious, and put my faith in God.” She was good.

“The anti-depressants aren’t all you stopped taking,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked, worried.

“You know, Abby,” he circumvented, “you’re right. This world does suck.” I thought of Miss Black-out in the waiting room. “So you’re religious,” he said. She was taken aback somewhat by this sudden stab into personal territory. She obviously thought her comment would be just the icing on the cake.

“I guess everyone is a little bit,” she replied.

He paused, looked up, and then sighed. His eyes drifted slowly back down to meet hers, but focused on a point way past her. He then spoke to this distant point of convergence. I imagined that he was looking down all of the layers through all of the Abbys who were in his line of fire.

“I’ve never been able to figure out why there are so many terrible things in this world—I mean, if you’re religious. A wonderful God, I would think...” He had trouble expressing these thoughts. “...how could He allow so many terrible things. I don’t know if I have the answer, but I’ve certainly rationalized a way to look at it. I think that perhaps most people don’t see the truly beautiful things happening or co-existing alongside the terrible things. I think they all balance out. I think that maybe all of the things in this world, the good and the bad, are both important and unimportant at the same time. That’s the only way I can reconcile the possible existence of a benevolent supreme being along with the malevolence He seems to ignore. Otherwise, I’d have to be an atheist. I’m glad you have such faith.”

Abby’s case must have had a big impact on him. It must have made him do some thinking, for he certainly waxed philosophical.

“Maybe every bad thing has a good version of itself elsewhere,” I said, “and every good thing has a bad version, and all of that balances out.”

“Maybe so,” he said, humoring what he obviously felt was a naïve observation compared to his own uncommon introspection. “Well,” he said, the parallax suddenly snapping off, his eyes focusing on Abby, “I’m a psychiatrist—what do I know? We’re all supposed to be crazy anyway, right? Never met another psychiatrist who wasn’t.” He paused for a chuckle that never came. “I guess I try to make some sense out of this world whenever I know someone’s going to bring another child into it.”

Suddenly this was a world, exploding into existence like from the Big Bang itself. A world I couldn’t cope with.

“You see, Abby, besides discontinuing your psychotropic medication, you also stopped your birth control pills.”

I almost slid right there and then, but only the thought of triplets stopped me. So I only slid off of the chair. Abby’s question put her an immediate second, ranking herself behind baby in importance:

“Could the baby have been affected by the medicine I was given?” she asked, coolly nondisjointed by the news.

“You did stop taking it. The exposure you had would have been very close to the time of implantation. I frankly doubt that the fetus had any exposure. Of course, if you were to have any doubts, you could always terminate the pregnancy.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

“You could have an abortion,” he explained.

“I know what terminating a pregnancy is,” she said coldly.

“I could schedule it,” he offered.

“Does your hospital know you talk like this?” She became angry, only her amazement keeping her anger somewhat subdued. “You could lose your license for this.”

“For what?”

“For arranging an abortion, that’s what,” I interjected.

“Did you happen to miss Roe vs. Wade, Mr. Reber?” he asked me.

(Roe vs. Wade, I later learned from my Survey, was a landmark case of the Supreme Court in which a woman who was pregnant won the right to electively terminate her pregnancy, legalizing abortion. For this particular woman, by the way, the decision came too late for her to take advantage of it for her own personal plight, for she went on to have the baby. After the birth, she, as a previous birth-mother, went on to champion her feeling that she should have been able to have aborted her unwanted child at that time. It is unknown to me how the child, almost an ex-fetus, now ex-unwanted, ultimately felt about the whole thing.)

The conversation was indicative that we were in a world where women had this choice. Coming from a world where this had been taboo, like it had been (we would find out) in Dr. Landry’s world only decades or so earlier, we had to do some articulate square dancing to avoid looking to the psychiatrist like we weren’t in culture shock and that Abby was coping. We weren’t that successful. We both thought we had gotten good at looking unstartled in the midst of startling things, but pregnancy (for me)...and abortion (for Abby)...well...

“What’s the big deal?” Landry added, perplexed. “You’ve already had one abortion according to the history your aunt gave when you were admitted.”

Well, hey! I’m a sport, I thought. When in Rome, instead of in Reme...

Not Abby. At this point, she kind of deteriorated to the point that made Dr. Landry want his scan. Telling her that the person she was here, before she had gotten here, had had an abortion created a face she wore which easily showed a sudden self-love/self-hate conflict that eroded her self-worth. It was an expression of helplessness to retaliate, of confusion as to whom to retaliate against.

“I don’t want you to have a CAT scan, of course, being pregnant,” he said. He now assumed that she had no thoughts of termination. “A safer scan for the fetus would be the Magnetic Resonance Imager.”

“An MRI…” she asked in blank monotone.”

“Yes.” He then went on to explain it. And then he went on to schedule it.

The drive home was kind of tense. Not because she was pregnant, but because I started all of this crap about how we were in this world now and should think about things the way things are thought about here if we were to fit in, even if it meant as alien a concept as abortion. I said all of this partly to make her feel better about this Abby’s past history and partly because I meant it, because I really was a sport, because when in Rome...

“Where should we draw the line,” she asked, “to fit in this world.

Well! Good point. “I cope until I couldn’t cope anymore,” I answered, “and that was where I draw my line.” The lines in the roadway, on the other hand, were meant to keep me on the right side, and I responded to them with the necessary swerves.

When we parked in the lot at my apartment building, I noticed that the tarp was gone from the roof of the wagon. There were just some cut ropes which had been the fasteners. Abby went on ahead of me, actually sort of ignoring me. I looked above the car. The luggage rack was metal, slightly rusted, causing it to buckle against the top a bit. A couple of leaflets were caught in the space created by this warping, leading me to believe this was the cargo. Apparently the former Abby here was involved in some sort of political activities. I removed one of the leaflets, battered a bit from the wind of our returning home. It was actually a small placard announcing a speaking engagement for one Thomas Greally. He was described as “an Exclusionist to set our times right again.”

An Exclusionist? I asked myself. Couldn’t be good. I removed the few remaining pieces of propaganda and stashed them into a nearby trash can. I entered the elevator reluctantly, aiming for my apartment sheepishly; I knew Abby was in a mood. When I walked in, she didn’t even look up from the dinette table from where she was reading. She was reading my book, my Survey.

As she spent the rest of the afternoon with it, I spent my afternoon and into the evening napping, a prisoner of the distance between us. We went to bed together, but still—distance. That evening she fell asleep very quickly, but I lay awake for hours, thanks to my napping earlier. We were in the French provincial bedroom—she had retired there without explanation, and I had obediently followed her. She tossed and turned all that night; I know, because I was awake for most of it. Finally, when my time came, I was comatose.

That night she had a terrible dream. She woke up screaming and then began beating me—fists in the head in my dead sleep, flailing arms, the whole lot. She was hurting me.

“Stop!” I shouted in hypnotic confusion. The pelting continued. What was happening? I had no perspective, halfway between sleep and awake, floundering to make sense while being beaten.

“You!” she shouted back. “You bastard! You’re the one who can go to Hell!”

I was wrapped in sheets, having turned in my sleep many times in the same direction accidentally creating a papoose restraint, a sitting duck for her punches, clawing, and grasps. I felt every knuckle that hit my head and every slap to my face. I fought at my swaddling bed linens ferociously and finally succeeded in getting my arms free from my concentric handicap. I encircled Abby’s tornado of arms and locked her in.

“Abby, please,” I strained.

“No, no,” she cried, trying to cast me off. She had dreamed she had the baby, a very beautiful one. “So beautiful,” she said angrily. She couldn’t hit me, so she struck me with her words. “So beautiful, in fact, that I forced myself into that piece-of-shit Dr. Landry’s office and spit him while I presented my child to him.” She calmed a little. “That showed him.”

There is a frail beauty in nurturing. And especially frail is the nurturing between mother and child. I could feel something, this nurturing as it would turn out, when I clasped her, stifling her flying fists. And her dream showed me the violent desperation that can result from this exquisite frailty being violated, a delicate strength that always lays unsnapped and wary, guarded with a mammalian trigger finger. And I loved her so much upon hearing of her dream, and I loved also our unborn child so much. She could tell. Sportsmanship was dead.

“Long live our child,” I said lovingly, and this made everything alright for her. It was me she began to nurture, cooing to my bruises.

“‘Look at the beauty,’ I told him. ‘Look at the perfection.’ And he just sat there, oblivious. ‘Look at the uninterrupted process, my own continuation forever. You see,’ I told him, trying to make him appreciate the miracle, ‘I’ve reproduced.’ I was triumphant, but he just laughed.”

“It was just a dream,” I consoled her. “I’m here with you all the way.”

“He called me stupid. Actually, he said ‘styupid.’ He got up from his big chair behind his big desk, but they got smaller as he got bigger. He grew more menacing, which I guess was the actual aspect that was larger than life. And then he laughed louder, showing pointed teeth—y’know like in vampire movies.”

“Just a dream. Just a dream.”

“No wait. I think this is important. You need to hear this.”

“O.K., sure.”

“Suddenly, the weight of my baby in my arms was gone. And then I heard a slam on the floor. Dr. Landry stomped his foot hard on the dirty wooden floor at the same time as the thud that fired through my heart. It added a scary uncertainty to the sound, like when phoney wrestlers stomp on the mat to embellish the sound of a body slam. I screamed.”

“I remember.”

“I could hardly bring myself to look at what lay at my feet.”

“Please, Abby, just a dream.”

“And then he laughed even louder at the whole scene, staring holes through me the whole time, daring me to look down. I did, I looked down. I forced myself. I braced myself for horror, for a sickening sight.”

“Please, sweetie, stop.”

“No. I looked,” she cried. She rolled over on her back, looking blankly at the ceiling.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.

“There’s nothing to tell. There was nothing there! There was no baby!”

“Well, there is,” I reassured her.

“No baby, Rocky, like there had never been one.” She paused, sniffled. “Like there had never been one.”

“Well, there is,” I repeated.

“Our baby was gone. Then there was this clairvoyance, a merciless insight that told me what happened. Our baby was aborted in this world, after all. It survived only in the worlds it went on to exist in—the very nasty direction you say we’re going in.” Staring emptily at the ceiling all this time, she now turned to look me in the eye. “And somewhere at the end of the line we have inadvertently sent our child sliding to Hell.”

“That’s crazy. A crazy dream. Reality is what’s now. And what’s now is we’re together, all three of us.” She smiled and then hugged me firmly.

The next morning, purged of her doubts in me, I heard her singing, almost under her breath, as she dressed from her dismal wardrobe:

Rocky and Abby sitting in a tree

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

First comes Mellaril

After we’re a pair

Then Dr. Landry and

Pre-natal care.

It was like nothing unusual had happened earlier in the middle of the night. She was so happy to still be pregnant after one day. She cruised through a light cereal breakfast, and then we enjoyed each other’s company on the way to the big magnet test.

Well I was ready to marry her right there and then, her so happy and all. It was me! I thought. I made this difference. I encompassed all that she was and was to be, and I likewise was enchanted by all of the future joys that we would grow into together. I could sense a whole life yet to be shared and having been shared, too. After that dream she felt complemented in her life by me—more than just support; almost a feeling of joint vindication, of victory in a world with a lot of losers. There was no more anger over being hijacked here; this world was now family—child in tow.

The world we stepped out into.

The red tape in this layer was some red. I will spare you the needless drudgery it would take to tell the story of how we finally made it into the area that was to be our green room for the big show known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Abby made a joke, saying she was kind of curious as to why the cars from the parking lot weren’t stuck to the side of this little square building that held all of this magnetism.

“How come, smart guy?”

“Do you expect someone who became summa cum laude by sliding to where everyone was stupider to know everything?”

I mentioned green room. I swear, it was just like that, like we were getting ready to go on stage or on a talk show. They even had this guy come in to “warm us up.” We all introduced ourselves.

The guy was really husky, in his forties. Almost overweight but not. Like I said, husky. A more pleasing face, though, I’ve never seen on a husky guy, and his voice matched. His was a baby-face, although distinguished at the same time. He certainly was a very nice antithesis to a very lousy world. We both seemed attracted to him in a building that had its own magnetism.

“Hello, Miss Bentley,” he said in his pleasing voice. “I have your medical chart here.” He sat and paged through it. Abby showed only minor embarrassment over someone else knowing she had been in the nuthouse. At least all this character could know was that she, at one point, just couldn’t cope; she had never admitted sliding to Dr. Landry or to anybody else.

“Is the reason you’re having magnetic resonance and not the CT scan because you’re not going to have another abortion?” he asked as affably as a person could ask. (You have to understand our way of thinking to understand the reaction to this very pleasant gentleman. We came from layers where talk like this meant dead babies and stuff like that. We’d often react inappropriately, the way we’d react to what we’ve been used to.)

“Fuck you,” Abby said to the very pleasant gentleman. She said it fairly pleasantly, though.

Me? I was kind of stunned, I guess, by this reaction. I had only expected disapproval. His reaction to her salutation was even more puzzling.

“Yes, I know the thought of that may seem wrong to you,” he said.

“Sure is,” she answered, not swayed by his pacifying tone.

“Well, let’s just get set up. Here, slip this on and I’ll come back and get you.”

I have to admit, I was ready to “get” her myself as I watched her “slip that on.” I felt guilty—my desiring her like that. With all of this tension, the self-gratifying in me pushed aside any caring and appropriateness, and I didn’t like recognizing how wrong this was. It was almost as if I were getting some perspective on my lecherous inner core. Momentarily rescued by this insight, I dismissed my private lewdness rather than acting upon it, which I almost did, by stroking her waist lustfully in the guise of affection. I kept my restraint private; after all, she was very upset, having been reminded that the “Abby” of this layer had had an abortion.

And where was that Abby? Had she been ducked here or there, like a piston, ready to resume her original position as soon as the space were to be voided again by Ana/Ava/Abby’s sliding on down the line? Or had she been permanently pushed into a direction forever. If so, was she sliding insidiously to a worse layer where even she would be shocked by what she were to find; or to a better layer where she is cruder, stupider, and generally has just a plain ol’ bad attitude? Could this be true of anyone with a bad attitude? Are there then countless people who slide and of them, how many know it?

“One last question, Miss Bentley,” the MRI technician said to her as she lay in state, her North Pole about to meet her South Pole. “You claimed to have not been able to cope with ‘this world’; could this be you’re from another world and kind of pass from one to another?”

I heard him ask her this. How the hell did he know that? Maybe she had mentioned it to someone (each of us thought), prompting nice guy MRI tech to take a poke of fun at her. Maybe he was some closet shrink med school reject showing his morbid curiosity of thought disorder. Regardless, it was none of his damn business, and she apparently wanted to make sure it was not entertained (or entertaining) further.

“No. Just boyfriend problems,” she answered truthfully, in a way.

“Well, then, I guess it’s O.K. to begin the test,” he said as he walked to his console of buttons and screens.

His name was John Fitzsimmons. He had been employed here at least six years, or at least that was the date on his picture ID, whose pin was used to secure it to a cork board to the right of his console. He sat at this control center overlooking the chamber itself through a glass window above it. I stood to his back watching his technocracy in action, but I could see Abby, too.

“Does it hurt?” I asked her.

“No,” she replied, tight-lipped so as not to move.

“Then why are you crying?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, this time moving her lips.

“Please don’t talk to her,” Mr. Fitzsimmons requested.

She realized she might be able to see her baby. From where I could watch, she slowly composed herself throughout the duration of the scan. She actually came to be quite cheerful by its conclusion. The change was dramatic. Her cheer ended abruptly, however, when she was informed of the price she’d have to pay for this thing.

Mr. Fitzsimmons had escorted us down a corridor of many doors that ultimately ended in a cubicle. He had led us to a flat-affect type to arrange payment and lingered, as a courtesy, to make sure we were treated alright.

“How much did you say for this magnet thing!” Abby exclaimed.

“$650.00,” muttered the mutterer, repeating the price. She was a dull-looking woman, non-descript, as dull as this muttering that leaked out of her.

“Well how much was the CAT scan Dr. Lambert made me skip?”

“Landry,” the mutterer corrected, almost distinctly.

“Whoever,” Abby said back.

“The CAT scan is $275.00, the Magnetic Resonance is $650.00.”

“Shit!” she exclaimed. “I told him it didn’t make no difference to me only as long as the cost was the same.”

“It isn’t,” the muttering continued.

She pointed her finger at the mutterer who couldn’t have cared less. “I told him,” she spoke firmly—emphatically—that I’d’ve aborted the goddamn little bastard if it could have saved me this much.”

Huh? On how many levels did this not make sense! And from her! From my Abby! Unless—

I instinctively felt myself for any residual vibrations, which was stupid since doing this was only symbolic. I was checking for sliding. Did I slide? Did I slip? Did I come to the next layer where Abby was...different?

“Why don’t we bill Miss Bentley,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said to the cashier, who passively obliged the suggestion since it immediately made her life simpler. “Uh, Mr. Reber, may I speak to you in private, please?” he asked me.

“Why?” Abby quipped, turning to Mr. Fitzsimmons. “Did you see something on your expensive scan I need to know?”

“Mr. Reber, please,” he urged me.

I looked at Abby and then back at Mr. Fitzsimmons. I motioned it was alright to her with a gesture of my hand as I walked off with him.

“Can’t even get my name right!” she exclaimed to the furniture in the cubicle who was the non-descript woman as she eyed the invoice being prepared. “This pregnancy’s already cost me too much,” I heard her say. “Better set me up with Family Planning. They’ll know what to do.”

Confused, Mr. Fitzsimmons led me into an office; actually, it was another cubicle, even smaller, only large enough for a small desk. We sat across from each other, both our backs up against walls. Before he spoke I noticed his diplomas on the wall: High school—summa cum laude, School of Radiology—the Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen Award for Excellence in Radiological Technology.

Smart guy, I thought. I wondered if my summa cum laude could beat up his summa cum laude? And maybe this pair of summa cum laudes could figure out Abby’s behavior, because I really didn’t remember sliding.

“Why didn’t she tell me?” he demanded. “Why didn’t she let on before getting into the Magnetic Resonance Imager?” He seemed quite disturbed—and guilty, too, with that look on his face like he’d just hit a small dog on the road.

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me she was a true exister.” Now what on Earth was this guy yapping about? “Were you, in fact, aware of her capabilities?” he asked.

“Like what?” I answered sarcastically.

“She has the ability to live in many different worlds, you know.”

“Sliding!”

“Sliding?”

“Sliding,” I reiterated. “Going to another layer, slightly different and, judging how things have been lately, slightly more horrible.”

“Yes!” he shouted. “Yes. That’s why a lot of us true existers have stopped here,” he said, “refusing or afraid to go any farther.”

“True exister, true exister—what is a true exister? What are you talking about? Is a true exister a slider?” I asked him.

“I would think so. Most of us prefer the term—”

“‘Most of you’? How many are there? I thought I was alone.”

“Mr. Reber, I thought Miss Bentley was the true exister, or slider, as you call it.”

“No sir, it’s me. She just hooked on for a ride.” I paused. “Unfortunately for her,” I added.

“Hooked on?”

“That’s personal to you, fella, O.K.?”

“Ah, yes,” he said; he knew. “You mean sex.”

“I mean love,” I corrected.

“You mean sex,” he further countercorrected. “Well,” he added with a more conciliatory intonation, “sex plus love, I guess. But you need the exertion. A true exister can take anyone along with orgasm.”

“If they’re in love,” I insisted. He made a face like he didn’t really know. I knew, though. “Oh, God,” I exclaimed, “I can’t believe I’m talking with this total stranger about my orgasms!” Mr. Fitzsimmons suddenly stood up and towered over me, putting his hands on my shoulders, which I guess he felt was necessary for a more assertive and direct address.

“This is important!” he sternly reprimanded me, his voice slightly raised. I knocked his arms away with a single swiping out of my own arms.

“Get your hands off of me, please,” I ordered him. “You’re damn right it’s important—important to me, too,” I said when he fell back into his chair.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

It meant, of course, that I had been right with that crack to Ana that she could slide with me only during climax, the famous comment that started my life of regrets when she became the estranged Ava and then the mental patient Abby. It also explained why Ava had slid with me that night. I wondered if just anyone could slide with love and the physiologic exertion that states it so well.

“But only a true exister can drag someone else along,” he continued, still on his roll. I was getting more irritated by this time, listening to this banter on one level, trying to understand what I had just heard come from Abby on another.

“Explain what just happened, please,” I demanded.

“About your girlfriend’s change of attitude about abortion?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m getting to that. Please have patience.” He sighed, collecting his thoughts.

“All right,” I agreed. He seemed relieved.

“As I was saying, a true exister can take someone along,” he repeated.

“That is, if he or she is in love right back,” I said, loyal to my conviction, perhaps saying things just to make me feel good. My tone was still somewhat harsh. He made that uncertain face again, but he had given me an answer as to whether just anyone can do it.

“A true exister,” he went on further, “may just not notice because people don’t wise up to the danger they put their lovers into until they get to worlds that have really changed.”

“In this direction, you mean.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well I noticed,” I argued. He didn’t answer. “They don’t notice the name changes?” I finally asked.

“Name changes?” he asked.

“Yea. Name changes. My name has changed almost every time.”

“I’ve never noticed before. It’s never happened to me,” he said, now wrinkling his face in puzzlement.

“Aw, c’mon, man, not just your own name, but a lot of people’s names. Some stay the same, but a lot change slightly.”

“I tell you it’s never really happened that I remember.”

“How many layers have you slid through?” I asked him, pressing my point.

“I have truly existed through probably thousands.”

“And no name changes?”

“No.”

“Well then, we haven’t arrived at this layer from the same direction,” I surmised.

“Oh, we’ve come from the same direction,” he explained, “we just haven’t been on the exact same track.”

I was calmer.

I was interested. Not by the challenge of our disagreement in the subtleties of sliding theory, but by the fact that I finally had met another bona fide slider. I had thought I was unique. I mean Abby didn’t count; her ability was acquired, actually parasitic (symbiosed sexually with me). But here was a real one. And he said there were others!

I was beginning to neglect the startling spectacle of Abby’s complete turn-around. This was selfish of me, but this guy was a slider! And this was not only lucky for me, but good for her. I wondered if she should hear any of this; I wondered if there were any chance she was still the person I thought she was. I really didn’t feel any travelling going on for me, but still her ranting and raving made no sense. Maybe the cost bothered her enough to say things just to be outrageous; because she hadn’t really wanted any scan at all, and abortion was certainly out of the question for her.

I knew I had to go get her. I started to leave the cubicle, when Mr. Fitzsimmons objected.

“Where are you going?” he asked me.

“I’m going to get Abby to listen to this. I need to find out if she’s still who I think she is. If so, she’ll be so relieved.”

“And if not?” he asked.

“Then I guess I slid.”

“Don’t,” he said, one hand on my arm, eyes fixed—the whole urgency bit. I didn’t like my premonition.

“Why?” I asked with a worried tone.

“Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?”

“What?”

“You didn’t slide. Think about it. Her acceptance of the concept of abortion. Really, look what her reaction was to the thought before and after the scan. Pro-life to pro-choice or pro-choice to pro-life—doesn’t matter—a couple of hundred dollars can’t change a personal conviction like that.”

“So then how do you figure I didn’t slide, Mr. Fitzsimmons?”

“Because I’m the same, Mr. Reber.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure of anything now.

“No,” he said, “I’m afraid you’re the same, too, for me. It’s her. She accepts the concept now because she fits into this world now. It was the magnetism.”

“You mean the magnet sort of, well, aligned her to fit in?”

“No, no. Your Abby’s gone, Mr. Reber. The truly existing Abby’s gone. Say goodbye to her. The one out there fell back in when your Abby, the interloper, no longer truly existed here.”

I was so stupid!

“So now I’ve got the one who was here to begin with!” I shouted, an uproariously unacceptable reality raining all over me. “The one who has already had one abortion! The one who fits well into this terrible place! The Thomas Greally enthusiast?”

“Yes.”

“So where’s the one I arrived with? My Abby. The real one.”

“This one’s real,” he continued. “Everyone’s real. Except her...” He motioned derisively with his head to the mutterer that stood indifferently at the door. “Yes?” he challenged her, perturbed. Apparently he and the mutterer had had a running animosity for quite a while and now, and with this severe turn of events, he was in no mood to deal with her. By saying this clerk wasn’t real, he threw her the biggest insult people like us could deliver. It was true: she didn’t project the appearance of truly existing anywhere.

“Sign this...” the non-descript woman trailed off. John snatched the invoice from her hand and scribbled on it in a way much harder than necessary. He fired it back at her carelessly, but she was a good catch.

“Like I said,” he started again, re-collecting his thoughts, “everyone’s real.” He stopped until he was sure the mutterer had squirmed away. “It’s just that people like you and me—and now your girlfriend—well, we have the perspective of true existence.” But this didn’t answer my question.

“So again,” I asked more angrily, “where’s the one I arrived with?”

He paused to swallow hard. “She’s continued down this direction,” he finally said. “She’s been pushed along.”

I swallowed harder than he did.

I truly existed, I thought, but up shit’s creek: I have taken this lovely girl and dragged her with me to this God-forsaken layer. I have created circumstances for her that have given her an official psychiatric history. Now the poor pregnant thing has been sent onward to more terrible worlds. And I’m stuck with a seedy version of her in this seedy world.

“I’ve got to go after her,” I said to John Fitzsimmons. “I will slide until I find her. What did that magnet do? Tell me what it did.”

“Why do you think I asked her about it before? This thing is so dangerous to true existers. I ask everybody. I disguise the words, but regardless, something will sound crazy. I make a fool out of myself to try and save that rare person.” He was talking to himself as much as to me, flinging his parallel hands in the air which emphasized his martyrdom.

“O.K., O.K. Lighten up. She faked you out. So what? She thought you were making fun of her or something. We’ve got a runaway slider on the slick track of true existence, so tell me about the magnet so I can go get her.”

Just then Dr. Landry walked in. He couldn’t come in too far, because John and I took up most of the room in the cubicle. “Abby’s out there, Mr. Reber,” the doctor said. “She wants to know what’s going on.” He waited for an answer. He didn’t wait long. I considered Abby’s replacement.

“Shit on her,” was my answer. Dr. Landry was stunned.

“I heard that, you son of a bitch,” she told me, storming in as far as she could. Boy, was this weird: fighting with someone I was in love with elsewhere. I felt involved and detached at the same time, almost like an out-of-body experience—love in an out-of-body experience, hate in an out-of-love experience. I cared and at the same time I didn’t care about her feelings which I was certainly hurting. Now, after a lengthy glare, this Abby, continuing the legacy of Anas and Avas, stormed out. Gone. The old fashioned way.

Dr. Landry just looked at me, still astonished. The loving couple he had seen, so enthralled with the prospect of a child, were acting no less callously to each other than double-crossing comrades in crime. He had heard my profanity directed at her, and then her calling me a son of a bitch.

“I agree with her,” he told me, and then he walked out.

John was angry. “I told you she is real. You may not be in love with that one, but she has feelings, too. She has the right to perceive her existence.”

“Without perspective?” I seethed.

“I’m getting ready to agree with Dr. Landry,” he told me.

Now we were all incensed. And now it was me who put my hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “Please, tell me about this magnet.”

He had stood up with the arrival of Dr. Landry. He now sat back down again and put his elbows on his desk, hands at his chin.

“The magnet lines up all of the atoms in your body North and South. One direction. This is how it can scan. You can’t understand because you didn’t do all of the training I did,” he said, stopping suddenly, again losing some composure.

I thought his explanation was going pretty well, actually. After his fluster, he continued.

“Perfectly safe for everyone except true existers. Sliders, as you put it. With them, it pushes them, and very forcefully, perhaps through many worlds, perhaps thousands.” He paused, almost waiting for a reaction.

I was very quiet, very attentive. This was an acceptable reaction and he resumed.

“I have personally stopped dozens of true existers from this fate, simply because they caught my hint. They realized what I was asking before they had been in the magnet for too long. Once that connection was made, we could confide in each other.”

Dozens of sliders. Could this explain the imbalance in the world between the haves and have-nots? I had certainly gotten to where I was financially because of it.

“So tell me what I should do. Should I just slide away until I find her among a series of doubles? Do I climb into that thing to get the same push? What?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“Some technologist you are,” I snapped. “Come on! You won the, uh,” I read his plaque, the “Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen Award for Excellence in Radiological Technology.”

The guilty look of a face about to confess descended on him. “I had to slide dozens of times before I won that at convocation,” he admitted.

This evoked a halfway grin from me, which was about as far as he was going to get in the way of placating me. Still looking guilty about his diploma, and I know what that’s like, he made a quick cryptic phone call, said something about a real one, and then answered, “Maybe,” to whomever he had called. He then hung up and scribbled down an address and phone number.

“Be at my place at eight o’clock,” he said, delivering the note with a slap into my hand. “I’ll have another person there who’s very experienced. Maybe he’ll know.”

Since Abby had the car, I took a bus back to my apartment. I had been good and waited the few minutes for it according to the unchanged schedule. I studied the faces that sat in this old vehicle with me. I wondered what the faces of these people were like in the world Abby had landed in, and this haunted me. Like the skinny man with the dark circles under his eyes. He could be a very bad person, I thought. And then I looked again. No, he really could be a very good person. I studied the others. I turned them all around in my head, but they themselves didn’t change at all.

When I had arrived back at my place I found that the new Abby had been there. She had packed a lot of her things and had taken off with her car. This bird had flown. I painfully survived away the few hours till my meeting with John’s “experienced person.” I lay longingly in French provincial, the last style I had been in with Abby. Eight o’clock couldn’t come fast enough. I rehashed John’s dissertation on sliding, on true existence. I showered in my tub where Abby and I had frothed that morning, and so I missed her. I was ready earlier than I needed to be, but I didn’t want to waste time on the front end. Maybe I’d walk to John’s. I snatched the paper with the address off of the kitchen counter after I had dressed. No more jump suits, or even overalls, I settled for blue jeans and a white cotton dress shirt.

The address was on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter. I could walk it, I supposed, but I had trouble asking my body to do what car engines did better. I hailed a cab outside of my building with no trouble at all. I hadn’t eaten supper, and only now did I notice my hunger. I was too nervous, I agreed with myself, to eat, and getting to John’s early would make more sense.

John’s apartment was fairly far down Burgundy, just a few blocks from Esplanade Avenue. It was typically Vieux Carré, with ironwork, wilting balcony, and weathered weatherboard. I paid the taxi driver, tipping him well. I guess he seemed appreciative.

And so I finally found myself knocking at the door of the address John had given to me. The knocker was weighty and could only be swung against the door slowly, giving my announcement a grim reaper kind of effect. I was let in by a shadow who turned out to be John. I don’t know why this surprised me. Perhaps I expected to be welcomed in by an anonymous swing of the door, to be mesmerized into entering some sort of secret conclave within. But just plain John opened this door and shook my hand. He wore a face of purpose, which drowned out any expression that he was glad to see me. The door, a tall, dark, sticky thing of wood all bolted together with iron, opened into a red brick courtyard that seemed to focus New Orleans humidity. The source of the precipitation, a fountain, recycled water for a few large Koi that swam in a central pond showered by it. We walked around it, and I was led to steps that switched back only one time to a second floor. This is where John’s apartment was. The first floor apartment remained a mystery, because I couldn’t see any access to it, even from the central courtyard. Obviously there was a separate address out on the street.

Once in, he introduced me to an older man in his fifties, comfortably attired in, strangely enough, an orange jump suit. I could tell by his fingernails and jewelry that he only wore the jump suit to be comfortable. This man, however, looked a lot like he could have been my father. I mean a lot like him. He had that type of a resemblance. This had a spooky effect on me, my guilt over my parents hitting me like a slap in the face. Which out of the blue made me think of Ana on the beach.

I would even have said that he looked a lot like me, except that he was much older. In spite of his looking like this, there was still something about this guy that really rubbed me the wrong way—almost repulsed me. To be honest, I couldn’t stand him—and I didn’t even know why. What was even more incredible was that he seemed more disturbed by me then I was by him.

“Mr. Reber...Rocky,” John said to me, “this is my friend, Ralph Ebe.”