So here is the heavily edited and expanded version of the story. Sorry for all the grammatical errors. I’m going through a new round of injections in the remaining eye and some days are, well, while some days are better than others the need to write remains. There are times when I see words in pairs or even threes, or like great gobs of vaseline are floating across my field of view. Sadly, I’ve (still) yet to see Catherine Deneuve, but I will remain patiently waiting.

In the meantime…Music Matters, right?

Been back in the Genesis mode, listening to Duke. I love the second track, Duchess, the ambient flow then the build up to resurgent vocals, but this is a concept album, each song is a part of the greater story, and this project was a gamble for the group. Mining a similar vein, Peter Gabriel’s first solo album, often called Car, might go along with the zeitgeist. Moribund the Burgermeister and of course Solsbury Hill are the classics, but don’t ignore Humdrum and the last track, Here Comes the Flood.

Now…you’ve got a big read in your hands, so grab your tea and settle in.

The Seasons of Man 

Book Two: The First Point of Aries

Part I: The Empath

She had always been a quiet girl, some called her reserved, while there were others who said she was withdrawn, almost antisocial, but the truth was that had never been the case. Not to those who knew her. 

Most children are mildly curious about the world around them, while others are merely inquisitive. Then there are those who want to fully embrace the world around them. And not simply the physical world, but the people met along the way. This impulse is often confused with inquisitiveness, but those who spent time around Mary Ann Travers soon learned that they were in the presence of something far more unusual than that, something more than the mere inquisitiveness of a precocious child. She was not simply unusual, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word, for she at times seemed something far and away more exotic. For the few people who spent time around the girl, they soon learned that she was an empath, a true empath. More troubling to some, they would soon realize that the little girl leaned could reach in and see their deepest feelings, even their most deeply repressed feelings. Even feelings about themselves that some had spent hours and hours of their waking lives trying to hide. When such people found themselves around the little girl they soon felt remarkably exposed, and some dangerously vulnerable.

And, in time, her understanding of such people soon meant that the little girl developed an unusual working knowledge of good and evil, of what was meant by those usually oh-so-mundane  and over used words, because the girl sensed goodness in the people she met. But she sensed evil, too. Especially real evil.

And she was always considered a bright girl. As in book smart; indeed, she was at times considered a bookish wonk, and she loved complex games, especially chess. From her earliest years her parents gave her books and with little effort the girl was soon reading all the time – as in at school and after school. Like when her father drove her to school, or when her mother took her shopping for clothes. Everywhere she went she carried books with her, and when confronted with a moment of free time she simply pulled out whatever book she happened to be reading and carried on. When she read something useful, or even simply interesting, she jotted her thoughts down in a small notepad she always seemed to have near at hand.

Yet when she met someone new, say a friend of her parents, perhaps, or even a new teacher at school, she rarely had a book in hand because she wanted nothing to interfere with the moment. For her eyes settled on that person, and then she watched. And listened. She reached out and inside the other person and felt the contours of their being. Oh, yes, and there were some who said she looked inside others’ souls, and who knows, perhaps there was some truth to that, if you believe in such things.

Also, it seemed that having been so examined, the people involved seemed to understand that the little girl had somehow seen inside their deepest selves. Some people were amazed, others left appalled and claimed they had felt violated by the experience. And, soon enough, many such people grew wary and suspicious when they were around the little girl.

She grew up in central London, on a quiet, tree-lined street known as Morpeth Terrace, her room looking out over the grounds of Westminster Cathedral. She first went to school right across the street, too, at the St Vincent De Paul Primary School. One might say that she was raised in the good graces of the Church, as in the Catholic Church, but that too would hardly get at the essentials of an otherwise singular truth.

Her father was in the Foreign Service, and always had been, as far as anyone could tell. For all anyone knew, he may well have been born into the service of His Majesty’s diplomatic corps, for he seemed to speak of little else, if and when he spoke at all, for the man was rarely seen anywhere other than Whitehall. The little girl’s mother seemed obsessed with keeping everything ‘just so’ – in other words, the woman’s conformity was tinged in the ochre shades of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Though quite caring and more than intelligent, Marissa Travers spent more time than was absolutely necessary making absolutely sure that the people in her care became fit members of polite society. Her husband considered her a prig, and sometimes even worse than that, as inherently dishonest prig. 

And why was that? 

Two things might have come to mind if one asked Witcombe Travers that question.

Perhaps first in mind was that Marissa had concealed the true depths of her religious convictions from him. At least he like to say that was so, when out of earshot. Second, he truly cared for his daughter and by the time Mary Ann was ready for primary school he was convinced that Marissa was a malign influence on his little girl. In that regard, he had decided to intervene whenever he could.

Marissa had seemed a relatively sane and carefree soul during the time they courted, even though like most people her age she was a child of the Blitz – that brief period in time when Hitler’s legions took to the skies over southeast Britain, intent on bombing London back into the Stone Age. Despite the lingering anxiety the war imparted on her, she did well in school and attended university but soon lost interest, soon being that period in time when her romance with young Witcombe Travers blossomed into fulsome declarations of love, and his subsequent proposal of marriage.

Wit Travers was everything that his wife was not. He was a serious student of history, notably continental history through the realm of diplomacy, and yet he ignored the one simple fact of Marissa’s world that might possibly bring ruin unto his own. Marissa came from Catholic gentry, and while that may at first sound like a contradiction in terms vis-a-vis Catholics in Britain, locals recalled that her family traced an ancient lineage through the rolling hills and gentle vales of southeast Britain. Indeed, her family still possessed vast holdings throughout the region, from Hastings on the channel north to Maidstone and Canterbury, these from post-medieval times, while the family’s interests had extended north to Romford and Colchester in modern times. And her family had a somewhat different political outlook than Young Master Travers, a dyed in the wool conservative, seemed to possess.

But the short of it was simpler still: Wit Travers was willing to overlook Marissa’s rather inconvenient religious proclivities because she came from a family of immense means. Some might have said her’s was one of the most wealthy in Britain, and that might not have been too far from the truth before the First World War. To those seeking power, of course, money is an aphrodisiac all its own. With that said, their courtship was a brief but intense affair, a stately if occasionally flashy ritual that was often noted in the tabloids; marriage vows were exchanged in Westminster Cathedral, the two honeymooned on a large yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean, then young Witcombe settled into an almost hereditary fiefdom that seemed to be his station in life, deep as it was within the bowels of the Foreign Service.

Mary Ann was their firstborn; none followed. Marissa soon began a gradual retreat from her social calendar and fell deeper and deeper into the mysteries of The Church. Wit observed his wife’s apparent descent from afar, moving from tolerance to concern to outright alarm over the years of his daughter’s childhood, and so he increasingly found solace in the warm embrace of The Other Woman, or a series of them. Divorce, however, was out of the question. Members of the landed gentry just didn’t do such things, even in the middle of the 20^th-century. So it might be said that Wit spent his time on more pressing matters, the affairs of state being at the top of his portfolio, but it was also remarked upon, and perhaps more times than was truly polite, that his daughter’s upbringing had been entrusted to a religious lunatic.

What impact all this had on the girl remained to be seen, but it seemed to most observers that her mother’s religious proclivities probably had something to do with Mary Ann’s peculiar sensitivities.

+++++

Her father was not so sure.

In mid-November, 1963, the family was watching highlights of a speech President Kennedy had given in Miami, Florida the day before, and Mary Ann had watched attentively when Kennedy said that  “the harsh facts of poverty and social injustice will not yield easily to promises or goodwill” and that the people of this world would continue to struggle for “a system of individual liberty and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of man.” But then, near the end of his speech, Mary Ann recoiled from the television and ran crying from the room. Concerned by this reaction, her father ran after her, then stood by in shocked silence as his daughter explained that she had just seen the man on the television being shot in the head.

“You what?” her exasperated father cried, now more alarmed than ever that his little girl was a psychotic.

“The man, the President, I saw him in a car, a black car. He was shot in the head, and one of the men with him was shot too.”

When he considered the possibility that his little girl had lost touch with reality – because she had never reacted to anything like this before – he was at first lost. Now, and quite suddenly, Witcombe Travers was certain that his daughter had just experienced some kind of break related to his wife’s religious intolerance. Yet by the time Marissa Travers joined them in the kitchen, he watched his wife’s reaction and was soon certain his daughter’s break had something to do with Kennedy’s Catholicism, and therefore his wife’s. The next morning Mary Ann was describing the event in even more gruesome detail to the family’s physician, and the poor man in due course recommended she be hospitalized. Immediately.

So, in due course, she was.

And as Mary Ann’s bored psychiatrist’s watched as she described this imagined event in absolute detail, indeed, as if she had in fact witnessed the event, none of them knew what to make of this presumed break from reality because the story she told remained the same each time she retold it. All the other characteristics of a schizoid personality were absent. In test after test and interview upon interview, the architecture of her thoughts, her reasoning ability and, indeed, everything about the little girl’s emotional status simply cried normal.

And then everything the girl had described in such gruesome detail came to pass. 

And just as she had described the event, too, from the motorcade through downtown Dallas to Oswald’s flight and eventual capture in a movie theatre in Oak Cliff. She had described Oswald’s perch, Jackie Kennedy’s frantic attempt to crawl away from her husband’s decimated skull, then that last desperate drive to Parkland Hospital, followed by the last rites given by a priest that had just happened by the unfolding tragedy inside the blue-green tiled inner sanctum of what was the old ER at Parkland. And as Mary Ann’s doctors watched the unfolding tragedy on the evening news they each fell into a kind of fearful respect for the girl’s prescient abilities, for now they could see and feel what she had experienced. The hospital’s psychiatrists seemed content to put the girl’s experience down to precognition, to some kind of paranormal experience, and with that label firmly affixed on her file the little girl was discharged.

But, oh, how very wrong those noble physicians were.

+++++

She was returned home posthaste two days after the assassination, but after a brief discussion it was deemed in the girl’s best interest if Marissa take her to the family’s estate just west of Paglesham, hard by Ballards Gore. Witcombe was suddenly terrified of his little girl’s abilities, but the girl’s mother now thought Mary Ann was possessed by evil forces, perhaps by Satan himself, and when he realized what was happening he decided it was time to send her away to school.

Because through all this the child remained academically brilliant and emotionally engaged with those around her, from classmates to teachers. Perhaps because she had learned the hard way that it ‘might be best’ if she kept her precognitive abilities to herself, as in ‘out of sight and so firmly out of mind.’ So it might be fair to say that after the Kennedy affair she learned to keep her abilities, and her insights, to herself. And she would, by and large, for the rest of her life.

And it was in this context that the girl lived. When she was accepted at St Paul’s Girls’ School, right off the Brook Green in Hammersmith, she blossomed. Founded by the Sisters of Charity of St Paul the Apostle, when Marry Ann arrived she did not know what to expect except, perhaps, more of the same religious instruction her mother employed. Her father certainly had no idea, but he had little say in the matter.

Yet under the care and guidance of the sisters she thrived, and performed brilliantly on her A Levels, eventually making it into Girton College, Cambridge, with ease. She drifted away from her parents emotionally, just as they pulled away from her physically.

Mary Ann remained an impressive student while also displaying remarkable abilities when playing Chess. She seemed to have an inexplicable talent for anticipating her opponent’s next move and so rarely lost, even to the best Masters around Cambridge. She studied literature and history, but soon developed an interest in journalism. On projects for her classes she developed a remarkable ability to interview people who, more often than not, were known as reluctant to talk to the press, and as a result she earned a reputation for being an extraordinarily empathetic listener, as well as a brilliant writer. 

She enjoyed taking long walks along the River Cam, even crossing the more touristy Bridge of Sighs at St John’s College from time to time, which was where she happened upon a young man one evening.

He was staring down into the murky waters of the Cam, apparently just another student lost in thought, yet there was something about him that stopped her in her steps. So she reached out to him, tried to feel the contours of his pain. Then she saw the dog cradled protectively in his arms, and she could feel the boy’s pain as a searing agony of her own. She stood next to him, looked at the motionless dog in his arms, then gently touched the boy’s arm.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“No, no I am most certainly not alright,” the boy whispered. “In fact, I am very, very not alright.”

“What happened?”

“She got old, is all,” he said with a sniffle. “Old, you know, as in she ran out of time?”

She moved closer to the boy and put her arm around him, and still he did not react to her. “May I touch her?” Mary Ann asked. And when the boy shrugged off her question she reached out and put her hand on the pup’s neck, then she closed her eyes as she gently stroked the dog’s smooth coat. 

“She loved you, you know?” Mary Ann said a moment later. “Last summer, when you took her to Brighton, when you walked on the beach together…”

Malcom Doncaster turned and looked at the girl, his eyes rimmed with red-hot anger, his astonishment right out there in the open for all to see. “And you would know this how?” he asked, his voice an acid wash of curiously suppressed rage.

“Her memories, they’re still with her, they haven’t slipped away yet.”

“What do you mean…yet?”

“How long has it been since you put her down?”

“What?”

“How long?”

“We just left the vet’s office, why?”

“She’s not gone yet. She’s still listening to you, right now, she feels your heartbeat and she wants you to know how much joy that brought her.”

“Are you daft, or simply running some kind of con?”

“Neither, I’m afraid.”

“Maybe you’d best get away from me, and get your hand off my…”

“Daisy. She came when you called her Daisy. She loved the excitement in your voice, too, when you called out to her. Did you know that?”

He blinked away a tear, then shook his head and started to turn away.

“Stop, Malcolm, she wants to tell you something, while she still can.”

“Tell me…what…how  do you…did you say?”

“Her ball, her favorite one, the red one, she buried it near the corner of the house, right behind a rose bush, and she wants you to have it…”

He nodded because he saw the truth of the moment.

“She’s slipping away now. Is there anything you want to tell her?”

He nodded as he turned his back to the wall, then he slid gently down the Bridge of Sighs until he was just sitting there, holding his Daisy close to his heart, tears rolling down now, then he buried his face in her neck and she could just barely hear the boy saying ‘I love you I love you…’ over and over until the girl by his side leaned close and helped him stand again.

“She’s gone now,” Mary Ann finally whispered, and she took his arm in hers and held him up while he gathered himself.

“Who are you?” the boy finally asked.

“I’m Mary Ann, and I’m at Girton,” she said with a smile. “You’ll be okay now, but get that ball. She really wants you to have it,” she said as she turned and walked off through the North Court. She didn’t want to miss the last bus out to the college, but she already knew it was running a little late.

+++++

By the time of her last year at the college she had become kind of a hot property right after a summer internship at the Telegraph, and she had soon been considered a sort of minor sensation amongst the editorial offices on Fleet Street. That her father was Lord Travers, now a leading member of the Labour Party, was supposedly of little consequence to these editors, but c’est la vie. Her professors knew she had earned the job offers she received, and when Mary Ann took a position with The Times they were most proud of her.

She began seeing Malcolm Doncaster that year, too. He was a sort of minor sensation in his own right, having been offered a teaching position in the Renaissance Literature Department at St John’s even before graduation. Gifted in languages and with an uncannily sharp mind, he was regarded as one of the best translators there was of Renaissance Latin, even within that cloistered community, and he even appeared to be an able teacher when given brief assignments in local schools. Malcolm’s students reported that he connected with them, that he engaged them and made them interested in subjects they’d rarely given any thought to, and he enjoyed leading a class along familiar lines of inquiry to new discoveries.

She usually met Malcolm at one of the pubs on Bridge Street and they would talk and talk before walking the grounds of St John’s at night, chasing ghosts and whatnot, and then one weekend they’d taken a room down by the sea in Brighton, and after that their destiny seemed to be, as they say, written in the stars. She went with him a few months later when he bought a new puppy, another Springer Spaniel, and he named her DaisyJane. “Because I like the song,” he said to those who asked. Mary Ann, however, never needed to ask such things, and she too fell in love with this new addition to their lives. DaisyJane was her first dog, too.

Soon the two exchanged vows in the St John’s College Chapel, and with Malcolm’s post-graduate studies at stake, she opted to commute to London by train most days, though she occasionally stayed in the city at her family’s home on Morpeth Terrace. Life soon settled into the warm embrace of something akin to a routine; she interviewed celebrities one day and politicians the next, and her editors loved her humorous take on the world…if only because she seemed so dialed into the quirky sides of her subjects. It was, they thought, like she could read their minds, and she possessed the ability to express what she learned in words that did not alienate their readership or, more importantly, her subjects.

Things were going along quite splendidly when another war broke out in the Middle East. In the last phases of the war the Times sent her to Tel Aviv to interview Golda Meir, then the prime minister of The State of Israel. 

The results of this interview did not go over well. No, not well at all.

+++++

There remained one salient feature of Mary Ann Doncaster’s ‘gift’ that she barely understood. Perhaps because she had yet to discover the intricacies of this talent for herself.

One day, and this all happened quite by accident, she was grooming DaisyJane. She had just bathed and dried the pup, who was then not quite nine months old and so still fearful of such things, when Mary Ann held the pup close, and almost on happenstance the pup placed her forehead on Mary Ann’s. The connection was instantaneous and, for both of them, completely overwhelming. 

Mary Ann at first assumed she’d been hit by stray currents of electricity, as intense, bright clouds of stars appeared in her field of view. She felt dizzy, off balance, and something like vertigo enveloped her, while at the same time strange emotions not her own flooded through her. Yet Mary Ann did not at first understand that was simply experiencing the pup’s fears as her own, but she soon understood that when she felt waves of convulsive fear running through the core of her being. And yet, as soon as she grasped what these feelings were, and where they were coming from, she recognized that something new and altogether different, and something rather remarkable was happening both of them. She was experiencing the pups emotions as her own, of that there was no doubt, but she also felt another being out there probing this connection, too.

And this being expressed wonder, and fear.

But then, a moment of emotional clarity. After Mary Ann projected her own sense of calm about what she doing, about why she was bathing the pup in the first place, DaisyJane seemed to agree with this reasoning, and then she relaxed. At first blush, Mary Ann had no context for what had happened because everything passing between them was in fact a non-verbal exchange, and she’d had no prior experience of anything like this with a pup, or with any other animal. Even so, in the aftermath she was so taken aback by the whole thing that she kept the matter to herself.

Yet another element of the exchange kept hammering away at her.

The exchange itself had not simply been between DaisyJane and herself. She’d felt another presence. Something or someone not simply watching these events, but actively monitoring them. She had not been nimble enough, nor prescient enough, to reach out and attempt contact, but this aspect of the exchange lingered, and it was bothering her.

A few weeks later, when Mary Ann bathed the pup again, DaisyJane got in the tub without any of the histrionics she’d expected, and afterward the pup seemed almost excited when Mary Ann held her up and dried her fur, but then the pup placed her forehead on Mary Ann’s again. And once again there was the same instant connection, one mind to the other. And almost immediately that third presence arrived and this time Mary Ann tried to reach out for it.

White hot clouds surrounded her, then…nothing. She had no memory of the next several hours.

Then that night, DaisyJane jumped up on the bed between Malcolm and Mary Ann and the pup nuzzled up against Malcolm’s face and waited expectantly, then seemed confused when Malcolm refused the connection. She rolled over to Mary Ann and nuzzled into her neck, then their foreheads touched and this time the connection was overwhelming…

“Mary Ann, are you alright?” Malcolm asked when he heard his wife moaning deliriously.

“Oh, oh, yes, just fine…”

“Is that beast bothering you?” he asked.

“No, no, not at all,” she said. Yet Mary Ann was feeling something akin to the radiating warmth of emotional comfort, and she knew the sensation was coming from the pup. The pup, of course, had no language skills and probably never would, but Mary Ann was sure the pup was trying to tell her something. Then she felt confusion, and a bit of loneliness, and an image of Malcolm appeared in her mind. “Mal, I think she wants you to hold her,” Mary Ann said as she made the leap.

“She does, does she? And no doubt she told you so?” he sighed, foul dripping sarcasm coming through from his deepest, most professorial voice, his usual weapon of choice.

“Don’t be an ass. Hold the dog.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral!” he snarled.

“Admiral, is it? So, I take it you’re still reading those Patrick O’Brian novels?”

“Damn right I am! And loving every minute of it, too, you scurvy-poxed wench!”

“And you, the esteemed Professor of Renaissance Literature. If your students only knew…”

“I’ve never had so much fun in my life, you daft prig, so leave me be…”

“Daft prig, am I?”

“Bloody right you are, and don’t you dare forget it.”

“Which one is that?” she asked, wanting to calm things down, if only for the pup’s sake.

“The  book? Oh, the third, HMS Surprise.”

“Dare I even ask?”

“No, you dare not. I will, however, turn you loose on them once I’ve finished this one.”

“Assuming I want to read them, you mean…?”

“Oh, take my word for it…you’ll want to.”

“That good?”

“Yes, and I can’t wait for the next one.”

“You don’t mean…?”

“Yes. I do. The author contemplates a much longer series. Now, give me the damn dog.”

“Just hold her, would you, and for once pretend that you like her for just one moment.”

He sighed at her sarcasm, then put his book down as he rolled his eyes; DaisyJane snuggled into his shoulder, then the pup let slip a sigh that seemed to last a minute. “Dear Lord,” he whispered to his wife, “what’s up with her?”

“She feels that you don’t love her, oh Exhalted One. Is that so hard to understand?”

“I don’t understand this affinity you have of ascribing love to what is nothing more than an inbred instinct for utter dependence on us poor suckers…”

She smiled. “So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you ass, what you are in fact saying is that love doesn’t exist? That love has, in your mind, anyway, been reduced to a series of dependencies and obligations in some kind of contractual dominance ritual…”

“Damn right. Just so. And all of it sanctified by Mother Church, and of course duly enforced by her ever-present legions of omnipotent lawyers.”

“And what do you feel right now? With DaisyJane’s nose an inch or so away from yours? Is this all needs and obligations?”

“Oh, blast it all, woman! Yes, I feel oodles and oodles of love just pouring forth from her, from that cute little nose to those big brown, wondrously empathetic eyes…”

“And you’ve yet to acknowledge her presence, Malcolm. Would you at least look at her?”

He did. He now put his book on the bedside table and patted his chest, and the pup just kind of oozed up the bedsheets and settled onto his chest, her eyes boring into his.

“Oh my,” he sighed. “Now, just what are you trying to tell me, Munchkin?”

Mary Ann watched the unfolding interaction, curious how open her husband would really be to the pup, or if he was just placating both of them. She waited a few minutes then leaned closer. “So, what do you think she’s trying to tell you?”

“That if I continue to sit on the loo as long as I do, my hemorrhoids will soon turn into ferocious monsters that devour all of Europe.” He then leaned over and turned off his bedside light, pulled up his sheets and blanket, then turned his back to them both.

DaisyJane looked at Mary Ann and sighed, then came to her and snuggled in for the night.

+++++

She wasn’t sure why the Israelis extended the invitation to her. 

Their survival at stake, the outcome of the war perilously in doubt, and even now with the Soviets rushing reinforcements to Egypt while the Americans were positioning reinforcements where they could to aid Israel, it was looking more than possible that World War III could break out at any moment. Nixon had dispatched Henry Kissinger to the area, the latter believing that the regional balance of power was at risk, and that if the Arab coalition succeeded in defeating Israel the entire region would fall into communist hands. With a looming defeat in Vietnam looking more and more likely, such an outcome was anathema to the American president, and to the liberal world order established after the Second World War.

The current tactical situation in the Sinai was looking somewhat hopeful, however, or at least it was from the Israeli standpoint. Egypt’s Third Army had been encircled east of the Suez, so this massive force of tanks and troops was now entrapped deeply within Egyptian territory, yet the Israelis seemed to hesitate before taking out this last element of resistance. The Third Army was, after all, the only thing keeping the Israeli Army from taking Cairo. Yet Kissinger was putting pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, to halt their advance so as to allow Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, to save face. In so doing, Kissinger hoped to broker a peace deal and use leverage of his success to help push the Soviets out of Egypt. This would then give the US the necessary credibility to broker a lasting peace in the region.

It was, in other words, a perilous moment in history.

The stakes could not be higher. For the modern State of Israel, they had never been more consequential, and just at that moment the Israeli ambassador to The Court of St James quietly requested that a rather junior reporter for the Times be allowed to travel to Tel Aviv to interview the prime minister.

The newspaper’s editors was astonished and Whitehall was in a tizzy. The Israelis had been tight-lipped about their progress throughout the war and hadn’t granted interview requests to any number of American or European news organizations, and just who the hell was Mary Ann Doncaster, anyway?

“Ah, Lord Travers is her father. That explains it!”

At the Foreign Office’s request, a special flight to Tel Aviv was laid on by BOAC, as all their regularly scheduled flights to the mid-east had been suspended with the outbreak of hostilities, and Mrs Doncaster, as well as a hastily assembled covey of diplomats, were rushed to an undisclosed military airfield just south of London. The little group approached the British Overseas Airways 707-420 in the dead of night then flew nonstop to Tel Aviv, arriving just before dawn. After waiting on the tarmac for several uncomfortable minutes, with heavily armed fighter jets constantly roaring off towards Egypt and Syria, an Israeli jeep appeared and Mrs Doncaster was asked to enjoin a convoy headed to yet another undisclosed location. No one else was invited. When she walked down the airstairs to the tarmac she noted the pervasive stench of jet fuel and cordite, the cologne of modern warfare and apparently an aphrodisiac to some men, and the suddenly felt vulnerable, even exposed.

Two hours later, sequestered inside an Israeli leadership bunker, the young reporter was granted access to the Prime Minister, who had apparently just finished being briefed – by a small man wearing an eye patch – in her temporary office.

And why this meeting had been arranged remained something of a mystery in the years that followed. That Sir Edward Heath, then the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had been a close friend of the Travers family surely had no role to play in the affair, but perhaps Heath had been reaching out to Israel after at first offending the Israelis by professing neutrality at the onset of the war. After all, in the lead-up and in the immediate aftermath of the war, Arab members of OPEC placed embargos on all petroleum products to those countries that had supported Israel, and this first oil shock of the 20^th-century shook the global economy to its core. Had Heath been quietly playing both sides while steadfastly appearing to maintain neutrality, and if this was so, perhaps this interview had some role to play in the UKs redemption?

Or had Lord Travers, now completely understanding his daughter’s abilities, discussed using her in some sort of clandestine operation? At any rate, when Mary Ann Doncaster first met Golda Meir the two embraced, their cheeks met, and as a solid connection was made between the two, in an instant the reporter gained insights that not even generals in the Israeli armed forces possessed. The two exchanged pleasantries, of course, and the Prime Minister conducted an otherwise bland interview, revealing nothing, giving away nothing, and a half hour later the reporter was dismissed. Mary Ann returned to the airport and once she was aboard the airliner the same group departed for London.

As she sat down, emotionally spent and expecting to be left alone with her thoughts, she was instead surrounded by erudite men and women all dressed in somber gray and they had question upon question to visit on her memory of the event. Notes were scribbled furiously; one of the men scooted up to the cockpit with their first summary, and Mary Ann presumed the spy had gone up to check-in with their superiors by radio.

But when the article she wrote was chock full of secrets so sensitive that the editorial board of the Times submitted a copy of the article to both MI6 and the Israeli embassy, ostensibly for approval, the Israeli response was so extreme that the Times, for the first time in since the 1930s refused to print an article solely on national security grounds. Mary Ann Doncaster was then summoned to Whitehall, to be interviewed by God knows who. She revealed what she’d learned in her interview with the Prime Minister and left her reporting to speak for itself, while M, the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, sent all of this new material, including her notes, by special courier directly to Dr. Kissinger. The Israelis denied everything in this report, notably the Israelis near use of atomic weapons in the opening hours of the war, but that cat was now ours of the bag. And running free.

After this episode Mary Ann Doncaster became a sort of minor cause célèbre in both intelligence and journalistic circles, at least in London and New York, and this lasted for a few years, too. When a dictator in Syria or Iraq wanted to grant an interview to a Western newspaper, Mrs Doncaster was summoned and hastily dispatched. When a terrorist was suspected of plotting something vile, she was sent to interview those sympathetic to the cause, and more often than not she learned where the terrorist mastermind was in hiding. She somehow always returned with the goods, yet her handlers were perplexed. Her reporting was a never ending source of intel that even the most dedicated agencies had failed to uncover, yet even after tailing her they simply could not account for her continued success.

And while not one agency knew how she pulled it off, she put it down to a very deliberate interviewing technique. And yet not one intel agency bought that explanation, but what else could they do? Yet sooner or later Occam’s Razor applies and cuts a revealing swath through the tapestries of such mysteries, so of course the truth of the matter had to be that Mrs Doncaster was simply making this stuff up and reporting her creations as fact! What else could it be?

She was fired by the Times not long after MI6 and the CIA reached that very conclusion. In the aftermath, not even the tabloids would touch her. But that did not keep the spies from knocking on her door in the deep of night.

+++++

Malcolm had been adamant that the two of them make it on their own, that they’d never resort to asking her parents for a helping hand – despite his modest stipend as a graduate student. Though he was instructing lower level classes, his wages were slightly less than that of the janitors who swept the floors of his classrooms at the end of the day, though if the truth be known, he just didn’t seem to mind living in such reduced circumstances. In point of fact he rather thrived on that sort of life. Indeed, he viewed inherited wealth as something akin to gonorrhea, surviving on such money was nothing short of a quiet embrace of the wages of sin – before the advent of penicillin. He wanted nothing to do with her family’s millions, or was it billions, and told her just that repeatedly – as he made another peanut butter sandwich.

Mary Ann took on a job writing for one of the college newspapers, juicy columns like horoscopes  aimed at those who enjoyed tilting at windmills, perhaps like the budding Renaissance Lit scholars on campus, though on Malcolm’s insistence she sat down one rainy Saturday morning and started in on O’Brian’s Master and Commander as she had her morning tea. She was finishing the second, Post Captain, just before bedtime.

“How have I not heard of these before?” she asked Malcolm.

“Because we live in an age of impending literary collapse, dearest. Literary scholarship means nothing, or haven’t you heard?”

“Malcolm, I think the relevant question is why haven’t you heard?”

“I have, and I don’t give a flying fuck.”

“I see.”

“You can take your Woodward and Bernstein,” he sighed. “I’ll stick with Alighieri and Petrarch, and, well, perhaps a sprinkling of Chaucer, too.”

“And Machiavelli, no doubt?” she added.

“No doubt.” Case closed, and that door was now shut.

By the time she finished the third book she too was anxious for the next in the series.

+++++

In due course the next book in O’Brian’s series came and went, then another, and another. Malcolm was soon Dr. Doncaster, aka The Professor – or just Mr D, depending on the venue – while Mary Ann had taken a real position at The Telegraph, another conservative newspaper with a fairly large pool of foreign correspondents. With her penance finished, she resumed writing about events in the Middle East and occasionally interviewed the leaders of countries in the region, though now she toned it down, didn’t rock the boat, managing to get along with both Whitehall and Fleet Street. But the cloak and dagger sorts who had occasionally stalked her appeared in the shadows again.

Then DaisyJane passed, and of old age, and Mary Ann grieved for a day then she told Malcolm the dog had told her not to fall down that hole, and that she was to go and find another pup to take her place. Malcolm was dubious, but he understood: It was a ‘girl thing.’ Had to be, that’s all there was to it. So another Springer found a way into their hearts, a ten week old bundle of brown and white, yet Mary Ann was reluctant to connect to Sarah until she was much older this time around.

But then Malcolm asked: “Why not add a second to the mix? You know, maybe a boy?”

“Ah,” Mary Ann sighed. So that was it…did he need a boy around so they could commiserate? Too much estrogen on the sheets, was it?

So Rupert joined the Doncaster brood not long after Murdoch took over the Times. Rupert’s coat was what was called, in breeders’ circles, a ‘roan’ pattern, more of an even distribution of white and brown, neither spotted nor saddled, except his coat also had a fair amount of golden hair, so he was what, in the vernacular, was called a tricolor roan, and so he was considered fairly rare. Soon Rupert and Sarah were a team, and Malcolm loved walking along the Cam with them, even sneaking them into class every now and then.

The Travers’ holdings in Essex, south of Cambridge were, as noted, quite extensive and included several parcels along the River Crouch and the River Roach, as well as a huge, undeveloped stretch along the head of the Paglesham Pool. And it was in these soggy marshes that Malcolm well and truly fell in love with his dogs for the first time. 

He went out with a trainer and was absolutely convinced that Rupert would make a fantastic gun dog, and so he’d bought himself a shotgun for the occasion and had decided to go after some of the local waterfowl, only in the company of someone who actually knew up from down.

And although Rupert would have nothing to do with this business, as hunting involved actually working and getting filthy, Sarah turned out to be a both decent flushing spaniel and an excellent retriever. Then Rupert got into it and Malcolm discovered the boy’s strength was pointing at game, so in an unexpected way Malcolm now had himself a team of real working dogs. Soon, whenever he wasn’t in the classroom he was off with the pups, in the fields and bogs working scents or practicing retrieving in the local waters. He became consumed with them, and they him. He joined a sporting clays club, and after he was cornered into an interesting conversation about breeding, he was then quite sure he wanted to do that, too. Soon the Doncaster house was overflowing with puppies, and he finally relented when Mary Ann told him that her father wanted to give them a small estate just outside Burnham-on-Crouch. This worked for him as he was now teaching just two days a week, so the commute was manageable.

He started hunting with a group of locals, barristers and doctors and the like, who came out to Burnham on the weekend to either hunt – or to take out their sailboats.

And so about the time that O’Brian’s The Nutmeg of Consolation came out, both he and Mary Ann were as devoted to the Aubrey-Maturin series as they were to each other, or so they claimed when they went to book clubs around Cambridge or Burnham. Which was odd, someone said to them, ‘as neither of you are sailors.’

“I’ve never been on a boat in my life,” Malcolm proudly exclaimed to the members of one such club.

“And why haven’t we?” Mary Ann asked her husband later that evening.

So when one of his shooting buddies invited them out for a sail a few weeks later, Malcolm accepted the offer straight away and then called Mary Ann, and he’d told her that they’d need to purchase some boat shoes.

“Whatever on earth for?”

“Yar! ‘Cause we be hoisting the main’sl and setting off for deep blue this weekend, lassie.”

“Malcolm, what have you been smoking…?”

“Ben Shepherd is taking us out on his sailboat, Saturday next. He says we’ll need appropriate shoes, jackets, and gloves. Gloves, Mary, can you imagine that? There’s such a thing as sailing gloves!”

“What will we do with the dogs?”

“Bring them, of course!”

On the anointed day the four of them appeared at the marina in Burnham and Ben and his wife Sally met them in the car park then pointed at the at the whitecaps on the river. “It may be a bit sporting out,” Ben said, trying to make his voice heard over the freshening gale. “Are you sure you’d like to go out in this?”

“Sure!” both of them said. The dogs seemed less inclined to participate as they were escorted down to the slip, but ever the brave-hearted one, Sarah hopped up on deck as if she’d done so a hundred times before. Rupert looked at Malcolm, his eyes full of pure, cold dread in his brown eyes, and eventually Malcolm had to help the reluctant beast onboard. The winds, now out of the west at about 35 knots gusting to 40, were creating waves in the river that looked better suited to surfing but, as the wind was at their backs, that very same wind made for a pleasant – if faster than hell – trip down the river and out into the mouth of the Thames Estuary.

Shepherd’s sailboat, an almost brand new 37 foot Rustler, was ideally suited for the conditions  encountered that day, and he drove Achilles mercilessly into the open ocean with practiced ease, then cracked off to the north as gusts hit the low-50s. Malcolm was wide-eyed and hanging onto Rupert for dear life; Mary Ann and Sarah were ecstatic, their hair streaming out behind them, their eyes watering as the chill air bit into them, though both were soon soaked through to the bone. Shepherd turned into the wind and Achilles plowed into the building seas, the water now the color of coffee with a generous serving of milk, and crashing waves broke over the bow, sending great gouts of icy seawater all over everyone. Sally and Mary Ann was soon howling with glee, Sarah barking at the spume that pelted her, trying – more than once – to bite big globules of the stuff before they hit.

Then they turned back to the river and right into the wind.

And the waves, which were now approaching ten feet in from crest to trough, came on with terrifying strength.

Achilles slammed into each as Shepherd tacked up the river, teaching first Malcolm and then Mary Ann how to handle the winches on each tack. They soon passed Courtsend on Foulness Island, then taking the Wallasea Island seawall to port before turning back into the marina. 

Now soaked and shivering, Rupert looked up at them with loathing in his eyes. ‘Like…I warned you guys, but oh no, you just had to do it, didn’t you…’ 

“Malcolm?” Ben asked. “You alright?”

Malcolm turned and looked at his new friend and smiled. “What kind of boat did you say this is?”

Rupert groaned, then cut a fart before he hopped down to the dock and marched off to his car, thoroughly revolted with all these crazy two legged creatures.

+++++

Ever the academic, Malcolm was now more often than not spending a considerable amount of time doing research in Italy, and then as his interest in the ancient philosophers of Greece grew, he traveled with more frequency to Athens and the Aegean, before wandering one summer in Anatolia. Mary Ann had been consumed by her work, traveling frequently to the mid-east on one assignment after another. The pups grew older, their legs soon grew wearier, much sooner than Malcolm expected.

Mary Ann was now measuring their own lives in the lifespans of the pups who soon moved through their lives. DaisyJane – 12 years. Sarah – 10. Rupert an astonishing 14. Malcolm acknowledged the part these ‘animals’ were playing in their lives, but especially so as Rupert started to grow old. Malcolm and the pup had become inseparable, and when the aging professor was on campus he was never seen without his devoted Rupert. Students doted on Rupert, and so to the faculty and tutors he ran into every time he was caught walking about the grounds. When, on a cold winter morning, after Rupert refused to get up, he called in and then took the pup to a nearby veterinarian. There was no prognosis as Rupert passed quietly on the way to the clinic, leaving Malcolm gasping by the roadside, his tears uncontrollable, his raging grief inconsolable. A patrol vehicle stopped to check on him and they soon called Mary Ann after they found the dead dog cradled in the man’s arms, and she was able to come to the scene and take charge.

It took Malcolm weeks to get over Ruperts passing, the event more viscerally devastating than anything he’d experienced before. When Malcolm passed the entry off the kitchen and saw his boots and Rupert’s collar and leash he broke down for hours, and Mary Ann simply couldn’t understand what was happening…so she did what she had long ago promised her husband she wouldn’t do ever again. She connected with him, she reached in and drifted through his feelings, and image after image of Rupert came to her; she saw him running through their fields, or splashing through marshlands with another duck in his mouth, or on Ben’s sailboat, pounding out into the channel on one of their weekend trips aboard Achilles. And then there was that time when Sarah went into season and the poor pup had wanted to conjugate a few verbs…and oh, how he’d suffered…for almost a week. Malcolm had finally taken Rupert into the guest bedroom at night and slept with him in there, well away from Sarah, and Malcolm reported that the poor guy had moaned and trembled all through the night. Not knowing what else to do, Malcolm had simply turned and held onto Rupert, rubbing his head all through the night until they both, finally, found some rest in sleep.

And as Mary Ann re-experienced these things through her connection to Malcolm, she realized her husband’s grief was as simple as it had at first seemed; she uncovered no unresolved issues from his past, no secret dalliances, just simple love – from one being to another. He and the pup had bonded so completely that they’d become not just physically inseparable, but emotionally as well. And she was suddenly more than a little jealous about that bond, too. She had never felt that level of connection from Malcolm, who after all was her husband, and yet he was capable of providing all that emotional depth – for a dog? She felt mildly displaced, yet as a result her connection to him – while already quite strong – only grew stronger. She wanted to enjoy that same bond with him.

They had tried to have children of their own, of course, but something always went wrong. Spontaneous miscarriages. Something about conflicting RNA, all very vague and useless information. In time they had stopped trying, and perhaps that had contributed to Malcolm’s emotional embrace of Rupert, and for a time she wondered if their relationship had grown as emotionally barren as their biological incompatibility had proven to be. In the end, however, their barren relationship only made it easier, and all the more inevitable, that Mary Ann would thereafter be consumed by her work.

Clinton had left office only the year before, and the new American president had, after a painfully slow recount of ballots in Florida, assumed office without what the left in America called a clear mandate. Yet despite this, one of President Bush’s first acts was to pull back from the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in the process enacting policies specifically aimed at alienating the Palestinians in Gaza and the Golan. Once again the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean began to simmer, and accurate reporting from the region grew in both relevance and importance. Soon Mary Ann was shuttling between Damascus and Baghdad one week, then Washington and Geneva the next. And once again, reluctantly, she began connecting with her most important subjects – heads of state or foreign ministers – and once again her peculiarly insightful interviews became the subject of intense speculation within the West’s principal intelligence agencies…because it was clear that the West and the Middle East were approaching one of those moments in time when unforeseeable – and often radical events take charge and alter the course of history.

With the pups now gone, Mary Ann was, in effect, free from the more routine domestic obligations of running a household dominated by two active spaniels, so she felt free to travel for more extended periods of time. Malcolm went on extended sabbaticals, spending most of his time in Florence, Italy, but occasionally in ancient Anatolia, usually in and around the town of Sinop on the Black Sea, where he had gone to research the earliest writings about the early life of Diogenes, the Cynic.

He came across one of the philosopher’s remarks, usually translated as ‘Let the whole world be bed large enough for me, let me call the universe my home,’ that seemed to resonate with his inconveniently minimalist tendencies, so much so that upon his return home he found the societal strictures and mores of England faintly ludicrous, yet really, who knows why but he soon called Ben Shepherd and asked if he was still sailing Achilles and arranged to go out with his friend the next weekend. The weather on that late summer day was glorious, perhaps the last warmth of summer in attendance, their souls caressed by gentle breezes coming right off the rich, tilled soil beyond their wake, while cotton candy clouds adrift on cerulean airs above the Channel seemed intent on beckoning them onward into some kind of dream. And he came away just as smitten as he had been the first time he’d sailed on this very boat.

“Tell me about Rustler,” he asked his friend.

“Why? You finally ready to pull the trigger?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

“Oh, well then, they’re built out in Falmouth, solid lay up, very strong…”

And the very next day he called the firm, arranged to go out to the yard – which was difficult, to say the least, as the builder was located west of Exeter and Plymouth, almost at Land’s End. With Mary Ann in Washington to interview Colin Powell, the latest American Secretary of State, he had time enough to take the train all the way out to the remote, seaside village, and he spent three days there, talking, planning, and sailing two of the boats they happened to have available for demonstrations on the water. When he got home he called Mary Ann and said he’d had an idea he wanted to talk to her about. An idea he’d had on his most recent trip to Turkey, but then he’d said he wanted to talk to her about the next phase of their life together.

She took this gracefully. More so than she felt, because his words felt oddly unsettling. Like he was ready to move on from her.

Oh, little did she know.

She was finishing up in Washington and was slated to travel to New York City for another interview later that evening, so when he called she recommended he come over and they could make a sort of impromptu vacation of it together, maybe catch a Broadway show, or finally make it out to the Cloisters. After she rang off he made reservations and took the train into London, then woke early the next morning to catch the early flight to New York.

He watched the sea far below as the BA 747 climbed out over the Irish Sea and, he supposed that like most travelers in this era he thought of the first colonists sailing to the New World over these same waters. What had taken these courageous souls months to do, he was going to do the same in just a few hours. Not an altogether original thought, he knew, yet there it was, the idea spread out just like that ocean down there, like fields for the imagination to run through, free and unfettered.

“What must it feel like to cross this ocean?” he wondered aloud.

“Oh, it’s not as bad as most people think,” the fellow sitting next to him said, casually taking up the comment and striking up a conversation.

“You’ve done it, then?” Malcolm asked.

“Actually, I just completed the trip a few days ago. Connecticut, Bermuda, the Azores and Gibraltar. I crewed with a friend and his wife. Their insurance company wanted at least four experienced people onboard so…”

“Really?”

“Yes, something to do with maintaining a proper watch, but anyway, they asked and I managed to take six weeks off from work and now here I am.”

“Did you run into any bad weather?”

“Yes, of course, but typical storms aren’t really that big a deal. Not if the boat is well equipped and the crew experienced with heavy weather, anyway. Still, we had about a half day of really crappy weather; the rest was like sitting at the beach on a sunny day.”

“Sounds idyllic.”

“It was, for the most part. I’m thinking about making the trip myself next spring.”

“Oh? You have a boat, do you?”

“Yes, a 37 footer, but I’ll probably do it singlehanded.”

“Indeed. But the insurance…?”

The man shrugged. “I’ll go uninsured on the passage, get local insurance when I arrive in the UK.”

“Have you done much sailing by yourself?”

“Most of the time, usually. I’m used to it.”

“No wife? No children?”

“Who needs the baggage?”

“Quite right.

“What about you? Done much?”

“Just a little, with a friend.”

The stranger nodded. “That’s usually how you catch it.”

“Catch it?” Malcolm sighed, intrigued.

“The bug. The sailing bug. And once you make a long passage, well, little ideas start creeping into your head. Ideas like: how far, or just where could I go? Then you realize that the world is only limited by your imagination. And that limitations exist only in the mind, not in the heart, or in the soul.”

“I see. So you’re a poet too, I take it?”

The man smiled, a becoming smile. “I teach, or at least I like to think I do.”

“Ah, then we have something else in common.”

“Really? What’s your subject?”

“Renaissance literature, St John’s, Cambridge.”

And now the man chuckled. “That figures,” he sighed. “I teach classics at NYU.”

Malcolm had a laugh at that, too. “Why do you say that ‘it figures?’”

“Oh, hell, years ago I’d given up on the idea of coincidences, until they’d begun stacking up right in front of my face for so long I couldn’t ignore them any longer.” He took a sip from a bottle of mineral water, then continued. “I read a book a few years back, James Redfield I think wrote it, title is a little off-putting but the gist of it was simple enough. There are no coincidences, but people close themselves off to them so when such events happen they can’t even see them for what they are…”

“And that would be?”

“A new door opening. The next fork in the road. An opportunity to change the path you’re on.”

“Ah. One of those New Age tomes, is it?”

“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t obscure, or shouldn’t, anyway, what may well be a basic human truth. When we meet people, these so-called chance encounters may not be what they seem. Not simply accidents, not chance. And they present new opportunities, or new solutions to old problems, but only if we’re open to the possibilities that . Or, if you will, we’re open to explore the uncharted way ahead.”

“To take the road less traveled, as Frost put it?”

“Yes, exactly. To not let the present weigh us down so completely that we can’t see an unimagined future that may wait just ahead, or to take the path Diogenes walked.”

Malcolm’s head snapped around at that. “Diogenes?”

“Yes, surely you’re familiar with…”

“I’ve just spent the summer in Sinop and Corinth, tracking down references to aphorisms attributed to him.”

“And I’ve been trying to come up with a new module to discuss the Stoics and Cynics.”

“So,” Malcolm sighed, “no coincidences, eh?”

The flight hardly lasted long enough.

+++++

“You know, there’s one thing I really do love about America?” he said to Mary Ann as he stepped into the shower.

“What’s that, Luv?”

“The bloody showers. Just look at this, would you? You could land the Hindenburg in here, and it’s all perfect bloody marble! In fact, there’s more marble in here than in all of Florence!” He got in and stood under the five shower heads, the water pressure strong enough to power-wash thick mud off his Defender back at home. “This is bloody fantastic!” he shouted after a few minutes under the spray. “Have you tried it yet?”

“Yes, last night.”

“Well, come on, then. Come and let’s play a round of golf in here.”

She came in a few minutes later and they soaped each other, then he went to the spacious seat in one corner of the vast shower and sat. She came over and stood before him, which was his cue to lean the side of his face against her tummy and let the water run between them, and she’d rub his head and shoulders while he rubbed the backs of her thighs. It was just a little ritual but that’s how their intimacy began.

And an hour or so later they were dressing for dinner and he was wondering how to broach the subject of his journey to Falmouth, which was, after all, the kernel of the idea that had been taking shape in his mind, the fork in the road he was going to propose they now take…

“Mal, just curious, but I tried to call a few days ago and, well, I thought you were back from your trip so was a little concerned when I didn’t reach you? Is there anything going on I need to know about?”

“Whatever are you going on about now?” he grumbled, standing before a mirror trying to get his bow tie just so.

She came up to him slowly, to his reflection in the mirror, and she looked him in the eye. “You’re not seeing someone, are you?”

“What?”

“Another woman, Mal. You’re not seeing another woman, are you?”

“My God In Heaven, Woman!” he thundered. “Mary Ann? What’s gotten into you?”

“Me? Me? Malcolm, what’s gotten into you?” she said, her voice breaking, her eyes welling.

‘Oh dear,’ he thought, red lights and sirens going off now in his mind, ‘so this is menopause…’ 

“Now Mary Ann, first of all, no, no, and another no, there’s no woman, no other woman, at least not yet…”

“What? What did you say?”

“I went out to Falmouth.”

“Falmouth? Malcolm? What on earth are you going on about?”

“Rustler Yachts are built out there,” he stated flatly, his voice now professorial, blandly matter of fact, yet his mind was racing because this was not at all how he’d planned to tackle this subject.

“Who?”

“You know? As in Achilles? Ben’s and Sally’s boat?”

“Yes? What of it?”

“Oh, Mary Ann,” he sighed, suddenly feeling both exasperated and defeated, but she knew that look, knew he wasn’t trying to evade her concerns. “Have you made our dinner reservations?” he finally asked.

“At Peter Luger? Yes, of course.”

“Well, come on then. It’ll take an hour at least to get across town, by the time we find a cabbie and make our way down to the lobby.”

It did.

When they were finally seated he smiled as he roamed the same old menu, as yet unchanged since the first time he’d visited 25 years before, and the prices were still not revealed. And it was still cash only, which caused a minor panic, but as usual Mary Ann had seen to it. Dependable as clockwork.

“What would I do without you?” he sighed as he looked at her.

“Well, you mean assuming you could find someone to tie your shoes correctly? Well then, you might get on reasonably well.”

“I’m not sure I’d like that, Mary Ann. Not sure at all.”

“Well then, let’s not do that. You do recall the whole ’til death do us part thing?”

“I doubt that death will keep us apart, Mary Ann. I just can’t see that happening.”

She smiled. “So…you were about to say something about Falmouth?”

“Yes. I visited the yard where the boats are made. Quite something, too. The craftsmanship is extraordinary, puts Rolls Royce to shame.”

“Okay. What am I missing here, Mal?”

“Well, I’ve two years off, as you know, and I was thinking that now, well, that I’d like to spend some time in Florence, well, but, you see, well, I’ve been thinking a good deal about Turkey, uh, as well, and about how nice it might be to have a place to come home to. And NOT some DREARY flat,” he said, with more than a little unnecessarily added emphasis – which generated a little smile of her own. “Then again, I was, well, a…”

So she jumped in. “What you’re saying is that a boat would be perfect.”

“Dammit! You’re reading me again, aren’t you?”

“No, not at all. It’s written all over your face, like you’ve just managed to steal a bit of Christmas pudding without getting caught…”

“And here I thought I could…”

“Not on your life,” she said, grinning, “so why don’t you stop trying.”

“Never!” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “So? What do you think?”

“What’s the next step?”

“Go out and take a look around for yourself.”

“What are you thinking? Something like Achilles?”

He shook his head. “Too small for full time life aboard. You should look at their new 42 footer.”

“As long as there’s a decent galley, Mal.” She looked around the restaurant, and though the place was a hundred years old there was something so American about it, something trying to be English, or in this case a little bit of German, yet in an instant she missed their home in Essex. “Oh, Malcolm, what has become of us? Masters of the universe for two hundred years and then this. Coming to America to enjoy the fruits of empire once again.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mary Ann,” he rejoined, not sure where her sudden funk had come from, or where it would take them next. “But things aren’t so awful, are they?” 

“No, I suppose not. But tea and scones, Malcolm, the empire will be well and truly done for when our tea and scones are gone and forgotten.”

“There’s a nice galley on the 42, Mary Ann. I think you’ll be pleased.”

Their waiter came and he ordered sliced tomatoes and onions with two slices of their colossal bacon, then steak for two with creamed spinach and onion rings.

“So, do you have a plan in mind?”

“What?” he said, startled out of his reveries.

“With this boat you’re daydreaming about?”

“Oh dear, I was lost in that menu.”

“I know.”

“Well, we ought to make our way to the Med. Ben is taking Achilles across the Channel next spring, then he’s going to go to the Med by way of Paris and Lyon on the Seine. That might be fun, don’t you think?”

“It might be, yes, but don’t you think we ought to stretch our legs a bit first, see some places we haven’t been to yet? A real challenge?”

“Such as?” he asked, intrigued.

“Well, the Caribbean, for one. And how much trouble would it be to go to New Zealand?”

His eyes bugged. “New Zealand? I have no bloody idea, but that’s halfway ‘round the world!”

“Think you could stand being locked up with me on a boat for that long?” she added.

“I think I could manage, yes, but we might consider an extra passenger.”

“Oh?”

He looked at her directly, then sighed before he went ahead. “I know how you feel about this, but I think it’s time we got another pup.”

She smiled. “Now who’s reading minds?”

“Really? You’re ready?”

“I think so,” she said, smiling at his apparent relief. “Now, when do you want to go back out to Falmouth?”

+++++

They planned on getting up early to head up to The Cloisters first thing in the morning, and as the museum opened at ten they were up at seven to shower and have some tea before setting out. The Telegraph’s travel department had, as usual, made all her hotel and air reservations, so he’d been a little disappointed to be in a Marriott on the Lower West Side, but so far their stay had been nice, and the continental breakfast just delivered seemed decent enough. Even the water was hot enough for decent tea.

“You want me to set the table on the patio?” she asked. “It’s awfully nice out…”

“Sounds lovely. Need a hand?”

“Could you get the orange juice? That pitcher is a bit heavy…it must be solid glass…”

It was a small patio, more a large balcony, but it overlooked the Hudson and the morning really was glorious. Crisp but not too cool, and hardly a cloud in the sky. He saw she’d laid out a couple of linen napkins on the glass tabletop to set their places, so he brought the pitcher with him and sat with his back to the room, both of them leaning back and taking it all in while their tea steeped.

“In a way, it’s almost as interesting a city as…”

He stopped mid-sentence.

“What the devil is that?” he grumbled.

It was a high-pitched sound. Almost like buzzing, but more mechanical.

“Is that a jet engine?” she asked, just as an airliner at incredibly low altitude raced by, and they both stared as it disappeared inside the north tower of the World Trade Center. In the next instant billowing black smoke appeared, then thousands of pounds of vaporized jet fuel ignited, and they were so close that the concussive explosion knocked them off their feet. Windows all around them were shattering, glass was raining down onto their patio…

And then came the screams…

Malcolm stood and brushed chunks of tempered glass from his head then went to the railing and looked at the towering building as great gouts of white smoke and charred metal arced into the clear blue sky, raining down on the legions of unsuspecting pedestrians below. Without knowing why he started to cry, perhaps because he’d never seen anything quite like this before, but more than anything else it was the sheer scale of the unfolding horror that clawed at his throat. He turned and found Mary Ann inside their room, already on the phone.

Of course. Her reporter’s instincts had kicked in and she was now in high gear. Note pad in one hand, she was probably talking to one of the editorial staff, telling them what she’d just witnessed, then she was jotting down instructions, writing in that peculiar shorthand of hers. She put the phone down and went to the closet, pulled out her camera bag and opened it, then went back to the phone.

“Damn it all,” she said, “I’ve only got the 85. Yes, the 1.2” More jotting, her head down in intense concentration. Then she rang off and went to the camera bag and took out the camera, a lone Canon EOS 1D with an 85f1.2 L-series lens affixed. She slipped a new memory card in and joined him on the patio. She aimed, recomposed, then fired off quick, two to three shot bursts before pausing to recompose, and he watched her, fascinated at her raw display of instinct – and talent.

She’d become completely detached from the horror they’d witnessed, slipping into full blown reporter’s mode like someone had flipped a switch inside her brain, and he was as astonished as he was disappointed. Maybe, he thought, that was how she was processing the horror they’d just witnessed…

“Do you suppose this was an accident, Malcolm?”

He turned and surveyed the scene for a moment then shook his head. “At that speed and that altitude? I can’t imagine that’s even remotely possible, not on a day such as this, and even some kind of mechanical malfunction couldn’t explain this.”

“Yes, if it had been an emergency the river was right there. So…deliberate then.”

He nodded, mesmerized by the curling black smoke arcing from the tower into the clear blue sky overhead. A helicopter was now circling overhead, adding to the chaos.

“That couldn’t be snow, could it?” she asked.

“No. It’s paper, papers from hundred of desktops, blown out through the shattered glass.”

“Oh dear God,” she whispered – as the unfolding human tragedy finally reached her – then she raised the camera to her eye and fired a long burst. “Did you see that?”

“No? What?”

“A man. Jumped.”

“What? From where?”

“From above where it hit…the fire, the flames must have…there’s that sound again,” she cried…

…and they both watched as another airliner suddenly appeared, and as suddenly disappeared again, this time inside the south tower. He looked and saw that she had been shooting the whole time, and she brought the camera down and started looking through the images she’d just taken.

“Yes, there it is…small but…oh Malcolm, what in God’s name is happening?”

He saw she was crying now, that the inhumanity of the moment had finally reached her, but now was not the time. Not with the images she’d just taken…

“Get on the phone and call in, tell them what we’ve just seen, and tell them about your images.”

She wiped her eyes and nodded, and he grabbed a napkin to clear away the snot under her nose before he helped her inside. A minute later she was on the phone again, soon taking even more notes. She looked over at him as she spoke.

“Yes, he’s a pretty good photographer, actually. Yes, alright. You say we have an account there? Alright. We’re off. I’ll check in with you in a couple hours. Right. Bye.”

“What was that all about?”

“We’re to head over to a camera store, apparently not far from here. B&H Photo. We’re to get a couple of lenses and another body, and you’re to get as close as you can and take photographs. I’m to take notes for the story.”

“What?”

“Sorry, love, but you just became a staff photographer for the Telegraph.”

“What?”

“Oh, stop standing there looking stupid. We’ve work to do…”

“What…?”

+++++

By the time they left New York City both of them felt soiled; Malcolm remarked, on their way out to Kennedy, that the experience had ruined him. He even said that those three days had stained his soil, stained everyone, everywhere, forever. Stained by evil, the most evil kind imaginable. Evil that had hidden behind a mask of resolute goodness. Evil that explained its actions in the coy language of the relativist. Evil that seeks to justify evil by becoming a darker version of itself. It was, he added, the hallmark of all religion, and mankind’s truest gift to the universe.

He’d photographed thousands of victims of this evil. He’d even photographed the face of evil itself when, before police arrived and secured the scene, he’d come upon a large clump of smoldering wreckage in the middle of what looked like a snow covered lane. A charred hulk of metal that was easily identifiable as the cockpit of the second airliner, and there in right seat were the charred remains of what had once, for a few days or weeks or hours, become evil incarnate. That charred lump had once been one of the human beings who had taken it upon himself to commit this most unspeakable act. In God’s name, of course.

Always in God’s name.

No one was yet sure what the American response was going to be, but Malcolm was sure it would be massive, and that hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, would die in the aftermath. 

“Evil begets evil,” he whispered as he took his seat in the British Airways 777 and looked down at the men and women loading luggage into the plane on the ramp below. Just like the people on those four airliners must have watched, before madmen came and hijacked their lives. In the name of God.

“What’s that, love?”

“I don’t think the world will ever be the same,” he said as he turned and looked into her eyes. “Something is broken inside our world, Mary Ann. Inside us. Some vital spark has gone out of us. I keep thinking about those people sitting up there  in those airplanes going about their lives, not knowing yet that they had already been murdered. Then spending the last seconds of their lives in terror, wondering why their lives were at an end?”

“Because you’ve never been to Beirut, or the Golan, or Gaza. Mal, you live in the past, you chose to live in the past, but such people live in the present…”

He shook his head. “But the people who ordered this live in the past, too. They’ve dedicated their lives to preserving a very certain past, but when you get right down to it that’s exactly what I’ve done with my life, too. But Mary Ann, I don’t know any literature or history professors commandeering airliners with the express intention of committing mass murder…”

“I know it’s hard to accept, Malcolm, but this is the world we live in…”

He shook his head again. “No, I can’t accept that. No, Mary Ann, this is the world we’ve made. What was that comic strip… ‘We have met the enemy and he is us?’”

“Pogo, by Walt Kelly, came out in 1970, or maybe ’71…?”

“You are a walking encyclopedia, aren’t you?”

“You asked, Mal.”

He looked at the people down there on the ramp loading all their baggage but then he turned away, pulled the window-shade down. “He is us,” he repeated, then he closed his eyes, tried to ask once again that the images running through the windmills of his mind just leave him be for awhile. He’d had enough of all their pointed recriminations, and he had no offerings left to give save the silence he now craved.

+++++

They went into London a week after their return from New York. He had to turn in all the camera gear they’d purchased at B&H and, comically enough, someone had decided that News Corp was going to give him a cheque for services rendered, as a freelance photographer for heaven’s sake, but then he’d had to sign a few papers for the taxman but that set him right with the civilized world again. Mary Ann had typed up a sort of ‘after action’ report of their three days and was going to turn that in, as well. She’d already wired in several stories, all published on 9/11 or on the days immediately after, and her image of the second airliner just moments before impact with the south tower had been a page one item. Not dramatic enough for a Pulitzer, or so one of the editors said, but Malcolm had taken the file and had a large print made. It was grainy but in that grain he saw the truth of the moment. Lives caught in amber. Everything was smoke and mirrors save the truth of their last moments here on earth.

Hate had found them, and snuffed them out.

And with that accomplished, the circle of hate would resume.

What, he wondered, might Diogenes have thought about all this?

They took the overnight train out to Penzance that evening, then hopped the bus out to Falmouth. They walked through the Rustler Marine facility, the manager showed her the 37 and walked Mary Ann through the 42, discussed the building process, how they could be involved as much or as little as they liked, the complete sales pitch, a full-court press.

But everywhere Malcolm looked he saw that same premeditated stain on the people he watched, on everyone, everywhere. That hopeless, helpless look that never showed even the slightest traces of complicity, but that seemed to speak to a limitless anger. The evil that had been constrained by the new rationalists of the Enlightenment had finally been unleashed. Again. And while few realized what had just happened, even fewer knew what would come next.

In the eyes of the people on the train out of London and on the bus to Falmouth, in the eyes of the workers he watched it seemed everyone wanted to talk about this new evil. It was about all most people wanted to talk about, especially when some of the people they talked to on the train realized that Mary Ann had been one of the reporters sending the Telegraph’s a steady stream of information from the site. 

He stood back and watched, always aloof, and listened to their questions. Questions like: What did you see? Did you really see people jumping from those buildings? What was that like? What did you feel? And then, finally, “God, I don’t know how you managed that…”

Like God had anything to do with the things men did to each other that day.

No, that was the day God gave up on the human race and walked away, in despair of his creation.

“Why do they keep doing these things…in my name?”

“Haven’t they learned anything?”

or maybe, just maybe:

“Why did I give them Free Will?”

“What do you think about this one, Malcolm?”

“About…what?”

“This colour, for the upholstery in the saloon?”

He smiled. “Do you like it more than the others?”

“I think so, yes. But what about you?”

He looked at the sample and objectively it was indeed very nice, but his mind couldn’t process color and boats and images of people jumping from imploding buildings. “Oh, I think it’s lovely, Mary Ann. You know, I’ve always been a sucker for teal.”

Their new boat, the manager said, ought to be ready to launch in March, probably early March, and then they’d need time to add all the extras. Pick colors for the canvas on the dodger and bimini, electronics at the helm and anchoring gear on the bow.

“Where will you head from here?” the manager asked.

Malcolm didn’t hear the question, or at least he acted as if he hadn’t, so Mary Ann filled in the blanks. “Not sure yet, really. Maybe the canals to the Med, or work our way down to Spain, maybe sign up for the ARC. We just haven’t decided yet, really?”

“Well, that’s the beauty of a sailboat,” the man said. “You can go wherever the wind takes you, I suppose.”

Malcolm walked over to another boat, a black-hulled 37 nearing completion, and he walked along running his hand softly against the mirror smooth hull. Then he came to the stern and looked up, lost in thought.

“Have you decided on a name yet?” the manager asked.

And Malcolm turned before Mary Ann had even processed the question, and he said just one word to the man.

“Diogenes.”Part Two: The Explorer

“Are we having fun yet?” Malcolm Doncaster screamed at his wife, trying once again – and as yet in vain – to be heard over the hideous noises made by the thundering wind as it whipped through the sailboat’s rigging. He heard a freight train coming up from behind and cringed reflexively – because he already knew what was out there in the night.

The wave broke over Diogenes, almost filling the boat’s aft cockpit and nearly washing him out to sea. Only his tethered safety harness kept him onboard – this time – but he’d come down hard on something, probably the aft pulpit, and his back was hurting now. 

“You okay?” Mary Ann said as she scuttled over to him.

“Not sure,” he gasped, winded by the blow.

“You came down hard on the coaming,” she called out over the wind, “then slid into the secondary,” she added, meaning the smaller winch on the protective coaming that surrounded the cockpit.

He pulled himself back into the helmsman’s seat, checked to make sure his safety harness hadn’t been compromised, then double-checked their heading on the NorthStar GPS. Still zero-two-eight magnetic, and now they were more than halfway between the northern terminus of the Gulf of St Lawrence and the southernmost tip of Greenland, and while the weather-window had looked fair enough the situation had quickly deteriorated when a cold front came roaring out of Baffin Bay. The plan had been, that plan now being definitely in the past-tense, to skirt the remaining ice off Greenland on their way to Reykjavik, where they planned to stay a week or so. Then they’d head to the Faeroes for another stop, checking back into the UK at Stornoway before scooting through the Hebrides on their way to the Irish Sea and, finally, to Land’s End once again. This would mark their completion of the Atlantic Circle, a sequence of shorter segments taken by a few boats each year, those more often than not piloted by the more daring types. Those who circumnavigated the North Atlantic often went on to tackle the world.

Now, caught in a howling gale in the middle of one of the most inhospitable bodies of water on the planet, Malcolm Doncaster was cursing the day he’d met Ben Shepherd, the friend who’d turned them both into sailing fanatics. And it was fanaticism, he grumbled to himself for the tenth time in as many minutes. Who else would be out here doing this, and spending real money to do it? You had to be out of your mind. Absolutely bonkers!

Another freight train approached and he ducked again as he tried to angle up the face of the cresting wave, and luckily it began breaking just after Diogenes rose up and over the top. Then the terrifying descent, the boat sort of surfing down the back of the immense wave before rising to meet the next one.

Then it started to snow.

In August.

“Oh, that’s just bloody perfect,” he growled. 

Mary Ann took one look at the expression of disgust on her husband’s face and scuttled down the companionway to put water on for tea. It was going to be a long night.

+++++

The doctor in Reykjavik finished wrapping Malcolm’s chest in heavy white tape and admonished him that under no circumstances was he to partake in any strenuous activity for at least a month. Maybe two.

“I suppose sailing from here to Scotland counts as strenuous activity?” Malcolm snarked.

“If you are crazy, then yes. By all means, go right ahead.”

“Oh, I’m crazy alright,” he growled on his way out the exam room door, and the physician knew better than to comment further. He knew that look, and it was not to be trifled with.

+++++

Anchored off the Carrick Roads in the Penryn River, Diogenes and crew were now just off Falmouth, taking the boat back to the manufacturer to inspect and restore the boat’s standing rigging, or, as Malcolm put it, “All those blasted wires holding up everything!” Everything, in this case, being the mast. 

After the anchor was secured and the Zodiac deployed, Malcolm simply disappeared. He had been muttering something about a shower for days and by now Mary Ann was certain she didn’t want to intrude. He’d been in a foul mood for weeks, probably because it still hurt to cough, though she’d been watching him carefully for signs of burn out and hadn’t seen a thing. In fact her husband seemed most pleased that they’d completed the Circle “reasonably intact.” Now it was time to make sure that Diogenes was still in good form.

And a half hour later the Zodiac returned with Rustler’s yard manager, and the three of them moved gear and storage containers to uncover the chainplates and the ship’s bilge and by the time Malcolm took the manager back to shore everyone was convinced that their little ship was as fit as the day she’d been launched.

Malcolm seemed to puff up a little when he heard that, so proud of his little ship was he. They had her hauled out the next day and her bottom paint renewed, and all the sacrificial zincs changed, and Raytheon had released something rather new and interesting, something called an integrated chartplotter. Highly detailed charts, on memory cards, could be downloaded into the plotter, but then the real magic began…for the image usually generated on a separate radar screen could be overlaid on the chart, and this presented a whole new way of seeing where you were going, of navigating at night or in bad weather, and more importantly, of knowing who was out there with you. Installation would require a new radar set but could reasonably be accomplished in a day, so when Diogenes was hauled the electronics boffins crawled onboard and got right to it. New transducers on the bottom of the hull were slipped into place, and the installation was soon complete. As promised!

In the meantime, Malcolm had secured a palatial room at the Greenbank and walked into the shower with his clothes still on. Mary Ann simply shook her head at this latest display of his foul-tempered lethargy, but did manage to get her clothes off before joining him.

She’d had no idea he’d been so horny, of course, and afterwards they spent a long evening in the hotel’s decent dining room before falling off into the deepest sleep either had enjoyed in months. With Diogenes due to be launched the next morning they barely responded to the wake-up call from the desk until she remembered and sat bolt upright.

“Mal? Come on, get up…”

“No,” came the muted snarl from under the blankets.

“Diogenes hits the water in an hour!”

“Fuck!”

They took a mooring ball almost right off the hotel and stayed two more nights, making several trips to the nearby Sainsbury’s to replenish their lockers and Malcolm also booking a massage to see if the pain in his ribcage could be mellowed a bit. Then another massage, the very next day. And as his ribs were still hurting, off he went to the local NHS clinic for x-rays.

And when the physician told him not to do anything too strenuous for at least a month he snarled and grumbled all the way back to the boat. He fired up the new electronics and even though Christmas was still a few weeks away he sounded like a kid who’d just opened his presents. With all their provisioning out of the way, Mary Ann threw off the mooring pendant while he raised the main, and they sailed off the ball and into the Roads again, taking Flushing Beach to port and Pendennis Castle to starboard on their way to the English Channel. He pulled up the relevant chart onscreen and entered their next waypoint, the cardinal buoy marking the inlet channel to Le Havre.

“A hundred and ninety two miles!” he proclaimed. “And right here, our course to steer and an ETA, with all the channel traffic visible – right here!” he added, pointing possessively at the new display as he jumped up and down like a kid. “Mary Ann! It’s bloody magic!”

She smiled. ‘At least he hasn’t quit on me yet,’ she told herself once again, repeating her biggest fear. She’d thought he’d simply lost interest in her as he hadn’t so much as touched her in months, not since a long layover in Boston while they’d waited out a hurricane working its way up the Atlantic coastline.

But after a couple of nights in the Greenbank’s downy billows she’d come out walking bowlegged and chapped. ‘Don’t the Americans call that rode hard and put away wet?’ she asked herself.

She smiled at her own nagging insecurities, even as she squirmed in discomfort again, then she walked over to look at the chartplotter’s display. Malcolm was in love with their boat again, all over again.

Two nights later, while tied off securely deep inside the old harbor in Honfleur, he’d plowed her fields so thoroughly she could barely walk the next morning. They walked the streets of the old quarter the next day while waiting for Ben and Sally Shepherd to arrive on Achilles, and that night they had a grand reunion at a waterfront bistro.

Diogenes followed Achilles across the Seine to have their masts pulled early the next morning, and riggers and yard workers got them down and wrapped and ready for transport down to the Mediterranean. While all that was going on Malcolm had an engine tech go over the diesel under the cockpit while Mary Ann and Sally went to a bakery for fresh bread and croissants. By the time the last yard worker departed it was too late to leave so both boats remained tied up in Le Havre for the night. 

Both boats cast off their lines almost at the same time, and they turned south to motor up the Seine towards Paris, and they’d timed their departure to head upriver on a slack tide. And this was a new adventure, a very different kind of adventure! Diogenes now a motorboat, plowing up the Seine just like all the other commercial barges that passed them, but instead of endless waves now it was rolling farmland and white chalk cliffs and peerless villages with endless bakeries and bistros beckoning. Maybe it was the promise of France that had gotten into Malcolm, for he was as lusty now as he’d ever been.

So much so that she’d asked him to take it easy on her last night because, she had to admit, she had suddenly found intercourse painful. And this morning she felt bloated, almost nauseous, but she put it down to the diesel fumes wafting through the cockpit on the gently following breeze. By the time they’d tied off in Rouen two night later, the pain had spread to her lower back and she mentioned it to Ben, who was, after all, a physician.

He took her down below on Achilles and did a quick exam, and ten minutes later they leapt off Achilles and onto the dock, found a taxi and drove off in search of a good clinic.

Malcolm stared in dumbfounded befuddlement as he watched them drive off, and then Sally came over to have a talk with him.

“It might be nothing,” she said, “but Ben wants to get some lab work done.”

“For what?”

“Let’s wait until they return, shall we? No reason to get bogged down in hypotheticals.”

Ben and Mary Ann returned long after sunset, and Malcolm knew something was wrong as he watched them walk out to the boats. He helped her up and into the cockpit, and he had her sweater and hot tea at the ready, while Ben left them to hash things out in private.

“Oh, Mal,” she said, crying a little while she spoke, “it looks like I’m in trouble.”

He nodded. “I know, Mary Ann. I can see it in your eyes.” He’d decided to let her tell him in her own way, because the last thing he wanted to do was have to pull it out of her.

“The doctor did a pelvic exam, then an ultrasound and some lab work. She’s pretty sure it’s ovarian cancer.”

He nodded, devastated. “Next step?” he said, putting on his bravest face.

“Ben thinks I should get it done in London; he’s already called someone he knows.”

He nodded, sighed, then looked up at the stars – because he didn’t want her to see his tears. “Okay. So tomorrow we get into Paris…”

But she was shaking her head. “He’s got us on a flight to Heathrow just after midnight.”

“Us?”

“The four of us. He’s already got a taxi waiting and he called the marina and they’ll make sure the boats are in good…”

He looked down at his watch and nodded. “Right, off we go then. I’ll throw some things in the duffel. Anything you want me to pack?”

When he climbed up the companionway with the bag a few minutes later, she was already walking up the ramp that led up to the marina office. Ben and Sally were in the carpark, and he could see a taxi was already up there, waiting for him. He left the padlock in the hasp, unlocked in case someone needed to move Diogenes, then he jogged up the ramp and dove into the taxi. Five hours later they were in central London, checking into the surgical reception at the Royal London Hospital, and Marissa Travers was already there. Her arms crossed, waiting impatiently with Bible in hand, and patently mad as hell – if the steam coming out her ears was any indication.

Oh what fun, he told himself as he held onto his wife’s hand for dear life.

+++++

Ben and Sally had put off their trip for several months to make the trip with them, and now that Mary Ann was in post-operative chemotherapy Malcolm had expected them to return to France.

But they hadn’t. 

Ben went back to Rouen to secure the boats for the winter, but returned two days later. Sally went with Mary Ann to chemo on the rare days that Mal couldn’t make it, while the boys – as Mary Ann called the two men – shuttled to and from the boats all of January and into February, until Mary Ann was cut loose and cleared to resume limited activities. She’d need regular bloodwork and imaging, but the cancer had been caught early and, apparently, before any spread to adjacent tissues. The four of them returned to Rouen in March, almost two years to the day after Diogenes was first put in the water. Though both boats had been covered during their winter sojourn, both were covered in grimy black particulate matter and a fair amount of dust had made it below through their dorade vents. Mary Ann went below and started in on the teak with gallons of lemon oil while the boys put on their foulies and set about cleaning and polishing both boats’ topsides. Then back in the water and over to the fuel docks, where a service tech was standing by to run all their fuel through filtration systems to clean out any slimy gunk lurking in the bottoms of their fuel tanks.

This, Malcolm thought, was the true romanticism of cruising. Paying someone hundreds of pounds to come clean bacteria laden sludge from fuel tanks. But after a few more economic indignities they were off again, this time, hopefully, bound for Paris. And so, of course, a lovely freezing drizzle began falling, coating everything before turning the decks of their boats into ice skating rinks, while just ahead…the first locks on the Seine beckoned, which were also the first locks that any of them had ever encountered. Both Mary Ann and Sally were terrified, while ‘the boys’ were merely anxious.

“It sounds simple enough,” Malcolm said after he called on the VHF to check-in with the lock-keeper. “Wait for any down-locking boats or barges to clear the chamber and then, once we get a green light, we go on in.”

“And then what, Oh Mighty Exalted One?” Mary Ann said, now taking note of her husband’s totally unjustified confidence, and suddenly feeling pale green waves of fear rolling over her.

“It says the lock-keeper will toss us lines, one forward and one back here, then you just hold on while the chamber refills, and you take up your line as the boat rises to keep us against the wall. Simple.”

“Uh-huh, simple. You do recall, don’t you, that this boat weighs something like fifteen tons? And we’re going to ‘hang on,’ you say? While standing on a bloody sheet of ice?”

“Well, it’s that or we turn around and go back to Rouen.”

“And get covered in all that soot again? No thank you.”

“Maybe our hiking shoes would do the trick?” he asked helpfully.

She shook her head. “Do you know where our gloves are?”

“Got ‘em, right here,” he said as he pulled them out of his rain-jacket’s pocket, and he tossed hers over so of course one glove bounced off her hand and thence into the Seine. They both stood and watched as the glove quickly disappeared down-current, then they turned and stared at one another.

“We need to get back in the groove,” he said, more to himself than to anyone within earshot, but she heard him and nodded.

“We were a team there for a while, weren’t we, Mal?”

“We’ll get there again, Mary Ann. You’ll see.”

Two days later they were in Paris, at the marina by the Arsenal. Diogenes had a few new scuffs on her starboard side…and curiously enough these scuffs were the same color as a barge in the same chamber with them in the second lock. Malcolm left that encounter wide-eyed and knock-kneed.

Given the time of year most of the slips in the little marina were empty, yet Paris was still Paris, that is to say she was her incomparable self. They stayed a few weeks, until the weather began to turn a little warmer, and then both Achilles and Diogenes resumed their southbound odyssey.

Of course, the moment the boats left the city it began raining. And raining. Then more rain fell and rivers throughout France swelled. River levels in the Seine rose, currents grew more swift – and therefore unpredictable. Occasionally the sun came out for a few minutes – before beating a hasty retreat behind more storm clouds. Locks came more frequently, storm debris from all the rain ran into the river, clogging water intakes and fouling moods as engines overheated. The Seine finally merged into the Saône, and after two weeks of one lock after another and constant rainfall, they’d finally made it to Lyon, all of them drenched to the bone and utterly exhausted. Seemingly right in the middle of the city, the Saône merged with the blue-green alpine waters of the Rhone and everyone knew it was time for a break, indeed, a long rest.

The sun came out but then in a shocking change, winter turned to summer without benefit of Spring’s cooler weather, and in the span of a few days the weather turned ridiculously hot and humid. To many Frenchmen and women, however, Lyon is the true cultural heart of France, and this especially holds true where the culinary arts are concerned, so after one day in the city everyone voted on staying in the city for a few weeks. Malcolm led them on tours of the Musée Gadagne and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, then they lingered for a day in the museum of Roman Civilization before feasting on the best food in the world. And all the while the temperature continued to soar.

Ben’s sailboat, Achilles, had air conditioning; Malcolm, ever the purist, had vetoed the idea of equipping Diogenes with something so decadent. But now, after two days of these wicked temperatures he was roasting in his own juices. After two weeks the interior began to reek of sweat and condensation, and Mary Ann decided it was time to head south to the sea. By the time they made it to Avignon, Mary Ann had left Diogenes to enjoy the pristine joys of air conditioned nature and took to sleeping on Achilles, leaving Malcolm to swat flies while trying to fall asleep in the cockpit. He called the good people at Rustler, in Falmouth, and they recommended an air conditioning installer – in Port Saint Louis. In other words, relief was another week away. And it was getting hotter out with each passing day.

He called the marina in Port Saint Louis to make sure their masts had arrived and were ready to go back up, and then he called the marine services company that Rustler had recommended. Because it was still low season they could get to him straight away, and they took great pains to remind Malcolm that they were doing him a great favor by getting to him so quickly, and once all that was laid on he became more interested in moving down-river at a quicker pace. In his haste, Malcolm pushed past Arles when he’d wanted very much to stop there for a few days, but it was just too damn hot out and he was getting more than miserable now. He was starting to feel sick. A bad kind of sick. Light-headed and dizzy, palpitations and nausea. Once he felt a little pressure in his chest, pain in his jaw, so he called Ben and Mary came over and took the wheel while he went below and rested for an hour.

Once they arrived they had to find a place to dock in the overcrowded marina, then find the a/c installer, who turned out to be busy. Yet two days later the work was done and it also turned out that the new air conditioning unit could do double duty as a heater, not that it mattered right now, but it was an alternative to the noisy diesel fired hydronic system already installed. Once both masts were stepped and their standing rigging secured, Achilles led the way through the Canal Saint Louis and on to the sea. Almost as soon as they entered the Mediterranean, however, they had to prepare to enter the old port in Marseille, just a few miles to the east.

Diogenes cooled down as soon as she was hooked up to shore power in Marseille’s; with that operational Mary Ann started to sleep onboard again, so life resumed the typical diurnal cadence they’d grown used to.

But then the dream came.

For all of them.

Then the screams returned.

+++++

The old port, or Vieux-Port de Marseilles, was a revelation.

Boats from seemingly everywhere in the world were docked here. Hundreds, if not thousands of them. Fantastic restaurants were everywhere, some right across the Quai de Rive Neuve. The girls rented bicycles and pedaled around the old quarter that encircled the marina, picking up bread or fresh fruit one day and flowers the next, while the boys did what boys usually do when they own a boat. They broke out the sandpaper and the Epifanes and got to work renewing their exterior varnish. They changed the engine oil, then the Racor fuel filters had to be serviced, and the stuffing boxes repacked and tightened. The air conditioning units on both boats soon ran all the time and, because few other boats in the marina had them, theirs became the envy of the docks. They made new friends – who wanted to come below and bask in the flow, only to disappear a day or so later, never to be heard from again. 

Then Malcolm found a masseuse. Ben tagged along. 

And unbeknownst to each other, every night the dream returned.

And at breakfast at a local café one morning, with the four of them gathered around a small table, Malcolm casually mentioned that he’d been having a recurring dream. “You know, it’s the damndest thing, but I’ve been having the same dream every night since we arrived.”

“The same one?” Ben asked. Sally suddenly looked ill.

Malcolm nodded. “Out in the ocean somewhere, the Atlantic I suppose, and the boat is surrounded by…”

“Dolphins,” Mary Ann blurted. “And while there’s no land in sight, all of a sudden…”

“I see a huge volcano erupting off in the distance,” Ben Shepherd added quietly, “right before a tsunami appears.”

The three of them turned to look at Sally, who was looking down at her hands, trying not to join in the madness.

“So,” Malcolm sighed, “the three of us are having the same dream?”

“The four of us,” Sally Shepherd sighed. “In mine, when the big wave comes I wake up.”

“So do I,” Ben said, shaking his head in dismay, while Malcolm and Mary Ann just looked at one another and shrugged. “Sorry,” Ben continued, “but I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

“Something is seriously not right,” Sally added, now almost in tears. “I can feel it.”

“Why do you say that?” Mary Ann said, shocked by the tone of anguish inside the moment.

Sally looked at Mary Ann, only now her eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused. “Something evil is going to happen, right here. Something monstrous, and its coming.”

“What’s going to happen, Sally?” Mary Ann asked.

“I don’t know. That wasn’t part of the dream, but we were right here.”

Mary Ann looked at Ben, who shrugged, before going on. “We were in what part of the dream, Sally?”

“I can’t see it, but it’s close. Right now. It’s getting so close.”

“I think we must sound like barking madmen,” Ben said, his eyes sweeping the room, “but to tell you the truth, I’m beginning to feel a little paranoid.”

“The dolphins,” Sally blurted, and loudly enough that other patrons in the café turned to the sound of her voice, “they’re calling out, telling us we have to leave this place…right now…”

Mary Ann stood and grabbed Sally by the hand and led her outside to the sidewalk, leaving Ben to follow and Malcolm to settle the bill, then the four of them jogged across the street and down to their boats…

…just as someone in a van started driving through pedestrians, running them over on the very same walkway they’d just been on. Sally turned to face the sounds angry voices and shocked screams, then came the gunfire, and Malcolm could see an angry Arab man inside the van leaning out the rear door while shooting anyone still standing. A nearby Gendarme saw the unfolding chaos and returned fire, and a moment later the van swerved and smashed through the tables lined up at a sidewalk café – before the van crashed through a plate-glass wall and into the café where they had just been. More gunfire as two men and a woman from inside the van sprinted out onto the sidewalk and opened fire on more dazed pedestrians. Another policeman arrived and started shooting, adding to the mayhem. Fire broke out in the café and quickly spread to the floors above, black smoke roiled up into the sky– casting a pall over the dead and the dying. Bullets ripped into a boat next to Achilles and Ben pushed Sally to the dock while Malcolm pushed Mary Ann into the water. A split second later he cried out and fell into the water, clutching his side in shock. Mary Ann knew he’d been shot and cried out in anguish as she swam over to him.

The hi-low wail of sirens filled the air, police and EMS began arriving in force, not quite drowning out all the other sounds of despair coming from the sidewalk. Crying mothers beside shattered baby carriages, the scattered moans of men and women cradling loved ones as they died, frantic eyes full of despair and questions, desperate souls taking their last breaths. Soon there was only sporadic gunfire, some high pitched and sharp, another that sounded more like a low growl, like the bark of a heavy caliber machine gun. The Ben rushed over and helped pull Malcolm up onto the dock, looking for an entry wound while he assessed his friend’s condition. Sally, now sitting up, was staring at the heavens in wonder, apparently hallucinating. Mary Ann was pulling herself out of the water and rushing to her husband’s side, then holding his hand while Ben ran to Achilles for his medical kit.

To Mary Ann it was just another nightmare, yet this one was more than real because the blood on her hands belonged to her husband. Yet while Sally had seen it all coming, she was in shock and drifting away from reality. But now, as she sat beside her husband she recognized that they were surrounded once again by the products of anger and hatred once again, and right then Mary Ann knew these dreams were coming to them for a reason. 

‘Something in us has changed,’ she said to herself, even as she watched Sally drifting away from them.

The minds gathered above watching all this unfold could not have agreed more. Humanity, they now understood, was far more violent than they had once thought.

Part Three: Seeker of Minds

The Old Man walked along the Molo Umberto, his mind roaming the byways of recent experience, still unsure of the moment. Water lapped gently against the stones beneath his feet, along the old stone quay that lined this part of the harbor, and he sighed because most of the tourists were gone now. He watched as a woman in a splashy red and orange sundress composed yet another perfect moment in the viewfinder of her Nikon, pausing to keep out of the frame until the moment had passed. But…did it ever…? Could you ever really capture moments such as these?

But all things must pass, even the best things in life reach an end, and he wanted to tell the girl there is no reasoning with Time. Her life, like so many others spent rushing about in haste, trying to capture a fleeting moment of happiness, would be full of such moments, of such happiness. Yet life could also just as easily be composed of lost opportunities and memories never made, of souls rushing through the viewfinder as if Time had no meaning. But, he wanted to scream, Time is everything, especially when your Time is at an end. And what then? Will your parade of excuses make one last appearance down the byways of memory before the inevitable steals them away for good…?

The news today had been one more grim reminder of time passing out of reach. Almost forty people gunned down in Marseilles. More Palestinian extremists drowning the world with their hate. Endless circles of hate, apparently. So many people lost today, lost to the unquenchable thirst of their hatred, and he shook his head in apparent dismay. But really, nothing surprised the Old Man anymore, because nothing had changed during his long lifetime. Not even Hate had changed. Not even Love.

Still, the Pink had called out to him this afternoon. She had called and now he did as he must, for her call was, as it always had been, irresistible. She just might have been, after all, one of the Sirens.

Another yacht was slowly pulling into the little harbor, a big one this time. Rich men on full display, all so full of importance, yet not one of them was reaching out to really experience the world. No, these men were content to force the world to experience them. Yet they were blind, doomed to a peculiar silence. All of them would soon be less than a memory, would soon be forgotten, for no matter how loudly they screamed their importance the universe remained unmoved by such noise.

Clouds were building over the mountains to the east, just above Rapallo, yet even now the Pink was calling. He looked at his cane and tapped it twice, and the thunder came.

The men on the big yacht were angry now. Pointing at the storm and shouting at someone on the seawall, shaking impotent fists in the name of their God. 

The Old Man smiled at the silence lurking inside their furious shadows, then turned to go. He could no longer watch such folly without feeling ill.

+++++

Malcolm opened his eyes and looked at the IV, then at the bright lights overhead. He recognized them. The clustered lights of a surgical lamp, and he realized their light was focused – on him. 

But he felt nothing, not even the light. No anger, no relief, not even confusion, just the stillness of being. Here, in the moment, because that is all there is. Bright, inquisitive eyes appear overhead, and why is it, he wonders, that some eyes can smile, that some eyes can fill your soul with an impossible warmth that lingers a lifetime.

He took a deep breath and relaxed, holding onto the warmth in the man’s eyes as he slipped away.

+++++

Mary Ann had spent the morning working on Malcolm’s cabin, making sure it is spotless. Every bit of teak was scrubbed with a mild bleach solution before wiping it down with lemon oil. She had stripped his berth and washed the linens, and all his laundry had been folded and put away. Ben was helping move a little wooden stairway over to Diogenes’ starboard side so Malcolm could step aboard easily, while Sally was carrying fresh baguettes and croissant down the companionway. These were scenes from a homecoming, creating touchstones of normalcy using the echoes of lives they used to lead to recreate a sense of home.

He moved slowly as he stood from the wheelchair, pushing himself up off the armrests because his legs felt unstable. There was no hiding the drain in Malcolm’s side, though it was covered with layers of gauze, and a colostomy bag hung on a harness by his side. He looked at the two steps leading up to the deck of his sailboat then shook his head.

“I’m not sure about this, guys?” he sighed.

“I’m right here,” Ben replied, already at his friend’s side, “so use my arms to steady up.”

Mary Ann was on deck, holding out her hand – just in case – and she watched Malcolm take the first step, then the second, then the real troublemaker – the leap across the void between the steps and the deck, a hefty two foot chasm. Malcolm stepped across but came down hard, and he cried out in pain as the jolt spread through his body.

The 5.56mm NATO round had hit Malcolm in the lower groin. After it tumbled through the soft tissues of his small intestines it grazed his renal artery on the way out his back. By the time he made it to the emergency room at the Hospital Center Regional De Marseille, the city’s largest teaching hospital, he had already lost a fair amount of blood. Worse still, the sundered tissues of his colon were leaking their foul contents into his abdominal cavity, coating the peritoneum with deadly bacteria. These bacteria began attacking the peritoneal lining almost immediately, and small infections started in the gut before spreading toward the pleural cavity around his lungs. Bags of antibiotics were pumped into his veins in a desperate attempt to stop the spreading infection, even as surgeons operated a second time to repair more damage to his colon. These missed leaks had been spilling even more bacteria into his gut and the antibiotics had not been able to keep up.

The hospital had been flooded with gunshot victims that terrible day, and they treated more wounded people by gunfire in one day than they usually did in one year. Still, more than forty people will gunned down at the marina that day, while dozens more with serious gunshot wounds were triaged out to three local trauma centers, with the worst coming to the teaching hospital closest to the marina. The first surgeon in the emergency department to look at Malcolm sent him straight to surgery, then he called the best gastrointestinal surgeon he knew, and that one call made all the difference. 

He had been in the hospital for five weeks by the time he first got out of the bed in his room and walked ten feet across the room. The effort had been exhausting and nurses had helped him back into bed, then called his physicians. His temperature spiked. More leaks were suspected but scans proved negative.

He felt like an empty husk, dry and brittle, especially after the morning run of vampires, the techs who came by to draw blood for testing at four in the morning, and the absolute helplessness to resist their jabs left him emotionally drained. At first he grew depressed; soon he wanted to die.

In the first few days after the attack Mary Ann felt simply felt angry. They had worked for three plus decades and now, almost as soon as the two of them had broken free of the daily grind his life had been very nearly obliterated, and his future was now a huge question mark. How many times had she defended the Palestinians when he crowed on about the hatred that seemed to run through the bloodstreams of those people, and now this? 

She was interviewed by several local news outlets, and perhaps because of her background she was interviewed live on the BBC, but she found herself no longer able to defend the Arabs who perpetuated this madness, and she said so. Both the Times and the Telegraph asked her to write up her take on the event, and she tried but had great difficulty thinking clearly about the atrocity she had witnessed. In a way she just wanted to put it all behind her, but she also knew she could never let that happen.

One night while Malcolm was asleep she placed her forehead on his and she was devastated by the images that came to her through the connection. Seeing an angry looking woman running down the sidewalk with what looked like an M16 carbine in her hands, and then this crazed lunatic was spraying her venom into the backs of unarmed people fleeing the chaos she had helped create, shooting people in the back while screaming ‘God Is Great.’ Through the contours of his mind she heard him asking over and over again: ‘What kind of people do this? Who shoots at unarmed women trying to get as far away from their hate as possible? These weren’t terrorists, his consciousness screamed over and over, these were serial killers waving flags of convenience, they were Satan’s legions come to life. Their bargains with the devil struck, the remaining meaning of their lives had been reduced to body counts, to murder at all cost, even to the loss of their own humanity. And did these people not understand that their cause lost credibility with every bullet fired into every innocent mother’s back…? Did nothing matter in this world but hate?

She pulled back, broke the connection because all she saw was a circle of hate.

Then again, who lays dying in a hospital bed and has empathy for his murderer?

+++++

His was the aft cabin, a wide double berth tucked under the cockpit right off the companionway. He found sliding into the bed difficult but not impossible, yet the pain was significant and the danger of ripping stitches very real so he stayed in the saloon most of the day, usually reading but she has bought him a present, a new laptop computer called a MacBook. Soon he is writing out the notes to a book he had in mind, a book about Diogenes and his travels from Anatolia to Corinth and the people he met along the way, most of them in Athens. Malcolm almost seemed excited to be re-engaged in the academic minutiae he had once turned away from, and he realized he missed teaching, the hidden candor of the classroom, the sense of discovery as minds are opened…guided by other careful minds.

…as minds are opened…?

…guided by…

…someone just like Malcolm…?

Did he need the classroom? Did he need to look out over a sea of expectant faces, ready to listen and to learn again? How could she broach the subject without seeming to patronize him?

She brought him tea and sat across from him, watched his hands shake as he sipped from the cup.

“What is this?” he asked. “Not Earl Grey, is it?”

“No, no, something from a local shop. Sally found it and we can’t get enough of it. I thought you might like it too.”

“It’s lovely. I feel flowers turning to the sun. Really, what an extraordinary scent…”

She smiled. “How goes the writing?”

“Oh, you know. Without a good library nearby…”

“Anything I can get for you?”

“I doubt they’d have what I’m after?”

“Such as?”

“Lucian’s Lover of Lies.”

“Sounds lovely.”

He grinned. “It is a series of dialogues on the evils of superstition, but many of his aphorisms are grounded in the extant record from Athens, when Diogenes happened through on his way to Corinth.”

“God, Malcolm, you sound just like a…”

“Please, don’t say it. Really. I’m not anymore, so…”

“You do miss the life, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. That was my identity, you know?”

She sighed. “You really weren’t ready to leave, were you?”

“No, but you were, and there was no point fighting gravity, Mary Ann, was there?”

“I see. I had no idea you resented me so much.”

“I do not resent you, Mary Ann, I just did not understand what the rush was all about. Then again, you always seem to be rushing about. And breathlessly, I might add.”

“Meaning?”

“Sometimes I think you don’t look before you leap. I think we have to backtrack when that happens.”

“Do you want to return to Cambridge?”

“Heavens no. Look at us, Mary Ann. Look where we are. And everywhere we go our little home is with us. Really, who would want to give this up?”

“I take it you’ve forgotten that storm? When you busted those ribs?” she added, pointing at his right side.

He shook his head and sighed. “I’ll not be forgetting that night anytime soon. Not in this lifetime, anyway.”

“Do you think you’d be able to manage if we ran into something like that again?”

“Right now? Not on your life, but ask me in a year.” He looked at her and shook his head. “Oh, dear. We are a pair, aren’t we? You doubt my sincerity regarding this way of life, and you think I resent you for taking me from the classroom, so the question I have in mind right now, Mary Ann, is this. What are you getting out of all this?”

“I finally feel alive, Malcolm. Really alive.”

“So before…you felt dead?”

She nodded. “Maybe? Yes? Or at least I felt like I was losing my humanity, especially after, you know…”

“New York. Yes, I know.”

“I hated them, you know?” she added.

“The hijackers? Why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps a failure of the imagination. To imagine the anger and despair that drove those men to do what they did. To try and understand…”

“To understand hate? Is that what you’re asking?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “But it seems to me, well, that hate blinds us to so many things. Reporting from the Middle East for all those years, getting to know my sources in ways few could appreciate, well, when that first airliner hit the tower I knew in an instant what had happened, and who was behind it. But Malcolm, that was just the outermost layer of hate. What we experienced was just the open sore we created, and by that of course I mean the West. But now Israel has become the open sore that never heals, and now all this blood is spilling out on the rest of us.”

He shook his head and sighed again. “And where would you have had Europe’s Jews go? Where on earth could they feel safe? The world realized, finally I suppose, that these people would never be safe in Europe, so resettling their homeland was a last shot in the dark. A last, desperate gamble…”

“That’s failed.”

Again he shook his head. “I doubt there are many Israelis who would agree with that assessment, Mary Ann. And I’m not sure many in that first generation of post-war settlers ever for one moment thought it would be easy. And I think many realized they were walking into moral quicksand, but again, where else could they have gone?”

She seemed exasperated by that answer. “And that is the point of all this, Mal. No one in the region agrees, or can agree on anything – other than that one hardscrabble city is somehow their center of their civilization. But the truth is more complex, Malcolm, and yet simpler than anyone can admit. That land belongs to neither the Palestinians nor the Jews. Jerusalem belongs to the world, to all of us.”

“Well, that’s one point of view, but tell me one more thing, Mary Ann.”

“Yes, if I can…”

“Why don’t you write a book?”

She scoffed at that, then looked away. “Me?”

“Yes, you. You wrote for both the Times and then the Telegraph, and for decades. You cultivated a readership. Don’t you think that, perhaps, just maybe, that some of them might like to hear from you again?”

“Me?”

“Yes you. There’s no one else in here that I can see, so who the bloody else do you think I’m talking about?”

“Me? Write a book? Malcolm, what an extraordinary idea…!”

He looked at her and then shook his head. “Do I have to do all the thinking around here? Mary Ann? What’s come over you?”

“Extraordinary…” she whispered.

“Yes indeedy, and now that we’ve established that, how do you want to go about writing?”

“What?”

“How, Mary Ann. How do you want to write? You know, you put down one word after the one before, and soon you’ve constructed a meaningful sentence…”

“Malcolm…why don’t we write it? Together? We’ve been right there, right in the eye of the hurricane, so to speak, so who better to…”

“That might be a pretty good title, Mary Ann. In The Eye of The Hurricane. And how about, right under that, Scenes From The Edge of the Abyss…?”

“I’ll outline some ideas tonight, but Mal, it’ll be hard to write on notepads. I got so used to writing on the workstations in the office…”

“Why don’t you and the gang hop on the TGV and go up to Lyon. Get yourself a MacBook. We could knock this out in a few weeks, maybe a month, then you can carry it up to Fleet Street and shop it around.”

“Screw that. I’ll call Nathan. We’re still on proper terms.”

“Is he still on the desk?”

She nodded. “He came down while you were still out of it, took us out to dinner. He seemed very concerned.”

“I’ll be. I had no idea.”

“You were out, Mal. I mean really really out, for about a week.”

“The whole thing seems like it happened in another lifetime, Mary Ann. I think maybe I lost something vital, too. Memories, for one thing. And the past now seems very distant and…”

“Maybe writing about it will help you reclaim some of…?”

He nodded. “Maybe. Worth trying, anyhow.”

“What an extraordinary idea, Malcolm. Really. Who better than us?”

“We had a front row seat to 9/11, didn’t we? And now this?” he said.

“And it just came to you? Right now?”

He nodded, then his gaze unfocused for a moment as he stared off into space. “You know, it’s just a feeling, and I’m not really sure why it comes to me, but Mary Ann, it almost feels like some kind of invisible hand is pushing us in one direction after another, or maybe even like something is using us? Does that make any sense?”

She shrugged. “It does if that’s what you’re feeling.”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it. Very frustrating, really.”

“How’s that tea? Need some hot water?”

“No. I’m good. Why don’t you hop over to Achilles and see if Ben and Sally can go with you up to Lyon?”

+++++

Early the next morning she heard him up at the crack of dawn, struggling to make it to the head on his own and then to the galley, and she listened while he put on water and then put some bread on to toast, all this being of some interest as suddenly he was pushing himself hard enough to try things on his own. She gave him a moment then went to the head herself, before walking aft to the galley. He had several slices of thick, whole wheat bread already under the broiler, some local better and blackberry jam ready to go…and TWO cups on the counter, tea bags resting and ready for the water coming to a boil on the stove.

“If you could help me with my shoes and socks, I think I’d like to spend a few hours writing in the cockpit today. Looks like the sun will be out and I feel as white as a sheet.”

“Some sun would do us both some good,” she whispered like any good mother might.

“What time are the three of you leaving?”

“Soon, I’d say. The train leaves at seven-twenty.”

He looked at his wristwatch and nodded. “Well, give me a hand and you’d then best get yourself ready to go.”

She helped him up the companionway a half hour later; the sun was now out and the air gloriously crisp, the air still just cool enough to require a sweater, and his laptop was set up on the cockpit table. She’d laid out a blanket for his legs, “just in case,” and a thermos full of piping hot EBT, or English Breakfast Tea. Ben and Sally hopped off Achilles and enquired about him.

“You sure you don’t want one of us to stay here with you?” Ben asked politely.

Malcolm smiled while he gently shook his head no. “I’ve got to start pushing myself a little harder.”

“We won’t be back ’til 1700. Are you sure?”

He pointed to the quay and nodded. “Right you three, off you go! Don’t bother about me! Have some fun and don’t eat too many snails.”

He watched as they walked off towards the quay to find a taxi to take them over to Saint-Charles, the huge central railway station, and he took the little folded blanket and spread it over his knees before he poured a cup of tea. He opened the laptop a moment later then began thinking about New York, and that day.

They’d been in that new Marriott. Setting things out for breakfast. “We were going to the Cloisters,” he said aloud. “Then that noise. That godawful noise.” He could still hear it, the whistling howl of jet engines pushed to their limits, the whistling shriek mixed with the high-pitched growl of overheated turbines. “It was like the air was parting, trying to get away from all that evil…”

He bent to the MacBook and began writing and he looked up a few minutes later and realized he needed to pee, and badly, then he looked at his wristwatch…

“This can’t be! How bloody preposterous!” he said as he looked at his watch, because he’d been sitting in one place – but for almost five hours! “Oh hell!” he growled as the need to pee became urgent.

He pushed himself up and over to the companionway and then looked down into the boat. At that ladder. He gulped a little and took a deep breath. “Okay. We can do this,” he said, though his voice was laced with uncertainty. He took a step down, then winced as the little colostomy bag attached to his waist caught on something. He stood and turned a little, then made his way down the next step, slowly placing his feet just so. Then he was finally down and he waltzed to the head. Pull it out. Pee. Empty the bag, then replace the damn thing. To the galley. Get some saltines, and maybe one of those Moroccan tangerines Sally brought over yesterday…

Then he looked at the companionway.

“Oh dear, that might as well be Mount Everest…”

Shake it off. Shuffle over to the companionway, take it one step at a time.

First step up. “So far so good.”

‘Take another, and are you ready for the next one…? Grab hold of that winch and pull yourself up. Up onto the bridge-deck. Take a breath. Got to keep hunched over to get past the dodger, but oh, crap, that hurts…?’

By the time he took his seat he was winded and a little dizzy, suddenly seeing stars. “Damn it all, what the hell is going on with me? I’m not THAT old!”

Or am I?

He heard footsteps approaching and sat up, opened his laptop and started writing. Footsteps coming closer and a moment later an old man appeared, walking slowly, aimlessly, apparently out for a stroll and looking at boats. Striking man, older. Tall. White hair, blue eyes. Elegant. More like an Italian, or perhaps Austrian. Green loden cape. Varnished cane with some sort of silver filigree. ‘Looks like that actor…played the old assassin in Three Days of the Condor. Max Von Something-or-other.’

“Good morning,” the stranger said as he approached Diogenes, his manner offhand, almost diffident.

“And to you. Nice day for a stroll.”

“It is. Yes.” The old man paused, as if suddenly undecided how to proceed. Then he looked up and smiled: “I’m curious. Are you not the man who was injured in all that madness a few months ago?”

“I am, yes.”

“I recall seeing something about you in the papers. Are you feeling better?”

“I have good days and bad. Today is a good day, I think.”

“What a lovely boat. Have you taken her far?”

“A bit, yes. We crossed the Atlantic twice, explored the east coast of the Americas, from the Canadian maritimes to the Bahamas to the Virgins. Places like that. We had just come down through the canals when.…”

“A lovely trip, I hear. Where will you go next?”

“We may stay the winter, then go on to Turkey.”

“Have you been to the Ligurian Sea?”

“That’s around Genoa, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. We have a wonderful port in my village. Perhaps you could come?”

“I see,” Malcolm said, now a little wary. “And where would that be?”

“Ah. Yes. Portofino, just south of Genoa. If you come before summer, before the crowds arrive, it is a lovely place to rest and gather strength.”

“You’re from there, you say?”

“Yes. I have a restaurant there. Lo Stella, and it is on the waterfront. If you come you must visit us. I promise we will take great care of you.”

‘Now that was a strange thing to say,’ Malcolm thought. ‘Very strange indeed.’ He smiled and tried to think of something noncommittal to say. “I’ve heard a lot of nice things about Portofino, of course, but isn’t it expensive?”

“Oh, yes. Very. But that is in high season, but I myself own a quiet stretch along the waterfront and you would be most welcome there. Call me if you can come, and I’m quite sure we can find you a nice spot.” 

He leaned over and handed Malcolm a turquoise blue business card for his restaurant, and as Malcolm took it he noticed a sharp silver glint coming from the man’s cane.

“That’s quite a cane,” he said, pointing.

The Old Man looked down and smiled. “Yes, it is. This is my Altair, and she is very special.”

“Altair? As in the star?”

“Of course, of course, but do you not know the origins of the name,” the Old Man asked.

“The eagle, isn’t it?”

“Of course, yes, that is the modern interpretation. But more directly, I think from the original Arabic it meant ‘one who flies,’ so not exactly an astronomical name.”

“One who flies? I wonder who the name applied to?”

The Old Man smiled as if he’d just been visited by a fond memory. “Altair was a horse. A very special horse. He as the purest white, so white he shone like a star,” the Old Man said wistfully, yet Malcolm heard sincerity in the man’s voice. Something beyond a recitation of facts…more like a memory.

“You knew him well, I take it?”

The question startled the Old Man, brought him back from his reveries, then he turned his eyes on Malcolm…

…and in that moment Malcolm didn’t know what to think. He saw pure, unrestrained power in the man’s eyes, in his expression, but the Old Man almost appeared inhuman for a split second, after which he seemed to calm down a bit…

“The horse lived 2,500 years ago, Dr Doncaster, or so I’ve been told, so of course I never knew him.”

Malcolm was stunned, because he’d not mentioned his name yet…and that had to mean this meeting was no accident.

And as the Old Man seemed to realize his mistake he calmed down again. “Clever,” he finally said.

“Oh?” Malcolm said, smiling a bit. “What was so clever about that?”

“I’m not sure I have the words, but I do hope that you will take me up on my offer. Portofino is a magical place, and you and your wife would do well to understand what is meant by that.”

‘So, this old fella is really laying it all out there, isn’t he?’ Malcolm said to himself. ‘He knows who I am, he knows I’m married, and he wants me to come to Portofino. But who is he, and…”

“You are lost in thought, perhaps?” the Old Man asked. “I have disturbed you. So sorry. But perhaps we’ll meet again.” And with that said the Old Man turned and walked off, but he stopped about halfway up to the street and tapped his cane twice, and Malcolm was sure he heard deep rolling thunder right after that. And then, with Malcolm still watching the old man simply disappeared. As in one moment he was walking along on the sidewalk and in the next…he was gone.

The beeping on his laptop brought him back a while later. The poor thing’s battery was almost flat and he had no way to power the charging device up here in the cockpit…but then he saw he had apparently been dozing as it was now almost five p.m.

Which meant Mary Ann and the Shepherds would be returning soon.

Which meant he had to decide what to tell her about this visit by the strange old man.

And…why Portofino? Why… Why…

He pushed himself along the seat until he was behind the wheel and he powered up the chartplotter and pulled up the harbor charts for that area of the Ligurian Sea and yes, there it was. Just 200 or so nautical miles away, so call it a day and a half by sail.

But why go there at all? What could possibly be there – besides hordes of tourists?

The thunderstorm he’d first heard in the distance was very close now, but how had it come on so quickly? He turned and looked to the northwest, out over the city and beyond the bay and yes, the storm was building as it approached, thunder and lightning filled the air as he felt the air pressure drop in his ears. Yet even as he watched he seemed to recall there’d been no mention of rain in the forecast. But there was nothing he could do now but get below, so he slipped his new laptop in it’s case and moved to the companionway.

He stopped, could see slanting veils of white-streaked rain getting close to the outer jetty, but within seconds it looked almost like a foggy white wall, which meant the storm was kicking up spray from whitecaps on the bay. He watched, startled by the storms sudden intensity, as the wall of driving rain bore down on the marina, and he noted there wasn’t the usual warning he expected, either; one minute the air was warm and still, and a split second later a blast of cold air hit, followed by the wind-driven rain. As the first wall of rain hit an even stronger gust arrived and boats throughout the marina listed as they strained at their dock lines; wind-borne rain strafed anyone that had not already taken shelter, and then a torrential downpour began – just as he saw Mary Ann emerge from a taxi on the seawall, followed by Ben and Sally. Dressed in clothes appropriate for a sunny day of traveling, the three of them sprinted down the quay to the boats, sheltering their eyes so they could see the way ahead, but with Mary Ann sheltering a fancy sage colored canvas bag under her arms. He guessed that was for the new laptop, a Bellingham Bag by the looks of it, and so he was of course instantly jealous.

Everyone had just clambered into the cockpit on Diogenes when the hail hit. Soft, pea-sized clumps of snowy ice, they played a drum solo on the canvas cockpit enclosure while Mary Ann went below to get towels. He heard her putting on water for tea then her head popped up the companionway and she passed towels all around while the hail turned to a thundering rainfall. Lightning danced over and around the marina and everyone looked around nervously – because they understood they were in a marina full of sailboats, and sailboats – with their nice tall metal masts – make fine lightning rods.

Thunder cracked seemingly right overhead, then Sally’s hair stood straight out on end – just as a flash of light registered. An impossibly loud column of blinding light slammed into a nearby motorboat, one of those tall things, and an explosion of showering sparks arced through the air, falling everywhere. There was a secondary explosion on the big motor yacht, then Ben saw fire inside the deck saloon and he sprang into action; he ran over to the yacht to see if anyone was aboard, then he looked to see if anyone from the marina office had seen the fire. Another peeling rumble of thunder rolled across the city, another shattering bolt of pure, white-hot plasma slammed into the water perhaps 50 meters from where Ben stood and that was all it took. He turned and ran back to Diogenes, and when he crawled back inside the zippered enclosure he grinned and shook his head.

What little hair there was on top of his head was standing on end, and yet another bolt slammed into something close, but this time up on the quay, and more sparks arced into the marina.

“Goddamn, this doesn’t feel right,” Ben sighed. “Mal? You ever seen anything like this?”

Malcolm shook his head, shrugged, still focused on the fire spreading inside the big motor yacht. Someone had apparently called it in, because soon everyone turned to watch fire engines approaching, then dozens of firemen running down the ramp to the finger piers, some reeling out long lines of beige hoses, others carrying bright yellow fire axes towards the smoldering yacht. A large boat from the harbor fire brigade approached from the rear and two arcs of water hit the yacht’s superstructure…

…and then it hit him…

He hadn’t seen any storms building all day. There was nothing in the forecast, he told himself again. In fact, the storm had appeared right after that Old Man tapped his cane twice, up there on the quay. Coincidence?

His mind flashed back to that flight on BA, the day before the twin towers. A sailor, and a teacher. He’d talked about coincidence, too…specifically that there are no coincidences…that the things we encounter that we mistake for coincidence are really signposts, signs marking a change in the road ahead, or to the course of your life. His eyes blinked rapidly as the memory returned; the clear sky, the sea below, shadows of clouds on the ocean’s surface. James. James Redfield. That was the name of the author he’d told him about…

“James Redfield…” he said aloud.

“What’s that?” Ben said, startled.

“Oh. Sorry. Just a thought. I was, just, I was thinking about something that happened a few years ago. Bloke I met on an airplane…”

“You said James Redfield. Was that his name?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No. We were talking about coincidence, the nature of coincidence, and he mentioned a writer, this Redfield chap. Something happened an hour or so before you returned and suddenly that name popped into my mind.”

Sally looked at him as he spoke, then nodded. “The Celestine Prophecy,” she said quietly. “I have it onboard if you’d like to have a go.”

“I heard something about that book a few years back,” Mary Ann said as she walked up the companionway carrying a tray of finger sandwiches. “Caused quite a stir with the New Age set at the Times. Seemed to upset more than a few Catholics, too.”

“Oh, well then, yes, I must read this one!” Malcolm snarked.

“Oh, Mal…you’re incorrigible!”

“And sorry, but I’m not having it, Mary Ann, not after the way your mother went after you at the hospital.”

“She was a righteous prig,” Ben sighed as he remembered Marissa Travers lighting into Mary Ann, claiming that living the life she’d chosen had angered God and he’d visited cancer on her in retribution, and right then Malcolm had taken the old woman by the elbow and escorted her from the building.

“She’s a lunatic,” Malcolm snarled, “right out of her barking mind. Sorry, Mary, but that’s the way I feel about the woman.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, you old prune,” Mary Ann replied, smiling.

“A prune, am I? And do you know what, oh darling love of mine?”

“What?”

“Your feet stink.”

Mary Ann turned bright red, but in the end everyone had a good laugh.

And a tiny blue mote no larger than a grain of sand seemed to hesitate before it drifted out from inside the enclosure, then the tiny thing vanished in the blink of an eye.

+++++

A few weeks later, with his colostomy closed and his strength returning, Malcolm began walking around the marina, slowly regaining his strength and his wind, and more importantly, his balance. He found a gym and he and Ben started weight training together, then they’d hit the stationary bicycle for a half hour before walking back to the marina. Pretty soon, their discussions centered on where to go next.

“What does Sally want to do?” Malcolm asked.

“She seems quite content to go with the flow,” Ben said, “but truthfully, Mal, I think she’s content to go anywhere you go. She’s been smitten with you for years, you know?”

“What? That’s preposterous!”

“I know that, and the trouble is she knows too. Still, she just seems to want to be around you.”

“Have you talked to her about this?”

“Good god, no. She’d deny it sure as the sun’s coming up tomorrow, so what’s the point?”

“Deny it? Ben, there’s nothing to deny. Besides, you’re the good looking bloke, not I.”

“It’s not that, Mal. It’s the whole Cambridge don thing, you know? She always wanted to go but never made the grade. Jealousy, you see? But she enjoys following along, listening to you as you carry on about this and that. You truly are a brilliant lecturer…”

“Am I lecturing you as we see the sights…?”

“My God, Malcolm, when we walked through the cathedral in Avignon even the tour guides stopped and paid attention to what you were saying! It’s a gift, a bloody gift, and believe it or not I was rather proud of you! An Englishman teaching those snooty French a thing or two… It was brilliant!”

Malcolm blushed and turned to the way ahead. “Alright, now that we’ve established I’m God’s gift to academic geeks, what about us? Where are we off to next?”

“You mentioned some place south of Naples. Some village with more intact Greek temples than anyplace in the Med?”

“Ah. Paestum. Yes, and there’s a brilliant city just south of there on the Cilentan Coast. Agropoli, with it’s 6^th century Castello Angioino Aragonese on a bluff above the sea. Nice marina there, too.”

“There! See what I mean? Malcolm, you’re a bloody walking encyclopedia – so the best possible tour guide on earth, so of course she’s smitten!”

“Ben, let’s drop the matter, shall we? No good can come of this kind of nonsense.”

“Alright, Mal,” Ben said softly. “What about this Agropoli, then? Where’s it located?”

“South of Naples, Pompei and all that.”

“What, like Sorrento and Amalfi and those places?”

“Further south a bit, and the Greeks settled on that plain rather extensively. Lots to see and do.”

“How far?”

“Oh, about four or so hundred miles, but we could stop at Corsica, break up the trip before crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea.”

“And then Malta?”

“Yes, then the Ionian islands before we head to Athens.”

“God, Mal, did you ever think we’d be doing this?”

Malcolm shook his head but the wonder of it all reached him too. “What a glorious age we’ve lived through. Imagine us living a few hundreds years ago, would you? Struggling to survive, probably not living even forty years. Spending almost all your life within a few miles of where you were born…and now this? I suppose a few hundred years hence they’ll think of this as the Golden Age of Man. But, oh my, I wonder how they’ll judge us for the way we’ve botched things up?”

“I don’t suppose it matters much, Mal. Not to us, anyway…”

Malcolm nodded – yet he could have hardly disagreed more. What was more important than the world you left behind? “No, I suppose not.”

“You’re walking better. How’s the gut feel?”

Malcolm stopped and looked at Ben. “You’re a good friend, Ben. The best. The best I’ve ever had.”

Ben looked away, wiped a tear away then nodded. “You too, mate. The best.”

“Right. Well, I think I have one more appointment with the surgeon this week. I assume if he clears me we might be good to go.”

“Alright, Mal.”

“Well then, if that’s the case we might as well think about getting the boats ready for sea again.”

That night after dinner when it was just the two of them, Malcolm brought up what Ben had said about Sally as they sat in their glowing teak cocoon, two tiny Dutch oil lamps casting funny little shadows on the bulkheads and bookcases about the main saloon. “Ben said something strange this afternoon, Mary. It’s been bothering me ever since.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He said that Sally is smitten with me, and he mentioned the whole Cambridge don thing as the reason. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that as you two spend a lot of time together perhaps you’ve picked up on something?”

“Oh, Malcolm, you are as dense as uranium, you know? That poor woman has been head over heels in love with you for years…”

“What? Have you both gone completely bonkers?”

Mary Ann chuckled under her breath. “Why are you men always the last to know? Or are you so completely shut down now?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh really, don’t play stupid.”

“I am not stupid but I have absolutely no idea what on earth you’re talking about…!”

“Well, let me see if I may enlighten you, my good Herr Doktor…”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Of course I will, and I will because I know it annoys the bloody hell out of you.”

“I see. I’m sorry I brought this up…”

“Mal, put on your big boy pants for a moment, will you? All I’m saying is that once upon a time, you know, like way back in the Jurassic when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and you were still in your teens, it’s you boys who were dripping testosterone all over the floor, and you who were leering at anything wearing a skirt while we were pretending to be either, A. not interested or, B. completely oblivious. But, my dearest moron, now that you’ve turned 60, well, oh my how the tables have turned. But with our Sally, dear Malcolm, I fear the tables have turned completely round and round.”

“Now just what on earth does that mean?”

“Well, if I were you I wouldn’t lead her on, or astray. You’d find yourself in troubled waters very quickly, and I’m not sure even I could help you then.”

“This is all preposterous, you do know that, don’t you? I mean, really…”

“You asked, oh immortal one.”

“Oh, stuff it up your nose.”

She laughed at that. “You can’t even bring yourself to say a decent four letter word, can you?”

“Don’t be vulgar, Mary. It suits you too well.”

She really laughed at that one. “Oh, Malcolm, you’re priceless, you know? I mean, you do know that, right?”

“Okay, so tell me this? Are you fucking Ben?”

“What?” she stammered, suddenly outraged.

“I think I’m off to bed now, Mary. Good night.”

She watched him struggle to get up but didn’t help just yet, didn’t want to offend his brittle pride, but she stood after he’d made it upright. She held out her arm and helped him to his berth in the aft cabin, then helped him with his shoes and socks before tending the wounds on his belly.

“This one’s no longer red,” she said officiously. “Indeed, they both look much better tonight.”

He looked away in silence, made a faint chewing sound, his feathers still ruffled.

“What else happened that day?” she asked.

“What?”

“The day we went to Lyon. The day of that big storm.”

He bunched his lips, squinted a bit as the memory returned. “Something rather strange, Mary. Something so strange I know it can’t be real.”

“What does that mean?”

“There has to be a simpler explanation.”

“So…tell me. Maybe I can help?”

“I’m not sure I have the words.”

“Oh, truly? Coming from you…”

“I know, I know…but, well, just this once I think we need to connect.”

“What?”

“You know, the Vulcan mind meld thing…?”

“Malcolm? After all these years?”

“I know, but this might be important and I don’t want to muck it up.”

“Are you sure?”

He grabbed her round the waist and gently pulled her close, until the side of his face was resting on her belly, and then she slid down to him. Then she placed her forehead on his – and waited.

And waited.

She she leaned back and resettled on his forehead – and this time an explosion of dizzying light erupted between them, knocking her to the floor and sending him down on his berth, both of them reeling as afterimages of lightning criss-crossed through their minds.

And still…nothing.

“Mary? Are you alright?”

She pushed herself upright and took a deep breath, then helped him back up to a sitting position. “That’s never happened before, Mal. Not ever.”

He nodded. He looked away, but he kept nodding his head. “I understand. He doesn’t want us going there.”

“He? Malcolm, what on earth are you going on about?”

He pulled out his wallet, handed the blue business card to her. 

“What’s this?”

“An old man dropped by the boat that day. Maybe a little after noon. Striking chap, quite elegant, very Italian, if you know what I mean. But maybe more northern Italian, I think. Silver hair, and his eyes. Blue, but like looking into infinity. Dressed like he had just stepped out of Hermes.

“He started a conversation. Seemed innocent enough. Gave me his card, talked a little about Portofino, where his place is, and invited me…no…he invited us to come. He has space on the docks. But Mary, he knew our names.”

“He…what?”

“And I hadn’t told him. But he knew them, and once he addressed me by my honorific.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, not at all, but that wasn’t the strangest part, Mary. When he left, well, he was a little miffed at me. As he walked up to the street he stopped and looked back at me, then he tapped this cane he had with him, tapped it twice on the stones and almost instantly it thundered. And yes, I mean exactly what you think, that it was like he summoned the thunder. Then, out of the blue that storm came.” He sighed, clearly distraught, and Mary just let him talk. “And what did the weather service call it? A freak storm? Some kind of localized air mass that popped up over the Maritime Alps and raced across the bay, but you’re telling me no one caught it, no one issued a warning? That…well, things like that just don’t happen these days, Mary. Something was wrong about that whole day. Something was all wrong…terribly wrong…with that Old Man.”

+++++

They sailed in tandem, Achilles and Diogenes as one in their own Homeric quest, south along the west coast of Corsica in calming breezes. After putting in at the little village of Porto, and then Liscia, they put in at Ajaccio for fuel and a serious run at the markets for fresh fruit and vegetables.  They took to the byways of history once again, walking down lanes Napoleon Bonaparte had as a child, supping on Corsican bouillabaisse and warm loaves of crusty bread dipped in olive oil, but Mary Ann declared her favorite dishes were the stuffed eggplant, the Aubergines à la Bonifacienne and the local Charcuterie plates at the tiny bistros along the waterfront.

 Then it was off to Bonifacio, to the protected marina on the southern tip of the island, to spend a few days walking around the clifftop citadel perched over the sea, hiking up the King of Aragon staircase carved into cliffs. Yet Malcolm was reluctant to talk much now, and he was very conscious of Sally’s clinging to his every word, as if he was delivering the Sermon on the Mount. He struggled to walk for more than a half hour, less on the steep climbs there, and his mood soured as a result.

From Corsica they sailed straight to Agropoli, skirting the western tip of Capri and right into the ancient harbor under the bluffs, and right away everyone noticed the feeling inside the little marina was different. They were in Italy now, not France, and the change was unmistakable. The air, the light, even scents lingering on the breeze, redolent with wild things like lavender and honeysuckle and sometimes even something a little more spicy, all marked the change, but it was the spice of the people most of all that proved most different. There were fewer tourists so the locals were more open, or perhaps just less reserved than the French, and of course the food came from another universe entirely. 

But the weather was still somewhat cool here, at least in the marina, and Malcolm began to blossom again, to come out of his self-imposed exile, to become more and more his talkative self as his body continued to repair itself. Summer was still a few months away, so everywhere they looked they found ripening fruit and blossoming flowers in the open air markets, everything coming alive under the warmth of the Italian sun. They hopped in their Zodiacs and Malcolm steered them over to the Elephant Grotto and everyone swam in the warm water, but the tempo was much slower here, and not always in a good way.

The town was off the beaten tourist path so was not as flush with tourist dollars, pounds, and euros. Streets were just that; barren of pedestrian traffic and in poor repair, no t-shirt shops and souvenir stands hawking Chinese knock-offs. As the girls walked to the market it wasn’t unusual for someone to stop and help them carry their groceries back to the marina, something that never happened in the more touristy ports they’d visited.

But even after spending most of the winter in Marseilles, the hot sun began to feel a little oppressive after a few days. The boats grew warm by mid-morning, then downright hot by early afternoon. Hatches slammed shut, breakers were flipped and the air conditioning units on both Achilles and Diogenes sprang into action. Sally in particular seemed to plant herself in front of a vent and let the air flow through her long reddish blond hair. No one wanted to cook so Mary Ann made huge salads for everyone. Lethargy soon became the order of the day.

But Malcolm rented a car and drove them up to visit the ruins at Paestum, and Malcolm was still impressed by the site. “These temples are in such good shape,” he declared. “Nothing outside of Athens touches these; only the Acropolis is more intact.” They spent the morning walking through the ruins in a light drizzle, and Sally resumed her favorite position, walking right beside Malcolm, hanging on his every word. Ben was no longer amused.

So Malcolm returned to the site two days later, this time by himself. He’d felt rushed with the group, but now he found he really wanted a camera. A good one, too, something to take black and white photographs that he could really enlarge. He asked at the one local camera store but, the owner stated, with the coming of digital cameras interest in film had fallen flat, and not even Nikon was making a film camera anymore.

But, Malcolm explained, he really wanted to shoot film, and he wanted to take his time about it, too.

“Then you have two choices. A Hasselblad, or a Leica. The Leica is small, the Hasselblad large, but it also takes better images.”

“Where can I look at them?”

“Rome, certainly. I would not bother with Naples.”

So, with Mary Ann’s blessings he hopped on the local to Naples then the express to Rome and he took a room in a small hotel near the Pont Sant’ Angelo overlooking the Tiber and the Castel across the bridge. He spent the next day running down a Hasselblad, a 205TCC with a prism finder and power winder, and he also bought three extra film backs and several lenses, including a 110 f2.0 that soon became his favorite. He then spent two days walking around the more off the beaten path neighborhoods of Rome shooting dozens of rolls of 120 film, and even a few of his favorite touristy spots, too, before taking the return trip down the coast. He made another day trip up to Paestum to photograph the ruins, and this time Sally came with him.

Because by now both Ben and Mary Ann wanted to know if Sally’s behavior simply reflected some kind of infatuation or was something more troubling. But she acted anything but infatuated that morning. In fact, she seemed almost disinterested in him and wandered around on her own. When she walked with him she waited patiently while he set out his new tripod and slowly composed his images, and she even asked to look through the bulky viewfinder more than once, but that was as close as she got to him. Other than that? She had seemed very ladylike, the very essence of a caustically demur character out of Jane Austen all come back to life. Sally and Ben seemed terribly relieved by Malcolm’s dismissive report of Sally’s afternoon; Malcolm wondered what all the fuss was about. He yawned then went to the camera store to get his negatives developed.

With contact sheets made he took a loupe and scoured each for exposure and sharpness, then picked a dozen and took them to the same camera store. The owner looked at Malcolm’s gear approvingly, perhaps a little wistfully because he’d not earned anything but the goodwill of, perhaps, a new customer. Malcolm examined his latest contact sheets after he handed over new rolls of fill to be developed, giving the old proprietor plenty to do, and the two became friends after a few weeks. 

Yet after three weeks in the marina, and with the weather getting hotter and hotter, the group discussed their options going forward. Malta, the Ionian, and then Athens remained on a possible itinerary, but proceeding along that route meant sailing into the warmest region of the Mediterranean and just as the islands began to heat up.

“What about going north?” Sally asked innocently enough. “I’ve heard really good things about Ravello and Portofino.”

So, Malcolm thought, there it is. The hidden hand. La forza del destino.

Mary Ann looked at him, apparently alarmed by how quickly his face was turning crimson.

But he simply nodded. “You know, Sally, you may be spot-on. Warm but not hot, cool air coming off the alps all summer long, so cooling thunderstorms in the afternoons.”

“And,” she continued, “we could go south next autumn, and then to Athens for Christmas, maybe…?”

Again, she was correct, her thinking clear.

“Well, Ben? Mary Ann? What do you think? Shall we try Portofino? I have a standing offer for dockage along the waterfront, so we might be in for a real treat…”

So Malcolm packed up his camera gear and walked around the village just soaking all the lazy atmosphere up, not like a sponge but like the local bread taking up olive oil. Slowly, deliberately, each bite something to be cherished. But time had one more surprise in store for him, just waiting to be discovered…

Part Four: Sojourner

Agropoli was a study in postwar contrasts, a quiet town split into distinct neighborhoods, each rising phoenix-like depending on the amount of bomb damage sustained in 1943. The old quarter around the castle, most of the buildings pre-dating medieval times, seemed intact, indeed, the ancient buildings were in many spots simply dilapidated. Just inland, the usual mix of postwar buildings prevailed: modest concrete high-rises of four to five stories packed with low-income housing; closer to the waterfront more economic stratification was apparent, the more monied residences belonging to those who tended to the yachts that came in from time to time, for without this rich infusion of cash there was little in the city of to support growth. The town was a textbook example of the postwar stagflation that plagued Italy until EU policies provided new cash infusions.

But more Americans and British of more modest means were coming these days, and more often than not they came to purchase old farmsteads just inland, on the ancient-storied slopes above the crenellated coastline. It wasn’t, anyone could plainly tell, that hard to see why. The cities along the coast had been caught in the crossfire as Allied troops advanced slowly along this front of the war, fighting both the Wehrmacht on the ground and the Luftwaffe in the air in a long and bloody series of running engagements as the German and Italian Armies retreated up the coast. Cities and towns, even smaller ones like Agropoli, saw large swaths of their history flattened during this advance, yet the small farms and vineyards above the coastline often remained unscathed. Groves of olive trees hundreds of years old, perhaps older still, often surrounded ancient stone homes twice that had dotted these hillsides for millennia, the trees marking the what had become natural boundaries between the region’s abundant vineyards, some dating back to the First Roman Republic.

One afternoon after the decision to move north had been made, as Ben and Malcolm were hauling groceries out to their boats, Malcolm saw a lone woman in the marina, sitting at an easel painting the castle on the bluff. The light was approaching the ‘magic hour,’ when the golds of slanting sunlight bathed the rocky promontory, and now in the distance a large thunderstorm approached, it’s blue belly capped by billowing white cloud-tops just now succumbing to the ambers and oranges of the early evening’s light. There were a few small fishing boats in the bottom of the scene she was painting, modern things juxtaposed with the ancient castle, the need to provide food from the sea an immortal motif. So she was blending the old and the new, yet with so much conflict hiding in plain sight, the inherent contradictions of wanting to preserve a vital past while somehow embracing an unknown future, the woman was capturing all these feelings on her canvas. Even from a modest distance the colors the woman used were striking…artistic liberties had been taken, of course, but as he watched the progression of the evening perhaps not so much as he’d first thought. The sky was turning into a shifting kaleidoscope of deepening pastels right before his eyes, and somehow the woman had captured the moment before it occurred. 

He had a small rolling cart loaded with canned goods, nothing perishable to spoil, so he walked closer so he could watch her at work. Perhaps the woman was used to tourists looking over her shoulder, but for whatever reason she never looked up from her canvas except, from time to time to hold out an outstretched arm, using her upturned brush to measure the scale of the promontory and the overarching clouds beyond. His own forays into black and white photography had awakened something in him, something like an artistic impulse, so perhaps he was studying her work to get a sense of the techniques used to mold the elements of the scene into a coherent composition, so he was enthralled by her skill. Composition wasn’t always an easy thing to grasp, and he understood that from recent experience, if his own meager efforts were a good indication.

And it was just then that he saw the basket at her feet. 

Three puppies, their eyes just recently opened, and by golly they were Springers and that was all he could take. He walked over and cleared his throat, then sat near her on a low stone wall beside her easel.

“Yes, may I help you?” the woman said, and Malcolm was pleased, even startled to hear the rich, clipped accent of a woman of some means, from Sweden perhaps, or maybe Denmark.

“I was admiring your work from afar,” he began, “but then I saw the pups and had to come see them.”

“Ah. So you enjoy spaniels?” she asked.

“My wife and I have had Springers in the past, for many years, really, but we sort of gave up on the idea after we decided to spend more time on our boat.”

“Are you down in the harbor?” she asked.

“Yes, right out there, at the end of the first pier.”

“The sailboat?”

“Yes. That’s us.”

“I have been breeding them, up there, at our vineyard,” she said, pointing to the foothills, “for many years now. My husband and I inherited a small place here, but I needed something more interesting to do than tending grapes all day.”

“Springers are definitely interesting,” he said, bending low to look at the puppies sleeping in the basket. “Will you be selling these?”

She turned and looked at him, this time from head to toe – as if, now that she’d lost her train of thought on the canvas, there was a sudden need to look up from her work long enough to size up this stranger. Or, perhaps, to see if he was worthy of her pups. She sighed, then her head canted to the left just a bit as if in thought. “Is your wife onboard?”

He nodded. “Should I go get her?”

“Yes. Why don’t you?”

“By the way, about this painting? Do you sell your work?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

He nodded. “Well, I’ll go get Mary Ann,” he said as he turned to roll his cart out to Diogenes, and at one point he turned and saw that she was watching him. A few minutes later they walked back to the quay hand in hand, and he seemed almost excited now. Mary Ann still seemed quietly reluctant, as if she was still not quite ready to move on.

But that lasted less than a minute, about as long as it took for her eyes to fall on a small brown and white bundle of inquisitiveness who had just poked her head up from the basket.

“Ah,” the woman said to Mary Ann, “I see the connection already.” She leaned over and picked the pup up and handed it to Mary Ann, who was instantly smitten. Malcolm stood back, a little in awe of what he was witnessing, for the pup’s eyes were focused like lasers on Mary Ann’s, and when the woman passed the pup to Mary Ann’s waiting hands an even deeper connection blossomed. Mary Ann brought the pup up to her neck and the little thing licked an ear, then lightly chewed the round of her lobe before the licking began in earnest. “You will need to come up to the villa tomorrow,” she added. “I would like Elise to look you over.”

“Elise?” Mary Ann asked.

“Her mother,” the woman said. “She has the final say in these matters.”

Mary nodded. “I understand.”

“Here are the directions,” she said as she handed over a piece of paper. “And I insist you come for lunch. Say a little before noon?”

Both Malcolm and Mary Ann nodded, now completely entranced by the pup and, he had to admit, perhaps a little by the woman, as well. But the puppy was by no means through with Mary Ann, or, he wondered as he watched, was it now the other way around? The pups eyes were closed, their necks seemed conjoined and the utter contentment he saw on his wife’s face was beyond the price of rubies. When at last Mary Ann returned the pup it was with real pain, and, as far as Malcolm was concerned, that answered that.

So, he realized that they would henceforth continue their wanderings with a pup onboard.

So be it. But, he had to admit, he’d wanted that all along.

Yet now Mary Ann seemed almost ecstatic. A pup again! And a Springer? He could see she was so excited, and yet a part of himself asked ‘why?’…

And a curious thought crossed his mind. They’d not been able to have children, so had Springers taken on that role? Had it come to that? Or was there some other explanation?

They drove their rental up to the vineyard the next morning, turning off the paved main road onto an unpaved driveway that dropped down into a little valley. The way ahead was framed by overarching trees, and the shadows felt somehow comfortably reassuring. The driveway twisted and turned for a bit, following a creek for several hundred meters before crossing the stream over a timber bridge that rattled as they crossed, then around one more bend in the road and they were on the grounds of the residence proper. The main house was old, really old, made of stone centuries ago but he could see that the guts of the place had been cleared-out and updated, the sensitive architects very careful not to ruin the flavor of the old estate. Beyond that, he could just make out two smaller homes of the same style not far away. Ancient shade trees cast dark pools of cool relief around the expansive yard, and a few children were running around, playing in their very own World Cup football championship right there under the trees. A larger harvesting and processing building was in the distance, then smaller homes for a few of the workers who apparently lived on the grounds, and yes, he saw a half dozen or so workers walking to a trellised patio behind the big house as they parked their car. 

Malcolm followed the workers to the patio, Mary Ann as well, not sure what they were walking into but as always he was cautious in the extreme, while Mary Ann seemed ready to embrace whatever or whoever she might find with open arms. Then, as they turned a corner and came to the patio proper, they found the woman they’d met last evening now setting out food on three long tables. Food for their workers,  he saw, and then the woman saw them and waved.

“Hello, and find a seat!” she said, and she seemed actually happy to have fresh faces at her table. “You’re just in time for the soup.”

Malcolm found two places and pulled out a little bench and helped his wife get settled, just as the woman placed a huge bowl of bean soup on the table in front of them. Two more workers joined them, then the woman returned with a ladle, as well as a platter of freshly baked bread. There was no butter, but plenty of fresh basil swimming in pools of olive oil in bowls on the tables.

It was the start of a simple but hearty lunch, and the workers all appeared quite happy as they talked about their morning among the vines. Malcolm translated for Mary from time to time, and Mary Ann was soon quite sure she wanted the recipe for this soup.

“Oh, we just take what happens to come in from the garden that morning, then we add some spices and set it to a boil,” the woman said. “I’m glad you are enjoying it.”

Mary Ann nodded as she used the ladle to serve herself another bowl. “This bread is amazing, too.”

“The wheat comes from a neighbors fields,” the woman said as she pointed. “It is funny, but this area was ancient Rome’s breadbasket, so I think good bread is in the DNA of the grain…”

“And it always will be,” a man said as he came up from behind the woman and kissed her on the neck. “You are from the yacht?” he asked Malcolm.

“We are,” Malcolm said as he stood, extending his right hand. “Malcolm Doncaster,” he said before adding, “and this is my wife, Mary Ann.”

“We are pleased to enjoy your company, and I am Guido LeGrande. And please, you must forgive my wife’s humility, but she is an excellent cook. She makes all the sausages herself,” he said as he looked at his wife. “But Imogen, you have outdone yourself today. What spices did you use?”

“I have no idea, but I think roasted sunflower seeds and apples are the secret ingredient.”

Malcolm watched this casual interplay unfold and smiled. Aren’t all married people alike, he thought? At least given time to mature? Sometimes rough on the outside but soft on the inside, soft where the heart resides?

“Perhaps you would enjoy a walk around the vines with us this afternoon?” Guido asked, addressing Mary Ann directly but his eyes including Malcolm from time to time.

“We would love to,” Mary Ann said, her eyes twinkling from the sudden attention.

“Guido?” Imogen said. “Our guests have come to visit with Elise and her children, not to play among your grapes…”

“No reason we can’t do both, is there?” Malcolm interjected…to the other man’s immediate relief.

“No, no reason at all,” Imogen said, laughing before she turned and walked over to one of the other tables to sit with their workers. Malcolm sat and once again dipped bread into his soup, and everyone at their table resumed talking and laughing about the things that had happened out there in the fields. Then more platters arrived, these loaded with sausages and roasted field vegetables, and Mary Ann’s eyes bugged until she remembered these were workers toiling the fields and the vines, and that their appetites would surely reflect that.

They spent an hour or so walking under the sun while Guido inspected his vines, and all the while Malcolm smiled as he was breathing air redolent with history, Roman history. Now these fields produced wines that sold in restaurants and supermarkets all across Europe, some even made it to America, even in markets as far-flung as China and Singapore. They went inside dark, limestone caves and sampled a few reds, then walked up to the kennels, which weren’t kennels at all but one of the small cottages behind the main house.

And there they met Elise, the matron of the litter, and apparently of this estate, too. Imogen and a little girl were already there, showing off a little tricolor male to a couple from Verona, for Elise was a champion, both a show dog and an agility champion, and her pups were in high demand. “When Elise runs an agility course, she wins,” Imogen proudly told the couple. She’d taken ‘best in show’ honors too many times to count, and ever since there had been waiting lists for her pups. But when she stopped showing Elise a year ago the people stopped calling, and, Imogen said, she was sure that Elise had never been happier. This would be her last litter, too. Elise stayed with Imogen in the house during their mornings together, and after lunch Elise usually spent in the fields, walking by Guido’s side as he made his rounds. But not today. 

No. Today Elise was here to examine the people who had come to look at her puppies, for as Imogen said she exercised first right of refusal. If Elise didn’t take to a couple, or reacted negatively to someone, the deal was off. That much was understood before negotiations ever began.

So when Elise walked up to Malcolm and sat in front of him, Malcolm looked at her then knelt to give her a good scratch behind the ears. And still the girl stared into his eyes…and for a moment he was sure she was sifting through his memories, memories of Rupert, of afternoons walking the marshes or running the fields along the river, of the absolute love they had shared, and then Elise’s tail started thumping away on the timber floor. She rolled over, presented her tummy and Malcolm lay down beside her and rubbed away until her soft moans filled the air. After a few minutes of that Elise stood, lavishly licking Malcolm’s chin before she ambled off to the couple from Verona.

“I don’t even want to know how much these puppies cost…” Mary Ann said when they were out of earshot.

“Are you ready to go through all this again?” he asked. ‘All this’ included the joy a pup could bring back into their lives, but all the heartache, too, as too soon pups grew old and the inevitable came… Putting down Rupert had been the hardest thing Malcolm had ever done, and it still hurt every time he thought of it.

“I think so, Mal. I think a pup would give our journey some kind of meaning beyond ourselves.”

He nodded. “Okay then. I brought the checkbook, so how much is too much?”

Mary Ann shrugged and walked away, as Imogen was carrying out the little pup she had bonded with the day before.

And that was that. Malcolm knew you can’t put a price on moments like this, and to do so was to demean the memories to come. They drove back to the marina with Elsie under Mary Ann’s chin, the pup’s eyes absolutely mesmerizing his wife. By the time he parked in the little lot by the marina Mary Ann was already a lost cause, her heart completely captivated. 

Yet a few minutes later Imogen arrived in a haste, and she walked out to Diogenes carrying a canvas tote bag full of things to help Elsie make the transition. A blanket rich with the scents of her kennel, and her mother too, some food to help her adjust, and of course a bottle of wine, just because.

And Imogen had brought Malcolm the painting he had admired, and he was stunned by the gift. “You captured the moment perfectly,” he sighed, and the woman smiled too. “But this is too much. How can I ever thank you?”

“It has been a pleasure,” Imogen said, extending her hand. “You must come and visit us when our little girl is a older.”

“We will,” Mary Ann declared, now almost in tears. “And…thank you for a perfectly magical day! We shall never forget it…”

They watched Imogen leave, and even Elsie seemed to realize that one part of her life had just drawn to a close, but then she turned and looked at up Malcolm, up into his eyes, into the window to his soul, and maybe, just maybe she wondered where he would take her, where they would go together, but there was trust in the pup’s eyes now, and as he returned her stare he realized he didn’t ever want to betray that trust. A pup’s love and trust was, he had learned over the years, the most profound gift in all creation.

+++++

Achilles and Diogenes left Agropoli the next morning in tandem, but as soon as the boats cleared the breakwater Diogenes continued to the north, to head for the Amalfi coast, while Achilles turned south, aiming to make Malta, then Corfu, before heading to Athens and someplace warm and sunny for the winter. It was a bittersweet moment, yet one that had been inevitable from the beginning as Ben and Sally had set out to circumnavigate the world. Even so, at the last minute the girls planned to meet up again in six months, at Tourlos, on Mykonos, before sailing on to Antalya, in Turkey.  Malcolm and Ben just shrugged because, after all, weren’t they just along for the ride? To steer and keep this expedition off the rocks to weather?

But the weather, of course, turned snotty within an hour of their departure, so instead of heading directly for Capri, Diogenes turned towards Salerno and her vast array of marinas. Elsie didn’t seem to mind one way or another, however, at least not once she was safely tucked inside Malcolm’s fleece lined foul weather jacket. With her little round head just poking out into the wind and rain, she sat watching while Malcolm steered for hours on end through breaking seas and squalls, and though neither ate much that day both seemed smitten. 

The three of them took short, protected walks around the vast network of waterfront parks in Salerno for two days, until the weather cleared, then they resumed their trek west along the Amalfi coast. Past Ravello and her ancient lemon groves and the glorious, sun-drenched hotels ensconced within the cliffsides above Positano. then out past the rocks that had bedeviled Odysseus, the islands known locally as The Sirens but that were shown on the nautical chart as Il Gally Lungo, la Rotunda, and la Castelluccia. As the water was over a hundred feet deep almost right up to the rocks on Gallo Lungo, he took Diogenes close along the east side of the island, tempted to stop at the picturesque inlet there, beneath the lighthouse and a small castle, but he thought better of it. He didn’t feel like being betrayed by these sirens, falling to their seductive call once again. 

Once past the Sirens he steered for Punta Campanella, then the Bocca Piccola, the narrow strait between Sorrento on the peninsula and the fabled Island of Capri. Soon the waters were almost as clear as those they’d sailed in the Bahamas, but while these clear waters called out to Elsie she was still far too young to start swimming. That did not stop them from sailing to the northwest corner of the island, to the Grotta Azzura, the storied Blue Grotto featured in Technicolor movies shot on the island since the 50s. So of course they stopped and then marveled…at the hordes of tourists in little rowboats waiting for the tide so they could row inside the dark caves and look down into the shockingly clear blue water lit from below in shocking shades of silver and blue.

“You want to take the Zodiac and go have a look?” he asked Mary Ann.

“Not on your life! Look at those crowds, Malcolm! There must be fifty boat queuing up!”

“Yup. Never seen anything like it,” he muttered. “Oh well, a sign of the times. Every girl wants to be Audrey Hepburn.”

“Don’t kid yourself, you old dinosaur. I bet there’s not one of them out there who even knows who she was.”

“Stop, before I kill myself,” he muttered with a smile as he clapped his palms over his ears. “I can’t imagine a world where no one remembers her…”

But now they had 300 miles to go to reach Portofino, most of the trip across open water to reach the small bean-shaped harbor hidden within trees, the entrance a truly narrow inlet lined with shallow, rocky ledges. The coastline from Rapallo to Portofina was rock-strewn and riddled with these undersea ledges, and shipwrecks had been common there through the ages. After taking two days to cross the sea, to make matters even more interesting…once again storm clouds were building to the northwest, just as they were closing on that rocky shoreline. Now it looked like the last ten miles of their journey would be made in one last thunderstorm, which meant reduced visibility. And that meant relying on radar, which Malcolm did not enjoy doing.

So Malcolm looked up from his charts, then at the approaching storm, and sighed. “Well…this is fucked, but why not?” he muttered under his breath.

“Malcolm? Did I just hear you say a four letter word? I am shocked.”

“Six letters, you daft prig. Six letters, count ‘em, six!”

She smiled as Elsie snuggled under her chin, then she went below to put on water for tea.

Malcolm looked up and watched as all sight of land faded from view – at one point the line between sea and sky seeming to hover in an indistinct blur of whitish-gray. He watched the approaching storm and wondered what Odysseus would have said. 

“Man, this is fucked,” still seemed about right.

+++++

“I can’t see anything but goddamn trees!” Malcolm snarled as he looked at the chartplotter once again, then through his binoculars. His Steiner’s were now glued to his eyes as he struggled to make out the entrance buoy that marked the left side of the inlet, but it was hidden somewhere in that wall of misty foliage and the village in the distance. “It’s supposed to be flashing red, every three seconds…”

He scanned with his ‘binos’ again while Mary Ann scanned with her’s.

“Is there a green one too?” she said, almost under her breath.

“Yes, do you see it?”

“Yup, you’re heading right to it, and its about 300 yards away now.”

“Right. Look just to the left. The red beacon should be…ah, okay, I see it now…! That’s the Punta del Coppo headland. The entrance channel is just to the right…”

“Are you sure this is the right entrance?”

“I don’t know, Mary,” he snarled – as he pointed down into the inky darkness below, “why don’t you ask him?”

He asked because, for the past 24 or so hours, they’d been accompanied by a lone dolphin swimming along in their wake, just off their port quarter. And the beast was a large one, too. Much darker gray than the ones he was familiar with and this one had a shocking white underbelly, and though it was dark out now he could still hear the dolphin cruising along beside them, especially when the animal exhaled. His blowhole popped open with a deep thud as it exhaled, then air rushed noisily into its lungs. And the beast had bad breath, too. When he’d first appeared, Mary Ann had predictably been ecstatic, and had run down the companionway to fetch Elsie and her camera, but coming up a few minutes later cussing up a storm…

“She got out of her box and crapped all over the place!” his wife shouted. “Have you ever tried picking up dog shit on a pitching sailboat?” she snarled. “At night?”

“I thought I heard someone growling down there? Driving the porcelain bus again?”

“Oh, fuck you!”

He smiled triumphantly.

And all the while the dolphin was down there, taking all this in, his baleful eye almost pitiless – yet ever watchful as Mary Ann came to the rail and presented Elsie to the world.

And the dolphin reacted to the pup’s presence almost immediately.

He dove deep, then powered up into the sky, spinning on his way to apogee before succumbing to gravity and gliding down noiselessly, splashing gracefully into the sea.

But then the dolphin had reassumed his silent vigil, gliding along off Diogenes’ port side, his right eye trained on Malcolm again. At first Malcolm had been merely disinterested, yet he soon grew restless under the animal’s relentless gaze. At one point Malcolm had installed the cockpit enclosure, blocking off his view of the animal, but the air had soon grown stifling and – the dolphin hadn’t budged…

So Malcolm flipped the wheel and tacked, rapidly turning 90 degrees to port, but once again the dolphin emerged, still maintaining his position about five feet off their quarter. Only now, on this new tack, Diogenes’ port rail was down almost touching the waves, the water hissing away just a foot or so from where Malcolm sat behind the wheel – and now the dolphin was just a foot or so away from him. In other words, they were now almost eye to eye, but just then Malcolm leaned closer still and spoke to the creature.

“What do you want?” he asked.

And the dolphin moved even closer, now timing his movements to get right beside the human, his pectoral fin just touching the boat’s hull.

“He’s presenting,” Mary Ann whispered, her head popping up beside his.

“What?”

“Put your forehead on his…”

Malcolm braced himself on a stanchion and leaned out as far as he could, and the dolphin closed the gap. In the next instant Malcolm experienced something akin to weightlessness as overwhelming light flooded his sight – and then… he was in a field of drifting stars.

He woke up stretched out on the cockpit seat, Mary Ann stroking his forehead. 

“Are you alright?”

“What happened?” he said, his mouth dry, his head pounding.

“I don’t know. You were leaning out to touch him and the next second you were just laying here. It was like I blinked and your body disappeared and then reappeared, and I mean in the same instant. It was weird, Mal, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“Where’s the fish?”

“He’s not a fish.”

“He swims in the fucking ocean. He’s a fucking fish.”

Her eyes bugged. “Mal? Are you okay?”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, and then he felt sand all over his face. Black sand, he saw, when he brought his hands down to look at them. “What the hell?” he muttered. “Where’d this come from?”

“Is that dirt?” she asked, equally startled.

“It feels like sand, Mary, but…it’s in my eyes too. And it’s black sand,” he mumbled as he turned and looked at the dolphin, his hands suddenly shaking, his head too, but in disbelief.

And the dolphin was still just out there, still swimming alongside, his expression unchanged.

+++++

As they approached the harbor, and it was just then a little after midnight, Diogenes had fallen into calm air, probably, he thought, as they were now in the windshadow behind the peninsula’s forested headland. And as it was still, technically anyway, winter – though just – the air was still quite cool. Elsie was tucked into her box all wrapped up in her puppy blanket while Mary Ann was standing just ahead of the binnacle, bracing her hands on the binnacle guard and a bimini rail, peering through the night at the little harbor as Malcolm motored in.

“You didn’t call that man, did you?” she asked, referring to the man he’d encountered at the marina in Marseilles.

“No, not yet. Why?”

“Because there’s a man on that seawall,” she said, pointing, “and he’s waving at us.”

He followed her finger, squinted a little then nodded. “Why am I not surprised?” he whispered, though loudly enough for Mary Ann to hear.

“Well would you look at that,” she muttered as her finger pointed out the dolphin…

And Malcolm watched as the dolphin moved ahead now, taking position as if to guide them through the congested harbor directly to the man on the seawall. 

“You know…? I’m not at all sure we shouldn’t just turn around and get the bloody hell out of here right now,” he grumbled.

“Where’d that come from?” she asked.

“I have no idea, but get the main all the way in, would you? I can’t see ahead…”

She lowered the sail and he cut power to the engine, then slipped it into neutral as he followed the dolphin. When they were about twenty meters off the seawall the man called out to them.

“Dr Doncaster, I presume?” the man said, with a chuckle to top off the moment. “Can you come in for a starboard side tie?”

“Can do. Mary Ann, would you go forward with your lines, please?”

“Fenders?”

“Three, please.”

“Righty-O,” she said as she walked forward, tying off big, sausage shaped fenders along the right side of the boat before she cleated off their mooring lines. As Malcolm steered Diogenes closer to the seawall he could just make out the dolphin watching now, nodding once to the Old Man – who gently tapped his cane once. 

Malcolm turned the wheel to port and put the engine into reverse for a moment, then centered the wheel and put the transmission back into neutral. Another shot of reverse, a little forward, back into neutral and a little left wheel. Right wheel, reverse, neutral…then he stepped off onto the seawall and tied his stern line to a nearby bollard before he went forward to take Mary’s lines.

“Nicely done,” the Old Man said, grinning warmly as he addressed Malcolm’s skill, then he turned to Mary Ann. “Welcome to Portofino, and to my home,” he added expansively, spreading his arms wide to embrace the village as his own.

“Thanks,” Malcolm said as genially, now extending his right hand, but then he turned to see where the dolphin was. And he as quickly spotted him, now off Diogenes’ port beam and about ten meters away, just standing out there while still looking at Malcolm. “I take it you sent him?” Malcolm asked as he turned to face the Old Man.

Which resulted in a hearty, booming laugh. “As if I could ask that of him! Dr Doncaster, are you a comedian, as well?”

“He’s been with us all day,” Mary Ann said as she stepped off Diogenes and walked over to her husband. 

“And all night, too,” Malcolm added. “Very attentive fella. Not sure what planet he’s from, but  nevertheless quite attentive.”

The Old Man turned and looked at them, then turned to face the dolphin and waved him away. Of course the dolphin disappeared under the inky black surface, letting Malcolm have one more very important piece of this puzzle…

“You are both cold,” the Old Man said, “but what of Elsie? Surely you won’t leave her unattended?”

Malcolm looked at Mary Ann – who for once in her life was at a loss for words – as the pup was still in her box in the forward cabin, and she’d not heard Malcolm mention they now had a dog.

“Mary, would you please go below and fetch the pup, please?” Malcolm’s voice was now tinged with respectful fear, as if they’d just confronted a lioness whilst out for a walk on Bayswater Street back home.

“Perhaps you’d like some supper?” the Old Man added jovially. “And of course something for our little Elsie, too.”

“Of course,” Malcolm said, trying to keep his habitual sarcasm at bay, “we’d love to.”

“Excellent!” the Old Man exclaimed as he tapped his cane once. “Malcolm, you are looking quite well. Much better than the last time I saw you. Yes. Quite decent, actually. Your stomach is no longer bothering you, I hope?”

“Yes, well, everything seems to have mended nicely.”

“Excellent! But…ah…there she is!” the Old Man said as Mary Ann appeared, with Elsie tucked protectively under her arm. “Look at that, would you? Is there anything in this universe more gorgeous than a puppy’s eyes? And look at the shape of that head!? Doesn’t that just pull on your heartstrings?”

“Yes, it certainly does,” Mary Ann said, trying to smile.

“Really,” the Old Man said as he bent to look at her more closely, “she has her mother’s markings. Did you notice that?”

Mary Ann was now too stunned to speak.

“Yes, it was one of the first things I noticed,” Malcolm replied. “But I had no idea you knew Guido and Imogen.”

“Ah, yes, but of course I do. I purchase a good deal from them. Not only wine, but olive oil and in the spring, soon, they will send me the best cherries in Italy. Certainly you will let us cook you something with their cherries? Some scallops, perhaps?”

Malcolm nodded. “Sounds wonderful. We’d love to join you.”

“Excellent! Now, come with me to the restaurant, please. Bernhardt has made you the most amazing supper! Lobster in a white wine reduction and, I believe, with a touch of shallots and lingonberries on his freshly made linguine. I’m sure I tasted a touch of basil with the shiitakes, too. I had a little of his sauce just a few minutes ago. Truly wonderful!”

+++++

Two weeks had passed and while Northern Italy was warming up Malcolm soon found he preferred sitting outside in the fresh air of the cockpit than in the teak cocoon below, so every morning he dragged his laptop up into the cockpit and started work on the book. Their book, actually. More and more tourists were returning to the village, too. A few came by yacht, but literal hordes came out of the endless procession of tour buses that came belching into the piazza every half hour or so, because Portofino was a very popular place for people desperate to find that one perfect place. Malcolm had, for a few days, looked up as each new tour bus arrived, each one disgorging 80 camera-toting tourists at a time, but he soon grew used to the constant swirl of people walking by right beside his home. 

Some days Elsie sat with him, others the three of them sat and worked through rough drafts of chapters together – because such was the nature of their book that memories of those moments had to be sifted through slowly, carefully, and, most of all, deliberately, because they were mining their own feelings, feelings from events that had been repressed almost from the moment of their inception.

But it wasn’t uncommon for these many tourists to walk along the seawall and talk to the people they saw on the boats moored along the seawall. Or they tried to, anyway. Some sailors just ignored the tourists, others were more direct, and very inhospitable. But not Malcolm. 

“Did you sail here?”

“Indeed, given that quantum teleportation is still in testing, I think that’s a safe assumption.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

or

“Is that your puppy?”

“Oh, her? No, she drops be from time to time to bring me coffee.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

It was, he realized, like watching a pro tennis match. His face tracking inane comments whizzing by so quickly it made his head spin.

Then, one afternoon:

“Dr Doncaster? Is that you?”

He looked up at that one, saw a chubby girl in her early 30s standing there and his mind raced for a name to go with his memory of that face…

“Katharine? Katy? Is that you?” Talk about inane, you stupid sod.

“Dr D? I can’t believe it’s you!”

Katy Sunderland…she had been in a horrifying car crash…and she’d lost her left leg in the aftermath.  She’d had to quit school to finish rehab and he’d soon lost track of her…

“Katy? How on earth are you?”

She shrugged and looked down. Never a good sign.

“Oh, just wandering around Italy. What about you?”

“Pretty much the same, but my dear, you look parched. Need something to drink?”

“If it would be okay, sure.”

“Would you like to come aboard?”

She nodded. “May I?”

She walked over to the gate in the lifelines and waited for him; he remembered her leg then came over to the gate and took both her hands in his, then as she got her good foot on the rail he pulled her up onto the deck. He guessed just then that she might’ve weighed 90 pounds sopping wet, but he doubted she weighed even that. After he helped her down into the cockpit he went to the companionway.

“Mary, we’ve company up here. Care to show your face?”

Mary Ann came up, with Elsie in one hand and the other on a railing, but she’d never met the girl before so…

“Mary Ann, this is Katy Sunderland. She was a student of mine in, oh, about ’98 or so, wasn’t it?”

Mary Ann smiled as she tended to the pleasantries but immediately saw that the girl was emaciated. “My dear, have you had anything to eat or drink today?”

The girl shook her head – and while Malcolm rightly sensed trouble ahead he knew that nothing would stop Mary from springing into action. 

Because as always, Mary Ann simply did not care. Katy was a fellow human being in need and that was all she needed to know, so she went below, fired up the kettle and the oven and got to work.

“So, Katy, tell me everything.”

“I, well, I don’t know where to begin…”

“Well then, let’s start with now. What are you doing here in Italy?”

She shrugged. “I came over with friends last year. We all went to a cooking school just outside Genoa, a wonderful place on the coast, and after we finished I got a job and they went home. Then I had problems getting a work permit and so, well, I’m just seeing the sights, I guess.”

“Living where?”

Again, that shrug.

“Where are you staying, Katy?”

Another shrug.

“What about going home?”

“Dr Doncaster, it turns out that no one wants a girl with one leg, okay? Restaurants sure don’t, and my boyfriend sure didn’t, and I guess it turned out my dad didn’t either, so here I am. I don’t know why I got on the bus this morning, it was just a local stopping at every town along the coast and for some reason I got off here and, well, I walked out here because it looked pretty and here you were.”

“And here I am? Is that it?”

“Yes?”

“So, if I’ve got this straight you have no money and no home, and something, call it some act of serendipity, led you right here, right now, to this boat? Do I have that right?” ‘There are no coincidences.’ He often wondered why that little voice in the back of his head kept reminding him of just that, but now that voice was a thundering call. “Tell me what happened after the accident? I lost track, you know? But I always thought you showed real promise.”

“You did?”

“I did. I was hoping you’d come back to school, but you never…”

“I was in the hospital for the longest time, Dr D…”

“Please, please, just Malcolm. ‘Dr D’ is an unwelcome reminder of another life, a life I hardly like to revisit these days.”

Mary Ann handed up tea and sandwiches, then came up with Elsie. Then she asked: “Your pardon, Katy, but where were your parents through all this?” 

“My mom…well, the short version is I never knew her. Dad remarried and I guess I never really fit in with his plans. I was his throwaway, his little mistake, or so he liked to call me.”

Malcolm turned away, Mary Ann reached out, took her hand. “So, you’ve no one?”

Katy nodded. “That’s me. Katy, the throwaway kid.” 

But Malcolm saw she wasn’t crying, and that she didn’t appear bitter, either, despite her situation. So, what was the deeper issue? “Katy? Should I call your father? Have a talk with him?”

She shook her head. “I’ve tried a couple of times. He’s not going to help.”

“Here, have a sandwich,” Mary Ann said, and despite her hunger Katy ate slowly, politely, which told Mary Ann she’d been raised by a decent family…but who?

Malcolm saw the Old Man walking their way and nodded as that little voice reminded him once again that there are no coincidences, and as the Old Man came up to Diogenes he looked at Katy and smiled. 

“Malcolm? You have a guest?”

“An old student of mine, she just finished at a cooking school up the coast?”

“Oh? Young lady, are you looking for work?”

Katy smiled. “I’ve overstayed my visa…”

But the Old Man shrugged off that concern, as if to state that the affairs of mere mortals were of little interest to him. 

“So, tell me the ingredients in a Ligurian pesto?” 

She told him. 

“The correct herbs in a sauce Béarnaise?”

 She told him. 

“And how do you make a fresh mayonnaise?”

 And she told him that, too. 

“Do you want a job, or not?” the Old Man asked.

She told him that yes, she did.

“Then let’s go get you an apron. I lost an assistant three days ago and we are going crazy in the kitchen. I need help…now, so you are a Godsend!”

“Katy,” Malcolm said, “come by when you can. You can sleep here tonight or whenever you want.”

“Rubbish,” the Old Man bellowed. “I have a room on the third floor. She can stay there until she’s settled in.”

The old man seemed to know that Katy had a bad leg as he helped her down, and as he walked her back to Lo Stella, his restaurant, Malcolm looked at Mary Ann and shrugged. “That almost seemed too easy, you know?”

Mary Ann shook her head as she took a deep breath, holding on tightly to Elsie. “You’re just figuring that out, are you? That daffy old man knows what’s going to happen an hour before it happens, and then he just smiles and pretends he doesn’t know anything at all.”

“Do you want me to ask him about it?”

“No, I most certainly do not.”

“And, why not?”

“Because, oh husband of mine, oh dearest love of my life, I’m about ninety nine percent sure that the old bastard isn’t human.”

Malcolm chuckled at that. “Indeed. So, just where do you think he’s from?”

“I have no idea, but what’s more, I am absolutely certain that I do not want to know.”

“Odd. You’ve always been the inquisitive half. What’s changed?”

“He’s closed off to me, Malcolm. I can’t see him or his feelings. He’s like a black hole, just sitting out there sucking up all the energy around him…”

“You know who I think he is?”

“Yes, of course I do. Malcolm, I can read you like a book…”

“But I thought you had to…”

“Not in years; it’s like I see people’s thoughts these days, even as they have them. I have ever since the second airliner hit. It felt like a rubber band snapping into place, all the pieces of a puzzle starting to fall into place. I could see your fear that morning, but I could also see what was causing it. I can see that girl’s hunger, but I knew what she was going to say before she said a word. I not only saw it unfolding, Malcolm, I could hear her thoughts – even before she had them.”

He looked at her, not sure what to think. “So all this time…?”

“Yes, Malcolm, I’ve broken every promise I made to you about this ability.”

“Why? Mary Ann…why?”

“Because you have it too.”

He smiled. “There are times I wish I did, but Mary Ann, don’t you think I’d be the first to know if that was so?”

“You’d be the last to understand, Malcolm, because you’ve been denying these abilities all your life, ever since your father came back from the war, after he came back from America.”

“And what the bloody hell do you know about all that?”

“Oh Malcolm, must you be so very stupid?”

+++++

Malcolm’s father, as it happened, was anything but.

But, as is so often the case, the son refused to follow the father and those connections were lost.

His father went to Oxford so Malcolm went to Cambridge.

His father was a physicist so Malcolm studied literature.

His father was an atheist with a peculiar hatred of the Church, the Catholic Church in particular, so of course Malcolm had studied the Medieval Church and married a Catholic.

His mother, of course, had been all the things that his father hated, so she’d wisely learned to keep all those things to herself. She died in an automobile accident when Malcolm was still very young, but the supposition was that she had simply swerved off the road and into a river for no apparent reason, and according to his father that had been the end of that. With his wife gone, Malcolm’s father turned his son over to an older brother to raise, as his work still required endless travel. 

Yet Malcolm always knew the truth. And he had grown up hating his father for pretending to not know. Because accepting the lie was the same as not caring about the truth. His mother’s death had been reduced to a lie, so her life had to be a lie too? Even in Malcolm’s limited understanding of the universe, a physicist should very well understand the difference between the truth and refusing to accept a self evident truth, should he not…?

His father had spent the war in America, but that was all anyone in the family knew. No one knew what he’d done there, or who he’d worked for, or with, or why. All his father ever said to anyone was that he couldn’t talk about it.

“Yes, dear,” his mother used to say. 

And when he thought of his mother even now all he heard her saying was: ‘Yes, dear.’

Eventually his father started to drink more and more, and this began soon after his wife committed, well, when she accidentally drove off the road. And then one night, just before Malcolm headed off to Cambridge, his father had started to talk about all the things he’d done during the war. Things like working for the Manhattan Project, first in Chicago, then California, and finally in New Mexico. And he’d actually been in one of the aircraft that flew over Hiroshima that August morning in 1945. There were so many secrets eating him up from the inside and he’d never known what to do about them all, but that night he told his son.

“You must never tell anyone, son.”

“So, I must horde all your secrets? Is that what you’re telling me I must do?”

“Yes…”

So many internal contradictions, too, each so destabilizing that when they finally caught up with him his life came apart at the seams. Yet because of who he was, and what he’d done for his country, or perhaps because of all the things he still knew, the government spirited him away in the dead of night, out of sight so firmly out of mind. And that was the why and the how of it, the childhood Malcolm had tried to hide all his life…

So now Mary Ann was telling him that she knew everything there was to know about all that? That there could never been any secrets between them? 

But he had been so sure all his father’s stories had been locked away, airtight, out of sight, so firmly out of mind. Even about how he’d grown up with an aunt and an uncle in Surrey, and how those two poor unsuspecting souls had never known the truth about his father mysterious comings and goings. No one did, in the end. No one but Malcolm. He remembered that last night, of course, the ambulance arriving in the dead of night, then the men in white coats taking his father away while neighbors stood and watched. He could never talk about it, someone from the Home Office told him. The things his father had told him had to remain a secret, for the good of the Crown, don’t you know? And all that tortured past had not mattered a bit to Mary Ann Travers, because she loved the man behind the façade he’d been forced to maintain.

Yet that let to the central contradiction of his own life.

He always wanted to tell Mary Ann that he loved her when she told him she loved him, but he’d struggled to because the word held little meaning to him, certainly not like it had to Shakespeare, perhaps, or even to Boccaccio. The word Mother, and to an extent Woman, in the general sense of the word, had evoked the word Suicide in the tortured corridors of his fevered, adolescent mind, so it was only natural that the word ‘love’ had become twisted into something like betrayal, or, more generally, into something more like loneliness. He’d always wanted to love Mary Ann in the same way Boccaccio had used the word, but while that funny feeling in the pit of one’s stomach was a good indicator, and one that appeared in literature from around the world, Malcolm simply had no context, no understanding of the sensation, or it’s import. Because he’d never experienced the sensation. Not even once.

So when Katy Sunderland had, apparently, appeared out of nowhere the first thing to enter his mind was ‘trouble.’ As in: she is going to cause Trouble. Or Pain. Or Betrayal. But then, of course, he felt her loneliness, too – as an echo of his own. Why, he wondered, had it never occurred to him that another’s loneliness might be a reflection of his own, that others besides himself grew up in shattered households. 

While Malcolm Doncaster still had no idea of the forces gathering around him, he knew that the way he experienced the world, indeed, the universe, was rapidly changing. Yet he still had no idea that he was an expendable pawn on an unseen chessboard, and that there were unknown forces moving into place even as he watched Katy Sunderland walk away with the Old Man. Forces he would never understand, though his wife surely might, if he could only bring himself to tell her about them.

+++++

The dream startled him so badly he’d jerked up off his berth and had stood before he realized he was awake. Yet, he wondered, perhaps because he had stood so quickly that accounted for the sudden dizziness that had come over him. He reached out, braced himself against a bulkhead and took deep breaths, trying to get his bearings…but nothing felt right.

But then came echoes of the dream, and they were so awful, indeed, so terrifying that he had to sit down again. 

In this dreamscape, Mary Ann was dead, the world seemed unrecognizable, and extreme violence was everywhere he turned. And he remembered a blue sphere in the dream, a really big sphere, transparent blue sphere. What had all that been about?

He got his shoes on, then a clean shirt and his wide-brimmed canvas sailing hat on, then he stepped out to the galley.

But nothing looked right. 

He was on the same boat, but all the little things were subtly different. The color of the kettle on the stove. Imogen’s painting was not on the wall. And Elsie? Where was she? He saw her bowl of water, so where was she?

“Mary Ann!” he called out. “Time to get up!”

Nothing. He called out her name once again. And again, all he heard was the peculiar silence of a boat at rest. Water lapping on the hull, seagulls cawing somewhere overhead, not a trace of Mary Ann nor Elsie.

He walked forward. And found there was nothing there. No sign that anyone had lever lived in the v-berth.

Panic, indescribable panic hit home. The walls felt like they were suddenly closing in. It was getting difficult to breathe. Then came tunnel vision, and finally, total disorientation.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” 

Or…

“Am I still dreaming?”

There was only one way to find out. “In the dream I was tied off…” but he couldn’t remember where now so he decided to just go topsides.

He went up the companionway steps and into the cockpit, but Diogenes wasn’t docked in where he remembered, or thought he remembered. It wasn’t England, at least not in the England he remembered. No. This was…no, the boat was still tied-off to the seawall in Portofino, but now it looked different. No tourists. No big yachts…anywhere. And yet there was no one in the piazza. No cars, no delivery trucks, no one out walking about. Just a couple of men under the awning at the Lo Stella, at one of the tables on the sidewalk out front. They were sitting in the shade of a red umbrella and appeared to be drinking coffee, and that was strange because the restaurant didn’t open until noon and their umbrellas were blue, at least he thought they once were.

Then one of the men under the awning saw him and waved.

“Guten morgen, Herr Doktor!” the man said. “How was your night?”

Malcolm sat, his eyes burned, his stomach was…he was nauseated. And bad pain now, too.

“Herr Doktor? Are you alright?”

He shook his head, sat down hard then slumped back against the coaming. Then he heard footsteps running his way.

“Herr Doktor, you are unwell?” the man asked as he climbed aboard. This man, this officer, was real, his concern was genuine.

“Something’s not right. I feel dizzy. Nausea. Nothing feels right,” Malcolm sighed.

The man raced off and a few minutes had passed when he heard a peculiar whining sound, something like a jet engine but not quite. Then an aircraft appeared. Bat-shaped, dark gray. White banner with a red cross, so an ambulance? An aerial ambulance? But…there, on the tail. The red banner, the while circle. And the black swastika.

The man, no, the men. Black uniforms, some insignia recognizable as Nazi German, as SS. The men armed, pistols in leather holsters, flaps covering the grip. Black riding boots, knee high.

And when he saw that he relaxed, because this had to be a dream. A really weird dream.

Medics arrived with a gurney. Other men lifted and set him on crisp white sheets, then the medics rolled him to the hovering ambulance, and the howling engines were not as loud as he’d expected. Then up the loading ramp in the rear, the interior all white. Bright white lights overhead, sudden awful dizziness. Medics in white, frantic movements, and one spoke in German, another Italian. He felt the burning pinch of an IV as one of the medics was inserting a line, then hanging a bag of IV solution, but he couldn’t see or read the label. Another medic bent over his face and shined a penlight into each eye while one of the others was talking on a radio. He felt the ambulance power up then lift into the morning sky, but he couldn’t see anything outside the aircraft. EKG leads were hooked up to his chest as he closed his eyes, and as the pressure in his chest built he finally realized that this was not a dream. He was dying. 

Of a massive heart attack.

+++++

Cinnamon. Cinnamon and ginger. He could smell cinnamon and ginger.

So familiar.

Where do I know that from?

Where?

“Scones?” he mutters. “Mary Ann’s scones? Is it…time for breakfast already? But I just ate. In the hospital. Apple sauce. And clear broth.”

“Mal? Let’s get up. Lots to do this morning!”

That voice. That’s Mary Ann. But how? That can’t be? She died years ago. Ten years, wasn’t it?

“Mal? You up yet?”

“Coming.”

Windbreaker on. Open the door, step into the galley, and there she was. For some reason he is stunned to see her and comes up from behind and wraps his arms around her.

“Well-well-well, what’s gotten into you this morning?” she responded, as ever both playfully and hopeful.

“That dream again,” he said. “It came back. Everything was different and you were dead this time.”

“Dead? Are you sure?”

“You weren’t onboard and none of your things were in your cabin.”

“So, you didn’t actually see me get killed? What else was different?”

He shook his head and she could feel the gesture through his beard. “Mary, this one was different. I don’t think it was a dream.”

She turned around in his arms then took a deep breath. “What was different?”

“I could smell things, for one. The people were too real for it to be a dream, and, well, the flow of events was, I don’t know, maybe too logical? I was in the cockpit and then I think I was having a heart attack. Then some kind of…Mary? They were SS. I mean Nazi officers…”

“Germans?”

He nodded. “I think so. But they were deferential to me, called me doctor…then I was inside an aerial ambulance…not a helicopter but some kind of directed thrust jet, like a Harrier but much more advanced than that. And I felt like I was dying. Medics were leaning over me while they worked on me and I’m pretty sure I was dying…and it’s odd because my arm still hurts from an IV one of them gave me…”

She pushed back from him a little and then lifted his left arm and found two gauze bandages covering the skin on his inner elbow, so she peeled one back and yes, there were two fresh punctures, and they looked like the tiny wounds from an IV cannula.

She took another deep breath, then turned and looked around the little harbor, paused here and there, then her eyes settled on the Old Man as he walked out of Lo Stella and out onto the quay. He stretched his arms out wide then turned to face the sun, and she thought he looked like a solar panel recharging his batteries.

“Does everything feel normal to you right now?” she asked.

He shrugged. “What’s going on, Mary?”

“I’m not sure yet. Did you see a blue sphere?”

He nodded again. “Yes. It was huge, too. I mean bigger than this town.”

“And you’re sure they were Nazis?”

“German accent, black uniform, and I mean right down to the black riding boots and the leather holster. And that silver lightning bolt insignia on the lapel. Yeah, they were SS. I’m sure of it.”

“So Nazis in Italy and a type of jet powered ambulance that was more advanced than anything currently in use? Anything else?”

“Yeah. The village seemed almost devoid of people.”

“You think there was a war going on somewhere?”

He shrugged. “It felt like fear, Mary Ann, like an all-pervasive fear. Like the people were afraid to leave their homes, to be seen by the Gestapo.”

She grimaced, nodded her head gently – as if she already knew all this and his experience was simply confirmation of something she was already aware of. “What was wrong with you? Do you remember?”

“Chest pains. Really bad. Heavy pressure, here and here,” he said, pointing to his sternum and left pectorals.

“Okay. First things first. Lets get you to a cardiologist and see if…”

“There’s nothing wrong with my pump, Mary Ann…!”

“Well, let’s go into town, shall we?” she said dubiously.

And by that time the Old Man was standing on the seawall beside Diogenes, looking at Malcolm. “You have had a rough night, I see?”

“Oh my, have I?” Malcolm replied, not sparing the sarcasm this morning.

But the Old Man just smiled. “I see your friend is back,” he added, pointing with a nod of his head to the harbor.

Malcolm turned and looked; Mary Ann felt no need to take her eyes off the Old Man, if a man was what he indeed was.

Malcolm leaned over the rail and the dolphin came up close, then he extended his pectoral as if he wanted to hold hands, so Malcolm reached down…

…and he was once again in the aerial ambulance. He looked down, saw the IV running and some kind of monitor beeping away behind him, then he felt the aircraft banking and slowing, followed by an odd, hollow whine of engines spooling up. Then the bump of contact, the rear loading ramp hissing open, the pop of equalizing ears, then the gurney rolling down the ramp and he realized that the air was cold here. He turned his head and could see jagged, white capped peaks just a few miles away, if that. So…he was in the Dolomites, perhaps?

But everyone here was speaking German, and everyone he saw was quite concerned for his wellbeing.

Then he overheard two nurses almost whispering by the doorway…

“Is that really him?” the girl asked, wide-eyed.

And her companion nods seriously. “Yes, hopefully medical attention was summoned quickly enough…”

“To lose such a mind! What a tragedy for humanity this would be!”

‘Now I know this is a bloody nightmare,’ he muttered under his breath.

“No, Herr Doktor, no nightmare.” A man’s eyes appeared, bespectacled and clear blue, yet all else is the blue-green surgical mask of a physician talking to him. “The scan show five blockages,” the doc says with a shake of his head, “so too very much to attend to here. You will need to go back up to the station again, I’m afraid.”

“Again?”

“Yes, I understand you just returned from there not long ago, but the high oxygen content of the station’s air will assist in your recovery, and, of course, robotic surgeons will be able to perform the procedure up there, so we must now get you to the shuttle!” An oxygen mask slipped over his nose as the physician muttered something about giving him something for the pain and then he felt the warmth of an opioid flooding through his veins, this his eyes closing…

…was he back on Diogenes, leaning over the starboard rail? Was that his hand just breaking contact with the dolphin’s pectoral…?

“Malcolm? Where are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just vanished. I mean, you were gone.”

“For how long?”

“Just a few seconds, but do you remember anything?”

Malcolm turned around and looked at Mary Ann, but when he looked up all he saw was the Old Man – who was smiling ever so modestly – before he turned and walked off towards his restaurant.

“He knows, Mary,” Malcolm muttered under his breath, just loudly enough for her to hear, “he knows exactly what’s going on.”

And his wife nodded slowly, almost remorsefully. “I’m afraid so, but let me grab your trousers.”

He looked down, realized he was in his skivvies and shook his head. “Oh…what now…?” he growled as the chest pains returned.

Mary Ann tried not to panic, but it was hard now. He was still so much like a little boy.

He realized he was falling now and he was concerned…because he didn’t want to get blood on his fresh varnish.

+++++

The IV was on the top of his hand. That much was different, but the overhead lamps looked similar and, oddly enough, the cardiovascular surgeon’s eyes did too. Warm and friendly, exactly the eyes you’d want to look into before someone was going to cut open your chest and put you on a heart-lung machine for a few hours. Because several vessels in and around his heart were indeed clogged, and one of the cardiologists was amazed he’d not already had an event.

“Are you ready, Dr Doncaster?”

“Now there’s a question,” Malcolm said with a grin, “but I think the most appropriate question might be, under the circumstances, ‘are you ready?’”

“I am indeed. Now…you’re going to feel a little sleepy in a moment, so just relax…”

+++++

“Did you dream?” Mary Ann asked as his eyes opened. 

“No. Nothing. However, I think a surgeon just said something to me.”

“Mal, that was four yesterday. You’ve been visited by Prince Morpheus.”

“Who?”

“Some kind of pain killer,” she said, pointing to his IV. “The nurse came by an hour ago and gave you a little more. You were moaning a bit…”

“Because I was dreaming of Catherine Deneuve, you prig…”

“You wish.”

“You’re right. Did Dr Morpheus tell you how it went?”

“Fine. You’ll be fit as a fiddle in a couple of weeks, and Ludvico has been by a few times.”

“Who?”

“You know…the proprietor of Lo Stella. Your friend and admirer.”

“Ludvico, eh? I thought for sure his name was Prince Vlad the Impaler?”

“Shall I check for secreted coffins of Carpathian dirt in the cellars around town?”

“Please, no laughing. It hurts like hell right here, in the middle…”

A nurse was summoned, more painkiller administered, and within a few minutes Malcolm was drifting away on warm seas again. Mary Ann remained in his room through the evening, but she went back to the boat after midnight, as soon as Ludvico arrived to pick her up. And of course he brought Elsie.

Malcolm came back to Diogenes after two weeks in the hospital, and once he made it down the steep companionway he disappeared under the blankets in his cabin, appearing only to go to the head or to sip some broth.

“Would you like to return to the house?” Mary Ann asked once, but not ever again, not after his response.

“This is my home now,” he growled. “When I’m dead and gone you can put me in the bilge and set the boat on fire.”

“I most certainly will not!” she replied in her best ‘outraged anger’ voice. “After I cremate your sorry ass I intend to flush you down the head and be done with you…!”

“Bah…you daft prig!”

“You’re a daft prig yourself, Malcolm Doncaster.”

His head slumped, his voice dropped, then he sat at the nav station and seemed to deflate. “I’ve never been so depressed, Mary. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I feel like death warmed over.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. You’ve just had a brush with your mortality, so of course you’re depressed. No one wants to die, Malcolm. Not even you, but I’d just like to remind you of one thing. We brought this boat into our lives because we wanted more out of our lives. We wanted to see and learn and do more, every day. Do you recall that conversation?”

He nodded his head slowly.

“So we need to get on with it. It’s either that or we go home, where I’ll soon plant you in the garden.”

“That figures.”

“Oh woe is me? Is that going to be your swan song, Dr Doncaster? Oh woe is me? Surely you jest!”

He looked up at his wife and shot her the middle finger salute.

And she shook her head as she poured him a cup of tea. “Come on. Let’s go sit in the sun for a while.”

“Sun would be good.”

“So would some tea.”

“Sunderland? Mary? What happened to the Sunderland girl?”

“She’s been sleeping in your bunk while you were away, helping take care of Elsie when she’s not been working at the restaurant. Did she just come to mind?”

“Yeah. When I went into my cabin something felt different. Maybe it was her scent?”

“Her scent? Malcolm, are you turning into a Springer?”

“If I’m lucky, yes.”

“She was only here three nights, and she helped me tidy up yesterday.”

“You like her, don’t you?” he asked.

“I do. Yes, she’s so vulnerable, but she’s also quite sweet and nice to talk with.”

“I know I’ve not been good on that account. I’m glad you’ve found someone to get along with.

“She’s back in the apartment above the restaurant. Well, really, it’s more a room with a bath, but she eats downstairs in the kitchen with the rest of the staff. Ludvico must be feeding and housing ten people, Malcolm. Amazing, really, when you think about the logistics.”

“Let alone the cost. Then again, for the price of one meal you might be able to feed a small family for a week.”

“Give me a hand with the scones, please.”

She had already set up the cockpit table and had two little blankets ready in case he caught a chill, but he managed the companionway ladder just fine and leaned back in the cockpit and let his face soak up the sunlight. 

“I am become helianthus asteraceae,” he sighed. “That’s all that I am now, you know? I shall sit out here and turn my face to the sun for the rest of my days.”

“Oh, Malcolm. Do have same tea, please?”

+++++

He came topsides one morning and was met by cold air, and that did not agree with Malcolm Doncaster. No, no, no…not at all, not in the least. He wanted sunlight, he wanted warmth, and he wanted them – right now.

“Mary! Get up here, would you? It’s bloody cold out here!”

“Did you forget your sweater?”

“Fuck the sweater, it’s time to head south.”

Her head poked mole-like out the companionway and she looked around the harbor then at her husband. “Alright. Where to? Malta? We’re supposed to meet up with Ben and Sally in Greece, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Well, no, as a matter of fact I haven’t forgotten. But I have, in fact, been going over the charts and if we’re going to make this rendezvous you two cooked up, well, we really should be getting a move on.”

She looked up at him, lowered her voice and in sweet maternal tones said: “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

He shrugged off the question: “I suppose not, Mary Ann, but surely you don’t think that we can stay here forever.”

“Why not?”

“What?” he cried, clearly shocked by this turn of events.

“Why can’t we stay here, or in the area, anyway. Have you ever seen anyplace so beautiful as this?” she said, her arms sweeping ‘round the harbor. “We could just call this home, couldn’t we?”

“Well, sure, of course we could, but I think I must be missing something. Because planting roots along the way wasn’t exactly the point when we purchased this floating dream palace, nor when we set out on this journey – or was it, Mary Ann? Or have I missed something?”

“Malcolm…I’m just concerned for you. You were shot and very nearly killed a few months ago, and now this surgery…?”

“Alright, so what’s your point? That I’m now too fragile and so couldn’t possibly go on?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said meekly. “I’m afraid for you, Malcolm…”

“Well then, fuck you,” he bellowed, and loudly.

And she recoiled from his words, she looked damaged, her eyes welled up and she broke eye contact.

“I mean it, Mary Ann. If that’s what you t-t-think of me, if you t-t-think I’m made of such fragile stuff, then perhaps one of us should pack our belongings and leave.”

“Malcolm, I…”

“Because here’s what this, well, this little journey has come to mean to me. It means I’m resilient, Mary Ann, and probably more than you realize. It means that I am not going to give up on life, that I’m going to keep on going until I give out completely and drop where I stand. And when that day comes there’ll be no regrets, not on my end, anyway. And I am bloody well NOT going back to Jolly Ole and putting me slippers on, sitting back in some godforsaken easy chair and sliding off into oblivion. Am I making myself clear?”

She was crying openly now, yet in her way she was proud of him, proud of the man she’d chosen, and she nodded her head almost joyously as she acknowledged his outburst. “When do we leave?” she finally asked.

“As long as you’re by my side, whenever you want.”

“Well then, let me run up to the farmer’s market. We need some things…”

“Another cucumber, perhaps,” he said salaciously, “for those cold, lonely nights?”

She fired off her own one finger salute just before she turned and gathered her shopping bags.

+++++

They had not sailed this long in over a year, since the second of their two major Atlantic crossings, and the Tyrrhenian Sea off Italy’s west coast has historically been a devilishly temperamental body of water. Calm, almost too calm, her winds can seem deceptively steady for days, but because of a confluence of katabatic energy flows these extended periods of light air can vanish in an instant. Cold fronts fall off the alps and advance from the north, colliding with hot air coming from North Africa, and when that happens the weather turns truly ugly, and catastrophic for the unprepared, or the desperate.

Malcolm laid out his initial course hugging the coastline as far south as Salivoli, but from there he chose to head deeper into the Tyrrhenian Sea on a more direct crossing to Marsala, located on the western tip of Sicily. His thinking was less than ideal in this regard, or even simply practical – because after having made the same trip a few months earlier he simply didn’t want to travel the same coastline twice – yet in so doing he was exposing Diogenes to the vagaries of a notably capricious body of water. At a minimum it would take two days to make this 300-plus mile crossing, and the weather would need to picture perfect, which for this trip meant winds out of the west-northwest at 12 to 20 knots, and with such a fair breeze at their backs they would enjoy an easy trip.

So after thanking Ludvico for his more than kind hospitality while he was ill, and for showing a particular kindness to Kate Sunderland, Diogenes prepared to leave the little harbor on a warm autumn afternoon. With her lockers full of food, her water-maker cleaned and ready to go, and with plenty of diesel fuel in her tanks, Malcolm had waited for exactly the best weather forecast before casting off his lines, but now it was a done deal. Diogenes left the Punta del Coppo light to starboard, heading for the yellow buoy that marked the boundaries of the local marine sanctuary, then headed for Monte Castello across the bay. From there, the plan was to simply follow the coastline, keeping a few miles offshore to avoid bucking the north-setting current that ran up the coast further offshore. 

With one day soon in their wake, they stopped at the new marina in Pisa, on Ludvico’s advice, and then had a late supper at a restaurant he’d raved about. The next morning saw more carefree treading along the coast, this time to Salivoli and another spectacular marina. They had time for a trip to the market, then had fresh seafood in the cockpit by candlelight. 

Elsie was proving to be a joy. She had learned how to use the foredeck to do her business and had turned out to be a fastidious pup, rarely making a fuss about anything. She loved long walks – anywhere. It didn’t matter if he took her to a park or a beach, or even to craggy, rock-strewn shores, she just loved to explore.

And the next day, just after they left the marina, Malcolm steered Diogenes further offshore, taking Elba to starboard before setting his course for Marsala, on the far side of the Tyrrhenian Sea. At times his emotions seemed to scatter on the winds, for these were the same waters Odysseus had crossed at least twice on his way home to Ithaca and then it hit him: it was one thing to read about these things, and quite another to feel them with every fiber of your being. At one point he pulled out an old, dog-eared copy of The Odyssey and started to read favorite passages to Elsie, and he wasn’t sure who enjoyed the experience more.

The only obstacles in their path, besides the inherent variability of the weather, were three mesoscale eddies that wandered around this part of the Tyrrhenian Sea – in great wobbly gyres. These eddies were difficult, if not impossible, to spot visually so both their location and their tidal set had to be deduced by drift calculations on a chart, important because knowing where the axis of rotation was located could add, or subtract, boat speed to or from the crossing. This, in turn, would lead to an increase or decrease in time spent at sea. As this is one of the first things aspiring captains learn when studying offshore navigation, Malcolm worked through the calculations with apparent ease.

Which was why Malcolm soon knew they were well to the west of where they ought to have been. Not yet close enough to Sardinia to worry about, but it was nevertheless something he needed to compensate for as he adjusted his course back to the east a little, towards Marsala. If he was in the top, or northern part of a gyre they could soon see a slight boost in speed, followed by the current pushing them to the east.

But it was otherwise a glorious day; the sky was bluebirds and the air cool. Just a few puffy cumulus floated by off to the east, no stratus clouds anywhere to be seen, and, as predicted, the wind out of the northwest held at a steady 17 knots. While the motion was not quite steady enough to pull out the laptop and write, it was mellow enough for Mary Ann to whip up a batch of cinnamon scones for their morning tea. The Hydrovane was handling the steering duties so all he did from time to time was adjust the main or make his rounds below, checking the bilge for water or the batteries for voltage and flow-discharge. The batteries discharged during the course of the day, of course, as power was drawn down to power refrigerators and navigation systems, the various lights or the pressurized water system, so knowing how much power was left meant understanding not just discharge rates but recharge times, and he checked these measurements every time he went below. Next he went down on his knees to see if there was water in the bilge – because the bilge pumps run on power from the batteries, and a leak could drain the batteries or, of course, sink the boat.

“You want your tea in the cockpit?” Mary Ann called from the galley.

“Sounds good. I’ll set up the table.”

She came up soon enough to hand him a plate with three steaming scones, then returned to the galley for their tea. “It’s hot, so don’t be in a hurry,” she said as she handed him a cup.

They ate in silence, Mary Ann enjoying the day, the sun finally winning out in its battle with the cold air from further north, then something caught her eye.

“Lord, it’s that dolphin again,” she sighed. “Look, there, Mal. He’s come back…”

“Oh…him…yeah, he’s been there all morning.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“Why? That fish seems glued to us, so we might as well get used to him.”

“Malcolm, he’s not a fish…”

“Yeah, you say so, Admiral.”

She looked at the dolphin, now about 10 meters off their port quarter, still just lazing along as if standing guard but, she thought, who knew what he was up to? 

“I wonder what he’s thinking,” she said softly, still kind of stupefied by his presence. 

“Next time we go to the pub I’ll get round to asking him.”

She shook her head then she turned to look at Malcolm. “Aren’t you even a little curious?”

“No, not really. Look at it this way…he showed up in our lives about the same time Ludvico did, but then you have to ask yourself why did that old man show up in Marseilles in the first place, and on the first day I’d been alone since coming back from the hospital. No. There are too many coincidences, Mary, that’s my way of looking at it. Remember, I have a medieval mindset, if you know what I mean? That’s always been my affinity; romantic mysticism unmoored from any sense of reason or, even, reality.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic…”

“I’m always being sarcastic, Mary. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Good scone, by the way.”

She smiled. “If that means thank you, then you’re welcome.”

The dolphin surfaced again, but this time just a few feet from Diogenes’ stern, hard by the aft rail again. And soon he was gliding along, one eye aimed like a laser beam at Malcolm. 

“Now that’s unnerving,” Malcolm finally said, after a few minutes had passed. “I feel like he’s trying to tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know…but something – important.”

He stood and walked forward along the windward rail up to the main shrouds and hung on, then he scanned the way ahead.

Nothing.

He kept looking, then heard the dolphin below, now swimming alongside but still keeping close to him.

“What am I looking for?” he called out to the creature. 

Nothing. No response. 

He stepped up to the mast and looked ahead again, and the seas were just rough enough to make spotting anything out there difficult, but right now he was sure, absolutely sure, that he was supposed to be looking for something.

“But what?” he asked the wind.

Something. A flash. Maybe just sunlight glinting off a wave, but…maybe not.

On the crest of a wave he looked in the same general direction and there it was again. A bright flash, and too bright to be a natural reflection. He turned and hopped down to the cockpit and picked up his Steiner’s and dashed back to the mast. With the binoculars up to his eyes the trick now was to hold them steady enough to see anything, while at the same time reading off the compass ‘bearing to target’ through the tiny compass window suspended in the field of view. While holding onto the boat’s mast as she plowed into wave after wave.

And it took a minute but he found something.

“Mary! Steer two-four-one magnetic!” he called out, and he felt their motion ease as Diogenes fell off the wind a little. He looked again then nodded and jumped back down to the cockpit and took the wheel.

“What is it, Mal?”

“I think its a raft of some kind, maybe a small boat, but someone is using a mirror to signal us.”

Mary Ann shook her head. “Did you see anyone?”

“There are people onboard. Why?”

“Malcolm, they’re probably refugees. Libyan, maybe, or sub-Saharan.”

“And? What am I missing here, Mary?”

“We need to call the Coast Guard.”

“Obviously, but what else are you not telling me?”

“These people have a history of being armed, Mal. I mean, they signal you to lure you in close then they either shoot you or move in fast and take your boat.”

He went back to the windward rail and looked again; Diogenes was closer now, much closer, and he could see one small head peering over the edge of a shabby wooden gunwale. He looked again. The boat appeared to be shabby, old wood with green paint, peeling green paint, with ragged red paint on the gunwale, and now the small black boy was waving at him, and the kid didn’t look like a pirate to him. Indeed, the kid looked half past dead.

“Mary, switch the VHF to hi-power and see if you can raise the Coast Guard. Give them our position and tell them we’ve got a boat out here with at least one small male alive.” He jumped down and got a couple of fenders ready, then a long line on a bow cleat – which he ran back to the cockpit.

He could hear the Italian Coast Guard coming in loud and clear over the speaker in the cockpit, and they were advising Mary Ann not to get close to the boat, but to radio the craft’s position until a helicopter could make it out to the area to look over the situation.

“A helicopter?” Malcolm asked as he regained the cockpit.

“Yes?” Mary Ann replied. “What of it?”

“Don’t the Italians and the Greeks have a habit of abandoning these people out here?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors, of course, but Mal…no one wants these people…?”

“And here I thought you were the empathetic one,” he mumbled under his breath. “Shame on me.”

“Sorry? Didn’t hear that.”

“I’m going in to have a look, I said.”

She shook her head; Malcolm turned on the diesel. 

“Drop the main now, Mary. I’ll get the genny.”

The black kid was waving his hand weakly now, and his other arm was draped over the gunwale; even from fifty meters out Malcolm could see the kid was emaciated, and his skin blistered from constant exposure to the sun. As Diogenes closed the remaining distance he could nothing else moving on the boat, and it looked like the waves and swell would make tying the other boat alongside almost impossible.

The boat was about twenty feet long, maybe a little more, and as Diogenes pulled alongside he could see inside. Maybe a dozen people, probably an extended family, lay there in the bottom of the boat, their lifeless bodies half awash in seawater. The kid, a little boy maybe ten years old, could barely hold his head up but he was putting on a brave face, trying to smile, and that was all Malcolm needed to see. 

He grabbed the dock line and jumped across to the boat and tied off the line, then went to the boy. He’d been using the two bodies to create some shade but that hadn’t been enough, or maybe it had. He checked several of the bodies for signs of life then went over to the kid and picked him up, and Malcolm was shocked when he realized how little the boy weighed. 

He grabbed the line and pulled himself close to Diogenes, but Mary seemed afraid now, and she wouldn’t come help him, and while he didn’t really understand, he put the boy on the deck on one swell, then waited for the next to pull himself up the boarding ladder. He then picked up the boy and carried him to the shade of the cockpit and laid him out on the soft cushions there.

“Mary, get me some water, please. Cool, not too cold.”

“Should I put some sugar in it?”

He nodded, then remembered something. “Do we still have any of that electrolyte mix?”

“Yes, a powder, a mix I think, but it’s old. Gator-something. We bought some in Maine, remember?”

“Mix up a batch, would you?”

“Okay.”

He cradled the kid’s head in his lap, and Mary handed him a cool washcloth and he tried to think where the cooling effect would do the most good and settled on the top of the boy’s head, then his neck. It took a few minutes but Mary came up with a paper cup full of something that looked like radioactive waste and he held it up to the kid’s lips and got him to drink a little.

“More washcloths, Mary,” he said softly. “Keep them coming, would you?”

She nodded and ducked below again.

The kid’s eyes fluttered and opened and he tried to say something but his throat was simply too dry to form words, but Malcolm nodded and smiled before he helped the boy take another sip of the fluid. More washcloths arrived.

“Thanks, Mary. Could you get on to the Coast Guard and update them. Tell them one survivor on board, a boy, maybe ten, in bad shape. Maybe ten deceased remaining in the boat.”

“Oh, God, Malcolm…are you sure…oh, how awful…?”

He nodded. “Make the call now please, would you please?”

He turned to the boy and smiled again, then held the cup to his splintered lips. There were open sores around the boy’s nose and eyes, and his scalp was split in at least three places that he could see, and one sore on the inside of the boy’s left thigh was crawling with maggots and he closed his eyes, tried to squint the memory of that image from his mind, but too late.

“Mal? They say now five minutes out.”

“Got it.”

He heard it long before he could make it out, but the thump-thump-thump of the helicopters rotors announced it’s arrival on station and Malcolm looked up as the orange and white Agusta-Bell AB412 circled Diogenes once about a hundred yards out. Mary went up on the foredeck and waved at the pilots – who waved back – then the sliding door on the right read side of the big twin-engined Huey slid open. A man wearing olive coveralls and a visored white helmet swung out a hoist mechanism and hooked up wire mesh gurney to the sling, then the pilot maneuvered the Huey into position as the rescue diver lowered the gurney. It took a couple of tries, but Malcolm got the boy into the gurney and then watched it lift back up to the open door. The pilot waved again, and Malcolm saluted once and watched them leave, then he returned to the cockpit.

“What did they say to do about the boat. And the bodies?”

“They have a ship en route, but it won’t be here for a few hours…like maybe five or six hours.”

“Did they ask us to hang around?”

“No.”

And that meant the authorities would probably not ever respond. Just let them drift off somewhere and decompose, or maybe sharks would take care of it.

Then he saw that poor little boy’s eyes again, like they were now etched into memory. Hollow, vacant, demon haunted, and where, he wondered, was God? Had God forsaken them all, but that one little boy? What a strange way of looking at the world, he thought. Absolutely nothing and everything could be justified when you adopted that mental framework, couldn’t it? The boy lived because God wanted him to. Or all those people face down in the water over in that padded little boat were dead because that was God’s will. Really? 

He stood, went to the line attached to the other boat and pulled it closer to Diogenes, then he just stood there looking at all those bodies. He took his time now and counted them…five women, three children, and nine mean, all crowded into a boat, a small fishing boat probably meant to hold two fishermen and their nets. All dead, and all God’s will? That just made no sense, none at all, so why would people even think like that? Were they so desperate to attach some grand sense of causation to everything that random acts like this were simply senseless, or meaningless. And not…God’s will?

Or more likely, maybe shuffling it all off on God’s shoulders was a neat and tidy way to avoid responsibility for all these dead people. The policies that lead to such death were growing in popularity these days, and everywhere in Europe save Germany. And how strange was that? The Germans were now Europe’s moral compass?

“Mary, tell the Coast Guard that we’ll remain on station until they arrive.”

She had been watching him, wondering what was going through his mind, but she didn’t know what to think now. “Okay, Mal,” she sighed, but really, what was the point? Maybe she’d seen too much death for this to effect her – like it was obviously hitting Malcolm – but these people were dead and gone now. She went below and called it in and she could hear the resigned boredom in the reply, because now the crew would have to come all the way out here to put a bunch of Africans in body bags, then someone, somewhere would have to try to figure out who they were and where they’d come from. In other words, this stupid British woman was accomplishing nothing, and in the process creating an enormous bureaucratic snarl that was really nothing more than a waste of time. Just let them go. Let nature take care of the remains.

Malcolm watched copper-tinged water sloshing over the bodies and it hit him then. Copper was hemoglobin, copper was blood, and it would be a mistake to let the pup up on deck right now. What if she saw a shark and decided to go on the attack. Trying to stop a Springer that had decided to make the leap would be like trying to nail Jello to a wall, it just wouldn’t work.

And yes, when he looked down into the sea he saw a shape gliding by in the darkness.

“Mary? We’ve got sharks out here, so keep the muppet down below for now, okay?”

“Okay. Shall I put on tea?”

Now there was a question. Sharks and tea. “Sure. Why not.”

“It must be God’s will,” he said with a sigh. Then he noticed something else in the water.

The dolphin.

The creature was still drifting along noiselessly, still right there beside their port quarter, and Malcolm saw the creature was still staring at him.

“Alright, you bastard,” Malcolm said as he turned to face the dolphin, “is that what you wanted me to do?”

The dolphin moved closer.

Mary Ann came topsides to see who he was talking to.

“What the devil do you want?” he shouted.

The dolphin moved closer still.

“If you think I’m going to get down there in the water with you and all those sharks, well, think again,” he added. And the dolphin was so close now that Malcolm could have reached down and touched him.

+++++

“Touch him, Mal. Lean out and see if you can touch foreheads again.”

“Are you out of your bloody mind? You do recall what happened the last time I tried that?”

A few minutes passed and still the dolphin stared at him. 

Malcolm returned the stare, searching for meaning because he was sure the dolphin was trying to tell him something again…but what? 

“What could he possibly want?” he said to his wife.

“I think he wants to connect with you,” Mary Ann repeated.

“But…why?”

And then that voice in the byways of his mind returned: ‘Every coincidence is just a fork in the road, the chance to strike out on a new path…’

And his mind went back to the sailor on the airplane. ‘Why didn’t I at least ask his name? Who the hell was he?’ He stared at the dolphin and saw echos of that chance encounter on the airplane bouncing in and out of consciousness. Then: ‘Or have I always been so closed off to the world? To the people I meet along the way?’ 

“You look angry, Malcolm.”

“Because I am. At myself. As always.”

“So…? Change the path you’re on.”

“What did you say?”

“Change it, Malcolm, change the path. If you don’t like the world you’re making for yourself, change it. Change your world.”

He turned and looked at this woman, this stranger, and for a moment he didn’t know who she was, or why she was here, then he looked down at the boat full of dead refugees before he turned once again and looked at the dolphin. 

And without saying another word he dove into their wake, then swam over to the dolphin. 

Mary Ann released the man-overboard-module on the stern rail, just like they’d practiced a hundred times, then she hit the MOB key on the chartplotter then in one fluid motion moved forward to drop the main and roll in both headsails. She looked around to make sure no one was near the stern then turned on the diesel and executed a tight 180 degree turn, not sure what to expect beyond seeing the two of them in the water.

But that’s exactly what she did not see.

Because they were gone. Both of them – just gone.

+++++

She reached the point on the chartplotter where he was supposed to be.

Nothing. She saw nothing but water.

She circled, then remembering something from the RYA class about setting up a search grid for a man overboard, so she set out to the north, then made 90 degree clockwise turns after 30 seconds, then a minute, then two…and still nothing.

She debated calling the Coast Guard again but then it hit her – what would she possibly tell them now…? That a dolphin had been following them around and that her husband had finally had enough and decided to jump into the sea – to ask it why? They’d lock her up and throw away the key. What a grand way to kill your husband, Mrs Doncaster. Now, how long have you been planning to kill him?

Then…a loud thump below, down inside Diogenes. Coughing and retching, then she heard Malcolm crying out for her.

She slammed the engine into neutral and cut the power before she dove down the companionway in one fluid motion, and she found him curled up in a fetal ball on the cabin sole outside the head and he was shivering – violently – and his skin was almost pure white but mottled blue around his lips and eyes. When she touched him his skin was as cold as ice, almost inhumanly cold. Then she felt a presence, something that suddenly felt indescribably evil in the air and she looked up, then fell back and away from the sullen creature that had been hovering behind her. 

It’s skin was dark gray-green mottled black here and there, but there was an irregular mask of crimson skin surrounding it’s green reptilian eyes. The creature was studying her, measuring her immediate reactions to its presence, and it appeared to have something in one of its ‘hands’ – it looked vaguely like an instrument of some kind but she really had no idea what it was. The creature’s head moved slowly, deliberately, and she sensed that the creature didn’t know what to do, only that it didn’t want to hurt her.

So she did what she usually did. She reached out. She probed its thoughts. She rummaged through the creature’s memory, for she sensed the creature was female.

But as soon as the creature realized what was happening, what Mary Ann was doing, it touched something on the instrument in its hand and an instant later a translucent blue sphere appeared to surround the creature – and just as quickly, and as silently, it was gone.

She turned to Malcolm. He was literally freezing to death right there on the floor so she ducked into his cabin and yanked two blankets from his berth and threw them over his smoking wet body, then she began rubbing his extremities. His eyes were wide open, unblinking, full of astonished agony. Or was it fear? It was warm topsides but less so down here and he wasn’t warming fast enough, so what to do?

He was inert, a dead weight when she tried to pull him up into a sitting position, but his eyes fluttered.

“Malcolm?” she shouted. “Come back to me…please…come back…”

“Help…me up…got to get to the shower. Turn on the sump pump and…” He tried to stand and his voice failed, then she helped him again as best she could, and when he was up she walked beside him to the head and got him into the shower stall. Back to the mains, flip on the circuit breakers for the water pumps and the shower sump, then back to the head to get the water on. Cool at first, then slowly warmer, helping him out of his clothing until the worst of the violent shivering was at an end.

But his skin was still abnormally white, almost as white as fresh snow. She ducked back to the galley, put on the kettle and was reaching for their cups when she heard something new, something that sounded like a huge ship, maybe a tanker or freighter making a close approach.

Then it was a deep throbbing sound – more like an electrical sound, like from a huge transformer – but this tone was impossibly deep. Deep as in penetrating her body cavity, the vibrations suddenly overwhelming, almost nauseating, and closing her eyes or covering her ears made no difference…

Then the light hit. Brilliant white, almost like pure unfiltered sunlight, hot and intense and very close. Then she was floating free of the cabin sole, as was everything else inside Diogenes not in a cupboard or otherwise nailed down. 

She pulled herself to the companionway and looked out, and was terrified by what she saw.

A ship. Vast, smooth, shimmering gray. Shaped like a manta but huge, impossibly large, larger than the largest tanker or freighter she’d ever seen. But right above the water aft of Diogenes something was retracting from the ship’s hull. Some kind of structure, almost like the windows of an airport control tower. But…why windows? Were they observation ports? Why? Windows were for looking out, or in…but…

Yes. She saw them now. Just like the gray creature that had just been here with her. Maybe the same one. She watched as several more came and stood there, dozens of them, staring at her as if she was a specimen under a microscope, and suddenly she felt very, very small. 

Her hair was standing on end, goose bumps covered her skin and then she realized it was now icy cold outside. She looked around and recoiled from the sight of a planet below, another just above, as if Diogenes was in orbit…in an orbit caught between the two huge planets…then she was afloat again…inside one of those blue spheres…afloat on an endless sea under red skies. 

All was still, and she was sure she wasn’t on Earth…until a flash and a jolt like thunder and lightning ran through her body. Then the chartplotter beeped. She turned to the chart table and watched all their instruments going through a hard restart, then the GPS ‘signal received’ light came on. All the breakers had tripped and the engine was off, so she went to the panel then dashed up to the cockpit and turned the key…and she felt a flood of relief when the engine rumbled back to life. Then she ducked down below again, made sure the water pumps for the shower were on and dashed forward. Malcolm was slumped in a corner of the shower, still sitting on the shower seat but he was now so still it almost looked as if he’d passed away. She turned the nozzle on his face and he sputtered once as his eyes flickered open, then he leaned forward, put his hands on his knees and shook his head.

“Is he still there?” Malcolm asked.

“Who?”

“That fucking fish.”

“I…I’ll go check and see.”

“No…no…don’t bother. Help get me dried off, would you?” he said as he stood, his legs wooden, still wobbly underfoot. “Where are we?”

“I’m not sure.”

He nodded. “I’m not surprised.”

She surrounded him with towels and began blotting his skin, then helped him into a fresh t-shirt and sweatpants. “I put…I have some water on. I’d better go check on it.”

He stumbled up to the cockpit a few minutes later and she had their tea set out on the cockpit table. Her eyes were fearful, yet curious as she watched him. Her hands were shaking, and he thought she looked a little like a cornered animal, small, vulnerable, and awaiting its fate at the hands of something indescribably large and awful.

“Just like a mouse, I imagine,” he sighed as he sat down beside her.

“A mouse?”

“Nothing. Just a stray thought.”

“Mal, where were you?”

He shook his head, looked away. “Those poor people,” he muttered. “Those stupid, greedy people,” he added.

“Malcolm? What on earth…”

“I’m not sure what to, what I can tell you or what to say, Mary, I’m really not. Nothing makes sense right now.”

“Well, do you at least know where you were?”

He nodded. “I do, yes. I was on the Titanic.”

“The what?” she cried. “You mean…the ocean liner?”

He nodded. “I think I got there a few minutes before impact. I was there for it all, Mary. All of it. The chaos and fear. The utter desperation in the eyes of those left to their fates. Then, in the frigid water, the feeling of abandonment, the horror of a solitary death…again, I don’t have the words, Mary, but perhaps…forsaken is best? Alone and forsaken…? In the name of money.”

“Did the dolphin take you there?”

He shrugged. “Who knows…?”

“Well, something brought you back. Something…”

“Yes? Well, what of it, then?”

She shook her head, then leaned her forehead into his and images flashed between them…

And in the next instant the same huge, manta-like craft appeared off their stern, the rogues gallery of observers there as before – but this time the observers appeared agitated. 

“Are they arguing?” she asked.

“They’re deciding whether we should be allowed to live or not.”

“What?”

“They want to kill us. All of us, and I mean the human race. But a few of them don’t.”

“Malcolm…you don’t mean it…”

“Well yes, Mary, I bloody well do.”

“Did you see something? Did they tell you that?”

“No,” he said slowly, almost carefully. “But he did.” 

He said this, of course, just as the dolphin surfaced behind them, right off Diogenes’ stern. They made eye contact at once, then he slid beneath the waves, confident that the man understood the meaning of the moment.

The beings in the ship hovering above Diogenes watched the exchange unfold, then they too slipped beneath the waves.

“I feel sick,” Malcolm sighed. “Sick all over.”

“You don’t look well, Malcolm. Your skin is, well, I’ve never seen skin so bleached.”

He lifted his hands and looked at them, then nodded. “How far are we from Marsala?”

She leaned over, looked at the readout on the chartplotter. “Showing 223 miles to the inlet.”

He closed his eyes, tried to visualize their position. “Can you lay a line to Ostia?”

“Okay,” she said as she maneuvered the cursor with the balky arrow keys. “Looks like 43 miles to the marina inlet.”

“Okay. Make that your next waypoint and engage the autopilot…oh dear…”

“What? What’s wrong?”

He had some hair in his hand, but a moment later, after he ran his fingers through his hair again he came up with long strands of enmeshed white hair throughout his fingers. 

“Radiation poisoning, would be my guess,” he muttered as he reached out for the cockpit coaming, steadying himself as Diogenes made the hard turn to port, to the east. “Maybe we better keep the motor on, and let’s get the sails out while I can still lend a hand.”

“Malcolm…what did, what on earth did they do to you…?”

“Doesn’t matter, Mary. What matters is getting to a decent hospital as quickly as we can.”

“I wish we had one of those new phones…”

He nodded. “You might look into that tomorrow. And see if you can get word to Ben and Sally. The last time I checked in with them they were still headed to Greece.”

“Do you have the frequency written down?”

“Yes, in the logbook, look for the entry called MedNet. I’ve written all the useful frequencies down on the last page of the book, but should you try to reach them you’ll want to do so after the sun’s been down a bit. Like around midnight to 0200. You’ll find…transmission quality is…decent then…” he just managed to get those words out before he leaned over the rail and slipped into unconsciousness.

+++++

The emergency room physician listened to Mary Ann’s story, that they were crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea between Pisa and Marsala when a very large undersea object had come near. Her husband had dived to investigate and an hour later Malcolm’s hair had started falling out. They had come to Rome after they’d felt a growing sense of alarm about the object. 

This patient, the doctor told his supervisor, was presenting with all the symptoms of acute radiation poisoning, and with what had to be a heavy dose, too. She didn’t have access to a dosimeter here, but the military hospital would have one. She called the emergency room at the Celio Military Hospital across town; after she explained what she was dealing with to the man on the other end of the connection, the man told her not to move the patient and to completely seal off his room. “Immediately!” he declared. “I will send a radiologic response team immediately!”

An hour later Malcolm was being transported to the military facility, while Mary Ann was escorted back to Diogenes by the Navy. Once there a UN-Atomic Energy Agency HazMat team swept the boat, eventually declaring it safe after the team sprayed some kind of pink foam on her decks. Then a group of naval officers boarded the boat and they gathered below to go over their track on the chartplotter, and to go over Mary Ann’s story once again. Soon a US Navy captain arrived, then a French submariner.

They were soon convinced that a Russian submarine had blown their containment vessel and sunk somewhere off the coast, so a Nato E-3 took off from its base in Florio while a US Navy carrier battle group diverted to the area. Soon E-8 Poseidon AEW aircraft were criss-crossing the area, dropping sonobuoys and running down spurious MAD contacts, and while no submarines were detected a massive area of radiation was noted in the area Mary Ann had indicated on her charts. That news created an even larger firestorm in Brussels and Washington…

Which all had nothing to do with the curious case of one Malcolm Doncaster. He was suffering badly now, and yet even after measuring the intensity of radiation absorbed in an ionization chamber, no one could account for the type and dose of radiation he’d been exposed to. He’d experienced massive alpha particle bombardment and that just couldn’t happen without coming into close contact with something like a ruptured containment vessel or fractured nuclear warhead. Whatever the source, cancers had been forming in his solon, stomach and lungs for hours, and now further development was being seen in his spleen and pancreas. At this rate, the man would be dead within a week, probably much sooner than that, yet one other mystery remained to be solved.

“Why isn’t the woman ill?” 

“There is evidence of trace exposure only, most likely from contact with the patient.”

“So…he was exposed in the sea. That is the only explanation.”

“We’ve traced the route recorded on the vessel’s chartplotter, and it appears that any other explanation is unlikely.”

Mary Ann was allowed to visit Malcolm but she had to wear protective clothing when she was near him, and she could tell just by looking at him that he was seriously ill, and fading fast…

“Look at me,” he said with forced cheerfulness when she came in that evening, “I’m finally losing all kinds of weight.”

“You were never that fat, Malcolm.”

“Well, I damn sure ain’t now! Still, the yellow skin isn’t as becoming as I thought it might be, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think it’s a nice touch. It goes with your sense of humor.”

“Did those navy types bother you too much?”

“No, not at all, and they’ve run down Achilles. Ben and Sally are on their way.”

“Ah, so I’m to have the full viking send off, am I?”

“I’m afraid so.”

There was a knock on the door and a moment later the Old Man appeared, resplendent in his chartreuse-yellow radiologic gear, and as he walked into the room he seemed to not have a care in the world. 

“So, here he is,” the Old Man said as he walked up to Malcolm’s bedside. “And my of my but you do indeed look like hell. What happened to you out there?”

“Who told you I was here,” Malcolm sighed, bored with such things as mundane pleasantries with this malevolent creature.

“Some navy types in ridiculous looking vehicles. They are busily checking our harbor for any signs of radiation, even as we speak.”

“I told them we had been docked in Portofino for weeks and weeks,” Mary Ann said apologetically. “I had no idea…”

“The authorities take such things seriously,” Ludvico said, still smiling. “So, Malcolm, I take it you’d rather not die?”

“What does that…how dare you!” Mary Ann barked. “Honestly Ludvico, perhaps you should leave!”

“Indeed, I probably should, yet I must present Malcolm with an opportunity, yet it also concerns you, dear lady.”

“An opportunity?” both Malcolm and Mary Ann asked, their voices in unison now.

“Ah, yes, just that. I assume you have not told these military types about our friend?”

“Our who?”

“The old gray fellow who follows you around?”

“Ludvico, what are you…”

But now the old man held up his hand, imploring them to stop. “You are not the first person this has happened to, yet even so you must understand that this was an accident. No ill will was meant.”

“Ludvico…? Make sense, will you?”

Again, the Old Man simply raised a hand. “There are those who have the means to right this wrong, but if they do so it will exact a worrisome price.”

“I see,” Malcolm sighed. “So, are you like…Mephistopheles?”

And that was good for a laugh. “No, no, not at all, but I was once in your shoes, though quite a long time ago. Now, well, let me see, how shall I explain this…?”

“How about straight to the point, and with as little BS as you can manage.”

“BS?”

“Never-mind.”

The Old Man sighed as he looked at Mary Ann, then he turned to Malcolm. “If you allow them to do this for you, Malcolm, you will no longer age like other humans. The structure of your cells will be genetically altered. You will never experience what the biologists of these times call ‘errors in replication.’ Your mind will remain sharp, your muscles strong. You will not appear to age, though time will pass.”

Malcolm’s eyes widened. “What are you saying? That’ll I’ll live a long time? Longer than most other people?”

Ludvico shrugged. “Yes, you will live a long time. Your lifespan will not be measured in decades or even in hundreds of years, but thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of years.”

Malcolm’s eyes fluttered, disbelief crossed his brow. “And I’ll get really-really fat and dress up in a red suit on Christmas Eve, too…while Mary Ann bakes cookies and gets my sleigh ready? Come on, Ludvico! Let’s get real, okay?”

The Old Man sighed, spread his hands expansively. “You will become one of the best historians the world has ever known, Malcolm. Think of the possibilities.” He looked at Malcolm not with pity but with hopefulness.

“And Mary Ann? What would happen to her?”

And at that a shadow fell over the Old Man’s face. “I’m sorry, but no.”

“Then would you be so kind as to bugger off…”

But now this time it was Mary Ann who held up a hand, and she looked at Ludvico quietly, carefully, and her words came in a slow, measured pace: “Malcolm will get better? Is that what you’re telling me? He’ll live, and go on living?”

“Precisely.”

“But,” Malcolm said, interrupting the Old Man, “Mary Ann will live a normal lifespan, and then die? And I’ll just keep on going and going, ad infinitum?”

Ludvico nodded. “Yes. Just so.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Malcolm added, turning away to look out the window.

“Malcolm, you’ll pass away tomorrow evening, in great pain, bleeding from every orifice, if that is what you wish.”

“That’s precisely what I wish, old boy. Now, would you please leave us…?”

Ludvico nodded and turned to leave, but Mary Ann held out her hand and grabbed the Old Man’s arm, stopping him.

“But this is not what I wish,” she sighed.

But Ludvico shrugged and pulled away. “This is your husband’s life, not yours, and his wants in this matter must take precedence.”

She turned to Malcolm and shook her head. “Now you listen, Malcolm, and do try your best not  to be such an idiot right now…”

“Like the man said. My body, my life.”

“So that means after tomorrow – I’m on my own? Are you really so bloody stupid, you selfish oaf? What makes you think this is a negative, Malcolm. In any way, shape or form? So I die in twenty years, or thirty, or even two. That’s two more, or twenty more years that I’ll have with you, and then our life together will come to an end. You remain among the living, but is that really such a bad arrangement?”

“And that’s precisely my point, Mary Ann. It’s a deal. Someone is going to come calling one day, and then it’s going to be my turn to hold up my end of the bargain. Right, Ludvico?”

“No, in this you are incorrect, Malcolm. As I told you, the…people…responsible for your current condition are simply offering to right a wrong, and this is the only means they have to do so.” 

“He’ll do it, Ludvico,” Mary Ann said, her voice still a measured, steely calm.

“Oh, will I?”

“Malcolm, don’t be so dim-witted. Just consider it an opportunity, the opportunity of a lifetime…

“Just so. As I once did,” the Old Man said.

“What?” Malcolm sighed, staggered under the weight of implications suddenly falling into place. “You mean…you…?”

“Yes. During what you would call the Second Peloponnesian War. Indeed, Malcolm, you and I might have been friends, for I have always loved the sea.”

“The…the Second Peloponnesian War? Did you…were you…”

“My name was then Lysander, and yes, I was in command during those final engagements against the Athenian fleet.”

“Lysander…?” Malcolm said, his brow furrowed in fragmented awe. “But…how…?”

“I was sickened by…our friends, when I was in the water. Then I was presented with the same opportunity as you just have been.”

“So, what you’re saying is I either die tomorrow or I live…a really-really long time? Is that the choice you…that your friends are giving me?”

“It is.”

Malcolm looked at Mary Ann, completely unprepared for the moment, then he simply shook his head. “I’m not prepared to live without you, you know?”

“You’ll get used to it,” she fired back.

“I won’t have to deal with your stinky feet. That’s a plus.”

“He’ll do it, Ludvico.”

“Now what?” Malcolm asked. “You snap you fingers and voila? It’s done?”

“Oh no, nothing so prosaic as that. It will take many months and a great deal of pain, but you won’t remember any of it.” The Old Man turned and pointed to one of the room’s corners, to a corner near the ceiling. “Take a look, up there in the corner. Do you see something floating around? A little blue mote, nothing more than a grain of sand?” he asked.

“No? Not really…?”

“Ah. Well then, watch closely…”

+++++

He was lost in thought, thoughts like echos of echos passing in a hall of echos, and he thought he smelled something familiar, something like a hospital room, but how could that he? It…must be just, what? A coincidence?

Then those words came to him anew. ‘Every coincidence is just another fork in the road, the chance to strike out on a new path.’

He drifted back to a warm memory, back to the sailor on the airplane…then back to that early September in 2001, and he felt a sense of wonder as they were talking at probably the exact same moment in time, that time when the 911 hijackers were discussing their final preparations…

‘Why didn’t I at least ask his name? Who the hell was he? Have I always been so closed off to the people I meet along the way?’ 

“You look angry, Malcolm.” Her voice startled him out of his reveries.

“I think I am. Angry at myself. And I think I always have been.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Because I seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over again…”

“So…? Change the path you’re on.”

“What?”

“Change the path, Malcolm. If you don’t like the world you’re making for yourself, change it. Change your world.”

He turned and looked at the dolphin again and the memories hit in torrential gouts. Of looming death. Radiation sickness. Of an offer, an offer he wanted to refuse. But then Mary Ann had…she had talked me out of – what? And that ship…how could anything possibly be so big…how many thousands of them were up there? 

But…none of that has happened yet. I’ll never get sick, I’ll not die in that hospital. 

But…how can I remember something that hasn’t happened?

“Something is different,” he sighed as he turned away from the dolphin. “Something has changed.”

“Everything has changed,” Mary Ann said softly, gently. “You don’t remember? Ludvico? In the hospital room?”

The memory hit like a punch to the gut; he was winded and a deep ache followed in his lower groin.

“Did you see…do you remember the sphere?”

Another wave washed over him. “A sphere…? Yes, blue, it was tiny – but then it expanded to fill the room…”

“Just you,” his wife said. “It was just you inside, then you disappeared.”

He shook his head, suddenly in a daze, almost in a trance. “I was on a ship, Mary Ann. Huge, I mean massive…”

“At sea?”

Again he shook his head. “No, somewhere up there,” he said, pointing to the sky. “I could see Saturn, or a planet like Saturn. It was like the ship was closer to Saturn than any other planet in our solar system, but again, their ship is huge. I mean miles long. There was a kind of tram line running down the central axis, huge gardens, even some kind of reservoir…”

“You remember all that?”

He nodded. “It’s fading fast, but yes…”

“Malcolm…you’re not going to die…I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you…not now…not ever…”

He struggled with a memory, something the Old Man, Lysander, the Spartan general…but he struggled to hold on to even that memory…

“What?” he croaked. “What are you talking about?”

“I, us, I can’t remember what I was thinking…” 

+++++

Marsala was one of those cities he could have stayed in forever.

After Diogenes was secure in the marina he walked across the street to one of those 19^th-century Baroque hotels that seem to flourish on the Italian coast, and after he checked in he stood in the shower for almost an hour, scrubbing his skin until it was raw. That was when he discovered the skin behind his knees was mottled with sores and he asked Mary Ann to take a look at them.

“They look like puncture wounds, Mal, but they’re bunched in hexagonal groups. There are three here, and another three here,” she said, pointing out spots behind each knee. “I don’t see anything else.”

But he soon left for the swimming pool and swam laps for an hour, until Mary Ann came and joined him. For the next three days he ate only the richest, most fattening things on the menu and yet he had no idea why. Suddenly ‘excess’ was the order of the day. He dug his Hasselblad out of the cabinet beside his berth then started wandering the city, looking for interesting things to image, and every interesting café he ran across he entered. He ate blistering quantities of food, enough for three people at a sitting, and yet he never felt full, never wasn’t ravenous, and never seemed to gain an ounce.

Mary Ann couldn’t keep up. Not with the pace he walked, nor with the sheer gross tonnage of food he was piling down. A four-course dinner at noon and two hours later he ordered something even bigger. And still he wasn’t gaining weight. The more he walked the better he felt. Swimming an hour turned to two hours, then a waiter would be ready for him with a sizzling steak and fried potatoes. In five days at the hotel he ran up thousands in food charges, and yet he never once didn’t feel like eating more.

They departed after a week in Sicily, bound for Malta. Less than 200 miles and he didn’t eat once. Nor did he sleep. Mary Ann grew more and more restless around him because, to her, it felt like he was becoming increasingly manic-depressive, with more mania than depression. He smiled constantly but hardly spoke and once she felt as if his brain had been rewired, like he had almost overnight become a teenager again.

They had several new Patrick O’Brian books in their little library that neither had gotten round to yet, and when she mentioned this he picked one up and read it, all of it, in less than an hour. That night he reread the Decameron – in Latin – in less than two hours, and he claimed he’d never gotten as much from the text as he just had.

And she believed him, too.

In Valletta he marched off and found a music store and bought an acoustic guitar…and an oboe. He bought textbooks on everything from how to read music to advanced music theory, then sat in the cockpit with the guitar for hours at a stretch, taking breaks only to do grocery shopping or work on the boat. Only now he had zero interest in eating. Or drinking – even water. She had to remind him to eat and drink one day and then she began to wonder if he was simply losing his mind…but she asked him questions and he was his usual know-it-all self, neither mean-spirited nor overly facile. He was his old self but sometimes it felt like he was on amphetamines, moving at hyper speed all the time.

Chania, Crete, was their next port, and the entire trip, almost 500 miles, he spent on the foredeck with his godforsaken oboe. The nonstop shrieking sounded like he was skinning a cat alive, but on the second day he was getting the hang of it, and on the third day he was simply accomplished. On Crete he decided he had to have a cello but Mary Ann had just one thing to say about that: “NO YOU WILL NOT! Malcolm, please! Try the viola instead,” she admonished.

So he bought one of those and started in on that, too.

They met up with Ben and Sally on Mykonos a week later and they hardly recognized their friend. Malcolm was running through life at a buzzsaw pace, cutting through anything and everything in his way. He wanted a new laptop and there wasn’t a place on the island to get the latest Apple MacBook so he hopped on a shuttle and flew to Athens. He came back the next morning and went straight into his cabin; two hours later he was playing music into a microphone, then adding tracks to a composition he was working on in a music editing program on his new Mac. A day later he’d laid down all the tracks of a concerto for guitar and oboe, and even Ben thought it was a luscious, truly captivating piece.

But with that out of the way Malcolm started in on their book about witnessing the terrorist acts in New York and Marseilles, and he tossed what he’d already written and cranked out 600 new pages in just a few hours. By then everyone noticed that Malcolm no longer had any interest in music, or even talking – to anyone. As in: not even talking to Ben or Sally. Then Ben, quite by accident, saw Malcolm very early one morning, hours before the sun came up, and he had leaned over the stern rail and was with a dolphin. As in, talking to a dolphin. That was it, he told Sally. He’d seen enough. Something was profoundly wrong with their friend and it was time to find out what it was.

Ben called and then visited with a local psychiatrist and explained the situation. The psychiatrist recommended that they have dinner at a certain restaurant that evening, and he would arrange to have table next to theirs. He would passively observe the man, then make recommendations for their next steps.

Yet Malcolm was as pleasant and as normal as another human being could be. He talked about relevant concerns. The weather. The political situation in Turkey, their next stop and where they’d planned on cruising in company for months. He ordered normally, drank water sparingly, and in every imaginable way behaved as if he knew he had been set up.

The psychiatrist called the next morning and had nothing to offer. Ben understood, so did Mary Ann and Sally. The only creature who indeed appeared to have any real understanding of the situation was Elsie…and she wasn’t exactly talkative. She was, however, enjoying the endless runs through the countryside with her human.

Yet soon Malcolm became less restless and more like his old self, and after that with each passing day he seemed less and less manic. He did spend more time with the pup but nothing out of the ordinary, and a week later the two boats took off for Chios, and they anchored off Nagos Beach and swam in the crystal clear waters for a few days, before moving on to Samos, south of Izmir, and finally to Bodrum, where they planned to get the boats hauled and painted while they enjoyed the winter in southern Turkey.

And it was perfect. Malcolm was his old self, though he did spend an hour or so on the foredeck at sunset playing the guitar, and getting very good at the instrument as time passed. Bodrum seemed to move at a different pace, too. Not quite medieval time, but close. Life was quieter here compared to London, and easier to take. Malcolm and Elsie usually took off at first light with the Hasselblad and he shot rolls and rolls of film, now also shooting the rising sun in Kodachrome 64 and then architecture with ISO 25 Tech Pan. He wore out sneakers in a couple of weeks, usually putting ten miles a day just walking around each new village or city taking photographs. 

When one of the group was hungry Malcolm ate, otherwise he took photos or composed music or went for a run. 

Mary Ann flew to London with the manuscript and HarperCollins signed to publish the book. It sold well in England and France and hardly at all in America, but now the two of them had a little name recognition – that she hoped might last a few months.

As winter faded and spring beckoned Malcolm talked more and more about wanting to return to Italy, to Portofino. He said he’d never been happier than when he was there and he told them he could envision them all remaining tied off in front of Lo Stella for the rest of their days. 

Ben and Sally said they would join them as far as Italy but that they still planned to circumnavigate and their intention was to join the ARC in the Canary Island next November, then heading to Panama. Yet another truth was becoming clear to them: Mary Ann was fast getting old. Her hands, especially her fingers, were now badly arthritic and she found line handling problematic. She had lost her balance more than once, not often but enough to be of concern. Her ankles were swelling and she liked to rest more during the day.

While Malcolm seemed unchanged, he realized that his wife needed more time to walk, that she wanted to spend more quality time with Elsie, but she didn’t want to move off the boat. Not yet, she told him. But while Malcolm seemed more and more like his old self, instead of a morning walk together he let her sleep while he went for a run. Ben ran with him and tried to keep up on a couple of occasions, but gave up after a mile or so. 

Malcolm now ate like a mouse when he ate at all, just seeds and grains and, occasionally, shrimp. Malcolm claimed he could no longer stomach the idea of eating the flesh of mammals, and he’d used that exact phrasing. “I might as well eat Elsie as eat another cow,” he added.

Ben started to lay out a course for Gibraltar and the Canary Islands, then Sally went shopping for provisions, and that was when the realization set in that another important chapter in all their lives was drawing to a close. Even so, though it seemed that their days of traveling together would soon be at an end, they decided to hopscotch through the Aegean and Ionian together – on their way to Portofino – first sailing to Alyaka and Kefalos before heading to Analipsi in the Aegean. Then, Santorini, dodging cruise ships in the caldera and tourists on the rim, walking from Fira to Imerovigli. Then Athens, for work on Achilles and, more importantly, work on Mary Ann when a worrying lab report came after a clinic visit. She decided to fly back to London and have gynecologists at the NHS do followup tests and scans, more thorough work than she’d had the past two years, but it seemed her concerns were unfounded. She returned in good health. Or so she said.

Ben recommended they go to Corfu together, but then hastily announced they’d not be able accompany Diogenes to Portofino; time was running out, he stated, and Achilles needed to head to Gibraltar in order to get some work done before joining the ARC, the Atlantic Rally to the Caribbean. After another year together the two boats finally parted ways at Marsala, once again on the tip of Sicily, and it was Sally and Mary Ann who felt their final parting most acutely. Oddly enough, Ben had begun to feel increasingly insecure around Malcolm, and while he never said anything about it to Sally, she knew. So did Mary Ann. If Malcolm suspected he never mentioned anything about it. 

+++++

And the strangest part yet. 

As Malcolm guided Diogenes into the tiny harbor at Portofino he professed he hardly remembered the place. He’d had to go through his logbooks and reread his notes about the inlet and where to dock, and when Mary Ann mentioned going to the Lo Stella to talk with Ludvico about mooring, he didn’t even remember the name. Everything about their earlier stay had been wiped from his mind, or so it seemed. Mary Ann had no such problem so went straight to the ristorante, only to find Ludvico waiting for her at a table on the sidewalk. By the expression on his face he seemed sympathetic as she approached.

“You seem upset? What troubles you so on this fine morning?” he said as he stood and pulled out a chair for her.

“It’s Malcolm…” she began, and she laid out his recent forgetfulness, his long walks and even longer runs and all the weird variations in his appetite…

“These will pass, dear lady. His body is adjusting to certain new realities, and it takes time.”

“New realities?” she asked.

“Ah,” he said, realizing she had no memory left of his hospitalization and near death. “I have heard that certain cases of heart attack bring about radical changes to the mind and the body…” 

He did all he could to allay her concerns while at the same time concealing the true nature of what had happened to him, and who was responsible, then he told her that they were free to stay on the seawall as long as they wanted. 

“I so enjoy Malcolm’s company,” he told Mary Ann, but that didn’t ring true to her.

“It’s very nice of you, but…”

“No, please stay, for you see, I have an ulterior motive. Being accomplished authors, I was hoping that you could write a book about the area. Even a cruising guide, so that we could attract more British sailors…”

“Surely you don’t need even more visitors?”

“Oh, but we do, dear lady. We need more cultured visitors, visitors who enjoy a slow lunch, perhaps, or an evening stroll. Not endless shops selling t-shirts or the same basketball shoes one might find in Bucharest. We need visitors such as yourself to help us get the word out…”

“Perhaps I could do a special for The Telegraph?”

He’d held out his hands expansively on hearing that. “You see? We understand one another!”

She’d smiled, too, because she thought she did.

+++++

Not long after their arrival, Malcolm stopped running. And a few weeks after that, the long walks came to an end. He sipped tea in the morning and rarely ate anything before midafternoon, and then he hardly ate at all. He did say once that food revolted him, which Mary Ann thought odd. He wrote sparingly about their journey across the Med, a page here and a page there, and he often seemed ambivalent about whatever it was he was currently working on. More troubling still, he went along with whatever Mary Ann wanted, whether it was shopping for a day in Genoa or taking the train to Milan for a night at the opera. Pliable was the word she was looking for, the word that best described her husband as he was now, and almost the exact opposite of what he had been recently.

He seemed to be at his best with Elsie, and of course that other friend of his…the one that hung around off Diogenes’ stern. He took the pup on walks along the rocky shore at least twice a day, usually when Mary Ann was baking in the galley. Once, the two of them even took a few days off on their own together, to go walking in the Dolomites, and for a while it seemed that Elsie was turning into his dog.

But the pup, like Mary Ann, had been growing increasingly confused by Malcolm’s many changes, for few things were as they had once seemed to her. But pups live in the moment and the little girl kept adjusting…or tried to, anyway.

When Mary Ann received an email on her new iPhone from Sally, she read it with sorrow. Malcolm’s volcanic personality had begun to frighten them, she wrote, and that it was like Malcolm was existing behind veils of secrecy, veils so impenetrable that not even he was aware of them. When Ben finally felt that Malcolm had become dangerous he’d decided it was time to leave.

Mary Ann was devastated but didn’t know how to reply, so at first she didn’t.

Which did nothing to explain Malcolm’s relationship to ‘that fish.’ 

Some evenings the dolphin came right up to the stern and poked it’s bottlenose snout up out of the inky black surface of the water and Malcolm would lean over and stare at the animal for a while, oblivious to the sounds of all the enthralled tourists standing about gawking at the sight. Some evenings Malcolm would reach out and touch the beast, others they’d barely acknowledge one another’s existence, yet Mary Ann was beginning to feel a powerful bond developing between the two. This union was primitive, and she felt it was almost like some kind of neurochemical exchange was happening. However improbable that may have seemed, she was sure a physical bond existed. 

She joined him one evening in the cockpit just as all the village’s townspeople emerged from their homes to begin their evening stroll, this thing they called a passegiatta, the walk a passage from the cares of the day to the promise of family and friends in the evening, and she seemed enchanted by it all as the ritual unfolded around them each evening.

“Don’t you think,” she began, “that we should get out there one night and join them?” But had she asked a stranger sitting by her side, or her husband…?

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, because I thought that was the point, Malcolm. When you said you wanted to stay here, you also implied you wanted to become a part of the social fabric of the place, to really get to know the people…”

“I said that?”

“You implied that.”

“Was I drunk?”

“No, dearest, and to set the record straight, I’ve seen you – intoxicated – just once during our many years together. That was, by the way, about an hour after you said ‘I do…’”

“I do…what?”

“I do believe that was just after the two of us got married, you imbecile!”

“Was I unhappy?”

“How the devil should I know?” she growled, now sorry she’d brought it up.

“But…then…why was I drinking…and why did I get drunk, er, intoxicated.”

She’d left him then to go below, sure there was something very wrong with him. Perhaps early onset dementia? Or maybe he’d swallowed a squirrel?

But then he had poked his head down the companionway. “Would you like to join them now?” he asked. 

She’d looked up, surprised, then nodded. “Sure. I’d love to. Do you think it will get cool out?”

“I’d bring a sweater, dear.”

And there it was…the reason why she loved him. He still listened to her, he cared about what she said and, after all he had been through the last two years she was lucky to have him at all. She had to remember to go easy on him, because, well, maybe Ludvico knew what he was talking about. 

So when they set out that evening they were The Old British Couple living down on the seawall  on their pretty sailboat and they were, really, anything but unknown. People greeted them quietly, not yet sure what to make of the couple that had heretofore been shut off from them, some going so far as to say the couple was, well, almost reclusive. But now, at long last, they were finally coming out of their shells, and the more effusive spirits in town proved to be more than accepting…they actually smiled. Malcolm was wearing shorts and a polo shirt and these regulars assumed that was simply because the poor man didn’t know any better.

So when the next evening came, Malcolm decided to bring Elsie along and she was of course game for anything that involved getting off the boat. The third evening Ludvico met them at the rail and he had a box for Malcolm; Malcolm took the box with a shrug and a smile and a reserved Thank You. When he took the box below he found a gray loden cape and a walking stick, more like a cane, really, but it was really quite ornate – with a detailed silver filigree depicting a lightning bolt running most of the way down the slender rosewood shaft. He dressed for the evening in dark slacks and was sporting his only dress shirt, but when he slipped the cape on he felt a tingle of excitement.

“Where on earth did you get that?” Mary Ann said when she saw him in his new cape.

“Ludvico came round and dropped it off.”

“He…why on earth did he do that?”

Malcolm shrugged as he helped her off the boat, then he saw Ludvico walking their way. “I’ve no idea, but here he comes so why not ask him yourself?”

“Malcolm, he has another box.”

And so he did. As he approached, Ludvico smiled and presented another box to Malcolm before he launched into his explanation of things. “You looked so dowdy, Malcolm. You must remember that the passegiatta is as bit of a pageant, someplace where one might display a cherished bit of clothing. A prized sweater, or in this case, a gift from a friend. But when I thought about it I just couldn’t see you in that cape without a hat, so here you are. Try it on, please.”

Malcolm opened the hatbox and found a gray loden Bavarian hunters hat, replete with Gamsbart Brush pinned to the heavy gray twine that encircled the head-band. “I don’t know what to say, Ludvico, but I hope thanks will do.”

“Of course, of course, but you must call me ‘Vico, my friend. Now, I have diners to attend, so if you will excuse me?”

But before Ludvico could turn away Malcolm stepped forward and extended his right hand. “Perhaps we could come by in an hour or so and dine with you this evening?”

“I shall look forward to it. And don’t forget your walking stick, Malcolm. These old stones…well, they are often hard on one’s balance. And, I dare say, you just never know when you’ll need it.”

Malcolm nodded and ducked below, and came up wearing his new things and carrying his walking stick, and he seemed to be strutting a little as he walked up to his wife.

“My, aren’t we the ham tonight?”

“Think so? I feel positively Bavarian. Schnitzel and spätzle for me, please!”

She shook her head. “You are incorrigible,” she sighed. “I mean, you do know that?”

“I take great pride in that, as you well know…” he said as he offered his arm. “Shall we…perambulate?”

“Passegiatta, you ninny. And I doubt you’ll find spätzle at his restaurant.”

“Let me take the leash,” he said, after Elsie pulled hard when she saw a black cat in a shadow, but she settled down after that. They ambled along the north side of the harbor, walking through the Piazza Martiri and out to the little coast guard facility by the small, rocky point that marked the inlet to the harbor. 

“I’m quite cold, even with this sweater,” she said as the breeze coming off the water finally got to her.

“Here,” he said as he took off his cape, “give this a try.”

He draped it over her shoulders and almost immediately she shrugged it off her shoulders.

“Oh…no…that doesn’t belong to me…get it off…now…”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, startled by her reaction. “Is it the fabric?”

She shook her head violently. “No… Oh, Malcolm, that was the strangest sensation I’ve ever had in my life. It was like I was seeing the world through your eyes…”

“You…what?”

“It felt like I was seeing everything you see, okay? I saw you looking at me, and I could see down to the pavement when you looked down at me. It was…just…so wrong. All so very wrong…”

He stared at her, now more than concerned. “You do know that what you’re saying sounds absolutely nuts? I mean, we’re talking bat-shit crazy, alright?”

She shook her head. “I know, but that’s what I felt…” Then she gathered her arms around her chest and shivered.

“Okay, let’s get back on the other side of the harbor. Maybe Vico has a table for us.”

“I’m not sure I want to go there, Malcolm. Not sure at all.”

“Do we have something you’d like me to cook?”

She shook her head violently again. “I’m not hungry.”

“Well, you sure were an hour ago.” They walked along in silence for a while but as they approached Ludvico’s restaurant he was out on the sidewalk, already waiting for them. Malcolm felt her tense up, then she leaned close. “What do you want me to tell him…?”

“Let’s go on in. I’m okay now.”

He nodded but in truth he didn’t, indeed, he could not possibly understand her shifts in mood, and he’d long ago given up trying.

“How was your walk?” Ludvico asked as they drew near, before he saw Mary Ann. “But my dear, you are freezing. I have a warm little corner in the back that I feel will suit you well. Follow me, please…I have a fire going in the fireplace already…”

He seated them in what appeared to be an ancient alcove, resplendent in washed wood paneling and subtle murals on stucco walls, and the menu was spectacular, the fireplace subtly warm. Malcolm had never had octopus but on Nico’s insistence he tried it for his first course, while Mary stuck with a more tradition plate of tomatoes and mozzarella. This was followed by an endless stream of seafood, some traditional preparations though a few that were way out there, like shrimp in puffy croutons glazed with some kind of sauce that had to have been dreamt up in lingonberry heaven. 

By the time Vico saw them to the door Mary Ann was in love with the place and couldn’t wait to come back. And the beauty of the evening? Little Elsie had curled up on Malcolm’s lap and slept through the meal…just like magic…

+++++

Kate Sunderland came by the early next morning and Malcolm watched her awkward gait uneasily, fearful she might take a tumble on the rough old stones, but in the end he needn’t have worried. As she came up to Diogenes he didn’t even need to ask: she wanted to talk and she was in pain. He got right up and went to the rail even before she said a word, and he held out his hands to help her up.

“My dear Kate, you look positively frightful this morning,” he said once she was in the cockpit and out of the weather. “What on earth has happened?”

“I got word that my dad has taken sick. From my step-mum. She said she wanted me to know even though he doesn’t want me to come.”

“Is he dying?”

She nodded and then the tears came. He leaned close and pulled her into his arms and just held her while the storms came, then she finally nodded and pulled away a little. “Thanks,” she said a moment later.

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I suppose I’ll just let him go. That seems to be the heart of what he wants from me…to just disappear, I mean.”

“Surely this can’t be so.”

“I know. But it is.”

“Have you your passport handy?”

“What?”

“Your passport. Is it nearby?”

“In my room. Why?”

“Well, it’s high time you went round and had a word with this bastard, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you do this on your own. Get some things together…because we’re off to Birmingham, Katherine.”

Of course Vico already had the car ready to go, but he had to remind Malcolm to bring along his cape and walking staff. With those in hand, Vico drove them north to Genoa.

“Vico, would you tell Mary where I’m off to, and why? If we’re not back this evening I think we should make it back on the morning flight from London.”

“Of course. Take care, Katherine. You are in good hands.”

“I know.”

“And Malcolm, do take care of your staff. You are just learning how to walk with it, so take great care.”

Malcolm nodded, yet what a strange thing to say, even so. “I’ll call when I know what flight we’re on.”

And Vico just grinned a little when he heard that. “Yes, you do that. I shall see you in the morning.”

They went into the Alitalia counter and their early flight was booked, but BA’s wasn’t, so off they went, nonstop to Birmingham, without that bothersome stopover in London.

Katy chattered endlessly on the flight, obviously nervous about seeing her father after so many years, and about seeing him in hospital. She did not know the details, only which hospital he was in. After they landed and had sorted out customs he summoned a taxi and directed the driver to carry them to Heartlands Hospital.

“That’s a big place, Mate. Know which ward?”

“No. Let me call.” So Malcolm called, found out the man was on the Oncology floor, Ward 19, and visitors were allowed, so he told the driver.

“Oy, that’s the center block, just a five minute drive. Take you right to the front door I will, sir.”

Malcolm smiled, felt a pang of nostalgia for the Midlands, for he’d grown up not far from here, after he’d moved in with his aunt and uncle. If London was the mind of Britain, the Midlands were the heart and soul…at least that’s what his uncle had always said.

Everything was green here, even in autumn, even though it was cool out, and it was a different kind of green than there was in the northwest of Italy. That part of Italy felt more like the Alps, that peculiar gray-green of Switzerland, even close to the sea, but here in the middle of Britain it felt more like Holland or Germany. A rich, wet green. After studying the world through the Hasselblad’s viewfinder he found himself looking at the characteristics of light and of color as he traveled, and it was getting to feel like he knew where a picture had been taken just by looking at the light…

But the Midlands almost felt like home, he felt the pull of home, even the need to call and ask about his own father.

But in the end he’d decided against that. He was sure he wasn’t up to that meeting just yet.

+++++

“So, how’d it go?” Mary Ann asked as Malcolm climbed aboard Diogenes and settled beside her in the cockpit.

He picked up his cup of piping hot EBT and took a small, tentative sniff of the tea, as ever his favorite thing about morning. He nodded slowly, as if still trying to come to terms with his day at the hospital. “She’s a wreck, poor thing. Her father passed about an hour after we arrived, but the only thing he said to her was ‘What are you doing here?’ Can you imagine?”

Mary Ann scowled, looked away. “Maybe you shouldn’t have taken her, Mal?”

“Oh, no, it was the thing to do, Mary. She needed the moment. Needed the closure, no more uncertainty. No more what ifs. She got to say good bye, which was the heart of the matter. She did her duty as a daughter, held his hand as the old bastard passed, and we talked about him all the way home.”

“Home? Are you referring to Portofino as home?”

“I am indeed, because it is. You know it and I do to. I can’t imagine not living right here, right on this bloody boat.”

“I’m afraid neither can I. Aren’t we a pair?”

“Match made in heaven. That’s what we are, Mary. A match made in heaven.”

“Malcolm? What’s gotten into you…?”

“A man needs to recognize a few of the basics about his life from time to time, Mary, and you are the bedrock of my life. Nothing else matters, simple as that. Seeing that cold old bastard really drove that home to me. He didn’t know the first thing about his own life. Pushed his responsibilities right out the door and out of his life, like his daughter was yesterday’s news. He wasn’t a man, he was an empty husk, and quite frankly I wanted to kill the prick.”

“Indeed. So I take it you are madly in love with Katy?”

“What did you say?” he growled, the veins in his temples turning red and distended.

“She’s becoming the daughter we never had.”

He sat back, let slip a long sigh as he nodded impassively. “I suppose there’s some truth to that, Mary, but I doubt she feels that way.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Bonehead.”

He rolled his eyes as he continued to calm down. “Bonehead? Is that what I am now?”

“Let her get settled back in for a day or so, then take her to lunch.”

“Mary Ann? What are you suggesting I do?”

“She needs a father. She always has. And aren’t you the one always going on and on about coincidence, so tell me, oh vaunted professor of mine, what coincidence brought her here, to Portofino, and to our boat? Or…to you, if I may be so blunt? Have you thought about that?”

He nodded. “Most of the day, yesterday.”

“And…?”

“And what?”

“Is she the new path you still don’t want to acknowledge?”

“Maybe. I’m still not sure.”

“Ludvico sure seems to be.”

“What?” he asked, befuddled again.

“Ludvico sure had no trouble taking her on, did he? And no problem helping out yesterday? Ever wonder why?”

He shook his head.

“Well, maybe you should. And while you’re at it, you’d better say hello to your dog before she comes completely unglued…”

He held out his hands and Elsie jumped into him, covering his face with wet tongue lashings as she tried to burrow into his soul…

“And please Malcolm, do not forget about that damn fish of yours.”

He turned and saw him out there, his dorsal fin just below the surface, eddies trailing in a stream of little blue spheres reflecting off something faraway beyond the morning sky.

© 2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkühnwrites.com | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple. And yes, let me not forget to ad that this is part of the TimeShadow storyline, and this element will be followed by one more, in Book Three: Mars, The Bringer of War. As always, thanks for reading along, and we’ll see you again soon.

And so here is the completed version of Book One, with all four seasons in one convenient microwaveable morsel, just heat & eat. With Peet’s Major Dickson blend, of course. For some reason I think Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon will take you where you need to go as you read this one, but if you lean towards country try out Lainey Wilson’s latest, Whirlwind. And I really don’t know why, but I finished out Winter while listening to a fairly obscure work from 1951, Aaron Copland’s Concerto for Clarinet and Strings (with Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello), featuring Benny Goodman on the clarinet, and the 2024 remaster is now on Apple Music.

So here she be, two of the final five characters in TimeShadow you haven’t met yet. The first three seasons ended up at 70 or so pages but as I worked on Winter heavy revisions were made on the first three seasons so you may need to revisit those if you run into inconsistencies.  The final version ended up at 177 pages, so this one will take a few cups of coffee.

Have fun.

The Seasons of Man

Book One: The Aviator

1. Spring

For as long as he could remember, the boy had relied on his oldest sister for almost everything. Her name was, Claire, and she was the good sister.

Because she was definitely not the bad sister. That was Ann. Ann was the bad one. The evil sister, if you are given to believing in such things as good and evil, for this is a tale of good and evil. Good where you expect to find goodness, and evil, of course, where you least expect it. 

Ann had tried to smother the boy once upon a time, when he was very small, and those helpless moments of infinite suffocating stillness had formed his earliest, and most vivid memory. Trying to breathe while she pressed his face down into a sofa cushion, laughing all the while, before Claire came into the room and pushed Ann away. Then Ann was screaming and crying, because the evil inside Ann knew the sound of her distress would bring their father running. And he could just barely remember Ann telling their father that Claire had been trying to kill him, and that, for some reason, didn’t make sense to him, because his father believed the lie Ann had told him. He always did, too, whenever Ann did something like that. And then their father would punish Claire, yet somehow he was always punishing Claire for the things Ann had done. That Ann did and always got away with. 

And while the boy grew to love his sister Claire, it took many years for him to fully understand the toll exacted on her. To the boy she seemed a resolute paragon of strength and virtue, and he never sensed the hard, brittle edges of the damage done to her.

And yet for years and years the boy wondered why Claire had bruises on her legs and arms, and it took years and years for him to understand that his sister Ann enjoyed what she had done to them all. And to understand the enormity of the injustice done by his father, with his belt out as he towered over the little girl trying to hide in the shadows of her bedroom. And the enormity of the injustice Ann was prepared to visit on all their futures. 

He would go to Claire’s room and find her under the sunny window under the dormer, to her favorite spot just inside the protective shade of the pecan tree outside her window, and she would take him and hold onto him so protectively. And yet, he never understood why she clung to him so possessively. So fiercely, with her eyes so full of vacant fear.

Later, when he was older, when he did something wrong, even before he could fess up to it Claire would come and take the blame. She had taken on the role of his protector and couldn’t shake loose of her sense of duty to him, even when she knew the consequences were dire. 

She seemed destined to remain his protector until she took her last breath, and one day he asked her why she did.

“I have to, you see? I have to stop you from falling…you, and the flowers.”

“What flowers?” He asked, because he didn’t understand.

Some nights the boy could hear his father in Ann’s room. Speaking in low, familiar tones that somehow seemed all wrong. Years later the boy understood, or at least he thought he did. At first he thought his father had been seducing Ann, but it was only much later that he finally understood the seduction had been the other way around. It took the boy that long to understand that some people are born evil, that this person’s moral universe does not align with goodness. That some are born with an innate understanding of human weakness, and an understanding of how easy it is to exploit that weakness.

So Ann was gifted in seduction and manipulation – yet oddly enough in little else, and in time even those gifts would betray her, as they would betray them all.

Yet Claire was gifted in ways few people could understand. In ways Ann never would, and in ways none of them ever expected.

For, you see, Claire understood music. The gift, if you will, of what lies both within and beyond music. And she was tempted to give this gift to her little brother.

The piano came to her as easily as breathing does to most, and her face could not be pressed into a cushion long enough, nor her arms bruised enough, to smother that understanding. Not even Ann could take her gift away, though she tried hard enough. Yet, and herein lies a conundrum of the human condition, their father was understanding enough to see that Claire possessed such a gift, and with this understanding he did all he could to help his daughter gain mastery. Because she needed his kind of help, the help only a decent father can provide, and even her father could see and feel and understand her need. Yet, even as the boy grew, this human conundrum took flight, as Ann and their mother became a kind of warped team. Because it seemed as though their job was to destroy Claire, and then the boy. Claire and her music, the boy and his dreams. It became a kind of spirited game for them. Birds of a feather, you might say.

The boy wasn’t particularly bright in those days, not like Claire was, but he was persistent. He’d liked to draw even as a toddler, and that was about all his teachers thought he had in the Smarts Department. He was always drawing, from pre-school through the earliest grades in elementary school. The usual stuff, too: airplanes and, naturally enough, space ships, because science fiction movies were all the rage and all the other boys in school watched that kind of stuff. But then he got interested in drawing houses. Houses he’d never seen. Houses so intricately complex that even his teachers began noticing that something more than a little unusual was going on with this boy. 

‘Where do you come up with all these ideas?’ the boy’s teachers asked.

“I don’t know. I just see things.” 

‘I see them in my mind, like they are a memory,’ he wanted to say – but he already knew better. Knew better than to tell these grown-ups such things, because he already understood that succeeding in school meant conforming to the narrow expectations of his teachers. And, anyway, those August Spirits would have never understood.

But when Claire asked him about a particularly detailed drawing one day, he told her.

And he wasn’t so very surprised when Claire said she understood.

Because she had her own memories, of places she had never been, and she went there too. Usually when their father was home.

So it turned out they both had places to run. Because in the end it really wasn’t safe in their father’s house. 

What Claire called the House of Pain, and later the House of Death.

+++++

Maybe it wasn’t really his fault.

He came home from the war and no one recognized him.

William Tennyson had always been the life of the party. The high school quarterback, the good looking guy who always brought the cutest girl to the dance. And though he was popular he was also smart as hell. A real Ivy League kind of smart, very good at math and the sciences, and all his teachers just knew he was really something special. Yes, Bill Tennyson was going places; everyone was sure of that.

While most boys his age were content to drink on weekends, Bill Tennyson could not be bothered. While a few caroused around with a different girls on Saturday nights, Tennyson seemed to prefer the company of just one girl, a very bright, and very religious girl by the name of Doris Sawyer. Her father was a Methodist minister, and both father and daughter were frail, nervous creatures prone to fits of overzealous evangelizing. So while Bill and Doris were an item, the mature, reasonable kids that all the other parents liked to dote on, there was a kind of elemental inconsistency about the relationship.

His life was grounded in numbers, in science, while her’s drifted in and out of mysticism, caught up in the web of the internal contradictions of her beliefs.

So it was something of a surprise to Doris and all their friends when, after everyone graduated from high school and the gang set off to USC or Claremont, that Bill Tennyson got on a train and went east, to Princeton. To study physics. Doris of course went to a Methodist university down in Dallas, ostensibly to study English literature and the Good Book, but those who knew her best knew she was more likely going to look for fresh meat. She had matured into a young woman of almost surreal beauty, but there was something quite unattractive lurking under the surface of her Patrician features.

Princeton was as different from California as Bill Tennyson had hoped. There were no subtle racisms and class distinctions, nor were parochial attitudes in fashion, and because of current events, there was a sense that the world stood on the precipice of something horrendous. Europe was falling into the labyrinth once again, but so too was Japan, while many at home simply chose to look away. 

And for the first time in his life, Bill Tennyson wasn’t the smartest kid on campus. He was, in a sense, one among many, yet even so a handful of Tennyson’s more observant professors took note of his keen sense of curiosity, something deeper that his quiet, studious nature often obscured. Yet he was even here a kind of Golden Boy, still the quarterback but now he was more the blond haired and blue eyed All American jock. Girls in town took note of him, yet he remained curiously uninterested.

All this came to a head in the summer of 1940, when the Luftwaffe appeared high over the English Channel. When the despair of the Great Depression, which had for a time given way to a fashionably virulent isolationism, finally took note of the disastrous events unfolding in Europe and Japan. Now, as a result of rumors emanating from Copenhagen and Heidelberg, big ideas were brewing deep within the scientific community at Princeton.

And so, soon enough and as William Tennyson’s luck would have it, the All American kid came to the attention of a peculiar, rather otherworldly old man. The old man was a Jew, and a recent émigré from Germany who had only just become an American citizen. An older man, and a physicist of some modest repute. His name was Albert Einstein, and the old man promptly cast a spell on Tennyson.

Under Einstein’s tutelage Tennyson continued as a graduate student at Princeton, but he soon departed for mysterious places with names like Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. The boy became so deeply enmeshed in the universe of numbers that the true dimensions of the universe began to fade away.

+++++

Not one of Bill Tennyson’s friends knew what he had done during the war, only that when he returned home after Japan’s surrender, he came home wearing the uniform of a full colonel in the Army Air Force, complete with the wings of a pilot. He came home a pale, gaunt shadow of his former self, and while he never spoke of his experiences during the war, he tended to drink now, and much more than was considered fashionable. He usually drank scotch whisky, and often before five in the afternoon.

They also noted that their old friend was working for an aircraft company that had just opened a massive new plant in Burbank, and this company was also constructing a truly huge facility up in the desert, on an ancient, dry lake lakebed. Yet no one really knew anything about what Bill was working on, because no one who worked for that company ever talked about what they did. 

So of course people were beginning to talk.

From time to time all the old gang got together and the boys cooked steaks on grills in their backyards and the same girls made their salads and side dishes and everyone talked about the good old days before the war, and yet even then Tennyson was tight-lipped about what went on in Burbank or up there in the desert. He did, however, drink more than his fair share of scotch whisky, which caused his old friends to talk behind his back.

And it was at one of those infrequent backyard get-togethers that Doris Sawyer waltzed in and everyone ooh’ed and ah’ed as she sashayed through her moment of victory, because she looked just like she did in all those motion pictures she was making over in Hollywood.

And though William Tennyson had seen not even one of her movies, he could not ignore the look in her eyes.

Oh, those eyes.

+++++

The boy pulled the sheets up over his head and tried to make himself small, something he always did when he heard his parents yelling at each other. Something he did most nights these days, but he knew that soon the worst would be over. His dad would threaten to leave again, and his mom would say something like “Go ahead! Just see if I care…” And then he would hear his dad storming down the stairs on his way out to his car, then tires screeching as his father backed out of the garage and down the driveway. Tires screeching and then the shaking would begin, because for a few minutes his mother would laugh – until she began crying. Then he could hear her on the telephone and a little while later he’d watch from his window as she went out the front door and walked out to the street and got in a car with someone. And it was always the same car, a Jaguar. A little convertible sports car. Silver colored, and with a tiny light that came on when she opened the door and climbed in. When he saw the same man. An actor, a famous one.

His father returned a few hours later and he usually went straight to Ann’s room, and a couple of times he heard funny noises coming from behind the closed door to her little room. Claire would poke her head out of the doorway to her room and tell him to go back to his room, and even then he knew she was trying to protect him. But from what? He did not understand such things.

But he remembered one night for the rest of his life, even though he didn’t find out what happened until the next morning.

Because his mom didn’t come home, not like she usually did. She wasn’t in the kitchen, and nobody was making breakfast. Because she had died in a car accident that night, somewhere out on Sunset Boulevard near a place called Malibu, but he didn’t know that yet.

His father came to school later that morning and he was called to the principal’s office. 

Everyone was so worried for him, and that felt strange as he’d been scared to death – because being called to the principal’s office usually meant you’d been caught doing something very wrong. And he grew even more worried because in his experience the only person who’d ever cared about him was Claire, and she wasn’t there in the office. But his dad was, and that scared him more than anything else. And that was when he learned about what had happened to his mother.

And a few days later he’d been dressed up in a black suit, his very first, and he went to his very first funeral, too. His dad’s friends came, and a whole bunch of people his mom had worked with came, and while the boy thought he understood what the word death meant, he didn’t, not really, not until he saw her shiny casket being lowered into the earth. His dad was crying, and Claire was too. Yet Ann wasn’t, and at first he’d wondered why. She’d had an odd little smile on her face, and a kind of meanness in her eyes that he just couldn’t understand. No, he never understood that at all, though he never forgot that moment.

+++++

It seemed, for a while, that throwing himself into his work was the answer.

He had been tasked, during the war, with helping engineers at Boeing understand the theoretical dynamics of an atomic detonation, and how to ready the B-29 to stand up to the effects of the blast. But the deeper the team got into the problem it seemed that more and certainly more complicated issues arose. What was the optimal IP for the bomb run, what about the best speeds and altitudes for the drop? And egress? High altitude, or low? How would these effects change at various yields? Yet no one knew, not exactly, just how big the reaction would be, how effective the bomb would be. Dozens of physicists in New Jersey and Illinois were scrambling to come up with a meaningful set of parameters, but Tennyson knew that, at this point in the project, these questions were being reduced to a series of very educated guesses. Hell, it hadn’t even been known how far along the Germans were, or even if Roosevelt would use the weapon to hit Berlin first, then Japan, so balancing pressure waves and spar deflections had almost seemed premature.

And now, fifteen years later, he was still at it. The blast effects of the latest warheads, the big hydrogen devices, had barely been factored into the wing designs of Boeing’s first two jet-powered bombers, the B-47 and the much larger B-52. Further complicating matters, the B-52 had been designed as a high altitude delivery system, but now the Air Force was testing them at high speeds and at altitudes low enough to burn the ass off a prairie dog.

Tennyson was also teaching at Cal-Tech, while also working at Edwards Air Force Base on projects Blue Band and Quick Clip, the first real efforts to address the accelerated stress fractures and general wing fatigue that high-speed, low altitude flight produced. And just as the latest hydrogen warheads were entering service, further complicating his team’s calculations.

As these things so often are, what Bill Tennyson was not doing was attend to his children. He found it convenient to move from Beverly Hills to Pasadena so he could get to campus without fighting traffic, and Claire was old enough to notice the change in their new neighborhood. And Tennyson soon lost touch with his old circle of friends again, and within a year of becoming a widower he entrusted his kid’s upbringing to a series of English or Scottish nannies, each vetted by the FBI because of the nature of his work.

He drank more, at least until his drinking became a security risk, and then he turned to pills. Uppers and downers, reds and whites. Whatever got the job done. He never understood the trauma his wildly swinging moods left on his kids, especially Claire, but then again he just didn’t think of them very much at all. His work was simply too important.

In order to fully appreciate the nature of that beast, it must be said that he’d gone through flight training in 1943, earned his wings, and had even flown three missions in early ’45 – testing the first modified B-29s. In the late 1950s he qualified in the Buff, or the B-52, and flew training hops over the pole from Spokane to England – again, testing their latest wing modifications.

William Tennyson viewed his children as something of an accident, as needy little creatures he’d neither wanted nor needed. He viewed humanity as doomed and had convinced himself that bringing children into this world was an exercise in cruelty, and sometimes he even believed that was true. The women he met confirmed his bleak assessment of humanity’s future; each seemed like hyper-manipulative head-hunters, hedonists looking for a free ride and a consequence-free life along their way to endless money. Nannies came into the children’s lives and, while nice enough, most just wanted a year in sunny Southern California before moving back to the UK. Most dreaded working for Tennyson after just a few weeks, and all felt terrible for his children. Few were emotionally nurturing enough to make a difference.

Yet all the while, Claire continued her studies with the piano. At one point, when she was seven, she began writing music, and word of her abilities soon spread. Not merely gifted, her work was evaluated by musicologists and concert pianists, then famous conductors looked them over. One piece, a modest piano concerto, was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, yet through it all Claire remained quite grounded. Her most cherished role remained looking after her little brother, still protecting him from their sister Ann.

One evening she was sitting at the piano in the little den off the main living room, and little Bill was – as was most often the case – sitting on a small sofa across from her, lost within an impressionist’s landscape of shadows as she played the Clair de lune, which was his favorite piece of music by far. She played the piece slowly that night, oh so slowly, and it seemed she had never played with such restrained passion, or with such anguish, and he wondered why even as he fell into that place her music always took him. The Clair de lune always left him adrift, like he was floating in some ethereal place, a place not quite real, yet not quite unreal, either. It was like, for a moment, he existed in this someplace else, like he was falling through time.

“It feels like I’m in a field of flowers, Claire,” he told her once.

And she had nodded, because she had seen them too. “Flowers in autumn, in the moonlight,” she told him then. “Just before winter. Before the snow comes for them.”

Because even then, if only inside her music, they would come for him and take him to a safe place to sleep. To the sleep only her music gave them. Safe, because Ann couldn’t get to them while they were safe in their hidden sleep. Safe, because even their father couldn’t find them while they were hidden away there. 

Yet Claire knew the way.

In fact, the dream was remarkably consistent. As he fell away within the phrasing of her music, as the soaring epiphany of Debussy’s resolution arrived, in this dream he woke inside a landscape of searing white, white like the surface of the brightest moon, and Claire was always at his side, holding his hand. Her music was still beckoning him on, even though there was no piano in this place. 

And within moments of their arrival, the two were surrounded by what looked like giant pink butterflies, only these butterflies had faces. Human faces, or almost human. The eyes were different. They had owls eyes, golden-amber eyes, and small beaks where a nose might be. The butterflies gathered ‘round, hovering and inquisitive, and the first time they arrived it was as if the butterflies were not quite sure if the boy and the girl were real. The light there was so bright it hurt, the glare so uncomfortable he had to shade his eyes with his cupped hand, yet the air was comfortably cool, and gentle breezes caressed his face. Then the butterflies would come closer still. Air from the gentle motion of their wings came as Claire’s music had, but then he looked away and was soon adrift in the familiar warmth of his bed. His room was dark but for the light of a full moon, yet he really wasn’t in his bed and he wasn’t really in his room. No, just now one of the butterflies was next to him – oh, she was so close now – and it felt like her mind was inside his. She was wordlessly asking questions and he was answering, too, as wordlessly. Why were they here, she was asking? How had they come?

And he couldn’t understand the questions, or where the words were coming from, let alone the answers she sought. After all, this was a dream and dreams weren’t real, yet this didn’t feel like a dream, or even look like the dreams he usually had. And certainly didn’t feel the way his other dreams usually felt.

Then he saw Claire. She was there right beside him, and she was dressed just as she had been a moment ago, while she sat at the piano. 

So this couldn’t be a dream, could it?

But Claire didn’t look surprised, and that was what he remembered most after that first time. That look in her eyes. The look that said she had been here before, and somehow he understood that the weird butterfly people were her friends. They wanted to be his friends, too.

And that scared the hell out of the little boy.

+++++

Bill Tennyson started flying again soon after the move to Pasadena, “to save time flying up to the desert,” or so he said. He purchased a Bonanza and later a new Baron, a 56TC fully equipped for instrument flight. Pressurized cabin, four seats, very fast. He kept the airplane at Hollywood Burbank, and as his boy was getting old enough, and his legs long enough to reach the rudder pedals, he started teaching Bill Jr. how to fly.

But he soon noticed the boy seemed distracted all the time, like he just couldn’t concentrate. Though the boy almost seemed interested in flying, when his son was at the controls he seemed to daydream and quickly lost situational awareness. And he realized with some sadness that his son was a stranger.

Then the two of them flew over to the Grand Canyon one Saturday morning, and Bill Sr. flew them down into the canyon, following the course of the river for a while before climbing back up above the south rim and turning for the airport just south of the big National Park hotels there. He landed and then rented a car and they drove to the El Tovar Lodge, and they had lunch overlooking the vast canyon just beyond the glass.

Bill studied his son as they looked over the menu. He seemed bright enough, often even inquisitive enough to be a good student, yet his grades were poor, and all his teachers said he seemed distracted. Like he was daydreaming as he drew. some kind of alternate reality. Sometimes that reality seemed to have exquisite detail, so much detail it was alarming. They recommended counseling, and of course, treatment.

“What did you think of the canyon?” Tennyson asked his son.

But the boy shrugged off the question and looked away, off beyond the dining room.

“Bill, what are you thinking about?” he asked.

And again, the boy shrugged. “Nothing,” he did finally manage to say.

“No one thinks of nothing, Bill. Why won’t you talk to me?”

His son turned and looked at him. “Because we’re afraid of you.”

The words stung, and Tennyson looked out the window for a moment. “Could I ask why?”

“Why? You mean you don’t know?”

He looked at his son again, repulsed by the sight of the loathing he felt in his boy’s eyes. “No, I don’t know. In fact, I don’t understand anything about you.”

“How could you? You’re never around, and when you are you’re drinking and you get mean. So we hide, we disappear. Even Carrie knows enough to hide when you start drinking.”

Carrie was their latest nannie. Nannies had recently tended to last just a few months before fleeing in despair.

“Because of my drinking? You hide because of my drinking…?”

“That, and the things you do with Ann.”

Bill looked away, acutely embarrassed. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

His son looked away again, and though he didn’t like where this talk was going his father had started it. “Claire and I, we see you when you get on top of her. We hear the things you say to her.”

Tennyson stood abruptly and left the table, leaving his son alone with not another word said. He returned to the table a few minutes later to find his boy staring out the window, crying. 

“Would you like to go live with your grandmother?” he said after he sat. 

“No, not really. Not unless Claire could come with me, anyway.”

“All three of you. Together.”

“Then no. Not if Ann comes. Nothing would change.”

“What do you mean, Bill?”

“She twists everything, Dad. She makes everything bad.”

“How do you mean?”

So he listened as his son talked about how Ann did bad things and then blamed Claire. Or about how she set up him and then blamed Claire. He was specific. He told his father everything, and the weight of his words began to crush his father.

So Tennyson asked the waiter to bring him a scotch and water.

“That’s what you do, Dad. You start drinking that stuff and then you get mean. That’s when we hide. But I don’t have anywhere to hide here,” his son said quietly. “I just want to…”

“Where would you go, Bill? If you could go anywhere you wanted, where would you go?”

“Claire and I go there all the time. It’s safe there.”

“What? Where do you go?”

“I don’t know where it is, but we go there a lot. We have friends there, too.”

“I don’t understand. You don’t know where this place is? How far away is it? How do you get there?”

But his son just shrugged. “I think they found us. Or…they found Claire, anyway. She takes us there, with music.”

“What do you mean?”

“She plays a certain song and we go there.”

“She plays a song? You mean on the piano?”

“Yes.”

Tennyson was now convinced his son had experienced a psychotic break, but could two people experience the same events? Could they share a delusion? He didn’t remember enough psychology to discount such a thing, but his gut told him that, while it might be possible, such a shared event would be unlikely. His son was either making this up or something strange was happening, and he tried to remember if there was a psychologist available at work when he had a sudden thought.

“Bill, do you think Claire could take me there, too?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“You said you have friends there? Who are they?”

“I don’t know.” There was no evasiveness, no looking away.

“They don’t have names?”

“No. They don’t talk, either, but I hear their thoughts.”

Tennyson looked at his unfinished lunch, which suddenly looked very unappetizing. His son’s food was untouched. “You want to spend the night here, or you want to fly home?”

“I’d like to walk around here, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, let’s do that.” Tennyson paid the bill and they walked out to the pathway that ran along the rim overlooking the canyon, and soon both regretted not having heavier coats handy. “Damn, it sure has gotten colder,” he said as they walked along. His son pointed to the deep blue clouds advancing over north rim, and they saw lightning flicker there, and several seconds later heard the deep, rumbling thunder of colliding air masses.

“It probably won’t be safe to fly, Dad.”

“Glad I reserved a room. What say we try and go find a store that sells coats!” His son looked up at him and smiled.

“Might be a good idea. I think it might snow.”

The pinks and greens of the north rim disappeared behind white veils of slanting rain, and the air turned much colder as they walked along. More lightning, then the thunder grew closer, the warning wind blowing through the stunted piñon pines along the rim. They ducked into the old Lookout Studio perched right along the rim just as the first squall hit, and watched as the storm settled over the lodge, tall pines hissing and swaying all around them. A sudden sharp crack, lightning crashing down nearby, hair standing on end…

When the front had moved through, they walked back to the lodge in heavy snow and made their way to the fireplace under the massive timber rotunda.

“Well, that was interesting,” Tennyson’s son said.

“Interesting?”

“Yes. The colors, and the sounds. And especially the trees, the way they sound in the wind, because it almost seems like they were talking to each other.”

“The trees? Talking to each other?”

His son nodded his head. “Yes. Couldn’t you hear them?”

“I heard the wind in the trees, yes.”

“I think that’s how they talk to each other. And maybe they use different scents.”

“Interesting. How’d you come up with that idea?”

His son shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems like they need to talk, and maybe that’s how they do it.”

“They need to talk?”

“Sure. Everyone needs to talk.”

“So, trees are like people? They need to talk?”

“They’re alive, aren’t they? And maybe they get afraid too, like when storms come.”

“Were you afraid?”

“No, I think it’s kind of exciting.”

“When I was your age, I thought so too. There’s something almost magical about storms.” He paused and looked into the fireplace and, as he always was, he stared, almost mesmerized by the glowing embers under the flaming logs. “But you’re afraid of me? Right?”

His son nodded his head, and this time he didn’t look away.

“Do you think you could ever not be afraid of me?”

“No,” his son said, “never.”

“Mind if I ask why?” Tennyson said, but he was unsettled by the sudden, icy contempt he saw hiding behind the lonely boy’s eyes.

+++++

Tennyson had been assigned to Project Silverplate in August of 1943, just days after it was formally authorized, and for the next two years he shuttled endlessly between the Naval Proving Grounds in Dahlgren, Virginia, to the labs at Los Alamos, New Mexico, as well as the engineering offices at Boeing in Seattle, Washington. As time passed, he spent more and more time at the Boeing B-29’s production facility located at the Martin Aircraft plant at Offut Field, just south of Omaha, Nebraska.

Initially assigned to work on strengthening the -29’s wings, he soon determined that the original wing’s structure could handle any loads from the blast waves of an aircraft flying above 20,000 feet. The physical size of the first two bombs, however, dictated major redesigns of the aircraft’s bomb bay and release mechanisms, while the safeties required to arm the weapons were also proving troublesome.

Two years later, flying 31,000 over southwest Japan, Tennyson crouched between the co-pilot and flight engineers’ seats in the Necessary Evil, one of three B-29s flying that first mission, photographing the fused air-burst 1,600 feet above Hiroshima. A film crew recorded the event just a few meters away, and the blast effects were minimal so high above the city. It was a Monday morning at 8:15, and Tennyson looked down on the city of 345,000 as his B-29 flew in a loose formation beside the Enola Gay; he blinked and turned away as the image of that blinding flash seared itself into memory. He had no way of knowing that 70,000 human beings had passed in that instant, and that over the next several years more than twice that number would die from the effects of radiation and indirect blast damage – but he’d had the presence of mind to take several images of both the blast and the Enola Gay’s structural reactions in the seconds after, so in the end he’d considered the day modestly productive. He never considered the moral implications of the mission.

Perhaps that was naive.

+++++

Tennyson and his son returned to Burbank, and to their home in Pasadena, the next day, and once again his son seemed only modestly interested in flying the aircraft. The Baron has an immensely strong airframe, and has an unusually stout wing assembly. Taking note of little Bill’s apparent boredom as they flew above the Mojave, Tennyson gently pushed the nose over and advanced the throttles, and when the Baron’s airspeed hit 180 knots indicated he applied heavy right aileron – and held the yoke hard over until the Baron was flying inverted.

His son screamed – not with terror but with pure joy – and Tennyson rolled out and pushed the nose over…until they were flying above Palm Springs, California so low that the police were called by several alarmed homeowners. Then back on the yoke and back up into the clouds, the G forces so heavy his son could hardly move his arms. Tennyson slalomed between puffy white cumulus clouds, then slammed into a few and he could see the goosebumps form on his son’s forearms as icy cold mist coursed through the little aluminum air vents on the overhead panel. They flew over their house in Pasadena before settling down and landing in Burbank, and by the time the dust settled that afternoon little Bill was certain he wanted to be a pilot, too. 

Just like his dad.

Just like his dad.

+++++

Bill Jr., just like his sisters, attended to the Chandler School before moving on to San Marino High School. He was the only freshman in high school with a pilot’s license, and when his senior year began he was a certified flight instructor, or CFI. And he had his own airplane, a ten year old Beech Bonanza that his father gave him on his sixteenth birthday, and soon he spent most of his free time giving lessons to friends. In the process he built hours and hours of flight time, and when anyone bothered to ask what he wanted to do after college all Bill Jr would say was “Fly.”

Just like his dad.

Claire had, on the other hand, disappeared deeper and deeper within her music, and she visited the butterfly people whenever they called out to her. Bill, however, began to distrust them, to distrust their very existence. To do so, he had to doubt his perception, the very nature of the world he’d known and thought he understood, but there soon came a time when he was no longer able to believe all that had ever happened. If he’d asked himself when that happened, he might have admitted that his trip to the Grand Canyon marked his turning away. And, he had to admit, the Grand Canyon had become something like his spiritual center, if he’d been willing to admit that there was indeed something like a spiritual existence.

But while the canyon always seemed to pull at him, he never once considered why.

When he first started his formal pilot training, he did his very first solo cross country flight from Hollywood-Burbank to the little airport near the South Rim, where he’d first flown with his father. When, a few years later, he flew with friends he usually took them there, dipping down low and flying along the course of the Colorado River before landing at the same airstrip. Claire had, by his last year of high school, been studying music on a more formal level, first in Boston and then in New York, so one Thanksgiving he flew all the way across the country to celebrate the occasion with her at their grandmother’s place on Martha’s Vineyard.

No one was very surprised when Bill Jr was appointed to Annapolis, nor were they caught off-guard when he went to Pensacola to earn his wings. The family came to Florida for his graduation, and for the celebration that followed, and while Bill Jr wasn’t so surprised by the way his sister Ann hung on his father’s arm, he was dismayed to find that Claire looked emaciated, almost skeletal, and her skin appeared almost yellow in some places and gray in others. He danced with both his sisters to the subdued music of a piano trio at a local country club, resplendent in his Service Dress White uniform, and when he held Claire she seemed little more than a wraith in his hands. His father beamed, so proud of his son that it almost hurt, as ever completely unaware of the lingering damage done to his firstborn.

A year later Bill Jr reported for duty aboard the USS Constellation, the carrier’s air wing then carrying out strikes and air superiority missions over North Vietnam. Two months later, Bill Sr received a telegram from the Secretary of the Navy informing him that his son had been shot down and was presumed killed. 

The truth of the matter was somewhat less clear.

II. Summer

A gray and green Lockheed C-141 touched down at Travis Air Force Base late in the afternoon, and as the lumbering jet taxied to the ramp William Tennyson watched impassively, just behind his two daughters. They stood just behind a low chainlink fence, noting that a hearse and several ambulances were waiting nearby, not quite out of sight. The aircraft’s massive wings, mounted on top of the chunky fuselage, drooped precariously, all four turbojet engines barely spooling as her pilots steered her to a stop. The rear clamshell doors parted silently and a massive gray cargo ramp lowered to the concrete ramp. The hearse from a nearby funeral home was summoned, then one of the ambulances; moments later corpsmen walked down beside the first of five stretchers, loading the first of the just released, and very ill, POWs into one of the waiting transports. 

At the same time, an air-stair on the jet’s left side opened and uniformed men walked out into the late afternoon sun, many shielding their eyes as they turned and looked for the gallery of waiting families just a few hundred yards away. But first the ambulatory men had to run a gauntlet of political dignitaries, then wade through a canyon of network television crews, and only then did the mostly Air Force and Navy airmen reach their waiting families.

Bill Tennyson Jr was in this second group, and when his sisters started waving frantically, Bill Sr looked at the line of men expecting to see a motley collection of stunted scarecrows, yet he was surprised to see that his son, his boy, looked remarkably healthy, if a little underfed. Indeed, many of the men looked to be, on the surface, anyway, reasonably fit. This was, however, the third, and final, repatriation flight, and this group had been held in captivity the shortest length of time. Still, Bill Jr had been at the Hanoi Hilton for more than a year.

The men, most of them aviators, had already been debriefed in the Philippines, and most had been “interrogated” by shadowy figures from one of the intelligence agencies, mainly to collect information on their treatment while in captivity. Some had needed emergent medical care, some just needed vitamins and antibiotics. All needed to see their families.

Bill Jr saw Claire first, and the first thing that went through his mind was that she looked far worse than most of the men on the airplane. Haunted, dark circles under her eyes, clothing that looked three sizes too big, and with her hair a frizzy mess he wondered what had happened to her while he was away. Ann looked like Ann, with her psychopaths darting eyes and faintly mocking smile still plain to see. Yet his father looked the most out of sorts, like time had worked a number on him. Or Ann had.

When he got close Claire ran into his arms and most of the families around them thought they must be husband and wife, but no, they soon saw that such was not the case. Claire was sobbing as she held onto her brother, and Bill ran his fingers through her hair and held her close. He watched as Ann looked at them, the same undercurrent of anger and jealousy in her eyes that he’d always seen. His father, however, wiped a tear from his cheek as he looked at his children – then their eyes met.

This was a moment of quiet understanding between men. His father’s eyes asked if he was okay; Bill smiled and nodded with his eyes, and that was all it took. After the formalities were over Bill Sr drove his family into San Francisco; they spent several days in the city before returning to Pasadena and they talked about everything and anything but the war. Claire was teaching at USC, Ann was working for a bank in New York City. His father was still teaching at Caltech, still working at Edwards Air Force Base, only now he was a one star General in the Air Force Reserve. He had briefly given up flying after receiving the telegram notifying him of his son’s death, only to start again when he learned his boy was alive. He was also currently working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on something he called the Deep Space Network, but he didn’t care to elaborate. Bill Jr shocked his father when he announced he was planning on spending at least five more years in the Navy, perhaps more, but his father wisely just nodded and smiled. 

He and Claire had walked around one afternoon while in San Francisco, spending time at Fisherman’s Wharf and Golden Gate Park, and while she talked Bill watched her closely. Especially her hands. She clinched her fingers up into a ball, usually when she talked of Ann or their father but sometimes when she talked about feeling alone, lost and alone, when she’d learned of his death. And how she’d almost felt reborn when she learned he was still alive.

She spoke in quiet, hushed tones, however, when she spoke of visiting the butterfly people.

“They told me you were alive,” she told him in a sudden rush of words, “but I didn’t believe them. The Navy wouldn’t have sent that telegram if they weren’t sure, but then they took me there…”

“They took you…where?”

“To your cell, at that POW camp.”

He’d stopped walking, looked around to see if anyone might have heard her, then turned to look at her. “You’re know how I feel about this, right?” he’d said with a scowl.

“I had to know if it was true,” she sighed.

“And you didn’t say anything to Dad?”

She shook her head. “You know I never talk to him about that.”

He relaxed a little, and turned to resume walking. “What else did they show you?”

“The night you were shot down. Taken prisoner. What happened to you after that,” she said quietly. “Colonel Thao. What he did to you, to all of you.”

He stiffened but nodded. “He’s evil. I always hoped that somehow we’d bomb the camp, that he’d be killed. It didn’t matter if I got killed. Only that the bastard died in the most painful way imaginable.”

“I know. They showed me some of the things he did.”

“To me?”

“Yes. And to a few of the others. And some of the guards you talked to.”

“They weren’t all bad, I guess. A few of the guards were almost nice, but we never knew if they were running a ‘good cop, bad cop’ op on us. Pretty soon we started communicating with each other in code and we figured out who the real bad actors were.”

“But Thao was the worst,” she said. “I sensed that. Why are you going to stay in the navy?”

“Because I like the life. Being at sea. Flying. Serving my country.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t look well, Claire. What’s going on?”

“The places they take me. The things I’ve seen.”

“Such as?”

“Stuff that hasn’t happened yet, Bill. Bad things. Bad people.”

“They’re letting you see…ahead?” he said, aghast at the very idea.

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Don’t tell anyone what you see, okay? Not even me.”

“You know I won’t. But…they were curious. They want to talk to you.”

He stiffened. “About what?”

“About what happened to you over there. They don’t understand.”

“I don’t trust them, Claire. I wish you weren’t so open to them.”

“Bill, I’m going to move here, to the City. There are others here. Others like us. I want to be close to them…”

“It’s dangerous, Claire. Who knows what their motives really are?”

“They just want to understand us better.”

He shook his head, looked away. “That’s what bothers me.”

“Don’t be paranoid…”

“Did you somehow forget what I do for a living? You know, like I drop bombs and kill people? Why would they want to know me better unless it’s to understand our capabilities.”

She sighed. “I don’t sense that, Bill.”

“What do you sense?”

She looked away, and her eyes became suddenly evasive. “Sometimes I think they’re judging us.”

“Oh, gee, and that’s supposed to be comforting?”

She shrugged. 

“I guess they think Colonel Thao is a shining example of our humanity…”

She grinned. “Maybe.” She turned and stared into his eyes, smiling again. “Or maybe they think you are.”

He had to smile at that, too. “Oh, man, if that’s the case then we really are in knee-deep shit.”

“Where are you going from here?” she asked.

“Whidbey Island, I think.”

“That’s where you were before, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. More of the same.”

“Then what? Back out to another carrier?”

“Maybe. In the debrief they told me they’d like me to go through instructors training, start training pilots new to the Intruder.”

“But Bill, the war’s over…”

“This one is.” His voice was flat, his meaning clear.

A shiver ran down her spine. “Is that all we are? Moving from one war to the next?”

“In the end, maybe it is. The old saying they keep drilling into our head is ‘someone always wants to take your stuff.’ Either someone stops that from happening or, well, I guess you know the rest.”

“Someone always wants your stuff. Wow. That’s one way to look at us.”

He nodded. “Maybe not the most flattering portrait of humanity, but I think it’s proven to be pretty accurate. But that’s what evolution means, kiddo. We evolve or, well, we don’t. If we don’t, I guess we disappear. I’d rather that didn’t happen to us, you know?”

“So, you keep flying…for how long? What comes after that?”

“Oh, you know, work for an airline, or run guns to South American revolutionaries.”

“You do know you’re lucky to be alive, right?”

He nodded. “It took some flying,” he sighed. “Wings shot all to hell, my BN bleeding out faster than our hydraulic fluid, two in the morning in a thunderstorm.”

“Did you really crash?”

“No, not really. I got the gears down and put her down on the first thing that looked long and straight. Turned out to be an unpaved road. Tore off a wing, big fire. I pulled my BN out just before fire hit the cockpit, and about that time it started raining police. They were pretty mad, too. I pulled a pack of Camels from my BNs flight suit and they mellowed down a little, at least until one of Colonel Thao’s goons showed up. Then the night turned kinda dicey.”

“You’re beginning to sound more and more like Dad.”

“Fuck. You’re kidding, right…?”

She shook her head. “Just don’t marry an actress and you’ll be okay.”

“Me? Marriage? I don’t think so…”

“Oh, you’ll get married, and soon.”

“Why? What makes you say that?”

“Well, you signed up for the War Corps, not the Peace Corps, and you sure didn’t sign up to become a priest…”

“How do you know I’m not, you know, a homo?”

“You? No way.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “I had to clean out your room after Dad got the telegram. Your collection of girlie magazines is safe, by the way. I boxed ‘em up and got them up to the attic before anyone found them.”

“Whew, thanks.”

“See, you ain’t gay, bucko.”

“Gay?”

“That’s what they’re calling homosexuals these days.”

He shook his head. “You know, there were girls in Annapolis, townies I mean, but it felt like I hardly ever left campus. Especially not the first two years.”

“I know. I got your letters.”

“Anyway, sneaking a Playboy onto campus was like grounds for expulsion, and I was either studying or shining brass til three in the morning and never had time…”

“You’re still good at changing the subject, Billy.”

“Please don’t call me that…”

She smiled. “I will if you’ll talk about girls and getting married.”

He smirked and then feigned anger but Claire wasn’t buying it. “I doubt Whidbey Island is a hotbed of action, Claire…”

“You never know…?”

“Yeah, I do know. I spent eight months there, remember?”

“So, call Pan Am or TWA, get a real job…”

“Actually, I need more time in jets. Like fifteen-hundred, two thousand hours more, maybe a lot more…”

“With your background? Seriously? Have you tried?”

“I haven’t really been in a position to do that lately, and besides, do you know how many pilots are hitting the job market right now? Just about everyone coming home is cashing out, hitting the private sector, and the Navy isn’t exactly clamoring for new pilots right now, either.”

“But they asked you to be an instructor, right? Why, Bill?”

He shrugged.

“Because you’re a good pilot, Bill. That’s why.”

“I’m sure you’re trying to make a point here, but I’m not quite sure what that is.”

“Oh come off it. The Navy represents the safe choice, Bill, and it also means you can put off looking for a girl a little longer…”

“Why are you so sure that getting married is the be-all of human existence? I mean, I don’t see any rings on your fingers…”

“C’mon, Bill, I’m not date-bait now and I never will be. You and Ann got Mom’s looks, and I look like I wandered out of Auschwitz…”

“You do not…”

“Yes, I do. Don’t be patronizing, Bill. Not to me, okay?”

“You’ll find somebody, Claire.”

“Okay. If you say so. More to the point, though…”

“I hear you.”

“Did you sign the re-enlistment papers yet?”

“No. No, they told me to think about it for a few weeks.”

“So, I’ll move up here to the city and then you can get a job flying out of San Francisco. We’ll bunk-out together, at least until you get your act together – and get yourself a wife…”

“You have a job up here, or what?” he asked, ignoring her last jab.

“Yup,” she said with a curt nod. “A teaching gig, a couple of offers from recording studios, maybe some concert work. I like it up here, Bill, and I’m really beginning to detest LA.”

“I always saw you ending up in Boston. You seemed happy there.”

“Because I was. But just getting away from Dad and Ann…that’s what really…it felt like a big weight was lifted from my soul, ya know?”

He nodded. “She’s not getting any better, I see.”

“She still has him wrapped around her little finger. Anything she wants, she gets. I think it’s called transactional psychopathy on the narcissistic personality spectrum.”

“Oh, swell,” he sighed. “So, if there’s a name for it, that must mean there are more just like her out there.”

“She’s a chameleon, Bill. Lots of psychopaths are. They show you what you want to see, tell you what you want to hear, because that’s how they understand the world. If they want something from you they watch and observe, find the chinks in your armor. Your weak spots, where you’re most vulnerable. Then they move in…”

“For the kill, don’t you mean? And let me see here, you want me to get married, right? No thanks, kiddo.”

“Your job is to find one of the good ones, Bill.”

“You make it sound like war, Claire. And I’ve had enough war…”

“Oh? And yet you want to sign up for five more years in the War Corps? Am I missing something, Bill?”

Both missed the Old Man walking behind them through the park.

+++++

Bill Sr flew his family back to Hollywood-Burbank the next day, yet the reality was that his son did most of the hands-on work. His son had not flown in almost two years, yet the still had the touch. The touch that defines a real pilot. Gentle, precise, confident. And though Bill Jrs approach was too fast and his landing hard, his father had to laugh.

“You do recall that this is not a carrier,” Bill Sr said as his Baron slammed down the numbers. “No tail hook, no arresting wires? No need to fly such a hot approach…”

“Oh yeah, sorry.”

“You’re going to have to get back into the groove, son. Every motion, remember…smooth…just like you got a handful of eggs.”

“Right, Dad.”

Bill Sr did the drive out to Pasadena, and he remained in a talkative mood. “You still playing golf?”

Claire rolled her eyes. “Uh, Dad, I don’t think they had many golf courses in Hanoi…”

Bill Sr rolled his eyes. “I know that! I was just wondering if he kept at it back in Maryland.”

His son scowled. “Not much time in school for that, Dad. Sorry.”

“You feel like trying your hand later this week?”

“Uh, with you?”

“Yes, with me!”

“Where?” 

“The Annandale course.”

“They finally let you in, huh?”

His old man beamed. “Yup, took a while, and some serious arm twisting, too, but…”

“Yeah, Dad, I’d like that.”

Ann looked distressed, Claire bored while ‘the boys’ talked, but then Claire realized her father was driving to the country club. “We going there now?” she asked.

“Just for lunch. Thought it might be a nice way to slip back into city life…”

“Dad, all I’ve got are my khakis. I can’t go out dressed in my duty uniform.”

“I don’t think, given present circumstances, that anyone there is going to put you on report.”

“Yessir.”

It turned out that Bill Jrs ordeal had been a pretty big deal amongst the membership, and quite a few were on hand to welcome the aviator into their club. Even the girls were tolerated, just this once. As he was still technically in uniform, Junior refused alcohol and was more than happy to slam down real, honest-to-god Coca-Cola all during lunch, standing and greeting each member as they dropped by their table. More than a few wanted to play a round with him, and it seemed everyone wanted to know what he was going to do now that the war was technically over.

But William Tennyson, Jr., found the whole day slightly unsettling. Not even a week before he’d been rousted from his sleep and told to vacate his cell. A few hours later he was walking up the rear loading ramp into a C-141’s cavernous cargo hold, and someone mentioned this bird was called The Hanoi Taxi. A couple hours passed and he deplaned into the oppressive humidity of Subic Bay, in the Philippines, but not a day passed and his group was off to Pearl Harbor on the next leg of their journey home. Two stretcher-borne men were unloaded while Hanoi Taxi refueled, then the jet lumbered off to Travis AFB – and home. 

But at the club, it wasn’t so much a case of culture shock as it was the complete lack of awareness among some of his father’s friends that there had actually been a real war going on. There’d been no rationing, no savings bonds or the image of Rosie The Riveter to drive it all home – as had been the case during the Second World War – and so hardly any reason at all for the country club set to pay attention to events in Vietnam…until he’d been shot down and reported KIA. Then it seemed only then had the war actually touched all their lives, and yet Bill Jr picked up an undercurrent of resentment from a few of these men. It was like they’d been perfectly content to ignore this war, like the sacrifices endured by so many actually meant very little to them, and his presence among them was not simply an unpleasant reminder, it was also an unwelcome repudiation of their comfortable ambivalence.

Claire picked up on the vibe, too. And so of course she had to comment.

“This war was different,” she sighed as she clasped his hand after an especially obsequious yet unmistakably snarky man his father’s age dropped by their table. All the fat man wanted to know was what Bill planned to do now that he was home. When Bill mentioned returning to the Navy the man had literally sneered before walking off, shaking his head in disbelief. She continued as they watched the fat man disappear: “There wasn’t a Pearl Harbor moment, just Walter Cronkite reading off body counts night after night before droning on about Kissinger’s latest failed attempts to get the North Vietnamese back to Paris.”

“To Paris?” he asked, clearly confused.

“The so-called peace talks were held there,” his father grumbled. “Damn shame. They never turned you boys loose to take it to them. We could’ve bombed them back to the Stone Age in one night, but neither Johnson nor Nixon had the balls for that. Instead, we sent fifty thousand young men to an early grave…”

Claire shook her head. “Dad, I think the North Vietnamese buried a few million of their people as a result of our involvement in their civil war…”

“Oh, Claire, don’t give me that Jane Fonda crap. That bitch was wrong to go over there, wrong to get involved when our boys were fighting there.”

“Dad,” Claire continued, “I think she was trying to stop our boys from being killed.”

“Yeah? Well, she’s nothing more than a useful idiot. Another commie-useful idiot.”

Claire turned to her brother. “Sure you don’t want something stronger?” she asked as she downed her third Bloody Mary. “God, I hate this place,” she muttered under her breath.

They played four rounds of golf over the next week, the first two in a wheezing Cushman golf cart, the next two on foot, and oddly enough Bill Jr found himself enjoying the exercise immensely, despite the overwhelming smog in the air. He talked to the retention officer up at Whidbey Island NAS a couple of times, between talks with TWAs personnel office at their flight academy outside of Kansas City. They wanted to fly him out for an interview, and both Claire and his father were ecstatic. Ann scowled then hopped on her broomstick and returned to New Jack City.

So he went to Kansas to have a look around, and a line captain showed him their new simulator facilities, including one of the first full-motion simulators in the world. After two days at the facility they offered him a position: First Officer (trainee) on the brand new L-1011. The whole situation was too good to be true, and everyone at the academy knew it. Yet they gave him 24 hours to accept or decline the offer, and the patient old line captain explained the facts of life to Bill – off the record, of course – which went something like: “You do know that if you decline the offer you’ll never get another chance at TWA.” And, oddly enough, that clinched the deal for Tennyson. Not only was the money good, but the routes he’d get to fly sounded interesting – especially after his life behind bars in Hanoi.

Flying the L-1011, the captain told him, would mean being based in New York and flying to either London, Paris, or Frankfurt, and possibly Rome and Athens in the near future. On a personal level, the job also meant a serious salary with one of the best airlines in the world. He’d be in training for months and if he washed out he wouldn’t be able to crawl back to the Navy, but the stress of flight instruction had never been a problem for him before. 

So, he sat in the parking lot outside the flight academy for a few minutes, mulling over his options, and his future, then went back in and signed on the dotted line. The next class started in three weeks and never once looked back.

Because looking back wasn’t in his nature.

With his future out of the way, he flew up to Seattle and signed all the relevant paperwork and was as suddenly a civilian again. Yet…when the reality of that moment actually hit him, he felt almost lost – and maybe even a little alone – for perhaps ten minutes.

+++++

And, perhaps not coincidentally, the dream started that night, during his last night in Seattle.

As sleep came he was soon back in his cell. The smallest details were present, like unwelcome visitors from the darkest recesses of memory: the tiniest slit of a window high up on the beige brick wall. Thick iron bars rusting on the ends, the blue-grey paint turning mottled red. The gray paint on the iron door peeling, the damp concrete floors slick with blue-green mildew that felt like cold snot. A single lightbulb dangling from a long cord in a round caged enclosure suspended from the dank timbered ceiling high overhead, the light too high to reach – so casting too little light to see the cockroaches in the shadows. A sleeping mat rolled up on the floor in one corner, an old wood bucket in another. Nothing else. No sink. No running water. No toilet but for the bucket, which if he behaved he would be allowed to empty – once a week.

As his dream came he looked around and began to cry. ’Nothing else but me in that hole. And I lived there for how many years?’

Wasted years. Years of pain, the isolation more painful than the pain Colonel Thao inflicted almost daily. Sadistic pain, pain with no purpose. And even in the dream he felt the pain.

But then she was there, in the cell beside him. The tall pink butterfly with the owl’s eyes.

Talking to him. Examining his wounds. Then treating him. Always the empathy and compassion of a friend.

The next morning after that happened the guards had been stunned by his appearance, and they wanted to know the how and the why of it, yet most of all the who. Who had treated him? Colonel Thao had been promptly summoned, another savage beating followed, and that time he was sure the bones around his left eye had fractured.

And that night she came to him again. She asked questions, she treated his wounds, and the next morning the exasperated guards summoned the colonel – again. Another savage beating – but this time the butterfly hovered unseen just above the colonel, and each bloody wound disappeared almost as soon as it was inflicted. The colonel and the guards were staring in mute disbelief, then they shrunk back against a wall, regarding him suspiciously – like he was something other than human.

Then the colonel began asking even more pointed questions.

“How you do this? This not normal…”

And then in the dream Thao takes out a machete and hacks off his arm, and all his tormenters jump back when his severed arm floats through the and reattaches itself. Then Thao hacks off his head, and he watches from within his own severed head as it rolls on the floor before it drifts back up and reattaches itself to his sundered neck. Thao pulls out a revolver and shoots him in the face, and the bullet bounces off his forehead and falls harmlessly to the damp floor. He looks at Colonel Thao, his eyes full of pity as he regards the poor man lost inside all his hatreds, then he looks up at the pink butterfly and smiles. She smiles back, and in his mind she tells him that he is learning well, that he is making good progress.

“What?” Bill Tennyson said as he woke up. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you were making progress, in your classwork?” his father said again. “You sounded kind of dejected on the phone.”

“Oh. I had a ding on my last check-ride.”

“Altitude hold again?”

Bill Jr nodded. When flying an instrument approach you have to hold your assigned altitude to  within plus or minus fifty feet, and blowing past those limits was a major error, a ding. And it was three strikes and you’re out, too. “Yeah, but it was a simulator check so it didn’t count.”

“Everything counts on a check ride, son. Don’t you ever forget that.”

“I know, I know.”

“I hope you do. When’s your next hop with the examiner?”

“Friday.”

“You’re done with all your classwork? Exams all signed-off?”

“Yup.”

“Know your scores yet?”

He nodded. “No mistakes. One hundred percent. But turns out that’s normal here.”

“No surprise there. TWA has the best pilots in the industry. Any boys from the Navy in your class?”

“A few. Some Air Force pukes, too. A couple of civvies made the cut, and there’s crew training for Air Force One here, too.”

“Really? They’re training with you guys?”

“Same building. They’re using the new full motion 707 simulators. Well, like you said, TWA is the best.”

His father nodded as he carefully watched his boy. “You look tired. Sure you have time to grab dinner?”

“Yeah. There’s a decent place not far from here. Huge ribeyes. I mean like 40 ounces.”

“You’ve got to be kidding…”

“No sir, but I’m not sure who orders ‘em.”

“Fat slobs marching headlong to their early grave, that’s who…” his dad snarked.

‘An early grave…now why does that click?’ the little voice in his head asked. ‘Didn’t Thao say that to me once? That he was going to send me to an early grave…?”

Or had he said that in the dream?

They ending up at an old honky-tonk downtown that served pretty good barbecue: “Legendary!” proclaimed the  hand-paintedmenu posted above the counter. He ordered a root beer and his old man drank iced tea, which was interesting even if he didn’t ask his dad about it. They talked the low-key talk of pilots, one-to-one, man-to-man and not the usual father son crap he dreaded, until then the subject of Claire came up.

“Apparently,” his father began, “she’s been seeing a shrink.” His father looked down at his hands and sighed. “Turns out she’s not doing too well.”

“What does that mean, Dad?”

“She, uh, apparently tried to take her own life.”

“What? When did this happen?”

“Last week. Saturday, actually. Apparently she, uh, took some pills, then called a friend to talk. Fortunately this friend called the paramedics.”

“Where was she?”

“Home. Her bedroom.”

“Where were you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“At the club.”

“And Ann?”

His dad looked away. “She was home, too.”

Bill Jr didn’t know what to say, but he felt his anger boiling over. “Dad, are you even aware of how Ann plays you. How she sets up Claire to take the fall, and how you always get sucked into her dramas?”

His father nodded his head, but he did not look up to meet his son’s eyes. Maybe he already knew what he’d find, but his son had had enough. “I need to fly home. Where is she, Dad?”

“No. You need to stay here. Finish what you’ve started. If you bail now you’ll be lucky to find a job flying cargo in Africa.”

“So, is this why you came? To tell me and then…”

Again, his father just nodded his head. “You finish here in ten days. Claire should be home by then, and…”

“Why was Ann home, Dad?”

“She had business downtown. She frequently does, you know, and she usually stays at the house.”

“I don’t want her around, Dad. Not when I’m there.”

“You hate her, don’t you?”

“Yeah, since the first time she tried to kill me.” Bill Jr suddenly felt ill, because now he wasn’t sure of his father’s reasons for being here. “You know, Dad, sure, you could say I hate her, but that really just barely scratches the surface.”

“She tried to kill you?”

“Oh come on, Dad…” Bill sighed, then he recounted all the times she tried, and finally spelled out his father’s role in enabling Ann’s schemes, and William Tennyson listened to it all, then stood and walked out to his rental car. Bill followed, and got in the passenger seat while his father fumbled about for the car keys.

“You want me to drive?” he finally asked his shaken father.

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”

“You never listened, Dad. I don’t think you could hear us, because Ann’s always had you wrapped around her little finger. But the worst part was, or is, that you seem to like it that way. Claire and I learned not to talk about it a long time ago – because that only made things worse.”

“So, what, you two just suffered in silence? Was I that bad a father?”

“I can’t answer that one, Dad.”

“But I can. Right? Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

“More like I’m telling you to take a long look in the mirror, Dad. Ann is your poison. She’s been poisoning you all her life. To get what she wants, even if she doesn’t really know what she wants.”

“Just to control me. I’ve known that, I’ve always felt that coming from her.”

“And yet you played along, didn’t you?”

“I know you won’t understand this, son, but I never felt like I had any self control when I was around her. It’s like she has this power…over me. I can’t…I can’t resist her, Bill. I’ve thought of all the ways I might have, but when she comes at me all my resolve just disappears…”

“Is it sexual, Dad?”

His father stiffened but then, recognizing imminent defeat, he just wilted away and nodded. “Even when she was little, Bill, she knew all the right buttons to push, all the soft parts to exploit. I’ve…I’d never been around anyone like her.”

“Was Mom like that?”

His father shook his head. “She was manipulative, sure, but your mother was nothing like Ann. Ann is…”

“She’s evil, Dad.”

His father nodded. “Whatever happens, son, don’t ever trust her. It’ll look like she’s coming at you from one direction, and the next she’s coming at you from the other, usually from behind. And she knows how to hit you when you’re not looking.”

“What did she do to Claire this time, Dad?”

His father shrugged, then looked ahead – his eyes lost and alone. “I don’t know. Perhaps this doctor will get to the bottom of it.”

“Where’s Ann now?”

“Mexico City I think. The bank is opening a new branch there.”

“And so she’s still fucking her way to the top.”

His father turned to him and sighed. “Finish what you’ve started, Bill. What’s done is done. I’m going to try and put things right, between Claire and me. She was looking at a place up in The City, and I think I’ll go up and get that arranged.”

Bill shook his head knowingly, because in his father’s moral universe money always set things right. Screw up your daughter, buy her a house. Or a car, or a horse, or whatever else might purchase a clear conscience. No guilty conscience meant absolution with no lingering aftershocks. So QED, that problem solved. Call the pro at the club and set up a tee time for the next round. Move on. Never look back.

Like father like son.

+++++

The idea of living in the same city as Ann proved an insurmountable hurdle; he simply could not, so would not do it – yet he had a difficult time coming up with an excuse that the crew billeting people would swallow. When he explained his dilemma to Gene Jenkins, one of the captains he regularly flew with, the old timer recommended getting a place out on Long Island: “Easier commute and no need to go into the city, so no need to think about her.”

“But like…where?” 

“Oh, there are some apartments near JFK, but you ought to try and rent a house. Prices are not to bad in Rosedale right now, and every now and then a duplex comes up over by Springfield Park. Nicer still if you don’t mind the commute, check out Oyster Bay up on the north shore. A little more money but a better investment, and I know a realtor up there if you want her number.” The old captain just grinned as he said that, but Tennyson didn’t catch that.

“Where’s it…uh, how bad is the drive from there?”

“Oh, I guess you could drive, but it’s easier to just get on the train. Crew shuttle stops at the station in Jamaica, and as you well know the shuttle brings you right to the lower level dispatch office.”

“Oh? That sounds interesting.”

“Might work for you, at least until they start using the L-10 on the Logan to Heathrow run. Give it a year and I bet that’ll be up and running.”

“You think I should put in for it?”

The old captain shrugged. “I like New York, and I like flying out of Kennedy. And my guess is they’ll start adding even more routes in a year or so. Chicago and the west coast feeding to our runs out of both Kennedy and Logan. You’re a Southern California native, aren’t you?”

Bill nodded. “Family in LA and San Francisco.”

“Pretty good chance you could get a slot out of SFO. My bet is LAX will be 7-4s and 707s for the time being, or, hell, you just might like JFK.”

“Never spent much time around Boston.”

“It’s nice – if you know where to go, but it can get pretty rough if you wind up in the wrong neighborhood. The Irish on the south side…man…you talk about mean…”

“Oh? You run into trouble there?”

“You could say that, but when I was your age I was pretty rowdy.”

Bill laughed, if only because it was hard to imagine Captain Jenkins ever being rowdy – or doing anything even remotely fun. After they landed at Kennedy, Jenkins gave him the realtors name and number, and the old man even asked if he could call ahead, let her know he’d be calling.

“Sure, thanks. The sooner I can get out of that hotel the better.”

“You’ll save some money, too. Always put some money away, out of every paycheck.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“And screw you. And, oh, I’ll do the ‘meet and greet’ while you handle the paperwork,” Jenkins said as he grumbled his way past the flight engineer and out to the forward door to chat with the deplaning first class passengers. ‘Everyone hates to do paperwork,’ Bill sighed. ‘Well, some things never change…’

+++++ 

His hotel was a short walk from the Long Island Railroad’s Jamaica Station, so he hopped on the train running all the way out to Oyster Bay, passing through the old monied villages of Glen Cove and Matinecock along the way. It was a gray day out and bitterly cold, while the greens of summer had given way to the reds and golds of October, yet these low clouds seemed oppressive, like a harbinger of all the slush and ice that loomed in the winter just ahead. 

Soon the gated mansions gave way to more modest homes, then the village itself came into view. Colonial era houses and frugal fishermen’s homes now dotted the way ahead, and by the looks of many of the colonial houses they were the real thing. There were some Shingle Style mansions on the water visible in the distance, and big red brick ersatz colonial mansions dotted the closest shoreline. Then he saw a sandy beach on the left and a pond off to the right, even more modest homes and then boatyards and fishing boats resting in the harbor. The station itself was little more than a siding with bare platforms on both sides of the tracks, and as it was midday there was almost no one on the train so he was relieved to see a silver Mercedes 300D waiting for him in the station parking lot. As his train slowed to a noisy, jolting stop he saw a woman emerge from the sedan, and a rather handsome one at that. Rich. Cultured. And she looked bored as hell, even from a distance.

He stepped out of the warm train into the biting autumn wind coming in from the north, right off the white-capped waters on Long Island Sound, and right away he knew this place would be as cold as could be in just a month or two. 

And Gloria Betancourt was as cold as could be, too, and she wasn’t going to wait for winter to let him know. 

“You must be Bill,” she said, her voice dull, matter of fact yet pleasant – in a professional realtor kind of way. “Let’s get you in out of this chill, shall we?”

He went around and got her door and she seemed oddly annoyed by that, then he climbed in the right front as she handed him a slim file folder, with, he assumed, a few rental properties to look over.

“So, Bill, Eugene tells me you’re a First Officer, and that you’re flying with him from time to time?”

“Yes Ma’am,” he replied in his best navy ensign’s voice.

“I know your pay isn’t all that great right now, so why don’t you tell me what you can afford?”

That was direct, he said to himself, and the tone of her voice was not just a little condescending. “Oh, I don’t know, what do those big places on the water go for?” he said with a grin.

She smiled. “Homes here in the village are in the fifty to ninety thousand range. The houses out on The Neck and Centre Island are quite a bit more.”

“How much more?”

She squirmed in her seat, not sure if she wanted to put up with this much longer and wondering if one of the new associates in the office would take him off her hands, so she made some idle small talk while she wheeled the Mercedes through the village to her office. “Why don’t we go in and get some coffee, and I’ll have one of my associates go through the listing book with you while I make some calls.”

He nodded. “Fine. Lead the way!” He walked behind her, admired her shapely legs for a moment, until they reached the door to her office. Which was located in a little gray-shingled saltbox that had once been a house, neat and tidy, too, with a receptionist and a couple of girls his age on the phone. Gloria waited until one was free then introduced Bill to one of the girls, her name Liz Parker, who she described as “One of my bright stars!” Gloria added this with a knowing wink.

Bill sat and Gloria disappeared into an office, shutting the door behind her.

“So? What can I help you with, Bill?”

“How about you show me around town, take me to a few of the decent neighborhoods, show me things like libraries and parks, just things like that.”

“Okay. Sure, we can do that. You have a price range in mind?”

He shook his head. “No, not really. Just show me around, take me to a few neighborhoods you wouldn’t mind living in, show me the areas to steer clear of, that sort of thing.”

Liz was wearing a dress but, he had to admit, she looked like she was dressed a little out of character, like she was more at home in jeans and an old flannel shirt. He followed her out to her car, a mustard colored Ford Pinto, and he helped her in then went around and hopped into the car. He noted it was tidy and he tried not to watch her while she drove around town, pointing out the library on Main and then Roosevelt Park, “Because Teddy Roosevelt lived here!” then they drove past the high school.

“Wow, now that’s a monstrosity,” he said as he took in the massive red brick building.

“Oh,” she said, and he noted she sounded a little hurt by that, “why do you say that?”

“It’s a mesh-mash of incongruent styles. Gothic and neoclassical elements don’t complement each other, but the Tudor arches are over-the-top. It looks like the architect reached into his bag of styles and started randomly pulling out things…”

“Oh, are you an architect?”

“No, but I was really into it when I was a kid.”

“What do you do now?”

“I’m a pilot.”

“Oh? Like airliners, that kind of pilot?”

“Yes. I take it Gloria didn’t brief you?”

Liz laughed. “If Gloria thought you had any money at all she’d fly you to the moon and back. She figured you don’t, so here we are…”

“Do you have any listings of your own?”

“Me? Oh, just a couple.”

“Show me one.”

She laughed a little. “Okay. I’ve got a nice one, well, it needs some TLC but it’s still solid, right over here on Pearl,” she said as she flipped her turn signal and turned from Main onto Pearl.

“Now that’s an interesting building,” he said, pointing at the ornate Carpenter Gothic Revival building to his right.

“Oh yes, that’s First Presbyterian. I think the building is from the 1870s. And here’s my listing, right across the street.”

“Cute,” he said as she stopped and pointed to a gray two-story house. “Nice front porch. American Gothic. I like it. Can we see it?”

“It’s vacant, so sure…but it’s a hundred and ten thousand. Could you qualify for that?”

He nodded and shrugged at the same time, but then he turned and looked at her as he smiled. “You never can tell.”

“Okay, well, it’s on a lock-box so we can go right in if you want.”

“I want.”

“Okay.”

“So, tell me about it.”

“Uh…okay, right, well, we have three bedrooms up, two baths, one up and one down, and the kitchen has a great butler’s pantry. Great dining room, too. Really big with a great view of the back yard.”

“You said it needs some tender loving care? What’s wrong with it?”

“The hardwood floors, they’re in bad shape, and the kitchen needs an update. The appliances are pre-war, and the heating system is ancient. It’s an estate sale so the family might just want to take the money and run, if ya know what I mean?”

“You know the family…?”

She looked away. “Oh, everyone knows everyone around here, Bill. No one locks their doors. The mailman puts your mail inside the door if the weather’s bad. Kind of the way things used to be, I guess. At least that’s what everyone says.”

She seemed nervous as she walked up to the door and fiddled with the lock-box attached to the front door knob, and as he watched her shaky movements he wondered what was going on. “So. You went to high school here. What about college?”

She nodded. “Yale. Two years.”

“What did you think of it? College, I mean.”

She looked down, didn’t answer the question but opened the door and walked on in; then, without missing a beat she began walking through the living room to the kitchen, describing things in intimate detail as she walked him around and through the rooms, and she even pointed out a few of the special features.

The bedrooms were small, both bathrooms antiquated, and the kitchen was indeed in need of a total makeover, but Liz was correct about one thing: the bones of the house were solid and it was charming, and with a few judicious upgrades the house would make a solid investment.

Then once again she asked about his finances.

“You like movies?” he asked, and judging by her reaction the question must have felt kind of out of the blue. “I mean old movies, like from the 40s and 50s?”

“Oh, yeah. You mean like Casablanca and all those?”

He nodded. “Ever hear of Doris Sawyer?”

“Of course. Who hasn’t!”

He smiled. “Well, she was my mother.”

She wheeled around and looked at him. “No way!” she cried.

“Way,” he replied, smiling.

“Isn’t she the one who died…oh, uh, I’m sorry.”

“Not a problem. Anyway, she left us, her kids, money in a trust and my dad is like the world’s best at managing money, so the price of the house doesn’t bother me…”

She was growing wide-eyed as he spoke, then tears welled up in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked – just before she turned and ran out the back door and into the tree-lined backyard. He watched her standing out there, her arms crossed as she looked up into the pines, thinking it better to give her some space. So he turned and walked upstairs again and looked at the bathroom, in his mind drawing the perfect solution in the limited space afforded, then he looked at the biggest bedroom again. One tiny closet, and all three bedrooms shared that one tiny bathroom, as was customary in mid-19th-century homes. He could keep it as is or he could enlarge the bathroom and create two larger closets by eliminating the smallest bedroom, but as he walked around he found the proportions of the rooms kind of pleasing. They fit the house, and more importantly the character of the times, and in his mind it was better to preserve than to destroy. 

She was waiting for him in the living room by the front door, and he could tell she had been crying…

“Sorry about that,” she said reflexively. 

“Sorry…for what?”

“Look, I grew up in this house and I can’t afford to keep it and it’s just kind of hard to think of letting it go…”

“Been in your family a while?” he asked.

“Yup. My great-grandparents built it in 1878. My father grew up here, and me and my sister did too.”

“Why can’t you keep it? Your parents didn’t leave any other assets?”

She shook her head. “No. My mom ended up in a nursing home. I think that ate up all their money, and then some.”

“Debts to pay off, I take it?”

“Something like that, but look, ethically I’m not really even supposed to be showing this house to you. Technically it’s my listing, but Gloria should be showing it to you.”

“Will you get in trouble?”

She nodded. “I’m still kind of on probation, so yeah.”

“Okay. Why don’t we head back to the office and you tell her you drove me by the house and I’d like to see it. Maybe you can tell her about my mom and all that. Think she’d be interested?”

Liz smiled. “Are you, like, impulsive or something? You don’t even know the area, let alone what kind of people live around here…”

“People are pretty much the same wherever you go…”

She looked pensive, yet at the same time evasive before she spoke: “No, Bill, the people around here are different. Some are really different. You’ve got the locals, then you’ve got the people from the city who come out for the summer, or for a weekend, people like Gloria. They live in the big mansions and the live in all the little cottages around here, the rich and the little people who take care of the rich.”

“Yeah, like I said, people are people and that’s pretty much how things were where I grew up. Beverly Hills and Pasadena, and then there was Watts and South Central, so yeah, I know that story all too well.”

“Yeah, I guess maybe you do.” There was something in her eyes in that moment. Something he couldn’t quite put a finger on, but maybe it was vulnerability and loneliness. Yes, that described what he saw, or thought he saw, in her warm brown eyes.

“So, let’s go pull the wool over Miss Betancourt’s nose. Okay?” he said, trying to pull her out of her funk.

“Okay!” she agreed.

“And…one more thing.”

“Oh?”

“Could I take you out to dinner tonight?”

+++++

A week later he flew out to San Francisco after he got in from his latest trip to Heathrow. Claire was home. In her new home out beyond the Presidio. And she had called, asked him to come out because she was going shopping for a new piano and, she pleaded, she needed his help. He was dubious, but as soon as he cleared customs he grabbed a snack then ambled out the domestic concourse to catch the evening flight to SFO.

It was an oldish 707, the 320c variant with long legs, and as he wanted to sleep he declined the offer of a jumpseat and instead settled into a vacant seat in first class. He was still in uniform so quickly hung his company jacket up and slipped on a black cardigan, skipped the champagne and reclined his seat as soon as the gears were up. He woke up on short final, the strobes on the wingtips pulsing in low clouds as the jet descended in a light fog – which, he thought, was exactly how his jet-lagged brain felt. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes early. He nodded and shut his eyes and napped as the Boeing taxied to the gate. He waited until everyone up front was off then walked up the Jetway and sure enough…despite having told her not to, Claire was there waiting for him.

And this time she ran into his arms. Very upset. Very happy to see him. And maybe a little contrite for the whole psychiatric episode.

And she had come for him in the Porsche. His Porsche, actually, but he’d decided to keep it out here for now. She rarely drove but she just managed the car despite the stiff clutch, so she asked him to drive back into the city. Despite being tired he demurred and took off from the short term lot just outside the old Art Deco terminal building. He took the 101 through the city almost all the way to the Golden Gate, then turned south on Highway 1 before getting off for the last bit out to Sea Cliff, to her new house. The house the money from her third album had bought. It looked like an Italian Mediterranean villa perched high on a cliff 200 feet above Baker Beach to the right and Mile Rock Beach to the left, and, she said, when the fog was out you could just see the Golden Gate Bridge, which still looked red to her. She fixed coffee and they went out onto the patio and listened to the surf a few hundred below, somewhere down there in the night.

“Glad you could come,” she finally said. 

“For a piano? Really?”

“Yes, but when you see it tomorrow you’ll understand. It’s terribly expensive, Bill, but the sound board is magnificent, and the tone…”

“You know, you describe a piano the way most people describe a ribeye steak…”

They both laughed at that. She’d grown up with a used Baldwin that had seen duty in a West Hollywood piano academy as well as a jazz joint on the Sunset strip. And it was still in Pasadena, in her father’s living room. Right where the damn thing belonged, she liked to say.

“I think I’ve found a very special instrument, Bill.” She looked hopeful, expectantly so.

“Claire, you could play a trashed upright and it would sound special…”

She took his arm and leaned into him. “I’ll never be able to marry, you know. I need you too much to let a husband come between us.”

“That’s for damn sure. So, when’s the last time you ate?”

“You mean food?” she said sarcastically. “I have no idea.”

“Okay. Off to the kitchen. It’s spaghetti and meatballs time, kiddo.”

+++++

They drove over to Golden Gate Park late the next morning, just a little before noon, really. Bill was jet lagged and the additional change from the east coast to the west wasn’t helping matters, yet he’d gotten up before her and fixed French toast and scrambled eggs, then squared away the kitchen before taking a hose and a chamois to his car. “I’ve never seen so much dust…and salt! My God…the amount of salt in the air must be incredible.”

“Everything corrodes up here really fast,” Claire said as she helped dry the 911’s sloped front bonnet. “It’s the surf.”

“Hell, this thing is going to rust out before I put five hundred miles on it.” He finished buffing out the chrome then popped off the Targa top, and when they’d cleaned up and redressed they drove through the park to Lincoln Way with the top off, enjoying the autumn warmth. When they passed Kezar Stadium she told him to start looking for a parking space. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“There,” she said, pointing to a low slung storefront, the building sage green and with big windows illuminating the showroom within. And the sea-blue sign above the windows said Rosenthal Music Company + Copenhagen + San Francisco.

+++++

There were the usual entry level instruments near the front of the piano showroom, and even one or two Steinways, but Claire led him to a smaller room located off a dark corner. Finished-up rather like the typical living room in an upscale home, complete with a sofa and two sumptuous lounge chairs, there was an ornate instrument in the cozy room, lit by two recessed can lights set to an easy on the eyes glow that made the room feel like late night. An old man was waiting for Claire in the room, and he smiled when he saw Bill, then came up and introduced himself.

“You must be the brother I keep hearing about. William, is it?”

“Bill,” he said, smiling.

“And I’m Saul. Saul Rosenthal.” The man spoke good English but did so with a rather thick Danish accent. He was dressed modestly but, Bill noted, with the cultured restraint of old money.

Then Bill turned and looked at the piano and he was simply overwhelmed at the intricate detail he saw. Each of the three legs was formed by standing herons made of cast bronze, but the other supporting details were straight out of fin-de-siècle Viennese coffee house architecture, a style that, while similar to Prairie Style elements actually predated Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie ornamentation by several decades. There were hints of verdigris in the bronze work, and so many different species of wood had been used that upon first sight the whole seemed overwhelmingly complex. Maybe too busy. But he stood back and reexamined the instrument from different angles and suddenly it all made sense, all the design elements came together…

“This is, I don’t quite have the words,” he whispered as he stepped closer and ran his fingertips lightly over the various surface textures. “It almost feels alive. Tantalizing, perhaps. Like she’s waiting for someone to come along and set her free.”

Claire smiled and nodded to Rosenthal. “See, I told you he would understand.”

Saul nodded appreciatively at Bill. “So you did,” he said wonderingly.

She turned to her brother. “It’s the only one, Bill. The only one of it’s kind.”

“Do I even want to know the price?” Bill asked as he went and ran his fingers along the keyboard. He knew Bösendorfers were pricey, literally usually twice the price of a Steinway, but the sheer production costs of this piece had to be beyond stratospheric.

“Probably not,” Claire sighed. “I just wanted to know what you think of it.”

“I’d say she’s worth the price on investment grounds alone,” he said, “but how does she sound?”

“Magical,” Rosenthal said, his eyes twinkling as if he alone was in on an inside joke.

“When can you deliver it,” Bill said more than asked.

“We can get everything ready by next Friday, and I’ve outlined steps you’ll want to take before we arrive and set it up.”

“Such as?”

“Humidity control, air filtration, and I’ll need to look over placement in the room as well. The acoustics of this instrument are demanding, and so the placement precise.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She might sound flat if not placed just so, but I’ll know more after I examine the room.”

He turned to his sister. “Where did you want to put it, Claire?”

“That little alcove off the living room. The room with the view you like.”

He nodded as this little showroom was about the same size. “That ought to work. Sorry I can’t be here next weekend.”

“Oh?” Rosenthal said.

“Yes, sorry.”

“A pity,” the old man said. “Well, shall I go ahead with setting up the delivery?”

Claire looked at him, her eyes hopeful.

“Yes. Let’s do it.”

“Splendid,” Rosenthal said, leading them to his office. “Your sister explained that you handle all her business affairs. How nice to be so trusted.”

Bill shrugged off the compliment, taking the invoice from the old man’s hands as he sat. His eyes went round as he looked at the figure she’d been quoted. “This can’t be correct,” he said, his eyes now shifting to Rosenthal’s. “I can’t help but mention that I just purchased a house on the north shore of Long Island Sound for less than this. Is this the best you can do?”

Rosenthal smiled graciously and steepled his hands. “How about ten percent?”

“How ‘bout twenty,” Bill countered.

Rosenthal extended his hand, and Bill wondered how much lower he could have gone – but he could see that Claire had been mortified by his dickering. Which was, when all was said and done, why he was handing her affairs. He did the math in his head and wrote out the check and signed it, then handed it to the old man – who bowed smartly and slipped the check into a black leather wallet, and this went into a pocket inside his jacket.

“When will you be back in the city, Mister Tennyson?”

“I’ll see if my schedule allows something in three weeks.”

“I should very much like to see your reaction to the sound she produces.”

“I’m looking forward to that as well.”

As they left the shop Bill looked at his sister, at the smile on her face, for that was, in the end, what this had been all about.

Across the street an Old Man in a green loden cape smiled as well, then he tapped his ornate cane on the sidewalk twice and walked off into the park. Thunder rolled in there distance.

+++++

The dream that night was especially bad. Colonel Thao again, Thao and his hideous house of horrors. Thao, presiding so proudly, and so efficiently over the Hanoi Hilton. His prison camp, the misery he inflicted was his and his alone. He was the architect of misery. Misery made of blood and sweat as much as it was of brick and mortar.

Thao began again. The torturing. Pure evil, as relentless as it was pointless, as surely all evil must be. The beheadings, the astonished amazement as heads reattached, all of it endlessly repeating, forever looping over and over and over. Because in this dream, as in life, blood was never in short supply.

He woke and went to the kitchen for a glass of water and saw Claire out on the patio overlooking the rocky beach far below, standing atop the low stone rail that marked the end of terra firman and the beginning of the abyss. Her arms stretched wide, her face bathed in moonglow, one foot over the edge, indecision hovering over the moment like a guillotine, or Thao’s machete. For a moment he wondered if he was still dreaming, but no. This was real. This was really happening.

He walked gently through the open door and across the cobbled patio and reached for her hand.

She turned to him, her long brown hair streaming in the freshening wind coming through the Golden Gate, filaments of her hair backlighted and shimmering in the moonlight. He said not a word, then stepped up onto the wide stone wall beside her and looked out over the sea.

“Isn’t life spectacular?” she asked, her voice full of wonder.

He squeezed her hand gently and looked up at the moon. Suddenly he felt unbalanced but as quickly he felt her reach out and steady him, as always the big sister protecting her little brother.

“Come on,” she whispered. “We’d better get you down before you fall and take me with you.”

He smiled inwardly, knowingly, and followed her down to the patio. “I was going to get some water,” he said when they were both back on solid ground. “Want anything?”

“Coffee, I think.”

He looked at his watch and nodded. It would start getting light out in about a half hour, and he’d already packed for his flight back to Kennedy so he had time. “Coffee it is,” he said as he led her back inside the house.

“I hate it when you leave,” she said drearily.

“Me too.”

“Can’t you transfer here?”

“I might be able to but it’ll be a few years. And I do seem to recall buying a house back there.”

“You haven’t told me about her.”

He turned and looked at her. “Who?”

“You can’t keep things from me, little brother. Especially the big things.”

“I haven’t met anyone important, Claire, other than the realtor who sold me the house. I took her out for pizza and we talked for a while.”

“Is she nice?”

“She seems nice, but dark clouds line the horizon and I’m not sure I want to…”

“To take care of another crazy bitch?”

He chuckled. “No, no, I’m not sure I want to get involved until I’m somewhere I can settle down. And not until I can see myself settling down.”

“And…? What’s the most important reason? The real reason…?”

He grinned. “I know, I know, I need my big sister’s seal of approval.”

“Right you are! So, when are you going to bring her out here?”

“You are relentless, aren’t you?”

“I can see it in your eyes, Bill. I can see her written in your eyes, and there are like little footprints written all over your soul, too. Are they leading her to you?”

“To me?”

“Or to wherever she wants to take you.”

“Sounds awfully one-sided, Claire.”

“C’est la vie, Bill.”

“Tu as l’air si sûr de toi. Pourquoi?”

She shrugged off his question, watched him move as he made coffee. “Are you all packed?” she finally asked as he handed her a fresh cup.

“Yup. Last night. Want to drive me, or should I call a taxi?”

“Would you mind so much if I begged off this time?”

“No, not at all. I know you hate that car.”

She smiled. “No I don’t. That car is so you, Bill, and how could I hate that?”

“Maybe we should get something you can drive?”

“No, there’s no need. I hate driving as much as you love flying, and besides, I don’t mind taking a taxi.”

“Are you ever going to go out on a date?” he asked, raising the specter of some old, long simmering insecurities.

“No. Are you?”

“If the right girl comes along, yeah.”

“Same here,” she said obstinately. “But the problem with that, oh brother of mine, is that the right girl already has come along, but you won’t admit it.”

He shook his head. “Man, you are stubborn.”

“So, have you seen our dear sister yet?”

He shook his head. “Not likely. I don’t feel like going to prison. Again.”

“You’ll have to make peace with her some day, no matter how much the idea repulses you.”

“Doubtful.”

“Dad isn’t going to live forever. I mean, you do know that, right?”

“That tends to happen to us all, Claire, whether we care to admit it or not.”

“Oh, you could go all religious on us, prattle on about salvation and the afterlife.”

“Me?” he asked, his face impassive.

“It could happen.”

“And lightning could strike you in the ass the next time you walk down to the beach…”

She scowled at that. “Don’t be vulgar, Bill. It doesn’t suit you.”

“If you say so.” They looked at one another and laughed, then he finished his coffee and called for a taxi, and as the run from Sea Cliff to SFO was a pricey one, the driver made it out in record time. He went to his bedroom and got his grip, then went to the door to say his goodbyes.

She stood on her tip-toes and hugged him. “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” she said as she started to cry again.

“Let me know when the piano gets settled into her new home. I’ll shoot for two weeks from next Friday.”

She walked with him out to the red and yellow taxi, taking his arm in hers. “You never told me her name, you know?”

“Liz.”

“Liz. I like that. Bring her with you next time.”

He shook his head and grinned as he got in the cab’s back seat. “You’re never going to drop this, are you?”

“Only when you do.”

+++++

The next afternoon he caught the crew bus out to T5 and made his way to the dispatch office; he picked up the weather briefing and the anticipated fuel load-out, then walked through the terminal to gate 7, not bothering to check and see who was flying left seat that evening. The TriStar was coming off a maintenance check and had just been towed to the gate, and as soon as the Jetway was docked he made his way out to the closed door and then into the cockpit. First things first. Get the shore power online then the Carousel IV-Bs spinning up, ready to input their IRS settings, their Inertial Reference Settings that would tell the inertial navigation system where the nose of the aircraft was. The flight engineer soon walked in and settled into his seat behind the little desk at his station, then the engineer woke up all three primary electrical buses and checked power to the APU while Tennyson walked out of the cockpit and down to the ramp to begin his walk-around. Nose gear first. Check the brake lines for leaks, the tires for tread depth and pressure. Over to number three, check the fan blades then open the inspection door and get a light on the sight gauge, confirm oil and hydraulics for leaks. Head back to check the APU, then around to number one, and finally the mains. Fuel Boss waiting for a signature. Captain Jenkins coming down the stairs to check every item he had just done on his own walk-around, and as usual, the captain signed for the fuel once he’d cross-checked the load against the manifest from dispatch.

Passengers were loading when Bill walked back up the Jetway stairs, so he stopped and talked to a few of them, inviting a couple of twin boys up to the cockpit to take a quick look around. He let them sit in his seat and when Jenkins came in the old man told the other boy to take the Captain’s Chair, the left seat. The boys left a few minutes later, wide-eyed and talking excitedly to their grateful parents about how cool it was up there.

Jenkins asked the lead flight attendant where the boys were sitting, then he turned to Bill. “Once we get up to cruise and after everyone’s been fed, bring them back up here and let them see the panel at night. That always wows them…”

Bill smiled. “You opening up a flight school? Drumming up business?”

Gene smiled too. “One of the perks of the business, Bill. Opening eyes. You never know how big an impression you’ll make. Maybe turn a life around, or help a family through a rough patch.”

Bill studied Eugene Jenkins’ face as the old man spoke. He sincerely wanted to be an ambassador to the career path, and to TWA. What he was doing was priceless, quietly and in a way few corporate types could fathom. Bill appreciated that and let his Captain know it.

“So, Liz told me you bought her house on Pearl?”

“Yessir. Looks like we’ll close next week.”

“Janet and I have been going to the church across the street from you for a while now.”

“Beautiful building.”

“Have you been inside?”

“No sir, not yet, but I’d like to after I get settled in.”

“We’d love to have you join us one Sunday,” Jenkins said casually.

“I’d like that, sir.”

And curiously, with that said the old man relaxed a little. Had he now assumed his FO was a true believer? – and as Bill watched he assumed that in Jenkins’ world being a Christian was a Very Good Thing. “What did you think of Liz?” Jenkins asked a few minutes later, as they worked through the pre-engine start checklist.

“She seems, oh, I don’t know the best word to describe her, but maybe really sweet. We went out for pizza last week.”

And Jenkins relaxed further as he began to talk about her. It seemed that Liz was like family to Gene and Janet and the rest of his family, and she’d been their kid’s babysitter for years. She had been an integral part of many family gatherings, and had even been included on a couple of family camping trips through the church’s youth program, and Bill was getting a clearer picture of both this captain and the girl he’d asked out to dinner.

“Yeah, she went through a rough patch a few years ago. She dated just one fella all the way through high school, and when she went off to Yale he went into the Warrant Officer Training Program, went down to Texas and learned how to fly helicopters. Well, the boy went to Vietnam and didn’t come back, and then she went to pieces. His name, by the way, was Ross Betancourt.”

Bill stopped what he was doing at that point and looked at Jenkins. “Gloria’s son?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s a fact. And when Elizabeth’s father got sick Gloria stepped in and helped pick up the pieces. Helped Liz get her real estate license, got her working in the office. Janet and I took her to Paris last spring, anything to get her out of this dark place she’s been in. How was she with you?”

Bill told her about her brief breakdown when showing the house and Jenkins nodded. 

“That sounds about right,” Jenkins said, then he was all business again as the TriStar was pushed back from the gate and they went through the engine start checklists. Their takeoff and climb out were practiced, and as the airliner passed the southern tip of Greenland Bill went back and brought the twins forward. They took turns sitting in the right seat and looking at the panel all lit up at night really got the kids going, and standing there watching them Bill wondered what having kids of his own would be like. Settling down and starting a family was simply something he’d never given much thought to, and in a way he’d always assumed that was something he’d never do. And, he had to admit, memories of his parent’s fights had left painful scars, but watching these kids left him wondering: ‘It didn’t have to be that way.’ Watching Captain Jenkins interacting with the boys got him to thinking, as well. Jenkins was a natural. He had a knack for getting these kids interested, for sparking a sense of wonder, then letting the boys’ curiosity run free. He answered questions in a way that made the boys think about the next part of the equation. And, of course, Jenkins had Junior Pilot wings to give to them before they left the cockpit, and he even pinned them to each boy’s shirt.

“So, you have any plans tonight?” Gene said after the boys were escorted back to their seats.

“No, but I wanted to go to the Imperial War Museum, look at some of the Battle of Britain displays.”

“You haven’t been yet?”

“Nope.”

“I go there a couple of times a year, at least when I stay in the city.”

“There’s hardly enough time to do anything on these layovers, you know?”

Jenkins nodded. “We’re not tourists, Bill.”

“That’s for damn sure,” their flight engineer sighed.

“What are you doing today, Roger?” Gene asked.

“Sleeping. Twenty hours, nonstop. I just came in from Frankfurt.”

A half hour later Jenkins wiped some sweat from his forehead then shook his head as he turned to Bill. “I’m gonna hit the head. Your airplane.”

Bill nodded and donned his oxygen mask, put his hand on the yoke as the motor under Jenkins’ seat whirred and his seat slid aft, then he watched to make sure Gene’s legs or feet didn’t hit anything on the way out before returning his attention to the panel.

A moment later something caught his eye high and to their left and as he looked a great splash of green and purple washed across the sky. “Damn, look at that! That’s a bright aurora…”

The engineer nodded. “We’ll lose HF soon, I betcha.” 

That meant being out of radio contact until they were much closer to Iceland or Shannon, Ireland, but these blackouts happened frequently enough to not be a big deal. He turned back to the panel and noted their location on the inertial navigator.

“How far are we from Iceland?” the FE asked.

“About 270 miles, just about due south of there now. Why?”

“I hate it when the high frequency band is down, especially when we’re out this far.”

The intercom chimed. One of the flight attendants calling from the forward galley. 

“Yo,” Tennyson said.

“Bill, there’s something wrong with the captain…I think he’s having a heart attack.”

“Did you see if there’s a physician onboard?”

“There isn’t, not even a nurse.”

He turned to the engineer. “Roger, go check on the captain.”

Roger was out the door in an instant, and Tennyson pulled out the airway chart covering this part of the North Atlantic Ocean. He looked for Keflavik in his Jeppesen, then entered waypoints into INS-2. The intercom chimed again.

“Yo,” Tennyson said.

“Bill?” the stewardess on the intercom said. “Roger is doing CPR. I don’t know what to do.” The girl sounded stressed, not quite hysterical but headed that way.

“Make sure any passengers who’ve seen anything are kept informed and let them know we have plenty of qualified crew on board. And Betsy, keep it together, okay? That’s your job right now.”

“Right. Okay, Bill.”

He got up and moved over to the left seat and entered the waypoint data into the captain’s INS, then executed the course change. Next, enter Keflavik’s radio and VOR frequencies, and he tried Keflavik approach on the radio. Nothing.

Perhaps ten minutes later the flight engineer returned to the cockpit and when Bill saw his ashen face he didn’t even ask. He looked away and shook his head, then turned to Roger as he sat. “Get up here and start scanning, would you? We’re crossing the westbound tracks now.”

“Anything on VHF?”

Bill shook his head as he pointed at the waypoint data on the INS. “Frequencies are entered. Start checking again at 125 miles.”

The intercom chimed. Betsy needed help moving Gene’s body to the galley on the lower level.

“You can handle that, Betsy,” Bill said, cutting her off.

The TriStar was at thirty one thousand feet above the Atlantic, and he’d need to begin their descent soon. “How much fuel do we have?”

“We’re okay…we’ll be about twenty under our max landing weight.”

“Okay.”

“You doing okay?” the FE asked.

“Yup, I’m nominal.”

“Nominal, eh? Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

Tennyson watched as the VOR twitched, then locked-on to the beacon at Keflavik. “Try ‘em now,” he said to Roger.

The NATO controllers in the tower responded on their next call, and Bill advised the controller of the situation onboard. Current conditions at the airport were vintage North Atlantic winter: forty knot winds with gusts to fifty-five and a very heavy snow falling. 

“Keflavik, TWA 12, you have any clear runways down there?” he asked.

“Runway zero-two is open but marginal, currently with about three inches of snow over patchy ice.”

“Okay, can you set up a PAR approach for us?”

“Roger, precision radar approach approved. Will you need any equipment standing by?”

“Just a, well, I guess a coroner, or whoever you have available.”

“Was it a member of your flight crew?”

“Yes, it was the captain.”

“Understood, -12, I’ll get the latest weather updates to you in a minute.”

Technically, the L-1011 had the first FAA approved ‘autoland’ system in domestic commercial operation, but the Collins FD-108 Flight Director still needed accurate setup to function properly, and Tennyson didn’t yet feel like trusting the autopilot to handle a heavily loaded aircraft under such challenging conditions. He was used to working PAR approaches from his carrier training, and the command bars inside his main attitude display made following the localizer and glide slope an intuitively easy chore; all that was left now was to enter the radio frequencies needed.

“TWA 12, Keflavik approach, plows hitting the runway right now, estimate runway clear in one five minutes. Base medical will handle the transfer. Assume you’ll need to refuel, or will you be parking for the night?”

“Uh, Keflavik, we’ll need to call company dispatch but we won’t be taking off without a full flight crew.”

“Understood, twelve. Squawk 1244 and report passing twelve thousand on the inbound.”

He acknowledged and focused on the HSI, watching the autopilot’s inputs on the course deviation indicator, and he called in when the aircraft reached 12,000 feet.

“Roger, twelve, turn left to zero-two-zero and descend to seven thousand, report picking up the localizer.”

“TWA 12, left to 020 and descending to seven thousand.”

He watched the stars disappear as the TriStar entered the solid layer of cloud. “Okay, let’s get bleed air to the nacelles,” he said as he made sure the pitot tubes, the critical speed measurement probes mounted just under the windscreens, were being heated, as well. Snow was streaking by the cockpit windshield, the glass so cold the snow couldn’t stick. Company procedure was to use heat to slowly heat up the glass, to, theoretically anyway, keep it from shattering.

“TWA 12 at seven,” he called in a few minutes later.

“Roger, 12, come left five, descend and maintain five thousand.”

“Twelve, left five and 5,000.” He turned to the FE: “I think the glass is warm enough now to use full heat.” He then picked up the intercom and switched to ship-wide. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is First Officer Tennyson. As you know we’ve had a medical issue and I wanted to let you know we have diverted to Keflavik, Iceland. Conditions there are just awful, but we’ll be on the ground in about ten minutes. As soon as we know what’s going on with the remainder of your journey one of us will let you know. That will probably happen once we’re in the terminal, so hang on, we’ll let you know as soon as we can. Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for arrival.”

The aircraft pitched up and to the left as a strong gust hit, and after the autopilot countered with immediate inputs to correct, Bill nodded his head appreciatively. “Not bad, not bad at all old girl,” he said just loud enough to be heard.

The FE chuckled. “You do know that this old bird has about 400 hours on her, right?”

“Yeah, don’t you just love that new airplane smell…?”

+++++

A replacement crew flew in on Icelandic Airlines later the next morning, and both he and Roger returned on the next Icelandic flight to Kennedy. And they stood on the ramp while Gene’s coffin was loaded in the forward cargo hold, then boarded the DC-8. Almost everyone in coach was smoking pot and by the time they landed in New York he felt higher than a kite. They went straight to the dispatch office and were interviewed by company lawyers and investigators from the CAB and the NTSB. Later that evening he made it to his hotel, and he called Liz to let her know what had happened.

“I know,” she said. “Gloria told me this morning. Someone from the airline came by and told Janet, and she called Gloria. Do you know what happened?”

“No, not really, but we think he had a heart attack. He seemed fine up until he got up to use the restroom, and I guess it hit him in there.”

“There was something about it on the news earlier this afternoon. They mentioned you.”

“Oh, great.”

She laughed at that. “So, how are you doing?” she asked.

“All things considered, I guess I’m okay, but it hurts. Kind of knocked the stuffing out of me for a minute, but losing control ain’t in my job description, ya know?”

“I guess not.” She paused and it felt like she wanted to ask him a question…

“So, I know it’s not the right time to ask, but how about dinner?”

“When?” she asked, and he could hear the relief in her voice.

“Tonight?”

“Yeah, sure. You want to go to that seafood place?”

“Sounds good to me. I’ve got to shower so I’ll be out on the 5:40.”

She met him at the little station in her mustard yellow Pinto and she drove him east along the shore to the harbor in Huntington, to an old clam shack that had been there since forever and they drank frosted ‘schooners’ of ice cold beer and had fried clams and cod, and even though it was very cold outside they walked along the waterfront for a while, and he never pushed her to talk about more than she wanted. No talk of her boyfriend, of her relationship to the Betancourt family, or even to Gene and Janet Jenkins.

Indeed, she always seemed to be walking along a razor’s edge, with defiance on one side and a stuttering vulnerability on the other. After her second beer she loosened up a little, yet in short order she became brittle and then a little mean. Little sarcasms at first, with a quip about the ‘hero pilot’ rounding out their evening. She dropped him at the station in time for the last train into the city and when he settled into the seat on the train he felt a little relieved to have escaped intact. He decided that if he did in fact take her out on another date he would take her to see The Exorcist.

+++++

He drew up plans for a minor kitchen remodel and engaged a contractor, and after the house on Pearl closed he bought some furniture and moved in. Liz and Gloria came by early that evening, Liz hopeful and Gloria grateful, and they came bearing gifts of flowers and freshly baked cakes. He did his best to entertain them but in truth he was growing wary of Liz. She was obviously smart but had a mean streak, and the obvious parallels to his sister Ann were growing more obvious by the hour. Yet he’d purchased her family’s home, so…why? Had some part of him wanted her? As a mate? When that wasn’t a rational choice? Was buying the first house he walked through rational, or just impulsive? He had to admit there was a part of him that had wanted to impress her. Yeah, Liz, but maybe Gloria too.

And the thought bothered him. Enough to suddenly question all his motives.

He’d spent enough time in Hanoi to understand human depravity, and he’d been bullied by his sister Ann long enough to realize that some people were indeed born just plain mean, but he’d had very little experience with good people. Claire was, in her way, a kind soul, and her kindness resided in her ability to see and understand when something was wrong. He’d learned that from her, too, yet he had a difficult time seeing Claire as a good person. He now saw her as damaged and in need of help, that she needed someone to watch over not just her finances but also her general wellbeing. 

Watching Gloria watch Liz was illuminating, too. Gloria had taken over the role of mother-protector after the death of Liz’s father, and even as they walked through his new home he saw how protective she’d become. But…why? And why was Liz so vulnerable?

As he watched them he began to understand that both women were simply needy. As in: Gloria needed to be a mother, and Liz needed one. The dynamics of a caretaker and an invalid. Was the mean streak he’d seen in Liz a manifestation of that neediness, or simple resentment at having been shoehorned into that role. In other words, was Liz even salvageable?

But, he asked himself as they moved around the old kitchen, looking at his plans for the remodeling, why did he even care? Liz was cute in a way, but Gloria was prettier, more exotic. She moved with an assurance borne of living around great wealth all her life, and she dressed the part. Elegant and sexy best described her, like her Mercedes, while Liz was beginning to seem more like her Pinto. On the surface maybe reliable and cost efficient if rather plain – once you saw through her initial charms.

He offered them ginger ale and soon saw them on their way, then turned to unpacking the things he’d had shipped out from Pasadena. The Bell Telephone installer came out and hooked up his phones: one in the kitchen, two downstairs and two up, then he added a third in his bathroom because hey, you never know. One thing about being in the business he was in, he couldn’t miss a call from dispatch. He was wondering what to do for dinner when the phone rang.

“Yo,” he answered with his characteristic greeting.

“Yo?” Gloria Betancourt said. “Odd you would say that. Where did you pick that up?”

“Gloria? That you?”

“Yes. I need to come over.”

“Okay. I guess you know the way. The front’s open.”

A few minutes later her Mercedes pulled up out front and she marched in like Patton through Sicily and found him in the kitchen. She walked right up to him and kissed him, hard, her right hand burrowing down until it reached pay dirt. She had his belt unbuckled and his pants down on the floor and was kissing him ferociously, then she was on her knees, taking him in her mouth and not stopping until she had finished him off. With that accomplished she got his pants off and dragged him up the stairs like a leopard dragging a kill up into the trees, and once she’d thrown him down on his new bed she mounted him and didn’t get up until they’d torn each other apart.

To say he was stunned by her feral intensity and by the repressed nature of these events would be coy. And given that he’d been with just one girl in high school, and no one since, he’d had no trouble getting into the groove and staying in the game. They walked to the shower together after several hours and once under the hot water she tore into him again, both soon lost inside an insatiable lust that neither knew had existed – at least not until their heartbeats had joined. Yet what passed between them soon felt more like something trivial. He dried her and she redressed while he dried off, yet when he came out of the bathroom she was gone.

“Well, I will be goddamned,” he muttered as he went to the ringing phone. It was dispatch, and they needed him to come in.

“Of course,” he muttered after he’d hung up. “The perfect end to a perfectly weird day.”

Then the doorbell chimed and Liz was standing there, in tears. “Gloria was here, wasn’t she?”

“What?”

“Gloria. I can smell that bitch on you,” she said as she turned and walked out to her little yellow Ford. As she sped off she flipped him the finger, and he went upstairs to get a freshly pressed uniform ready to go, then he went back to the shower and scrubbed his face once again.

+++++

Rosenthal and Claire had placed the Bösendorfer just so, tucked in one corner of the study off the living room so that she could catch the afternoon light falling on the Golden Gate Bridge, and he had to admit that the Viennese motifs embedded with the various design elements seemed to go with the space. Even though there was an obvious Italianate influence in the home’s design, there was a see-through fireplace between the living room and the studio that contrasted nicely with the green slate floor, and that lent the space a kind of white-washed Bauhaus austerity. Books on mahogany shelves lined the walls and made for a subdued, almost muted acoustic environment, but that too seemed to fit both the instrument and his sister.

She had just finished her Fourth Piano Concerto and was practicing for an upcoming series of performances from San Francisco to Munich, culminating in a performance at the coming summer’s music festivals in Salzburg and Spoleto, and she had at first seemed busy and distracted when he came out a week later. Yet soon enough she noted the change that had come over her little brother.

“What on earth have you done now?” she asked after their usual pleasantries were over.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I know that look,” Claire added.

“What look?” he said, amused yet suddenly feeling a little defensive, too.

“Oh, kind of like the cat who ate the canary look, oh-brother-of-mine.”

“And is that because you have an overactive imagination, or what? Oh-sister-of-mine?”

“What’s her name? It sure wasn’t Liz.”

He looked down. “No, it sure wasn’t,” he sighed.

“And?”

“She’s the broker that oversees Liz, and who was the mother of her boyfriend.”

“Her boyfriend?”

“Helicopter pilot. KIA.”

“Oh, William. You’ve become heartless, just like our sister.”

That stung and he turned away. She reflexively came to him, put her arms around him from behind. “You can’t treat these things so cavalierly, Bill. Sex isn’t meaningless, you know. It isn’t about physical conquest. Or don’t you know that?”

“Claire, it was more the other way around…”

“Ah, the old ‘…a stiff prick has no conscience…’ defense. Really, Bill? I expected more from you.”

He explained the encounter in more detail, a little more detail than was necessary, and she backed off a little. Still, she seemed disappointed in him and he wondered why.

Then he asked her, point blank.

“Because like I mentioned last time you were here, I guess in my fantasy world you’d come and stay here with me, take care of me.” She’d watched the look of growing horror in her brother’s eyes and felt more and more isolated as he turned away. 

“You know, it’s not like it wasn’t bad enough that dear old Dad had a think going with Ann, but now you’re telling me…”

“No, I’m not. Nothing like that. I’ve always taken pains to keep the worst of Ann and Dad away from you, haven’t I? How could you even think that…?”

“Aren’t you asking me to spend my life with you? To take care of you?”

She turned away. But she nodded her head just a little, like now she was ashamed of the very idea.

He went to the entry and picked up the suitcase he’d just put down, and then he went to the garage and threw it into the 911s front boot. He looked around and shook his head, then opened the garage door and backed out the driveway, then out onto El Camino del Mar. Claire came out and watched him drive away from her house, then she smiled and went back inside – to that luscious new piano. She was sure she’d done the right thing, too.

After all, he was having such a hard time cutting loose from their past.

III. Autumn

The dreams grew less frequent, and with the passage of time, the shadows longer. Colonel Thao disappeared entirely. Tracy, his wife, became more important to him as time passed, as did his children. There appeared to be no purpose to his most recent dreams, indeed, they often felt like unrelated pastiches of lives that might have been but never were. Because there had been nothing revelatory hidden within his most recent dreams, at least nothing that he understood as such, so his dreams remained a mysteries with no solutions. Then one night he drifted alone on a calm sea and one of the pink creatures suddenly appeared and hovered nearby, just staring at him. He’d felt a cold breeze and turned to see volcanoes erupting along a far horizon, and in a panic he’d spun around in the water, realizing he was alone and suddenly painfully aware of his loneliness. 

A fin circled nearby, glistening black and smooth in the liquid sunlight. An orca drifted along lazily until it apparently decided to come closer, perhaps to check him out – and as suddenly the animal surfaced and he found himself eye-to-eye with a deep brown iris, the whites of the animals eye, the sclera, streaked with delicate capillaries, and he was surprised to realize that the animal had eyelids. Its eye was, in fact, just half open. Then he felt more than heard clicking and turned to see several more orcas, and they all seemed to be studying him intently. The pink creature was hovering above them, studying the orcas’ reaction to him, and once he thought the big creature nearest him was trying to tell him something. It had come closer, closer to Tennyson’s face, close enough for Bill to lean in and hear the orca’s breathing, the sharp thud of it’s blowhole opening and closing, and even to feel it’s heart beating to a mysterious rhythm all its own.

The same dream came and went over the years, yet the big orca always seemed to come close and study him. In a recent dream, however, he’d turned to the sound of the erupting volcanoes and the orcas didn’t appear. He turned and turned, looking and then hoping they would show themselves, but…no, they were nowhere to be seen. They had left him. And as suddenly he noticed that the sky was red and the water felt different. He looked up, up beyond the red sky and he saw a huge planet. A large, ringed, blue gas giant and he realized this ocean was on a moon, a moon orbiting the gas giant. And then the pink creature appeared and she was smiling almost lovingly at him as she hovered overhead. 

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“No? How long can I tread water?” he asked.

“As long as you must. Forever, if need be.”

And then he would wake, bathed in the cold fear of that distant sea.

William Tennyson, Jr., was soon coming up on his 20th anniversary working for TWA, and he had been flying the TriStar all the while. Captains had come and gone, some friends as well, and first officers too, but for better or worse, for richer or poorer, TWA had become his life. The glory years had come and gone, too, as corporate raiders decimated the airline’s most profitable assets, her gate assignments at Kennedy and Heathrow, and these days the remnants of the once mighty carrier were operating out of Lambert Field in St. Louis. TWA still flew to Europe but now their most profitable European corridors were out of Boston to places like Zurich, Paris, and Frankfurt, yet now those planes flew nowhere near capacity and the vultures were circling high overhead.

He’d met his wife, Tracy Hillermann, after working at TWA for two years.

He had been flying New York to Zurich for almost a year, spending his downtime in the Swiss city walking along the Limmatquai, occasionally going to the main station and taking random trains out of the city to unknown villages, and once on the ground he was exploring, searching, trying out obscure trails or out of the way cafés.

On one flight to Kennedy from Zurich he walked back to the galley mid-flight, primarily to stretch his legs but also to get some coffee. There were the usual suspects gathered there, FAs he’d worked with dozens of times over the years, but there was a new girl working up front under the watchful eye of a training supervisor. This happened often enough, so often he rarely took note of these new hires. Until this girl turned and he got a good look at her. Looking at her was literally heart-stopping, and he couldn’t remember running across a prettier girl – not ever. Not exactly tall, maybe five foot-eight or so, and he knew she was in shape just by looking at her. Yet it was her eyes that nailed him. 

But isn’t that always the case?

So he did what he always did. He had tried to ignored her.

He was a senior FO by then, and still conspicuously single. And the girls usually talked about that ‘single guy up front’ when they were working the same flight with him. A few of the single girls had tried to get him at least interested, yet he rarely responded to them with anything more than a polite smile. Some gossiped, of course. He had to be gay – that was one of the more malignant rumors he’d heard – but there were others. And yet, he had to admit, he simply didn’t care.

He had carried on with Gloria Betancourt for a while, until he grew tired of the emotional conditions she’d imposed on their affair. She refused, she told him one evening, to get more deeply involved. She’d done that twice and it hadn’t worked out, and besides, Bill was fifteen years younger so it was just impossible. Then she laid out the bare truth: All she wanted was the occasional fuck, and the rougher the better. He did take her to Paris for a long weekend but the same constraints applied; she had no interest in doing the usual romantic things together, no crepes at midnight by the Cluny, no walks hand in hand through the Tuileries. After that miserable weekend he began pulling away, and soon enough she stopped calling. Liz never, not even once, called or dropped by, and he was happy enough with that outcome. As beguiling as she might have once been, he’d seen only danger ahead, even though he’d been tempted.

He had majored in aeronautical engineering at Annapolis, and while not the greatest student he had at least maintained High Honors at graduation, and soon enough he found himself wanting to return to school. The best option academically was either CalTech, Berkeley, or MIT, but he wanted to stay on the East Coast so applied to MIT. And he was accepted. That had meant completely rearranging his life, from where he lived to where he was home-based, but Boston Logan was not simply the obvious choice, it was his only option if he wanted to resume school part time.

Coordinating the move with his change of assignment proved easier than expected, and it only took him a few weeks to sell the house on Pearl, then he spent more than he wanted on a just remodeled walkup on the corner of Chestnut and Willow, near Beacon Hill. The house, a narrow five story walkup, had been built before California was even a state and someone had recently spent real money updating the old structure. He now had no yard at all, and he’d had to find a garage to simply house his old Porsche, yet he was happy with the location and working with dispatch he’d been able to get a schedule that allowed him to return to school on a part time basis.

But even after moving to Boston he still got calls to work flights out of Kennedy, which meant hopping on a shuttle to New York, which often meant sitting in the jumpseat of overcrowded 727s making the half hour flight. And on one of those spurious assignments he saw Tracy Hillermann. And he – tried – to ignore her.

+++++

“Hi there,” she said as he stepped into the galley area in front of First Class. “Can I get you something?” Her accent was pure Texas yet she didn’t look like she’d grown up on a ranch. She was more Dallas, that so-called Paris on the Prairie, and even a close look revealed that she came from money. The little gold Rolex on her wrist, the perfect teeth and clear skin, and a subtle perfume sparingly applied. Her uniform, even after serving lunch, was perfect. In other words, she cared how she presented herself and that came from upbringing. Then again maybe she was simply on her best behavior because she was being graded.

“Howdy,” he replied. “Coffee, please.”

He’d leaned against the galley counter and watched her work. Not self-conscious at all. Her motions sure, not hesitant. Her figure perfect, her eyes killing him when she looked his way.

“You take it black?” she asked with a warm smile. Not fake, he observed. Real warmth.

“No, not this battery acid. As much cream and sugar as you can lay your hands on.”

She had smiled again, and politely too, as she handed him the cup and a spoon to stir, then their eyes had met once again and she held him there for a long moment.

Strange how one moment can change the arc of a life. Interesting how one moment can change the course of a lifetime.

After they’d parked at the gate he wrapped up the ‘meet and greet’ routine as passengers deplaned, he helped a couple of the flight attendants with their bags before he got Tracy’s out of the crew’s luggage compartment.

“Thanks,” she said as she took the rolling bag. And there it was, he said to himself, that good eye contact once again. No evasion, no wariness.

“You are welcome,” he replied, their eyes still locked.

Crew usually walk to customs together and they did so that evening; he helped her with her rolling bag as she fumbled for her passport and, as he usually just carried a small fold-over to keep his uniforms reasonably neat, he slung that over his shoulder then helped her through the terminal – until they reached the dispatch office.

He had to go in and finish up paperwork so he turned to her. “I have some stuff to do in here,” he as he stopped outside the door, “but if you wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes I’ll help you out to the shuttle.”

A couple of the other FAs did a double take when they heard that, and yet Tracy just smiled a little as she sized him up again. “Sure. You doin’ anything tonight?” she’d asked, blowing them over.

“You want to grab something?” he asked, his heart skipping a beat.

“Sure. Sounds good.”

And so they went out. Things clicked and they started seeing each other. Every now and then, and then a lot. She applied for a posting in Boston and got it. She began flying from Boston to St Louis to Fort Myers but it was a start. She moved in with him a few weeks after that and she was the first to mention marriage and maybe having kids and he knew right away that she was the one to do that with, to do the whole family thing. Her father did indeed own a ranch down in the Texas Hill Country, but while he ran cattle he had a foreman on site to handle the day to day, so he was a weekend rancher at best.

Because Ted Hillermann was a banker, and he owned car dealerships in five states and was known around Dallas for having started with nothing and had then worked his way up to the top. Tracy was, by the way, the apple of his eye, his pride and joy. Her father came up to Boston to meet Bill when it looked like things were turning serious, but the most obvious issue was that of age. Tennyson was now in his late 30s, but Tracy was just 24. Ted Hillermann had been a little less than impressed with that and so had engaged the services of an investigative firm to dig up some dirt on Tennyson, only to read the synopsis and drop all his objections. The kid, in his eyes, seemed like the real deal.

After securing Ted’s permission, Bill got down on one knee and asked for her hand and it was as simple as that. Over and done with, a little slicker than eel snot. Of course he invited his father and sisters to the wedding, and of course they came to the Methodist Church in Highland Park, and to the reception at the Dallas Petroleum Club. Tracy had wanted to honeymoon in Tahiti so off they went, spending the first two days of their marriage sitting in airplanes, staring at the shadows of clouds on the dappled sea six miles below, both wondering if what they had just done was really the right thing to do…?

But don’t all newlyweds?

They spent a few days on the main island, wandering around the streets of Papeete poking their heads into shops and art galleries, eating French food a million miles from France yet really right in the heart of it. And one day they found themselves walking along the waterfront, looking at all the sailboats tied off in neat, orderly rows, with sunburnt sailors everywhere they looked.

“I wonder what that’s like?” said the girl from Paris on the Prairie as they looked at sailboats from California and Seattle, and from Germany, the Netherlands and, of course, from France. “All alone out there, thousands of miles from land, just the sea and your boat?”

Bill nodded. “I used to watch boats just like these heading out the Golden Gate when I’d visit Claire. Some of them turned left and headed down the coast, but every now and then you’d see one just heading straight out, like due west, pointing towards Hawaii. One weekend we watched the start of a single handers race from her house. Ten boats heading to Hawaii. Ten people out there by themselves. I wondered what that must feel like, thinking that your life is so important and then you’re out there in a storm at night and realize that the universe really doesn’t think too much of you, if at all. I wondered how small the world would feel when it got reduced to a few square feet of boat underfoot. Maybe how small those sailors started to feel when civilization just disappeared in their wakes.

So they’d gone down to the docks and found a couple of people working on their boats and asked them all the usual questions. ‘Where are you coming from? Where you headed next?’ And of course, ‘What’s it like out there?’

And she had asked a rather bohemian looking man from Portland, Oregon that question, and he had turned thoughtful and looked up at the sky then at her before answering. “Everyone has a different experience of life on the open ocean, I guess? Every voyage is defined by the usual sunsets and storms, the uncertainty of standing watch at night when it’s so dark out the sea and the stars just seem to blend in. But then there are the mountains along the far horizon, and everyone has their own take on that too, but everyone has to confront their truest self out there, you have to come to terms with yourself – as you are in that moment – because your first landfall after a long crossing will tell you all you need to know.”

Bill looked at the man’s boat. There were tools and nuts and bolts scattered everywhere yet there appeared to be an underlying order within the apparent chaos. “What are you working on?” he’d asked.

“Oh, the Monitor, the self-steering wind-vane, keeps sheering two bolts on it’s mounting plate.”

“Too much stress on the plate,” Bill said. “Maybe the bolt is too small, or the mounting holes might have been drilled at an incorrect angle?”

And so the three of them spent the next two hours remounting the self-steering gear on the stranger’s boat, then they took their new friend out to dinner. They talked boats and trips the man had taken and where he might go next. He’d been an engineer for Hewlett-Packard until he’d had enough, and then he’d chucked it all, bought his boat, a 34 foot Pacific Seacraft, and spent a few months fixing her up before he sailed to San Diego and then on to the Sea of Cortez. He’d spend a few years in Mexico then set out for Panama, the Galapagos Islands and finally, he’d laid out his course to French Polynesia and off he went. He’d been to Fiji and had just returned to Papeete, where he’d had his boat hauled out for Typhoon season and gone back to the States. Now, he said, he was heading south to New Zealand, and then he just didn’t know. He wanted to go to Japan but had heard cruisers weren’t really welcome, but what about Alaska? Or the Seychelles and South Africa? The world was, quite literally, just out there, quietly waiting for those with a sense of adventure.

Again, it was just one of those moments where the arc of life shifted just a little, shifted perhaps into the wildly unpredictable, but Bill Tennyson was just beginning to find that out about Tracy. There wasn’t a mountain she didn’t want to climb or a trail she didn’t want to take. And now, suddenly, there wasn’t an ocean she didn’t want to cross.

Yet she had always wanted kids, too. At least two, and he knew where that came from.

When her father, Ted, had ‘The Talk’ with him at the wedding reception, among other things he’d told Bill that he had wanted “at least a dozen kids, all boys,” but that his wife had died when Tracy was little. So he’d ended up with Tracy and had somehow been more than happy with how things turned out. “Some people,” he said, “go where life takes them, you know, they go with the flow. But I couldn’t do that, Bill. I’d always grabbed life by the balls – and then I made what I wanted out of it, but dammit, once I held that little girl in my arms, well sir, that was it. After her mother passed, Tracy became my reason for living and pretty soon, wouldn’t you just know it, I was hanging on for the ride just like everyone else. Going where life had decided to take me. So, Bill, you have to realize that there are things out there you just can’t fight. Some things are gonna be bigger than you. And, yeah-yeah, I see the look in your eyes, but listen to me now, ‘cause this is important. What I’m sayin’ is sure, yeah, you can fight it all you like, but in the end you’d better learn how to hang on.”

So Bill Tennyson stood beside his wife, standing there above the docks looking down on rows and rows of sailboats tied off in that faraway marina, their masts clanging as they rolled in the swells of waning breezes. He watched her looking at all those dreams tied off down there in that little marina, and while he had to admit that he really didn’t know her very well yet, he was sure about one thing.

His life with Tracy was about to get interesting, and it would never be predictable.

+++++

Tracy was a good mother, and conscientiously so. She worked at it. Worked at it because motherhood was something completely foreign to her. Her mother had passed from breast cancer when she was quite young; coincidentally at almost the same age as Bill when he lost his mother. As such, both could not rely on memories of their mothers as role models; their mothers imprinted little save what was passed on during a time when memory is capricious, more fleeting impression than solid foundation.

The first of two girls was born after Tracy and Bill had been married a year, the second hardly two years later. By the time Doris and Evelyn were finishing high school, Bill was seriously considering retirement – now that he’d earned his PhD in aerospace engineering, and now that TWA had been through multiple bankruptcies and, just the year before, the Flight 800 tragedy had rocked the airline. Load factors on their remaining all important routes to Europe were falling, and analysts were saying it was now just a matter of months. Bill was young enough to start a second career, yet he did not want to give up flying.

Years ago he had let go of his animosities long enough to call his sister Ann, first for the wedding and then just before Doris was born, inviting her up to Boston for a baby shower – at Tracy’s insistence. Claire had therefore refused to come – until Tracy intervened and talked to her, literally almost begging Claire to come. There had been a minor rapprochement for the occasion, and soon there was talk of a big family reunion.

And Tracy decided to make that happen, because, to her, family had become the most important thing, and everything was soon set up by Tracy. Her father flew in for the occasion, as did Bill’s family, then everyone drove up the coast in rental cars and enjoyed a week together at a waterfront lodge on the Maine coast.

Both fathers were of course by now retired, though both ‘kept their hand in the game’ – as time permitted. They talked about colonoscopies and constipation, the bane of old men everywhere, and of course of friends who had recently passed. Both were avid golfers, so they played the course at the Samoset Resort every morning as soon as the course opened, and ‘in due course’ getting to know one another. Bill Jr, meanwhile, mediated encounters between his sisters and still managed to play a round with the patriarchs when he wasn’t mediating arguments between Doris and Evelyn. Or Ann and Claire. As a result, he developed a wary respect for the role estrogen had played in the development of civilization.

But this first week together in June soon became a new family tradition, a sort of coming together that allowed a new level of familial cohesion to take root. “For the girls’ sake,” became Bill’s rallying cry to Claire and Ann. At the end of each week the family had their picture taken in front of the huge stone fireplace in the main lodge, and soon there were five such pictures on the wall in Bill’s study, then ten, then fifteen…

There was always a Sunday Brunch at the lodge, a sumptuous affair complete with a piano player grinding his way through a tired repertoire of jazz standards, and despite this grinding music the family always enjoyed their buffet together, usually just before returning home. And the year before Doris graduated from high school the family came together again, and here the arc of Bill’s life, indeed, all their lives seemed to shift again.

At one point during brunch, the pianist, a grizzled old man who seemed as bored as his playing, launched into a savagely fast rendering of the Claire de lune, and at that point Claire had simply had enough. She stood in an angry huff and went to the pisno and lit into the poor hack, berating him in front of everyone in the dining room.

The hack, of course, did not recognize Claire Tennyson. Though she was by then an accomplished concert pianist and noted composer of classical works, and more recently had one Oscar winning movie score to her credit, when he told the overbearing woman to take over if she thought she could do better, he was in for an unpleasant comeuppance.

Claire pushed him aside and began again, and she floated lazily into the piece, just as she always had, playing so softly, and so lovingly that everyone in attendance simply stopped eating and slowly began to listen to what was unfolding. Murmurs of recognition soon drifted among the more attuned diners; by the time she finished the piece word had spread and the room burst into applause. Claire smiled, faintly if appreciatively, then turned to the old man who’d butchered Debussy and scowled at him, a withering, knowing takedown from one professional to another. She then returned to the family’s table and rejoined the conversation as if nothing had happened…

…yet something had…

+++++

Her brother was still sitting there at the table, yet in truth he was far, far away.

+++++

He was, in fact, on a sailboat – resting at anchor in an unrecognizably small harbor far, far from Maine. The water was the color of turquoise verging on silver, a light trade wind was sifting through his hair and the sun was beating down on his forehead. He turned and looked at the island, at the palm trees – most of these palms not tall but low, stunted things – that lined the harbor, and a few hundred feet away the turquoise shallows dropped away to reveal a deep cobalt blue that took his breath away. Tracy was on the beach, waving at him, then calling out to him, yet he could not make out what she was saying.

He felt a familiar presence and turned away from Tracy, and yes, the pink butterfly creature with the owl’s eyes hovered just a few feet away from him, her delicate face perhaps five feet from his own, and she was regarding him silently, almost quizzically.

‘Why have you come back to us,’ the pink creature seemed to say to him, the voice as ever unheard yet as clear as any ever spoken. ‘Was it the music that sent you?’

“I’m not sure I know,” he replied. “I was with my…with Claire…and then, yes, I was inside the music…”

‘You have denied this place for so long, yet you chose to come now. Why?’

“I…chose? But…how? I’ve never been here before…and I didn’t choose anything.”

The creature’s eyes smiled, her head tilted quizzically. ‘Oh?’ she said. “Are you so sure?”

He turned and looked further up the shore, and he thought he saw Claire standing there, but no, the woman he saw there was impossibly old. He heard another voice nearby and now a rising tide of panic hit as he wheeled around to this new voice. Another woman was waving at him from a boat anchored no more than 50 yards away.

“Dad, are you alright?” the stranger called out.

He didn’t know what to say, because, after all, this was a dream, wasn’t it? But…who was this other woman? She wasn’t his daughter…she was a…a stranger? Yet why did her voice seem so familiar?”

But by then he’d remembered that he had never smelled things in his dreams before, yet right now he thought he could pick out the scents of bread baking in the nearby village, and then all the fresh flowers blooming on shrubbery along the beach.

“Dad?” the woman called out again.

“Yo! I think so,” he replied. “Actually, I’m not sure…”

Within seconds the woman had jumped down into her Zodiac and started the little Yamaha outboard, and as Bill watched he shook his head because boats and motors didn’t have brand names posted so vividly in dreams. Or did they? Or could this be what was called lucid dreaming?

Yeah. That’s it.

By now Tracy was running to their own inflatable, untying the painter from a palm tree and pushing off from shore. She started the motor and was now racing out to their boat…

“Our boat?” he asked the universe. “When did we get a goddamn boat? And when did I buy that inflatable?” He watched as these normal yet surreal feelings kept unfolding all around him, and the feeling of panic became pervasive and suffocating, an all encompassing nightmare. “But…didn’t I buy the Zodiac in Newport, at the boat show a couple of years ago?”

Now. Then. If. How. Separate. Realities. Superimposed. Not. Possible.

Why? Not?

His thoughts seemed to come in molten waves as he fell back against the companionway and then slid against the coaming. 

“This isn’t right. Something doesn’t feel right.”

Again, the rising tide of bile. The empty panic of nowhere left to hide.

He sat up a little, took a sip of peach nectar from the clear blue drinking glass in the cupholder on the binnacle. There was condensation on the glass, and the nectar tasted fresh, just like Tracy had made it this morning. Because he remembered seeing her do just that. A million years ago. Or…was it a billion?

And then he saw his hands. They were the age-spotted hands of an old man, and nothing like his own. But no, there was the scar on his left forearm, the scar a remnant of his crash landing outside of Hanoi – fifty years ago, then he was perspiring and disoriented as his Intruder skidded through a small village, shocked people scrambling to get out of the flaming wreckage that was spilling through their homes. So he looked at the condensation on the blue glass before he finished the nectar and then he leaned forward, resting his head in his outstretched hands. He felt someone caressing his shoulders and expected to see Claire after their mother stopped screaming at their father and when he looked up he saw the pink creature was now sitting by his side.

‘Are you tired?’ he felt her ask.

“Tired? I don’t…I don’t think so…?”

‘Death is near. Would you like to go there now and rest?’

“What? Hell no! Who wants to go to death?” he asked angrily.

And as suddenly came a blinding flash and he was back at the table with his family in Maine, and his father was standing to help Claire into her chair.

“Dad, are you alright?” his daughter said, her voice repeating what the woman on the boat had asked not two minutes ago.

He looked up, startled, still feeling disoriented. He leaned back in his chair and sighed, then shook his head. “You know, I think I’ve eaten too much,” he barely managed to get out.

“You don’t say?” his father shot back sarcastically. “I’m not sure there’s anything you haven’t eaten this morning…”

“The food here was unusually today,” Ted said as he signed the check – over the strenuous objections of Bill Sr.

“Dad?” Tracy asked. “You still driving up to Southwest Harbor tomorrow?”

Ted nodded. “I have an appointment up there at one. They recommended I stop for lunch at a place called Beal’s Lobster Pound. Supposed to be right by the Coast Guard Station. They unload the lobsters right there, come straight from the boat to the plate…with a brief stop for cooking, I suppose.”

Bill Sr. looked from Tracy to Ted. “You have what kind of an appointment, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Boatbuilder. Hinckley. They started making a little runabout called the Picnic Boat a few years ago, and I’d like a decent little boat to use at the new cottage.” His little cottage was in Naples, Florida, and Bill Jr had learned that this little cottage had approximately twenty thousand square feet of living space, and of course had its own boat dock facing Naples Bay. Gordon Pass, the main entry into the bay, was literally just seconds away, and the views were great…

“Sounds fun,” Bill Sr. said. “Mind if I tag along?”

So quite early the next morning everyone skipped the continental breakfast and headed down to their small fleet of rental cars and set off for Acadia National Park; they made it to Beal’s just before noon and they tumbled into the unassuming gray-shingled building only to be confronted by rows of galvanized tubs absolutely crawling with lobsters. 

Or bugs, as the locals called them. 

There were one pounders and two pounders, and then there were the big ones, then the really really big bugs, and these older, wiser bugs had pushed themselves into the corners of the tanks to better conceal themselves. And a smart looking teen stood behind the counter, waiting for these new arrivals to pick the bug, or bugs, of their choice.

Ted, and as a Texan perhaps this was only predictable, zeroed in on a huge, defiant looking thing and pointed at it. “Is that the biggest you got?”

“It is right now,” the freckle-faced girl behind the counter replied. “You want me to weigh him?”

“Go ahead, if you please.”

The girl reached in and picked up the creature, whose telson, or tail-fan, was now flapping wildly about. Perhaps the creature saw the look of intense delight in Ted’s eyes as the girl said “He’s a four pounder.” And so, with his sentence entered into the proceedings, perhaps the poor creature knew his time had come. Even so, he’d decided he was going to put up a fight.

He lost.

And everyone in turn pronounced sentence on the bug of their choice but for Claire. Ever the empath, she simply could not look an animal in the eye knowing that she was going to kill it and eat it, so she settled for a Cobb Salad with blackened haddock instead.

Bill Jr picked a two pounder, and was stunned by the sheer size of the corn-on-the-cob that came with the large red bug, its back now arched in steamed agony. He carried his paper plate out onto the deck overlooking the picturesque harbor, and the sight of the harbor, and all that food, simply took his breath away. He’d traveled the world and yet he had never been to Maine, let alone this part of the Down East coastline, and right then he was wondering why he hadn’t.

There were several small wooden piers jutting out over the water, none particularly big but each in their turn quite interesting, almost charming. Fishing boats came and went from the fuel dock, while lobstermen unloaded their catch just under the wooden deck where he sat. Gulls flew overhead, hoping to snag an errant morsel that might accidentally fall from one of the tables. The sky was blue, as blue as a bluebird, and little cotton-candy clouds scudded on their way high overhead.

He felt something hit his shoulder and turned to see seagull shit running down his arm. He shook his head then wiped the stuff off with a moistened towelette before turning to his plate.

Ted’s bug had started out a huge, mottled thing of mainly indecipherable colors in the reddish-black range, but now the just-steamed beast was as red as a fire engine. Ted was salivating as he cracked a claw, extracting the meat with a lobster fork and dipping it in freshly melted butter. No one said a word as they feasted on bug meat, steamed corn and new potatoes, and everyone had blueberry soda and a thick slab of blueberry pie with a tennis ball sized scoop of locally made vanilla bean ice cream – before they groaned their way out to their rental cars in bloated agony.

Though the Hinckley yard was nearby, literally just across the small, horseshoe shaped harbor, it took fifteen minutes of fighting through the village’s overcrowded and almost painfully narrow streets to get there. With Ted and the girls in one car and Bill Sr and Claire following, Bill Jr fell in behind them with Ann in the back seat of his car. Tracy, of course, knew a little about the toxic family dynamics of the Tennyson household, yet she’d had no trouble embracing Ann as the sister she’d never known.

And Ann had embraced the role. Indeed, after eighteen years the two of them were chattering away like best friends, because, not too surprisingly, they were. They carried on about how stuffed they were and how they planned to play tennis tomorrow “all day long, or we’ll never fit in our clothes…” Bill cast nervous, sidelong glances at Tracy, and occasionally looked at Ann in the rearview mirror, wondering what the hell had happened to his life. Had All That Hate Been For Nothing?

Claire, for her part, was still fuming, even after so many years had passed, distressed that Tracy had taken to Ann like a duck to water. Jealous didn’t even begin to describe how she felt, yet she’d felt her brother go back to the pink creatures while she was playing the Claire de lune at brunch the day before, so she’d reached out and followed him. She’d found herself on a small street, little more than a paved, one lane track that meandered along a manicured waterfront. She was surrounded by palms and rows of frangipani, fragrant with magenta blossoms, and sloped, grassy lawns that led down to the water’s edge. She’d felt warm under the clear afternoon sun, and it took a moment but she soon recognized this place. Tall reeds topped by lavender blossoms blocked her way to the water, but then she saw a much older Tracy standing just ahead, waving to a man on a sailboat. Black hull, white cove stripe and a green bottom, the sailboat was not a hundred yards offshore and it lay at anchor on calm waters the color of a shallow swimming pool. Then she recognized Bill standing there, though he too appeared much older in this place. He turned and seemed to fall into a seated position in the shade of a protective canvas bimini, and Tracy ran to a small rubber boat and sped out to him…as too did another woman from a nearby sailboat… 

“Who is that?” she asked.

…Then one of the pink creatures was beside her, hovering a few feet above the grass. ‘You must return, and quickly,’ the creature thought to her. Tracy nodded, and had instantly returned to the brunch at the Samoset. She had never imagined her brother so old, or so fragile, and the sight had both shocked and depressed her. 

Now she turned around and watched him maneuvering the car through the congested village, trying not to run over one of the hordes of tourists walking about as if in a food-coma, yet sure that something important was about to happen.

When the cars had parked at the yard and Ted had disappeared inside the front office, everyone got out and stretched in all their postprandial dismay, with Ann remarking that she was sure she had ‘gained at least ten pounds so far this weekend.’ Bill Sr walked past a few boatsheds down to a long pier, and he began walking out the sloping ramp that led down to where several boats were tied up. His son and daughters and granddaughters followed, though they all walked ponderously – with their lobsters suddenly having the last laugh. Someone farted and everyone turned and pointed at Ann, then Tracy, then everyone laughed nervously. Even Claire.

There were several fancy motorboats tied up out there, as well as two sailboats. A family was loading groceries and other provisions onto one of the sailboats, a pretty red-hulled sloop with the curious name Heist, while the second, almost identical black-hulled sloop, named Argos, lay just beyond. This boat looked brand new, and Bill Sr thought she was drop-dead gorgeous.

And so did Tracy. Ann too.

When Claire saw the boat she flinched and turned away.

And when Bill Jr saw the sailboat he staggered back as if he’d just taken a left hook to the chin.

+++++

“I guess I tripped on something,” he said as he stood and dusted himself off. Tracy took him by one arm and Ann the other, and they helped him over to a nearby bench.

“What happened here, son?” his father said as he walked over to investigate the commotion.

“Nothing, Dad. I think I just, I must’ve tripped on something.”

“Good thing you didn’t fall in the water,” Bill Sr said.

“Why?”

“Well, look over there, would you…?”

Everyone’s eyes shifted to a dark sheltered tidal pool formed by mottled rocks, the black water full of kelp, and then at the large orca there. He must’ve been a male…if the size of his head was any indication…because it seemed massive. And the orca was staring at them, or, more specifically, he was staring at Bill Jr.

“Oh, he seems almost tame,” an old man walking beside Ted said, just as the two men came out to join the group on the pier. “Been here a week or so, too. The tourist boats have been having a field day with him, but he’s just been hanging around near that tidal pool, almost like he was waiting for someone.”

Claire turned and looked at the orca, and the orca’s gaze shifted to hers. “Do they usually come in so close?” she asked.

“No, no they don’t. As a matter of fact I can’t recall one ever hanging around the here this long, and never so close to our pier.” The man with Ted then walked over to one of the motorboats and pointed. “So, Ted, this is the Picnic Boat I told you about,” the old man said as he ushered Ted over to the graceful, deep red hulled motorboat, leaving Bill Jr and Tracy to walk over and admire the black hulled sailboat once again.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life,” Bill whispered to her.

“She is something,” Tracy replied, “but she’s so big! What do you think, how long?”

“Got to be 40, maybe 45 feet.”

“Remember that Swan we saw last year at the boat show?” she asked.

“Yeah, she was pretty, but…” he said, thinking ‘– in the same way a Ferrari can be pretty. Functional for one thing, impractical for anything but racing.’

“But yeah, she was pretty bad down below. Remember that companionway? It was so steep….it almost felt like a ladder…”

They paced up and down the pier looking at the black-hulled yacht as if entranced, as perhaps they were, until Ted and the old man came back to rejoin the little group.

“What model is this?” Tracy said, pointing to the black-hulled sailboat.

“Oh, that’s a Sou’wester 42. Nice boat, too.”

“How hard is she to sail?” Tracy asked.

“Oh, not very. She’s setup for singlehanded sailing. See the mast? The sail is rolled up inside, and it furls electrically. The foresail furls, too. Everything controlled from the cockpit. Too bad, a sad tale behind this one.”

“Oh?” Ted said. “How’s so?”

“Oh, well, we took the order for her about a year ago. The buyer came up several times while we were building her, made a bunch of requests for modifications. He got it just right, too. Prettiest one we’ve built in a long time, but about two months ago he passed on. Never got to sail her. Damn shame, too. It was like he poured his soul into that boat.”

“So, you mean she’s for sale?” Ted asked.

“Oh, yeah, actively, though we just listed her a few days ago. We wanted to get her into the water and fully commissioned before we brought her to market.”

Bill Jr walked over and looked at the yacht’s name again. Argos. ‘Now where do I know that from?’ he asked himself. He looked to Claire because he was sure she’d know, and now she was looking at him, then the sailboat, so he walked over to her. “Argos? I can’t remember where I know that name from.”

She smiled, shook her head. “The Odyssey? Odysseus’s faithful dog? When he returns home to Ithaca he comes disguised as a beggar, but Argos recognizes him despite the passage of time, and his disguise. And as soon as this faithful companion knows his master is still alive he promptly dies.”

“That’s it. I remember now, Miss Tompkin’s classics class, wasn’t it? Argos is faithful while Penelope has been, well, besieged with suitors, and no one recognizes Odysseus…”

Tracy was standing by her father, whispering in his ear, then Ted turned to the old man.

“How much for both of ‘em?” Ted asked.

And without missing a beat the old man looked at Ted, then at Tracy, then he nodded his head knowingly and smiled. “Well, let’s go up to the office and run some numbers.”

+++++

Ted sat across from Bill Jr at dinner that night, just the two of them for their last night at the lodge. He seemed amiable enough, but as soon as he’d ordered a Jack Daniels, neat, he turned serious.

“Look, Bill, I need you to take some time off from work. Say a month, maybe six weeks, and help me bring that Picnic Boat down to Florida. I’ve got the route all mapped out, and I’d like to leave in August…”

“Ted, that’s right in the middle of hurricane season…”

“Yeah, but that boat can outrun a hurricane, and anyway, I have no intention of going offshore. Just marina to marina, one day at a time, taking the ICW most of the way.”

“All August?”

“Yup.”

“Ted, Doris is starting her last year. Don’t you think I should be home for that?”

“Oh, don’t give me that crap. She’s eighteen and tough as a boot. Besides, you look like you could use some time away from all that estrogen.”

Bill laughed a that, but he was also a little taken aback by all that had happened during this last day, and it must’ve shown.

“Next, I want to talk about Argos.”

“Okay,” Bill said, still a little flummoxed that Ted had bought a sailboat, too.

“She’s going to be documented in an LLC, but in our names. You, me, and Tracy. It’s just a tactic, a way to pass her on to you two. Depreciate, then depreciate some more, avoid all those inheritance and gift taxes, but she’s yours now. Yours and Tracy’s. I made arrangements to keep the boat at the marina up there in Southwest Harbor for the rest of the season, then they’ll put her in heated storage over the winter. I’ll assume by next year you can make all your own arrangements, because I know you two will have your hands full for the rest of this summer.”

“Yessir, I imagine so.” His heart was racing now.

“Item two. Tracy tells me you’re thinking of retiring soon.”

Bill nodded his head. “Yessir?”

“What are your plans, assuming you do retire?”

“I’ve got a standing offer at Raytheon, another at Orbital Sciences.”

“Give up flying? You sure you want to do that?”

“No sir, I’m not at all sure I want to do that, but TWA ain’t exactly breaking any revenue records right now, if you know what I mean…”

Ted snorted. “Oh, hell, that story was written a long time ago. TWA will be snapped up within months, maybe a year, and probably by United but maybe American. You could stay on with one of those, of course, but…”

“But the L-1011 is being phased out. Delta is the only other major carrier still using them, but they’re getting old.”

“So if you’re going to keep flying you’d need to get a new type rating.”

“I know,” he said with a nod. “And that would mean losing seniority, and that means losing the flexibility I’ll need…”

“You do know, of course, that Orbital Sciences bought a TriStar a couple of years ago?”

“Yes, I heard something about that.”

“You might be able to do both, you know? Engineering, while still keeping a hand in the cockpit.”

“Yessir.”

“Ah, I see you’ve already thought of that.”

Bill nodded. “Everything going on there is classified right now, but yes, I’d have to go down to Patuxent, go through test pilot training.”

“Sounds right up your alley, Bill.”

“Yessir. I, uh, really don’t know what to say about Argos, sir.”

“Look, Bill, you can call me Ted. You can even call me Dad if that floats your boat, but please, knock it off with the ‘Sir’ stuff, okay?”

Bill nodded. “I’ll try. Ted.”

+++++

Ted and Bill made their trip south, and despite the dissimilar trajectories of their lives they got along well enough before the trip even began and so seemed destined to become fast friends. They left Southwest Harbor on a crisp summer morning, taking the old white lighthouse on Great Duck Island to port, anchoring out their first night out in Burnt Coat Harbor on Swan’s Island. The next day was brutal, with a fresh wind out of the northeast bringing whitecaps and a seasick-inducing roll that saw both men leaning over the rail, feeding the fish the remnants of their breakfast. On the advice of the old man at Hinckley, they ducked into the Fox Island Thoroughfare and anchored in a deep, protected cove just across from the village of North Haven. Taking the Zodiac dingy to the rocky shore. Both men jumped out of the dingy and fell to the ground as soon as they reached land, wanting to embrace anything that was rolling…and heaving. After putting down a fair measure of single malt, and with nothing to eat save a few saltines, they slept the sleep of the dead that night.

And his dream returned.

Leaning on the coaming of the sailboat, he suddenly knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was on Argos, and the boat had to be anchored somewhere in French Polynesia. The woman on the sailboat next to his called out again, “Dad, are you okay?” and he looked, realized it was his daughter Doris on the sailboat she had bought in Seattle years ago. She had retired when she was in her 30s and had a chunky, almost indestructible 37 footer and she had singlehanded down the Pacific coast to Cabo, then jumped to the Marquesas. She had met up with them when Argos arrived in Tahiti after a long passage from Panama City, Panama.

Then the memory of it all grew clear. He and Tracy were on their second circumnavigation. They’d gone east-around their first time around, going to Nova Scotia, then Scandinavia and the Baltic before taking the shortcut to the Mediterranean through the canals of France. East to the Suez then the Red Sea, the Maldives and Sri Lanka before hitting Phuket and Singapore on their way to Japan. With some difficulty they had sailed through inland seas and deep inlets all the way to Hiroshima. 

In his dream now he found himself there with the pink creature once again by his side. The city looked beaten down and war torn and she had pointed to the sky, to the three silver bombers approaching the city. He had stared at the aircraft knowing that his father was in one of them, and that the bomb that he saw falling was going to be cataclysmic, rupturing not just atoms but the shape of all their futures. Then a bright flash and the pressure wave that followed. The raging fires, the sundered lives, death everywhere – and when the pink creature turned and looked at him just then he saw the question in her eyes.

‘You knew of this, yet you followed your father and began working to make these weapons even more devastating.’

He had nodded and in the next instant found himself back on Argos, back in the Gambier Island Group, anchored off the village of Rikitea on Mangareva Island, and he knew he was having a stroke.

+++++

Doris graduated high school at the top of her class and went on to NYU. Evelyn struggled to compete in her sister’s shadow, though Bill tried to manage her ego while wrapping up his career at TWA. After Doris left for college he spent more time with Evelyn, took her sailing on Argos and even took her flying a few times, yet she seemed to lack something he thought of as curiosity. She seemed to live entirely in the moment and so had little regard for the past or her future. She watched movies of the moment, car chases and dinosaurs seemed to grab her attention while nothing in school ever did. She graduated from high school and had no interest in college; indeed, she had no interest in leaving home. She began to overeat, to get fat while she refused to clean up after herself, and he had to process that. Somehow she had come of age in the shadow of a beautiful mother and a brainy sister and rather than compete she had withered into this brittle thing, what he considered a shell of a human being.

When he no longer knew what to do, and after it became apparent that even Tracy had reached her wit’s end, he did the only thing he knew to do.

He called Claire.

“I wondered when you’d asked,” was almost the first thing she said when he called.

“You did?”

“She’s a lost soul, Junior Birdman.”

“You know I hate it when you call me that.”

“And that’s precisely why I do.”

“Look, can you give me some insights?” he asked.

“Sure. Send her to me for the summer.”

“Oh, God no. Really? What are you going to do to her?”

A week later Evelyn boarded an American flight to San Francisco, and as he watched her plane take off from the upper deck of the parking garage at Logan he felt sad, a defeated failure.

+++++

Ted was at the helm, bill standing up on the Picnic Boat’s foredeck waiting to throw a line to the boy on the dock. When he heaved the line the boy grabbed it and made it fast to a cleat on the stone quay, then Ted jump off and took the stern line to a bollard. A few minutes later, Ted’s Picnic Boat was tied off in Ego Alley, a narrow inlet off Annapolis Harbor where the city docks were located. Bill was soon tripping down memory lane, staring at the Halsey Field House about a hundred yards from where he stood, lost in echoes of his time as a Midshipman at the Naval Academy. 

They spent  five days tied up in Annapolis, one afternoon at the Preble looking at ship models and two days at a dermatologist’s office getting skin cancers diagnosed and removed from Ted’s nose and ears. The finally took off down the Chesapeake with Ted sporting a variety of bandages on his face and with Bill trying out a variety of sunscreens.

After slipping through Norfolk in deep fog, with the docked row of aircraft carriers silhouetted  in the sunrise, the Hinckley turned off the main artery of the Intra-Coastal Waterway and entered the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, the nation’s oldest manmade waterway and George Washington’s first public infrastructure project, and they both looked back at their experience in the trees as one of the highlights of the trip. Sailboats, fellow travelers along the migration route, motored along with their masts brushing through the overhanging trees, the deep brown tannin rich waters of their bow waves staining their prows, in effect marking their passage through the canal.

Staying overnight in Wrightsville Beach, grazing on seafood and ice cold beer until the wee hours, talking with fellow cruisers about the known hazards just ahead and many of them commiserating with Ted and showing off their own scars from skin cancer. Shrimp and grits in Charleston, South Carolina, walking among the gardens in Savannah, Georgia, getting a too close  for comfort look at nuclear submarine at St Mary’s inlet just before they reached Florida.

After their time on the water was at an end, Bill began to look back on their passage as an interlude, perhaps not so peaceful but enlightening. He’d picked a battered copy of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha at a used book store in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and he’d started to see his journey with Ted as a mystical series of encounters with others they met along their path. 

The disgruntled newly retired millionaire on his big Hatteras complaining about everything he’d seen and everyone he’d met on his months long journey. The kids with almost nothing to their name but their dilapidated old sailboat who were having the time of their young lives. The sun-broiled almost ancient hands of fishermen they met in the middle of the Chesapeake who asked if they wanted some fish, the lobster pots in Maine blocking every channel. And everywhere, the U.S. Coast Guard, always helpful, sometimes menacing, but seemingly ever-present. So many juxtaposed worldviews, a world of incongruent expectation.

They’d cut across Florida, taking the Hinckley from Stuart through the Okeechobee Waterway to Fort Myers, then the last thirty miles just off the sugary white beaches on their way to Naples. And Ted’s cottage off Gordon Pass overlooking Naples Bay had lived up to Tracy’s description. Huge, almost garish, the architect had obviously been from South Miami Beach, with pink and white the predominant colors on the exterior and the interior a riot of senseless pastels and randomly scattered rooms, all this in one discordant pile of white tile that just screamed FLORIDA. Bill had smiled his muted approval until he stumbled across a swimming pool right where he’d expected to find the dining room, and then he saw that the kitchen was sunken to the same level, and that also shared a long glass wall with the pool. “So,” he said to Ted, “you can cook breakfast in there and serve it at that counter there, right there in the pool?” 

Ted beamed and replied that it saved time that way.

Bill flew back to Boston in time to help Doris to her dorm in New York City, and found out he’d been accepted in the test pilot program at Patuxent River NAS, and as suddenly he realized that time did indeed possess vastly different textures, just like Ted’s sprawling cottage. Perspectives differed in one kind of time versus another. Everything about the world had slowed down out there on the water with Ted, but now that he was home he was back inside the perpetual motion machine of modern life, always moving purposefully towards something which often turned out to be nothing at all, all the while never just enjoying the moment. Another year passed, another year with the family at the Samoset in Maine, and he’d looked at his life, and Ted’s, and looked at the results of living in their shared perpetual motion machine. 

Did he really want to end up there? Always taking time for granted, never living in the moment? He reread Clavell’s Shōgun, dwelling on Mariko-san’s descriptions of making time stand still, of learning to watch a rock grow, about Wa, or harmony, and when he looked at his daughter Doris he saw echoes of her grandfather, and yet with a start he recognized his mother and Ann lurking inside his own flesh and blood. Evelyn happier while Doris was turning into a psychopath… ‘Oh,’ he wondered as he tried to find sleep that night, ‘what did I do…?’

‘Maybe it’s just genetics?’ he usually told himself, trying to let himself off the hook. 

Evelyn had come back from San Francisco in time for the family’s trip to Maine and she had seemed different, happier those first few days on Argos. Changed, almost happy. But after a few days around Doris all the resentment blossomed and flowered and took root again, and Evelyn usually sat up on the foredeck, her legs dangling off the deck as she stared off into infinity. Until one day, anchored in Smith Cove, just east of Castine, Maine. The cruising guide mentioned that Captain John Smith – of Pocahontas fame – had anchored in the cove to ride out a storm during his second sojourn in the colonies, when he was mapping the northern New England coastline in some detail. As she sat staring down into the black water, she noticed a rippling at her feet and almost screamed when a small orca appeared.

Bill had seen the two of them, Evie and the orca, and quietly took a picture of the moment. He eventually gave a copy of the photograph to a friend who painted landscapes, and she gave him an impressionist’s interpretation of the moment. As soon as he had it framed, the painting graced the saloon bulkhead above Argos’ varnished teak table. 

That evening, after her encounter with the orca, Evelyn asked her dad if the two of them could talk. “In private,” she’d said.

So they had made their excuses and jumped in the Zodiac and puttered over to Sheep Island, right in the middle of the cove, and they found some rocks and watched the sunset as a couple of big schooners sailed into the cove. Bill found the sight of the old sailing ships jarring, even as packed to the rafters with tourists as they were. Relics of an extinct era, as the two schooners dropped anchor time had seemed to turn inward on itself, and as the evening gave way to night shifting amber reflections of oil lamps on the water fought with the stars for their place in the here and now.

“Dad?”

“Yo.”

“I want to go to school in San Francisco this year.”

He swallowed hard, not sure how to handle this one, but he thought Tracy needed to be in on this conversation. “Oh?” he did just manage to say.

“I need to spend more time with Aunt Claire, and I really like it out there. I feel like I fit in.”

“How so.”

“Well, for one thing Claire is teaching me the piano, and I’m really getting into it.”

“And?”

“I like the people out there. Boston is so…uptight and strait-laced…and I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m out there.”

“Have you talked to your mother about this?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, and he gathered it wasn’t because she was cold. “I can’t talk to her, Dad.” She sighed, looked into the water and he thought she looked lost in time, like she didn’t belong in this time. “I guess I’ve never been able to,” she added quietly.

“Yet you can talk to me? Am I that big of a pushover, Kiddo?”

“No.” Again, the hesitation. Time, on a precipice. Then: “Mom has never loved me, Dad. I know you don’t look at it that way, but…”

“Oh, come on, Evie, I don’t know how you can say that…”

“Because Claire showed me, Dad.”

He looked down, now utterly defeated. There was no reason to put on airs, no reason to deny it. Claire had violated her oath and taken his daughter over the threshold… “I see,” he finally whispered, clearly wrestling with the implications. “Where else have you been?”

“In the operating room when I was born. Right after you passed out. Mom screaming how much she hated me right there in front of all those doctors and nurses. All of Dories birthday parties when Mom told her that she was her secret favorite. All the times when you weren’t around, Dad, when you were off in London and Paris or God knows where else, when Dorie and I got in arguments and Mom took her side. Dad, she always took her side. And you never saw that. You never saw a thing those two did to me.”

“I don’t know what to say, Kiddo. I really don’t, because sorry seems inadequate…”

She looked at him and nodded. “Apology accepted, Dad. You know, Claire says we see what we want to see. Even when things are nothing at all like what we think. We delude ourselves, we chase our illusions until we finally reach the moment of our final reality. The reality we can’t deny any longer.”

The frothy weightlessness of summer had just vanished, the timelessness of being on vacation was gone now, vanished on sylvan breezes borne on yesterday’s passing, carried away on the gossamer wings of denial. “And what do you think I’ve been denying?” he said.

“Dorie has always been Mom’s favorite. I’m think I’m yours, or will be yours, because I think you can relate to the things I had to put up with Ann, and maybe with your mom and dad. And I think because sometime you kinda resent Mom.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“I think so, Kiddo.”

“I think you also think that Doris is becoming more and more like Ann, and that scares you.”

Some people from one of the schooners rowed over to the island with a fire pit and some logs, and they invited Bill and Evie to come and makes s’mores with them. They sat with these strangers under the stars and everyone talked and laughed and then laid back and listened to the snaps and pops of the fire until there was nothing left but the red glow of fading embers, and only then was it time to head back to Argos.

Tracy was asleep when he went in to check on her and then he realized it was after one in the morning; he grimaced and shook his head, then grabbed a blanket and a pillow and went topsides to sleep in the cockpit. He saw Evie on the foredeck again, talking to someone in the water.

He decided he really didn’t want to know.

+++++

But he was back in time for his next ride on the perpetual motion machine. Putting in for his retirement from TWA, making sure that all the necessary retirement accounts he’d set up over the years were ready to receive his retirement and pension payments. Yet even before all this was finalized he was working at Orbital Sciences, developing satellite payload delivery systems. 

And taking Doris back to New York before getting on the long flight to San Francisco with Evie. It was easier this way, enrolling her in school out there, setting up a bank account for her – an account that he could access and monitor because she was still a minor. He went down to check in with his dad and they played a round or two and shared war stories with a bottle of single malt. For the first time he could recall his father talked about that day, that early morning over Hiroshima, and he finally understood why his father drank so much.

He never mentioned the things he and Evie had talked about, nor did he mention this to Tracy. Those feelings of Evelyn’s, he knew, had to remain locked away, for now anyway. He loved Tracy and Doris and he always would, but he told himself that maybe some secrets are better left hidden away.

Even after he’d retired from TWA he managed to keep his hands on a TriStar, because the company had adapted the L-1011 to carry a small rocket on it’s belly and once at altitude launch a small payload to orbit. As this was a relatively new technology he’d needed to attend test pilot school just to learn the appropriate testing protocols, but he found the process exhilarating, especially go through live launches. 

Because, he admitted to Tracy one night while they watched Letterman on late night, flying was still the bees knees to him, one of the things that had given meaning to his life. She had felt somewhat dismayed by the remark because in 25 years together he’d never once said that, yet despite the lingering sting she thought she understood what he meant.

So many secrets. She wondered what else he was keeping from her.

But as they sat there one beside one the other in that cathode glow, she understood now that they both had so much to unlearn.

Would there be time, she wondered?

+++++

Claire called just a few weeks after Bill returned to Boston. Their father had passed earlier that afternoon, and of course while playing golf, so at least he’d died happy. She recounted a friends version of events, of how he’d simply stepped out of his golf cart on the eighteenth fairway, chipped up to the green on his way to a solid birdie, then dropped where he stood. No warning signs, in perfect health – for his age, anyway. As in: here one minute and gone the next. 

Or, as in: Time. Just. Stopped. For William Tennyson Sr, anyway.

Everyone flew to LA for the service, and then the next day, Bill, who was the executor of his father’s estate, read the old man’s last will and testament. Out loud to his sisters at their father’s insistence, in the presence of Bill Sr’s attorney. All assets to be liquidated and divided equally between Doris and Evelyn, yet those funds to remain In Trust, untouched until his granddaughters reached 35 years of age. Only one exception: a medical emergency with no other way to provide for care. Claire and Bill could have cared less, but Ann was livid. Bill smelled trouble, then he remembered his father’s final admonishment concerning her: Never. Trust. Ann.

 And the three siblings left the lawyer’s office with no apparent ill-will, yet Bill smelled the lingering financial animosities trailing in Ann’s personal perfume. Which was, when all was said and done, exactly what his father had told him to expect. But the Will was an iron-clad instrument perfectly executed, so he would have to play another game of Wait and See with Ann, endure one last snake-dance with her before he could finally be done with her.

Because, in truth, he wanted to be done with her.

He remained at the house in Pasadena to get it in order and ready to list, and after the movers had cleared out the things Ann and Claire wanted, he went upstairs to his old bedroom and stood in the empty room looking around, remembering the time he had spent there. His room had been trapped between his parent’s room and Ann’s, so he had been a non-stop witness to his mother’s screaming infidelities and his sister’s innate depravity. 

Then looking at the room’s built-in bookshelves he found a Playboy from 1968 still lingering in all its dust-bound glory, one that Claire had somehow missed, and he smiled, then went up to the attic to look around. The emptiness smelled of cedar shingles and cardboard boxes full of unused Christmas tree ornaments, like a warehouse full of forgotten things and broken dreams. He wondered where his prized collection of Playmates was going to end up – in a landfill, perhaps, or maybe stashed under some other teenager’s bed, just waiting for one more call to duty?  

For a moment he thought he could hear his mother and father fighting and then his father running away one more time, doing exactly what his mother had wanted him to so she could carry on with her secret dalliances, then he remembered his father coming back after his mother had fled, the quiet sounds he’d made sneaking into Ann’s room. Suddenly he felt guilty as he wondered how Ann was coping with her release now that he was finally gone. Maybe she’d finally be able to let go, but the last few times they’d been together in Maine he’d seen the look in her eyes. She didn’t want revenge, she’d wanted retribution. And that left him with a sour feeling in his gut.

Claire, on the other hand, still had issues with Ann and disliked being anywhere near her. That would never change, but he had to wonder given the things Evie had told him.

A few months later, just before summer, Tracy and Bill moved Argos to a marina south of Providence, Rhode Island, which allowed them to take her out on weekends from April to October, usually on long weekends. Tracy remained at TWA until it was absorbed by American Airlines, and then found herself at loose ends. American offered her a job at their flight academy in Dallas training new hires at the flight attendant school, but in truth she was ready to move on. During the family’s next summer on Argos, one evening they were at anchor in a small cove opposite the village of North Haven, just off the well-traveled Fox Island Thoroughfare, Doris and Tracy engaged in rinsing off several bugs they had just bought from passing lobstermen, when Doris asked her mom what she was going to do now that she was at a crossroads.

“You’d make a great teacher, Mom. It wouldn’t take you long to get certified.”

“No interest,” her mom sighed as she turned to fill an eight quart stockpot with seawater and white wine. She set the pot on a burner and tossed tarragon and basil into the water, then leaned against the galley counter waiting for the water to come to a boil. “The fact of the matter, Doris, is that I’m tired of the grind, of the rat race, and I’m really really tired of your father being away all the time…”

And Bill was at that moment in the 42s aft stateroom, almost upside down with his head in the engine compartment, struggling to close a balky raw-water intake so he could clean out the raw-water strainer, and even though the door to the stateroom was closed his head was just a few inches from where Tracy stood, and he could hear every word said in the galley, even those things Tracy might not have wanted him to hear.

So, he listened and he suddenly realized that all things must come to an end. Even the best things, the things he had so often taken for granted. He sat up and looked around the Hinckley’s stateroom, then sighed as the moment passed.

Then he felt a soft bump against the hull, and then the clicks of a nearby orca calling it’s pod.

IV. Winter

“Four-zero Sierra Charlie, you are clear to land on runway one-five, wind one-niner-five at one-two, ceiling five hundred with light rain, report on the localizer.”

“S-L-F 4-0-Sierra-Charlie has the localizer, clear to land 1-5,” Tennyson said. He had been the pilot in command this morning for the launch of the latest Pegasus air-launched multistage rocket. Slung beneath the belly of an L-1011 built in 1974, Pegasus was carried to flight level 3-9-0, 39,000 feet above the Atlantic, and towards the rocket’s orbital insertion heading – preparing for countdown and release. Tense minutes passed as range safety officers made sure all commercial traffic had been vectored out of the rocket’s trajectory, and as all the systems onboard Pegasus were still in the green. He listened intently as the countdown reached T-minus 4:00minutes, preparing the cockpit for launch, then he tensed as the final ten seconds counted down. At “Zero!” the rocket dropped approximately 500 feet and Tennyson had gently banked the TriStar to the right and descended out of the rocket’s flight path, then he turned the aircraft so onboard sensors could track the vehicle as it ascended. He heard clapping and applause a few minutes later so knew they had a good bird. This morning’s launch had taken place off from the Canary Islands and the Orbital Sciences crew had celebrated another successful launch. In control rooms behind the cockpit and on the ground mission controllers monitored the placement of satellites while Tennyson and the flight crew flew back to and prepared to land at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility on Merritt Island, just north of Port Canaveral, Florida.

He watched glide-slope capture on the flight director, nodded in satisfaction as the autopilot corrected for a little down-draft, then as the auto throttle maintained speeds right on the correct descent profile, but at 1500 feet MSL, or above mean sea level, he switched off the AP and took the controls.

“Flaps thirty,” he said to his FO for this flight, Tom Collins.

“Thirty.”

“Gear down.”

They listened as the nose gear whirred and clunked, then waited for the three green lights on the panel that indicated proper extension. The noise level in the cockpit increased as the nose gear significantly increased the TriStar’s drag through the slipstream. 

“Three green,” Collins said.

They quickly ran through their last pre-landing checklist even as Tennyson flew the last seconds of the approach through dense clouds and rain, the high intensity runway lights coming into view about ten seconds before touchdown. When the mains hit spoilers popped up from the upper surface of the TriStar’s wings and Tennyson applied even pressure to the brakes with his toes, and then he allowed the aircraft to slow gently through 80 knots before cleaning the wing. There were no taxiways here, just a straight runway leading to a small turnout where families usually waited to greet returning Space Shuttles. Just beyond that small apron Orbital Sciences maintained a hangar for the L-1011, and Tennyson taxied to the ramp in front of the hangar and then ran through the TriStar’s shut-down sequence while ground carts attached umbilicals. An truck mounted air-stair drove up to the port forward door and within a few minutes most of the people had de-planed. Most, except the flight crew. Now came the endless paperwork required by NASA to document all phases of their flight, and this took another hour – as the ground carts underneath the aircraft provided the power needed to run the air conditioning and electronics.

After a night in a Marriott in Cocoa Beach, he drove up to Jacksonville and hopped on a Delta flight to Atlanta the next morning, then another going to Boston. Tracy was on the telephone as he walked into the old walkup on Chestnut Street, and she looked pale, almost terrified, as she listened to the voice on the other end. 

Bill immediately put his suitcase down and walked over to her, and he sat beside her as she looked up at him, tears in her eyes and unspoken grief fluttering over her like the wings of dark angels.

“He just walked in. Could I let you talk to my husband now?”

She handed the telephone to him, the long coiled cord dangling across her lap. “Bill Tennyson here,” he said calmly.

“A-ah, Mr Tennyson, this is Detective Harwood, NYPD Homicide. I understand you were not home the past week? Is that correct, sir?”

“That is, but what’s going on?”

“Where were you last night, Mr Tennyson?”

“Let me rephrase my last question, in case you didn’t understand what I said. What the hell is going on?”

Tennyson could hear the man scribbling notes, then: “Uh, is Miss Ann Tennyson your sister?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Mr Tennyson, she was found earlier this morning in an alley near Central Park. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead. That was at five thirty eight this morning. Could you tell me where you were at that time, sir?”

“I was leaving the Marriott Courtyard in Cocoa Beach, Florida, to catch a flight home.”

“What were you doing down there?”

“Launching a rocket.”

“Oh.”

“Do you have any suspects or leads, Detective?”

“Nothing solid, sir.”

“Where is my sister now?”

“The Medical Examiner’s, sir. Will you be coming down?”

“Yes, as soon as I can get some things together and repack. Could I have a number to call to get the information I’ll need…”

He listened and took notes after Tracy handed him a notepad, then he scribbled furiously until he hung up the phone. He shook his head then dialed Doris down in her dorm at NYU.

“Dad? Is that you?” she groaned, just waking up at two in the afternoon…

“Yes, Sleepyhead, it sure is. Your mother and I are coming down as soon as we can get to the airport. Something’s happened to your Aunt Ann. You get yourself together and we’ll call you when we get to LaGuardia.”

Doris was wide awake now. “Dad? What’s happened?”

“We’ll talk when we see you. We’ll pick you up outside of the dorm.”

He rang off and stood, then turned to his wife and shook his head. “How long will it take you to get ready?” he asked.

“Give me five minutes. Want me to throw some things in your suitcase?”

“Please. I need to get some reservations going.”

She nodded and walked to get his suitcase on the way to their bedroom, then he took out his Amex Platinum Card and dialed the Concierge Services number on the back of the card. 

He listened to the girl run through her canned greeting impatiently, then let go: I have a family emergency in New York City. I’m in Boston and need to fly into LGA, get a rental car and I’ll need a suite at the Marriott in Soho for a week.” He gave her his card number and listened while she got to work; she had everything prepared within five minutes, and she read off his confirmation numbers while he wrote. Tracy came out of their bedroom as he hung up from calling for a taxi, and he helped her carry her suitcase down to the street. Twenty five minutes after walking in his front door he was on the way out, though his gut was churning now.

When they made it to the Crown Room Lounge at Logan he called the same girl at Amex again.

“I don’t know if you can do this,” he began, “but do you know those new Motorola Flip-phones?”

“Yessir?”

“Could you arrange for me to pick three of them up when I get to the Marriott?”

“Yessir. I’ll have them there for you when you arrive.”

“You are an angel. Thanks a million.”

He rang off and grabbed some coffee and some kind of cinnamon roll that seemed to have been baked at a factory in Scranton Pennsylvania maybe five years ago, then they walked out to their plane and boarded. Fifty minutes later they walked out of the grim businessman’s shuttle and made their way to the rental counter, and soon they were approaching the dank warrens of midtown Manhattan. 

And Bill was frantically trying to remember the best way to the university. 

And failing. 

Again. 

“Tracy? You remember the way?”

His wife smiled…the great navigator had lost his way. Again.

“Get off on the FDR, go through the South Street Viaduct, then get off on Canal Street.”

“ How do you remember that crap!” he snarled as someone cut him off. “God, I hate this fucking city,” he snarled as he fought his way through snarling hordes of kamikaze taxi drivers to Washington Square, and there was Doris, standing just outside the entrance to Lipton Hall.

Doris waved when she saw her mom then hopped into the Lincoln’s back seat. 

“What’s the best way to the Marriott,” he growled without even saying hello.

Hiding her disappointment, she navigated them away from Washington Square the few short blocks to the Marriott. There was no one to help with their luggage and no valet, so he drove around until he found a garage and was stunned to see the rates.

“Eight-five dollars a day?” he screamed at the attendant. “You happen to know where the parking is for the Marriott?”

“They validate,” the bored Sikh woman behind the glass said, stifling a yawn.

He stomped back to the lobby and Amex had taken care of all his check-in paperwork, and as he finished in a sales rep from Bell Telephone came up and introduced himself, then helped them activate their new phones, and he had their new numbers ready, too. After the rep showed them how to call each other, the man smiled at Doris on his way out, and Bill called the Detective Bureau to check-in Detective Harwood, who was by now off-duty. His call was transferred to a Detective Washburn, who advised he would be en-route to their hotel to speak with them. After the cop hung up he dialed Claire’s number at the Sea Cliff house and Evie picked up the phone.

“Hi Pops! What’s cookin’?”

Oh dear God, he thought, she been in California too long. “Get Claire, would you?”

She came on a moment later. “Bill? What’s wrong?”

“I’m in New York. Ann’s been murdered.”

A long pause followed. “You need us to come?”

“Yeah, you have something to write with? Okay, here’s your flight information.”

He rode up the elevator in silence then walked straight to the suite’s living room and sat to let his brain take a moment off. He looked up, saw that the suite had a huge terrace and now sun was settling over the Hudson. The sky was clear, aside from the few stray clouds over the western horizon, and when Tracy brought him a glass of sparkling water he took it gratefully and looked at her as she sat on his lap. 

“You doing okay?” she asked carefully.

He shook his head. “No. I am flat out exhausted, Tracy…and running on empty doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel. I didn’t sleep well last night, and, well, I have a bad feeling about this whole thing.”

“You…what thing?”

He shook his head as he sighed. “Oh, hell, maybe I’m just tired. Let me lean back and shut my eyes for a minute. Come get me when that cop gets here…”

She got off his lap and it seemed like he was asleep before she’d made it to her feet, so she and Doris went and unpacked their suitcases in one of the three bedrooms. Once in the room Tracy closed the door and she began filling in the blanks, telling Doris what little they knew so far…

And Doris seemed to fall back a little when she heard the news, then she stepped back and went to a window, looked at the sun setting and the lights in Jersey sitting winking on. She then looked down before she turned and looked at her mother. “I knew something like this was going to happen her, Mom…”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t tell Dad, but I think she was into some really dark stuff…”

“Dark stuff? What on earth do you mean by that, Dorie?”

“I mean,” she began, but then she looked away – as if she had just re-entered a demon-haunted world – and she walked over to a little armchair and sat. “Mom, Ann was into a really strange scene. I mean S&M, Mom, real kinky shit…”

A suddenly wide-eyed Tracy blanched and stumbled back into a chair. “Dorie? What are you saying? You’ve got to be kidding…” Then she took a deep breath as the next most obvious question came to her. “Doris? How do you know? Did she tell you about it?”

Doris nodded. “She told me. Then she convinced me to come with her to a few of the scenes she went, and I think it was someplace she regularly went, I guess.”

“How many times did you go, Doris?”

“Just once, and I left as soon as I saw what was going down…”

And just then her father walked into the room, his eyes like focused lasers beams, his malignant fury now focused on his daughter.

“Do you know anything about this, Doris? About what happened?”

“No, Dad. All that happened last year. I knew it was dangerous, and I…”

“Dangerous?” he said, his grumbling, almost feral voice taking complete charge of the room.  “How was it dangerous?”

“There were powerful people there, Dad. I mean Rich. Like rich beyond your wildest dreams, and Ann told me these men do what they want. Anything they want, Dad.”

“Are you saying they kill people at these scenes?” he growled. “For kicks?”

She shook her head. “No, but I saw an altar there Dad. It looked like maybe they were sacrificing animals there, but Ann it was mainly for sex…”

“Do any of these people know you, Doris? Know you, as in know they where you live, or what you do?”

She nodded. “Maybe,” she said, her voice weak, now far away and almost beyond his grasp. “Why?”

Tracy looked at him yet right now his face was a mask, his emotions locked away, out of sight. “Bill? What are you thinking?”

The suite’s doorbell chimed. “That’ll be the homicide detective, Doris.” He was staring at her now with unbridled anger roiling his features, but he turned his attention to his wife as he started for the door. “You two stay in here. Doris? You will not say a word about any of this until I knew more. Not to another soul. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, Dad. I understand.”

‘This is a nightmare,’ he said to himself as he turned and walked out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind as he walked across the suite to the door, ‘and I am so ready to wake up now…’

+++++

He took a taxi to Liberty International in Newark to pick up Claire and Evelyn, and by that point it was past midnight and he was beyond exhausted. They were, however, the first off their United 767 and luckily their bags were among the first to pop out of the chute and onto the revolving carousel, and they were back at the Marriott by two in the morning. Claire and Evie were, of course, on California time so weren’t even remotely tired. The first thing they did was to call room service, and Claire ordered piles of club sandwiches and gallons of coffee.

She assumed it would be a long night, and this gave Bill time to go over the day’s events in his mind, and to process what Doris had just told him. In a way, he told himself as he looked back over her life, Ann’s demise was almost predictable. Ann had always been sexually manipulative so sadomasochism must have seemed like the next step to her. She could manipulate men to her heart’s content in that setting, and who knows, maybe every head she fucked with actually enjoyed it.

‘But…what if she went too far?’ he asked himself. ‘Or what if she tried to extort someone?’

That might have set things in motion, events beyond her control. He shook his head when he remembered how all her seductions had been about control. About getting what she wanted.

‘But doesn’t everyone do just that…in one way or another? Don’t we always seek to control the narrative, even if that involves challenging our moral compasses?’ Again and again his mind sifted through memories of her, how she’d routinely set Claire up to take the fall and she’d willfully lied and distorted the truth to achieve her ends, and her means always justified her ends, achieving control over their father. But if she was involved with the very powerful, which was more than possible in this city, what might have happened to her if she crossed the line, violated a taboo? What if…

‘What if…what if…what if…what we need are facts…’ he muttered out loud.

Claire was sitting beside him now, watching him, but he’d been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t seen her.

“What facts, Bill?”

“Oh, hell, you’d better let Doris tell you. My mind is a mush right now.”

“You look tired.”

He nodded, leaned back in the patio chair and sighed.

Claire looked at Doris while her brother drifted off, and as she recounted all she’d told her parents Claire began to feel sorry for the girl, sorry for her falling into Ann’s orbit, and sorry for where this journey had taken the family, because one more time Ann was controlling the families dynamic. Even in death.

She that she had seen Bill distancing himself from Doris, and that couldn’t happen. Doris had always been bright and an extrovert, but what would happen to the girl if her father emotionally abandoned her? Yet even as she spoke, as she recounted some of the powerful people Ann had told her participated in these things, another thought entered her mind. What if Doris was lying now. What if she had been involved in more than she was telling them now. If that was true, and if Doris was a know associate of Ann’s, what immediate danger might she conceivably be in.

Claire looked from her brother to his wife, and she felt a sort of cool detachment coming from Tracy, like she was only mildly interested in all this, and – just perhaps – she thought that Bill was blowing this out of all proportion, coming down to hard when a soft touch might be more productive.

Claire, on the other hand, thought nothing of the sort. As she listened to and watched Doris recount the things Ann had allegedly told her, something wasn’t ringing true.

And in a flash, Claire suddenly felt danger lurking everywhere around them, and then she realized she had the moment they’d left the airport in Newark. Tracy, she reminded herself, had always considered Doris her favorite, and acting in loco parentis with Evelyn, she understood such inherent bias led to extremely unpredictable outcomes. Tracy had always been cute – like Ann. Doris was by far the cuter daughter, and what feelings had that imparted? In conversation, Tracy had often proven to be dull and unimaginative, and Claire had always put that down to coming from new money. Did Tracy, Claire wondered, possess any real understanding of human depravity? Were the things Doris was relating even mean much to her mother?

Claire now knew that Evelyn despised her mother almost as much as she despised had her sister Ann, yet because Claire had taken the time to understand where that anger came from, she now regarded Tracy and Doris as close cousins to the sort of person Ann had always been. Some people, she knew, were just better at concealing their truest selves. Some people were chameleons. And they became that way out of need.

Why had Tracy? 

She turned her gaze to Doris again, and now she could feel deceit boiling away inside of the girl, almost magmatic guilt waiting to erupt and spill out over her family, ruining all their lives. So Claire took a deep breath and began.

“You know what, Doris? I don’t believe a thing you’re saying?”

“What?” Doris replied, her left eye twitching.

“I don’t believe you. You’re lying.”

Tracy moved to protect her daughter.

Claire wasn’t going to let that happen. 

“Tracy, sit down,” she declared.

There was something in Claire’s voice that Tracy recognized, something she thought of as the power of an inherent, self-evident truth, and that stopped her in her tracks. 

Claire remained focused on Doris, her eyes now savage, vengeful: “Where were you when all this happened?” she said, her eyes leveled on Doris.

“When what happened?” Doris shot back.

“When my sister was murdered. Where were you?”

“In my room, at the dorm.”

“No, you weren’t,” Claire stated, her voice the incisive, matter of fact words of a magistrate pronouncing sentence. “Stop lying to me.”

“Excuse me?” Doris said, unsettled by this unexpected attack.

“You were with Ann. Now tell me where you were.”

“How do you know where I was?”

Bill turned and looked at his sister. He recognized something in her voice, the same voice she had used to confront Ann with her misdeeds, even when their father wouldn’t listen. He felt Doris beseeching him, asking him to help her, and he could feel the manipulation in her eyes.

“Doris, if you know more than you’ve told us now is the time to just let it go.” His eyes were still as unforgiving, yet he recognized she needed a lifeline. “If you hold onto this, if you’re keeping something important from us, over time the guilt will tear you apart. It will end up tearing this family apart, too. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, Dad, I do.” She was looking down now, and he could see the tears falling from her face hitting the tiles below, so he came and sat by her side, put his arms around her and gave her a gentle squeeze.

“What do we need to know, Dorie? What did Ann get you all messed up in?”

Doris looked up as if lost and alone, then she just shook her head and took a deep breath.

“Ann called me a lot my first semester. Came by when I didn’t have class, took me out to lunch or dinner, and we even spent a few weekends together that year. She took me up to Vermont, to Woodstock when the leaves were turning, and up to Stowe that January, to go skiing. She was so sweet, you know?”

He nodded. “In my experience…well, if she was acting like that it was because she wanted something from you.”

Doris nodded. “My second year we went out dancing a few times. And drinking. Sometimes with her friends…”

“Men?”

“Yeah, Dad. Men.”

His lips quivered. His sister had been grooming her, and when he looked at Claire he could tell she had already surmised that. “Sex?” he asked.

“Yeah, Dad. Sex.”

“Older men?”

Doris nodded. 

And Claire leaned in now. “And when did Ann start taking you to these S&M parties?”

“Not long after.”

“Doris, what happened at these parties?” Claire asked, now the patient, and sympathetic interrogator.

Doris looked away, lost in the cascade of memory the question had released.

“Doris?” Claire repeated gently, her voice little more than a whisper. “Come back to us, okay? Don’t go there? Don’t let Ann keep you there. You have to let it go. You have to let her go…”

More tears. The eternal struggle between truth and denial. Between deceit and bearing witness.

And so Doris began an exposition of the things she had seen and done. The orgies, for months every Saturday night, the scenes lasting hours and hours. Men jacked on speed and Viagra, most of the women she saw were on ‘ludes or coke. Some weekends she was the dominatrix, some she was the submissive. Ann told her it was so that she could get in touch with her inner self, her repressed feelings, but that in time she would know who she was and could choose one or the other. And as she spoke it didn’t seem to Bill all that big a mystery, because almost immediately she knew she was a top, or a dominatrix. Just like Ann.

Now almost in a trance, Doris described the things she had experienced, the things she had done to an with both men and women, and then she’d dropped another bombshell. She related how she had increasingly seen herself as being bisexual – while also ferociously dominant. She couldn’t date boys any longer, not at school now, not anywhere, because she simply could not filter out what she had become. All her interactions with boys in her classes had turned toxic as she felt herself becoming more and more like Ann. Because, Bill understood, Ann was all of these things, too.

And all the while Bill was staring at his daughter. He saw her, in a way, but he realized there is nothing within her he understood. She had, in her way, taken Ann into her soul and become a repudiation of everything he had stood for all his life. Even worse, Doris’s feelings for him are written in the blank stare of her gaze when she looked at him, and it was clear she had become Ann, incarnate. 

Claire thought that Doris had embraced darkness, and through her questioning the veil had been pierced and cast aside. She had suddenly found herself staring into the hollow gaze of pure evil, though Bill no longer looked at the world in such terms. Yet no longer was that truth something Doris could conceal. No, the simple truth was that this new reality was just the latest chapter Ann had visited upon their lives, all their lives, so now the family had to come together to understand the implications of Doris’s descent. 

More importantly, Claire realized she’d have to help her brother prepare for all the unknown consequences yet to come. If someone had killed Ann and her death was related to her activities, Doris was likely in danger. If the person or people involved were as powerful as Doris implied, that danger could take on many dimensions.

Claire turned and looked at her family.

Tracy was just standing there, open-mouthed and aghast, and Claire watched as Tracy turned away from Doris, moved protectively, instinctively, towards Evelyn. 

When he could stand it no longer, Bill turned from the sight of his daughter, turned to walk onto the terrace outside the suite’s living room, and Claire shook her head before she followed him.

“I had to do it, William. For her sake, as well as our own.”

He turned to face her, frightened for his daughter and her ability to deceive herself. “My god, Claire, do you understand what she’s done? Do you have any idea?”

“I think we have barely pierced the veil, William.” And with that she turned and looked behind him, scowling imperceptibly.

And without quite knowing why he knew. He could feel her behind him.

The pink creature. She was hovering there in the air behind him, several feet above the patio. Regarding him with detached curiosity. As a scientist might, he thought. Perhaps how a scientist might regard a new species of bacteria.

But then she disappeared.

Just as Tracy came out onto the terrace.

“Was someone with you?” she asked as she came up to him.

“No. Just me and Claire.”

“I thought I saw someone else out here.”

“No, Tracy,” Claire said, “it’s just us and our little nightmares out here.”

Tracy shook her head then came close to her husband and leaned into him, then she laid her head on his shoulder. “Bill, what are we going to do about this…?”

“That depends. We can do the right thing and tell Harwood what we’ve learned…”

“But…?”

“Yes. But. There’s nothing she’s told us that he won’t figure out on his own. Sooner or later, anyway.”

“You don’t think Doris is in danger, do you…?” Tracy added.

“I have no idea, Tracy. What does your gut say?”

“I’m a little frightened right now, Bill…”

“That’s the unknown knocking on your door,” Claire sighed. “I’m not sure I like the way that feels, either.”

“I thought I knew Doris,” Tracy sighed.

“So did I,” Bill said with a shrug.

“How could we have been so wrong?”

“I don’t think you were,” Claire said.

“What does that mean…?” A suddenly suspicious Tracy replied.

“What I see right now,” Bill interjected, “is that Doris was pulled into something like a black hole. The only mistake anyone made, that I made, was ever letting Ann get anywhere near her.”

“But how could you…?”

“Evil always seeks to undo goodness,” Claire said. “But think about it, Tracy, evil can’t just destroy goodness, it has to get goodness to destroy itself. Ever since I…we…we’ve known Ann, we always knew she was pure evil. Bill knew instinctively when he was very young…” 

“And you were the one that always had to deal with the consequences of Ann’s manipulations,” Bill added. “Our home was a toxic stew when growing up and I knew that, yet I let Doris come here, to New York. I let her fall into Ann’s hands, but Doris wasn’t strong enough to resist her. She’s always been kind of gullible, you know? Intelligent, but not street smart, if you know what I  mean.”

“We tried to protect her from all that, Bill,” Tracy said, exasperated. 

“In the end, Tracy,” Bill sighed, “I’m afraid Doris was simply weak.”

“Could all this…just be a dream?” a wistful Tracy asked.

He shook his head as he shrugged. “Or a dream within a dream, maybe?” He scoffed, turned away. “Hell, I don’t know, Tracy, I really don’t, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? What you’re asking is what if all life is really nothing more than a dream?”

Claire looked at him, wondered how far he would go with this. 

“You know, we can’t exactly measure consciousness, or the unconscious, yet we can experience it, right?” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “But what if consciousness is nothing more than energy? If that’s the case then we can experience energy? At least we could if that’s true, so take it a step a further. Somehow, here we are, deep within streams of intersecting fields of energy, and these streams become this thing we call consciousness. Maybe, who knows, because that means our lives exist as a field-state, maybe not on the same energy level as our dreams but maybe sometime those field-states intersect. And maybe they interact.”

“You sure you’re not just describing female intuition…?” Tracy said with a smile.

He looked at her and smiled too. “When was the last time we stayed up all night and watched the sunrise together?”

“Last summer, on Argos. Block Island, Great Salt Pond.”

He nodded. “Of course.” He sighed as he took her hand. “That was a kind of dream, wasn’t it? Or it feels like it right now, so what’s the difference between a memory and a dream? Yet they both exist inside us, right? Because we shared the experience…”

“The two of us. Okay, I get that. But what about my kind of dream? Mine was probably different.

“Unless somehow they interact,” Claire said, smiling. “What you just called intuition might really be a consequence of these interactions.”

Bill nodded.

“But Bill knows what I want to do. He understands that.”

“You ready to do that?” he asked.

“Do what?” Tracy said as she turned to face him.

“Sail off into the sunset?”

“I’ve been ready to do that for a long time, Bill. In case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed. I just wasn’t ready to accept the reality of that.”

“But you are now?”

He sighed. “Yeah, maybe I am.”

“But that just became impossible, didn’t it?” Claire said.

Bill nodded. “We’re going to have to clean up Ann’s mess before we do anything.”

“We are?” Tracy asked.

He shook his head. “I am. And Claire.”

“Bill? If this is…if the kinds of people you think are involved…if the really are…”

He looked at her and smiled. “Never underestimate what Claire and I can do, Tracy.”

“What does that mean, Bill?”

He smiled, but he didn’t immediately answer the question, either.

“Bill?”

“Tracy, the less you know about this the better off you are.” He saw the question in her eyes. “You’re going to have to trust us on this.”

“Us?”

“Claire. And me. This ain’t our first rodeo, girl.”

Evelyn came out and walked over to them. “Geez, how can you guys stand it out here? It’s so frickin’ cold out…!”

“Evie,” her father said as he slowly came to terms with her new mannerisms, “you’ve been in California too long. It’s beginning to warp your ability to speak English.”

“Chill, Dad.”

“You’re not too old for a spanking, either.”

“Why start now, Dad? You’ll mess up your halo.”

“You’re right. Never thought of it that way.”

Claire walked to the low brick wall. It looked to be about four feet tall, a border of reddish-gray brick with a tubular gray metal railing along the top, and the style blended in with the rest of the building’s semi-modernist architecture. She stood at the rail and turned her face into the breeze and seemed to float there for a moment, like she was measuring the moment. “Bill, does something feel strange to you?” she said as she turned to him.

He nodded. “I’ve felt something all day, but I think the feeling is getting stronger. It feels like something terrible is going to happen, Claire. And it’s going to happen right here,” he said as he pointed at the city. He too turned his face into the breeze and held his arms out wide, his face tilting a little as the building sensation fear washed over him. “Oh, what is that?” he cried. “I can feel it but I can’t see it…”

Tracy was regarding him suspiciously; she stepped back from him, unsure of this odd, new sensation. It felt like she was longer sure who he was…or even what he was…but she told herself that was ridiculous.

Bill turned and walked over to one of the patio chairs and mumbled something about being hungry and needing sleep, but he was also rattling on about how he was afraid to sleep and for a moment Tracy thought he was descending into madness. Then he turned to her. “Is there a room service menu in there?”

“Yes. I’ll go get it…” Tracy said, eyeing him nervously.

As Tracy left the patio he turned to Claire. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”

She shook her head. “We’re safe here, for now. I can’t see anything beyond that, Bill. It’s too dark here.” She looked away, unsettled as she looked at the city and the waters of the Hudson River. “Where’s Argos right now?”

“Rhode Island, just south of Providence.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

He nodded and quickly said “Yeah” just as Tracy came out with the the room service menu. 

He was in luck. They had Eggs Benedict.

+++++

He ate first, then showered and put on fresh clothes, yet the feeling of oppressive darkness was growing by the minute. It felt like an all-encompassing evil had gathered and was spreading everywhere he looked. Without thinking he packed his suitcase as the feeling grew, then he went back out onto the terrace to find Tracy. 

Claire was out there with Evelyn, but now Evelyn was shaking like a leaf.

He walked up to her but Claire stopped him.

“She’s like you were, Bill, once upon a time. She’s learning to see. She’s always been able to, she just didn’t know how to focus.”

Evie turned and looked at him, her eyes red-rimmed and tear-streaked. “Daddy? Do you feel it too?”

He nodded. “It’s almost here.” He went over to the wall once again and looked out over the river, at the city once again deep inside its very own perpetual motion machine, and right then he heard smoldering evil in the air.

It came on as a low whistling hum, almost like the high-pitched howl of jet engines at full thrust.

The American 767 shot by just a few hundred feet overhead and he instinctively ducked as the noise hit, then he turned and stood transfixed as the aircraft and all those terrified souls onboard flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. They were so close that the explosion very nearly knocked them all off their feet. Claire was visibly shaking now, Evelyn fell to the patio floor and started screaming as a long series of explosions rocked the city. Bill stood watching, his fists balling and releasing, contracting and extending as he watched the fuel-air combustion spread, and how glass and debris arced out from the two visible sides of the tower. 

Then Tracy came and held onto him. “Oh God…oh God…all those people…”

“It’s gotta be Bin Laden again,” Bill growled between gritted teeth as he watched black smoke pouring from the wound on the side of the building. “It’s just gotta be that fucking coward.”

Claire turned to her brother, and with her voice shaking she managed to say just two words: “Argos. Now,” before she fell back into one of the patio chairs and starting gasping for air. A few minutes later she stood and pointed at something low over New Jersey: “Bill…what is that?” she asked as the darkness came for them once again.

Everyone stood transfixed as a second 767 arced through the skies like an arrow before it penetrated the South Tower. More flaming debris rained down on Lower Manhattan, darker gouts of black, sooty smoke poured out of the second strike and suddenly it seemed that the only sounds coming from the island were frantic sirens and waves of endless screams.

“Everyone grab a bag and head for the elevators. I’m going for the car and I’ll pull up in front…” He stopped at the front desk and settled his account, then followed his family out into the chaos.

The streets were full of running men and women, most dressed for another day at the office. Now most everyone was covered with the tattered remnants of fluttering debris, some had visible wounds on their faces, everyone was running and stumbling away from the towers, panic in their eyes as they searched for help. Firetrucks approached, their wailing sirens and blaring honks adding to the pandemonium, yet everywhere he looked it seemed that no one knew what to do. 

He made it to the parking garage and found no attendant on-duty and the barricade raised; he made his way to the car and drove to the hotel’s lobby entrance. Everyone piled into the Lincoln in a blind rush. More sirens, more ambulances arriving on scene now, cops everywhere trying to get some kind of perimeter established. Bill turned against traffic on an almost empty one way street and then turned away from the carnage, taking 6^th Avenue north and away from The Battery. Once in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel he was on 495, then the 278 to the 95 and he was out of the city heading to Argos.

+++++

Some segments of the aviation community recovered after the events of 9/11 faster than others, but generally speaking air travel collapsed afterwards. For a while fuel prices soared and international travel collapsed, none of which impacted operations at Orbital Sciences. Tennyson was working both sides of the fence by then, spending more than 90 percent of his time working engineering problems  related to Pegasus launches, the rest of his time supervising the maintenance operations of the TriStar and maintaining current with his training.

He had developed a reputation for being one of the better L-1011 training captains in the country, though by the early 2000s TriStar operators were dwindling as airframes aged-out and were replaced by more economical new aircraft. The L-10, as the community referred to the TriStar, was also one of the last commercial airliners whose cockpit was full of so-called “steam gauges,” or round instruments with mechanical internal workings. Newer aircraft operating systems were utilizing GPS waypoints to navigate in 3-D space, while aircraft such as the TriStar, older DC-10s and early 737 models all still utilized older technology, and in the case of the 737 many were still operating with only radio-based aids to navigation, which had seen only modest, incremental improvements since the second world war. The TriStar was now one of the last commercial aircraft in service that was equipped to handle a full Category III Autoland – or – to be able to shoot an NDB, on Non-Directional-Beacon approach, which, having been developed when air mail was flown in bi-planes, remained one of the most primitive types of foul weather approaches still in relatively common usage.

As the events of 9/11 gave way to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the subsequent activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, civilian airlines were increasingly called upon to move troops from the United States to staging areas in the Azores, Italy, and Turkey. Many of there airlines were charter carriers or air cargo operators, and more than a few of the CRAF fleet was made up of L-1011 TriStars, but because fewer mainline carriers still used this aircraft there simply weren’t enough line pilots to meet the immediate need.

Bill Tennyson was still years away from the mandatory retirement age and because he was so well known within the tight-knit TriStar community it wasn’t long before someone approached him about flying a small number of flights. Many of the TriStars in use were ex-TWA aircraft and so familiarity wasn’t really an issue, although different carriers maintain different FSMs, or Flight Standards Manuals, to spell out corporate specific procedures, but Tennyson would be flying with line pilots, not taking their place, and besides, he was in fact still a fully rated instructor on the L-1011.

Which was how he came to be in the front office of several old TWA TriStars, aircraft he’d last flown when Bill Clinton was in office, even before Monica Lewinsky came on the scene. He’d be at Pope Army Airfield one day, then maybe a week later at MCAS New River, picking up a couple hundred soldiers or marines, carrying them to their overseas staging area, and sometimes bringing troops home. Every now and then, though rarely, he carried special forces teams and their support staff all the way to Saudi Arabia, and a few times even farther east. By that point his world had been reduced to series of number strings, GPS coordinates and runway lengths, automated balanced field length calculations based on anticipated density altitudes. His mind once again consumed by fuel load versus burn and reserves on approach.

And these things kept him from thinking about Doris as much as he had. Wasn’t it bad enough to lose your sister like he had? Had Ann really needed to drag his daughter down that same path? Had her hatred of their father led her to destroy everything their parents created? 

Yes, he had to admit that maybe it had, but why had she never been able to account for her own actions? Was that truly the nature of her dis-ease? Her inability to see herself as she truly was? Or, he wondered, were people generally incapable of such self-analysis?

He remembered his family’s crazy drive from Manhattan just after the towers were struck. Traffic was insane, and he’d come to think that was the best and only way to describe the way people had acted. Supreme self importance, like where such people were headed was the only thing that mattered to them now, and everyone simply needed to get out of their way. Yet why had traffic on Interstate-95 seemed like the epicenter of all that insanity? People stuck in traffic pulling out their hair, banging their fists on their car’s steering wheels, abject anger everywhere he looked. He’d found himself wondering what these same people would be like if the air raid sirens of an imminent atomic attack sounded? How different would they be than the people of Hiroshima that his father had seen and photographed that August morning?

The price of gas had doubled in the first few hours after the aircraft hit the towers, then staples on grocery store shelves had disappeared, and soon everyone he encountered seemed personally stricken by the attacks – but as far as he could tell no one he met had actually been near the towers, and not one was injured. No, what he had witnessed was mass hysteria. Truckers in Arizona running Arabic looking drivers off the road, in one case killing a man in bare-fisted rage. One group of men in Mississippi on the evening news had been screaming into the camera that they wanted to find and kill as many ‘Ragheads’ as they could, but why? Why so much hate? Why was no one taking the time to ask why had this happened?

Where, he wondered, was the dividing line between mass hysteria and mass psychosis.

It was obvious to him that a handful of Islamic fundamentalists had embraced a kind of hysteria, but what if they had indeed become functionally insane? Could that insanity spread to an entire country, or within the adherents to religious community? If so, what would keep that from spreading? Anywhere? Everywhere?

Once everyone was safely on Argos all those things had simply seemed like something remote and far away, like something he’d left behind. Even as overcrowded as they were on the boat, Tracy had plotted their course to Block Island, to the Great Salt Pond again, and they stayed safely at anchor there, going into the little village to grab a cheeseburger a couple of times but otherwise just remaining away from their fellow man. Claire had snagged a room at one of the B&Bs and everyone showered, but then things died down, the insanity passed, and so they’d returned to the marina. 

He called Amex again and they’d hopped on the Acela and returned to New York to take care of Ann’s affairs, and to get Doris packed up. He arranged for a funeral home to pick up Ann’s cremated remains and the family had decided he needed to find her papers to figure out what she’d wanted done with them. With a file folder full of notarized death certificates he’d visited her office, then three banks before finding the one box with her papers safely filed away in a safety deposit box. He found nothing, no will, no directives of any kind, just a bunch of small black books in dated envelopes. 

Sitting in the secure room inside the bank he read through them, growing more concerned with each entry he read. These were, he soon realized, diaries of all her depravities. She’d named names, too. Famous names, important people. She’d documented dates and venues, too. She’d even diagramed the human sacrifices she’d supposedly witnessed, and the more he read the more convinced he grew that these were the scribblings of a lunatic. Still, there was enough information in these books to end more than a few high-profile political careers, so he did what he thought best. He put them back in their envelopes and these he put in his briefcase, and after he’d consolidated all her accounts into one, he took all the information he’d uncovered to his own lawyer in Boston.

“Nolan, I’d like you to read through these right now, because I need some advice.”

“Bill, it will take me a few hours to read all this. Two at least? You sure I need to do this?”

Tennyson nodded. “You’ll understand after a few pages.”

So Bill sat in his lawyer’s office, watching the man’s reactions as he turned page after page of Ann’s telling of her activities, a couple of times reaching for a bottle of antacid tablets, chomping them down like peanuts, all the while taking notes. Three hours later the attorney had looked up and nodded. His hands were shaking.

“You say she was murdered? In midtown?”

Bill nodded.

“My advice is this. Let me burn this material. All of it. If you turn this over to law enforcement there’s no telling where this information will end up, but I’d assume the people listed in here will assume you’ve read it and that you are therefore a threat to them. They might do nothing, or they might arrange for you to get audited by the IRS every year until you die. They might kill someone else in your family. Or you. My point is there’s absolutely no telling what such people might do, really, but in your position I’d assume the worst.”

He nodded. “I assumed as much.”

“Do you have an offramp?”

“A what?”

“If the worst happens, what would you do?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Good way to get killed, Bill. You, and maybe your family, too. What you need is an offramp. A way to disappear in a moments notice. Without leaving a trace, by the way.”

“I take it you do? Have an offramp, I mean?”

Nolan smiled. “Several,” the man smiled as he steepled his fingers mischievously.

“Could you set one up for me?”

Nolan shook his head. “That defeats the purpose, Bill. No one, I repeat no one should know any of these details. I can give you guidelines, but the specifics will be up to you, and it will require some legwork.”

“How’d you learn about this stuff, Nolan? I mean, there’s not some kind of class in law school on this stuff, is there?”

His lawyer shook his head. “No, there isn’t.” 

“Do I even want to know?” Bill asked reluctantly. Then Bill remembered Nolan had ‘worked for the government’ once. In some kind of law enforcement that worked overseas a lot.

“No, you don’t.”

“Okay. Well then, burn it. Burn all of that goddamn’d stuff.”

Of course, Bill had made photocopies of everything. Just in case.

+++++

“I’m so tired of this new schedule I can’t even think straight anymore,” Tracy sighed. Instead of retiring, and instead of taking the teaching position at the American flight attendant’s training academy, she’d opted to continue flying. As her seniority had transferred, thanks to her union contract, she’d managed to remain based in Boston and had the status to bid on the Logan to Charles De Gaulle run, because she simply loved Paris. Over the years she had learned the language and so she often helped younger FAs get around the city. She and Bill had taken frequent breaks there, often just spur of the moment getaways when he was still with TWA, and she could still put those short-notice vacations together. Two hours after he left Nolan’s office, he asked her to do just that. And that was where they were this morning, walking along the Seine looking across the water at the intricate, 13^th-century traceries on Sainte Chapelle’s lone gothic spire.

“What are your retirement options at work?” he asked his wife.

“Depends,” she retorted. “How much longer are you going to work?”

He looked down at the sidewalk, reluctant to open this can of worms again. Ever since 9/11 she’d been ready to cut loose and sail away, yet something had been stopping him. Something beyond the lingering doubt of becoming a full-time liveaboard sailor. Because, his thinking went…where would we go? What would they do once they got there? And why? Why slog it out on a boat for weeks at a time when they could literally go anywhere in the world, and be there in hours, not weeks.

But that argument meant nothing to her, and as their situation had changed he doubted the wisdom of staying in Boston. But why take off on a boat? Would they be safer?

The journey meant more than the destination, she always said. The sense of accomplishment, she maintained, would become the real reason for taking these trips on Argos.

He’d remained dubious. But not so much right now.

Still, he was not sure of himself where sailing was concerned.

Because, for one, he loved his half hour showers in the morning, after his five mile run. He’d been running since high school and became something of an addict at Annapolis – where running was the norm – and he could still grind out five miles in under 40 minutes if he had to. Second, he enjoyed sailing…on clear days with light winds. They’d been caught out in a minor storm before, making the trip from Nantucket back to the marina when a sudden storm hit, and he didn’t like it out there under those conditions. Tracy, on the other hand, loved it. Loved it! While Argos could take nasty weather with ease, the feeling of being so exposed bothered him.

And taking a long trip meant cutting ties to home. Being out of communication range. Being…alone. And while Tracy almost seemed to long for solitude, he liked the camaraderie of the cockpit or the engineering teams he’d recently been assigned to work with.

But then there was the dream. That dream. The island. The palms, Tracy in the Zodiac rushing out to Argos. The other woman, the stranger. And then there was that pink creature, always there, always studying him. And Claire. She wasn’t talking about it these days, but she was concealing something big. From him. And that really bugged him.

He’d woken in a sweat that morning only to find white sand in the bed…sand from his feet. He’d never had a problem at this hotel before, the he realized that his sweat smelled like sunscreen.  But he hadn’t used sunscreen since last summer, in Maine. And then after he’d looked in the mirror he’d found his face red from recent exposure to a lot of sunlight. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Because when he was standing there, looking at himself in the mirror over the basin in the hotel bathroom, Tracy came in and she was absolutely sunburned. As in: to a crisp. And it was January. In Paris. And then they’d stared at one another in that little mirror almost in a state of shock…

“I was having a dream,” he began. “We were anchored off some island and it felt like, oh, I don’t know, maybe somewhere in the tropics…”

“And you had just slumped over in the cockpit, you are on Argos…”

“What?” he cried. “Are you saying you had the same dream?”

She nodded. “You’re on Argos and Claire and I are walking back from the village with fresh bread…”

“You can’t mean it. We can’t be having the same dream?”

She nodded, the wonder of the moment almost overwhelming. “We’re on Argos,” she sighed. “Claire and Evelyn are on Moonlight…”

“Moonlight? What the hell is…”

“Claire’s sailboat. Just like ours, but with…”

“…a white hull?” he asked.

“That’s right. A Hinckley, a 42 like ours.”

He snorted derisively. “Claire? On a sailboat? Man, that’s some kind of dream…”

“How long have you been having it?” she asked. “The dream, I mean?”

He shrugged, shook his head. “I can’t remember the first time, but it was a while ago…”

“How often?”

“Oh, man, I can’t…well, maybe once a month, maybe more…”

“It started a year ago,” Tracy said. “Sometimes once a week. It’s funny, Bill, because at first I thought it was something like repressed desire coming out in that dream…”

They usually had breakfast across from their hotel, the Hotel Saint-Louis en L’Isle, a little place located on the Île Saint-Louis, at a small crêperie, then they took their usual walk across the Pont Saint Louis to the walkway along the south side of the cathedral, across the Pont au Double to the old Shakespeare & Company Bookstore. Coffee was next, then when the weather cooperated, find a bench in the Square René Viviani before continuing along the Quai Saint-Michel to the Pont Saint-Michel, over to walk through Sainte Chapelle before returning to the hotel for some intramural sports between the sheets.

But today had been different.

The weather had been ferociously uncooperative, the north wind creating whitecaps and spume on the Seine, and after the revelation about the shared dream they’d been having, they stopped by the bookstore and looked for anything by Freud or Jung about interpreting dreams, then beat a hasty retreat back to the hotel. 

Down to the basement they went, to the barrel-vaulted restaurant for coffee and croissant, then up to one of the sitting rooms off the lobby to talk.

“We love it here,” he finally said, “so why don’t we buy a little place here on the island and retire?”

She crossed her arms and her lower lip jutted out a bit. “If that’s what you want, then by all means. I hope you enjoy your dotage here.”

He nodded, quietly accepting this defeat. “So, you have an itinerary all mapped out in your head, I take it?” he asked.

The lip retracted a little, her arms opened to accept his surrender. “I want to do the coconut run,” she said defiantly, daring him to object.

“You mean Tahiti? The South Pacific?”

“I do, yes.”

“You wouldn’t be content with, say, Bermuda for a week or two?”

She shook her head.

“What’s with Claire and the boat…in the dream?”

“I don’t know. Have you asked her?”

“Hell no. She’d laugh in my face if I told her we were having the same dream, let alone…”

“May I make a suggestion?”

He hesitated, his brow furrowed as he wondered where her next line of attack would carry them. “Sure. I guess,” he sighed, resigned to the inevitable.

“Why don’t you call her and ask?”

“How’d I know you were going to say just that?”

“Are you getting clairvoyant as you ripen?” she asked, still relishing the fact that she was almost fifteen years younger than he, and not at all hesitant to rub his nose in it – when or if necessary.

“Ripen?” he sighed. “You aren’t exactly a spring chicken, you know?”

“And that’s my point, Bill. We wait ten more years and will we, will you even be able to make a trip like this?”

“I can’t answer that, Tracy. No one can.”

“And that’s precisely my point, Bill. We can, right now. You and I. Together. The trip of a lifetime. Together.”

“You mean…leave now?”

“In late April.”

“Full time, I take it?”

She nodded. “A clean break,” she added, perhaps more brightly than necessary.

A woman from the reception desk approached their table, and Bill looked up expectantly.

“Dr Tennyson?” the woman said.

“Yes?”

She handed him a note as she spoke. “The caller said that it was most urgent that you return their call,” then she left them in perplexed silence while Bill opened the envelope and skimmed the contents of the message.

“Nolan,” he said.

“Your lawyer?”

He nodded as he pulled out his Motorola. “No signal here. I’ll go up to the room.”

“Let’s both go. I need to freshen up.”

Their room was on the top floor and had a small terrace that looked out over Notre Dame, and as it also had excellent cell phone reception he looked at his watch and nodded, then dialed the number on the message.

“Bill? That you?”

“Nolan, yes, I just got your message.”

“Whew, thank God.”

“Nolan, what’s wrong?”

“Bill, I don’t know how to…but…well…Doris is, well, she’s dead. Apparent suicide, but the detective I just spoke to said it looks staged, like a professional hit…”

Tennyson sat on the edge of the bed, then slid to the floor, his world suddenly spinning out of control, everything he’d wanted out of life now slipping from his grasp. Tracy came running out of the bathroom and found his telephone on the carpet, so she grabbed it…

“Hello? Nolan? This is Tracy, what’s happened?”

So the attorney recounted what he knew so far, what the police had deduced in the earliest stages of their investigation. Then he added: “Look, Tracy, I’m not at all sure that you two are safe here. Whoever did this defeated the security system in your place, and that took planning and resources. Professional level resources, if you get my drift.”

“Nolan, what are you saying?”

“Someone knew where the safe in the basement was located. They made it in, defeated the security mechanisms to get to it, then closed it. Do you know if, well, ask Bill if he kept a copy of Ann’s diaries, would you? Right now, please.”

She did. “Nolan, he says he didn’t. Why? What was in them?”

“He hasn’t told you?”

“No. Not one word.”

“Bill still has a sister, correct?”

“Yes? Why?”

“Well, it’s not inconceivable that she could be in some danger, as well…”

Tracy listened, asked if there was anything else they needed to know…

“Tell Bill now’s the time to take that offramp. He’ll understand, Tracy.”

“Okay, Nolan. I’ll tell him. Thanks.”

She rang off then dialed Claire’s number from memory; when Evelyn answered she spoke forcefully without going through the niceties: “I need to speak with Claire,” Tracy told her daughter, “right now.”

Evelyn knew that tone of voice and ran off to get her aunt.

“Tracy? What’s happened?”

She told her. Everything Nolan had just told her, including the possibility of further danger.

Claire listened, and despite the heartache she knew now was not the time to give in to despair. “Where’s William?” she asked. 

“On the floor. Basically, I think he’s gone catatonic on me, Claire.”

“Put the phone up to his ear, would you?”

Tracy could hear the sudden stream of invective swearing coming from Claire’s end from two feet away, and Bill’s eyes flickered and came back to life. Suddenly he grabbed the phone from his wife and brought it up to his face.

“Claire, are you still having the dream?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“Tracy is too.”

“Bill, so is Evelyn.”

“Oh for pity’s sake, you’ve got to be kidding me! Claire…what’s going on?”

He could hear the hesitation in Claire’s voice as she spoke her next few words. “Bill, have they been in contact with you?”

“Who?”

“Bill, we don’t have time for this right now…”

He sighed. “Yeah Claire, the tall one is in the dream.”

“The pink?”

“Yeah.”

“Any others?”

“No. Just her.”

“Ask Tracy is she’s seen anything unusual, like some kind of pink creature…”

He did. She had not.

“Bill, has she ever tried to say anything to you?”

“No, bot in a long time. Now she just looks at me like she always has, like she’s watching my reactions to something. Wait a second…no, that’s not right. One time she asked if I was ready, ready for death, then I woke up…”

“Where you at the island?”

“The island? Hell, it was an island, but what do you mean by ‘the’ island?”

“If we’re having the same dream it’s likely an implanted memory, Bill. I have to assume it’s the same for all of us, because, well, nothing else makes sense…”

“Claire, nothing about any of this makes sense…but what I want to know is what are you doing on a boat? You’ve never even had a rubber duck in a bathtub, let alone a…”

“Moonlight, right?” Claire asked. “White hull, red stripe just above the waterline? Is that in your dream?”

“Yup. She’s a Hinckley Sou’wester 42, like Argos. And I mean just like Argos except for the hull color.”

“Bill, uh, Evie and I were at a friend’s birthday in Sausalito last weekend at a place on the water. We went out to look at boats before we drove home and there was a sailboat there called Moonlight. It looked just like yours.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Bill, she was for sale.”

“Look, I’ve got a bigger problem right now. My lawyer thinks it might be dangerous for us in Boston, but we’ve got to go back there for, well, you know…”

“I agree.”

“I don’t know what to do, Claire…”

“Bill, I’m so sorry this had to spill over onto your family. That Ann had to spill over on you like this again, but you have to take care of Tracy now. But I agree, something still feels wrong, and if we get together for a funeral that might just make it easy for whoever is doing this. You do what you have to do right now and I’ll take care of Evie until we can meet up.”

He paused while he thought of an idea, then he just spit it out: “Claire, do you think she’d help us?”

“The pink? Wow, Bill, you go from not wanting to have anything to do with them to full-blown dependence. You sure you want to go down that path?”

“No. Just asking.”

“Look, Bill, I don’t think they want to get involved, but then again I’m not sure why they singled you and me out in the first place, but I do know we’re not alone. There are others, Bill. Like us. I think they’re in contact with a few of them here in the city.”

“It was just a thought, Claire.” 

“Do you have a plan?”

“No. I have an offramp.” 

She did not know what that was, so he explained it to her, in great detail.”

+++++

Just before two in the morning, StarGazer, Orbital Science’s L-1011, settled onto final preparing to land at the old air force base in Westhampton, New York. Runway 2-4 at the airport was over 9,000 feet long and so more than long enough to handle the TriStar, but after touchdown the jet taxied to the ramp and barely stopped before it turned and made for the runway again, pausing briefly to run-up the engines before taking off again. Total time on the ground: less than 5 minutes. No one, not even the people in the control tower, saw the two people exit via the lower level airstairs, and no one saw them walk over to a small private jet parked well away from any lights. The Cessna Citation took off ten minutes after StarGazer and turned northeast towards Block Island, Rhode Island. By five that morning Bill and Tracy were onboard Argos; they left their mooring in the pond and cleared the island by 0530; they plotted their course, 145 degrees true, and calculated their distance, 615 nautical miles, to the entrance buoy off St George’s, Bermuda and raised a double-reefed main and a storm staysail, proceeding into the North Atlantic. It was, of course, still January, and the seas off the New England coast were raging.

Tracy was at last fully in her element, howling with glee as Argos slammed into 12 foot seas, the Hinckley cutting through them like a scalpel. Bill, however, spent the first two days hunched over the lee rail, blowing beets out his nose and cursing the day he’d met his wife. On day three and now deep within a warm eddy in the Gulf Stream, the seas fell into a dead calm and life on Argos calmed down a bit. Bill managed to hold down some broth. A few hours later it was ramen in more broth. Tracy was exhausted and fell into the berth in the aft cabin and slept like the dead, only to be jolted awake when Bill’s watch ended, when the ship’s bell signaled the change of watch. He’d managed to cook bacon and eggs for lunch and held them down, and once he started eating and sleeping regularly he started to regain his strength.

With the calm seas they began to see more marine life. Dolphins swam in their bow wave and in their gurgling wake, flying fish landed with a slap on the deck and Bill tried to pick them up and toss them back into the sea before they died. 

And early one morning the orca appeared.

But it wasn’t just some random orca, it was the orca from Southwest Harbor, the same big male. He looked at it now and thought it had to be at least twenty five feet long, maybe more, and his girth was astonishing, and he’d watched it swimming alongside Argos for at least an hour and it soon felt like the orca was some kind of sentinel, like he was watching over them. 

‘Or is it just me?’ 

What was this connection? Where had it come from?

On the fifth day out they called Bermuda Radio and checked in for clearance to the harbor at St Georges; on Day 6 they refueled and reprovisioned and immediately took off for the Turks and Caicos, and almost immediately the orca took up his station a few hundred feet aft. 

They took on more fuel at West Turk, and Bill loaded more fresh seafood aboard before casting off the next day for the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. Rather than stop in Jamaica, Tracy had wanted to sail directly to Panama while Bill had wanted to stop in the Caymans to do some banking – and that took precedence. He called a Panama Canal agent from there, prepared the way for their passage through the canal, and he enjoyed a few days of long, blissful showers before heading south again.

And once again, when they were back in deep water, the orca reappeared. Always hanging back, always keeping a watchful eye on Argos. Or was it watching him?

After their arrival in Colon, they checked in with the agent and got their transit papers. Even so, they had to wait three days in an insect infested marina west of town until their scheduled reporting time and place, whence they were boarded by a pilot who scowled in frustration when he saw the size of the boat he was in charge of for his next passage through the canal. Tracy did her best to feed him well and late on the second day they dropped him off. The pilot left and Argos made for the next marina, this one on the Pacific. More fuel, two long trips in rental cars to stock up at local grocery stores. Two calls made, one to Claire.

Fully provisioned again, this would be their longest crossing yet, 3600 miles from Panama City, Panama to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands. Bill had expected more of the same, more endless storms and sleepless nights, but the reality of this next passage soon became one of long, languid days spent under equatorial sunlight, finding cool shade and reading a book, or working down below in the early morning, baking bread without heating up the cabin too much. Bill tried to catch fish a few times, only managing to snag a blue shark on his first attempt, and that poor creature convinced them both that it did not want to be eaten – before thrashing the side of the hull and swimming off in anger. Dark, fast moving squall lines, rain-streaked and fierce, came on hard and disappeared as quickly, rarely kicking up waves or swell, and while each storm forced them to reduce sail, the cool rain felt nice. A few times the rain fell just long enough to wash their hair and to quickly rinse away the soap, yet ten minutes later the sun would come out again, ready to roast them dry. 

And all the while the orca swam along, quietly on guard.

One night in light air Bill saw the lights of an airliner high overhead and he just stared longingly at the sight until the blinking red anti-collision lights disappeared over the far horizon, leaving him to grumpily shake his head in disgust – when he dryly noted their current speed was topping out at a blistering 4.2 knots. Then a few hours later and without warning, they had to change course in the middle of the night to avoid being run down by a huge cargo ship – and whose crews did not respond to any calls on the VHF radio. The next morning another tanker passed by so close that Bill could plainly see that not a soul was manning the bridge – it was simply plowing its way across the open ocean on autopilot. Then, as they entered and sailed across one of the main shipping lanes between North America and New Zealand, they dodged shipping containers that dotted the seas all around like roadside litter. On a whim, Bill lowered sail as they approached one of the steel behemoths, a blue container streaked with rust, and as the seas were calm he hopped aboard and just managed to open an inspection port. When he used a flashlight on the cargo within he saw hundreds of boxes of high priced audio speakers, the contents of the container probably worth hundreds of thousand of dollars, and it was floating out there in the middle of the Pacific, just another container abandoned and waiting for rust to claim it. One afternoon they counted more than forty containers, little triangular bergs jutting from the surface on the mirror calm seas. What would happen, he asked Tracy, if they were under full sail in a stiff breeze in the middle of the night – and they hit one doing eight knots? Easy answer, that: they’d get to try out their new life raft. 

Bill tried to adjust the radar to pick them up but the radar targets were just too small to see unless the seas were dead calm and they kept the radar range at an eighth of a mile. Maybe, he wondered, some kind of sonar would work, but both decided they needed the radar set to 24 miles to spot tankers and cargo ships, as these were the greater danger. 

Or were they?

Yet all the while the orca remained on station, as always just a few hundred feet behind Argos. When the seas were calm his glistening black dorsal fin would pop up and scythe along before disappearing again, and a few minutes later it would reappear. In rough seas he was harder to spot and Bill had to really concentrate, but no, on the crest of a wave or deep in a trough that dorsal fin would pop up, like a metronome beating to a rhythm all its own.

Hiva Oa appeared when and where it was supposed to, a pale green mound hovering above the thermals in the distance, and that morning a small green and yellow bird visited them, perching on the dodger above the companionway, looking nervously about while it rested. Bill filled a cup with fresh water and set out some sunflower seeds and the little guy sat for a quick snack then off it went. As if on cue a pod of dolphins appeared and surfed on Argos’ bow wave, Tracy leaning over and slapping the hull just above the curling water, hoping to get one of them to come close. They surfed alongside for a few minutes and then were as quickly gone. Another sailboat appeared on the horizon, apparently leaving the island and headed west, and the sails soon disappeared behind an approaching squall. Tracy called on the radio to check in and got permission to approach the island, but there was no fanfare, no greetings by flower carrying natives.

Later that afternoon they anchored off the village of Atone in forty feet of clear green water; Tracy hoisted their amber Q flag, or Quarantine flag, to indicate their’s was the vessel that needed to be checked by officials. Once cleared-in, they spent the next two days taking on water and always more fuel, and, finally, more fresh fruit and seafood, then they set out for Rangiroa in the Tuamotus Island Group.

Bill had learned that planning wasn’t about creating rigid schedules and sticking to them, instead it is about creating options. Rigid schedules tied you to a route, to another schedule, and such schedules compromised the very reason for cruising. When you’re out there and see something new, something interesting, or if you meet people worth getting to know better, schedules destroy such opportunities. Good planning, on the other hand, makes it possible to have the supplies and resources on hand to explore unforeseen options as they appear, so if he thought the next leg of the journey might take 20 days, he provisioned for 60.

Yet timing is everything on a sailboat, especially when approaching the entrances to harbors, but this became even more critical when attempting to enter the very narrow pass they found off the village of Avatoru, at Rangiroa Atoll. Avatoru is easiest navigable channel into the atoll’s central lagoon, and at its widest it’s about 200 yards and over a hundred feet deep in the center of the channel, but the way ahead narrowed considerably as Argos approached Motu Tara, an islet in the dead center of the pass. Depth hadn’t been an issue but as they approached Motu Tara the depth quickly shoaled to ten feet, then eight. Tracy began a slow turn to port, or to their left, and as they’d entered the pass when the tides were turning, water was pushing Argos along, accelerating as it was constricted in the narrowing inlet. Their speed picked up rapidly and Argos teetered on the edge of uncontrollability, but just as suddenly they were through, spit out into the deeper waters of the lagoon off the village.

But nothing had prepared them for what they found.

The lagoon at Rangiroa is immense, and at 45 x 15 miles it is larger than the main island of Tahiti, and yet the waters are of wildly varying depth. The waters are, however, crystal clear and of a perfect depth for scuba divers of all abilities. Sea life abounds in the relatively shallow waters bear the atolls coral lined shores, yet depths up to 115 feet are not uncommon just a few hundred feet from the village. And so the orca following Argos slipped in unnoticed.

Scuba divers in big Zodiacs roared by, heading for the pass at the turn of the tide so the divers could get up close and personal with the white tip reef sharks that cruised the waters off the inlet, and as Tracy went up to the bow to drop anchor she waved at the divers as they passed. After Bill backed down to set the anchor he joined her forward, looking at the village and the water beneath Argos.

“It’s like we’re in a swimming pool,” she sighed as she scanned the shoreline about 50 yards away.“And there’s supposed to be a market not far from the dingy landing.”

“I could care less” he growled sourly. “I want a hotel room that doesn’t move every time a wave hits, and a shower with an endless supply of hot water. Beyond that, I really don’t give a flying fuck what else is here…”

“There’s also a place to get a massage,” she snickered.

“Now I could get behind some of that,” he grinned. “Where?”

“Maybe they do ‘happy ending,’ Bill?”

“That’s your job, kiddo.”

“Not with this sunburn, bucko.”

“Okay. One massage with happy ending, here I come.”

“You are awful.”

+++++

They told officials in the village that they planned to stay a few days, but they ended up staying several months. Bill found an interesting hotel near the airport that fronted the lagoon, complete with thatched roof bungalows right on the water. They moved Argos so she lay at anchor within easy swimming distance, and he stayed there while Tracy flew to Papeete to visit a dermatologist and gynecologist. With little else to do he started taking scuba diving lessons while she was away, and when she returned they finished the class together. Soon they were going on shark dives off the pass, then spending hours on end snorkeling around the vast lagoon around Argos almost every day. 

And he swam with the orca as often as he could, though he took pains to keep that part of his life out of sight.

And to those who saw the couple perhaps the only thing that might have come to mind was that they were two middle aged Americans out enjoying the fruits of their labors. They appeared happy and seemingly without a care in the world, though of course such was not the case.

They were still on Bill’s offramp, slowly but surely disappearing from view. All the while looking for people who might be following them. Stalking them.

And yet at the same time, while all this had been happening, one other part of the plan was coming together far, far away.

Claire and Evelyn and, of all people, Tracy’s father Ted were at that time on Moonlight, the other Hinckley Sou’wester 42. Claire and Evelyn had sailed from Sausalito to Santa Barbara, California, then mentioned that they were on their way to San Diego and Baja, but they stopped at Avalon, the old casino village on Catalina Island, and Ted – now in his 70s – was waiting for them on the town dock – with his new girlfriend. Soon, with their duffels stowed, the four of them set out for Honolulu. 

This was something new for two of them, for Claire and Maria Cantrell, Ted’s friend. Evelyn was by now an experienced, and competent, sailor, while Ted was comfortable with boats and the sea, so Evelyn took Maria and Ted stuck with Claire when each pair stood watch. Evelyn was a good teacher when she was interested in the subject matter, and the crew of Moonlight soon grew comfortable with their new routines. Eighteen days later they arrived off Diamond Head.

With that leg out of the way, Claire and Ted managed the refueling and taking on water, while Evie and Maria did the grocery shopping. Once everything was stowed Moonlight set out for Rangiroa. 

Claire had scoffed at the idea when Bill told her the bare outlines of his plan, yet she had seen the logic behind it. Disappear for a few years, let things die down, then she could return to San Francisco, Ted to Naples, and Evelyn could set out on the boat for a life of her own. Things would blow over. Life would return to normal.

Yet Claire had been devastated by Doris’ murder, probably because she felt it had been preventable. Doris had been the weak link in the chain, the easy mark, and as Boston had been so close to New York, and the connections between the two cities so solid, the danger had never really gone away. Maybe Doris had realized how tenuous her situation really was, or maybe she finally just didn’t care, but she had exposed herself to the wrong people and had put all her family at risk. 

Or maybe Doris had been, in the end, too much like Ann. Within the confines of Claire’s worldview, evil had taken root in Doris, just as it had Ann, but that was because Claire looked at the world as equally divided between light and dark, or good and evil. And the truth was she always had. Bill had too, at least until he went to Annapolis, then he increasingly saw the world in more transactional terms. 

More relevant, Bill had increasingly felt like calling someone Evil was intellectually lazy. By calling someone innately evil you eliminated the possibility that things like upbringing made no difference. If someone was evil, well then…case closed! But it that was so, what about goodness? If some people were innately evil, didn’t follow that others might be innately good?  Or were good and evil simply constructs of the mind? Yet hadn’t he always thought Ann was evil. Who had taught her that smothering her baby brother was fun, or good? How had she developed the ability to seduce their father, when she was not even ten years old? Surely their mother hadn’t taught her that? By the time he had taken the required Intro to Psych at Annapolis, and so after he returned from Hanoi, Bill saw his sister Ann as a psychopath, as someone who thrived by exploiting the vulnerable, and so the best way to deal with her was to become invulnerable to her predations. How best to do that? Keep her at arm’s length, or, really, to stay as far away from her as possible. And yes, he’d had the good sense to keep his daughters away from Ann’s malign influences while they grew up.

Until he didn’t.

Until he’d let his guard down. First in Maine, then when Doris left home for NYU.

And Claire saw that capitulation as Bill’s greatest moral failure. His purpose, indeed, his duty as a father required that he protect his children while they were still learning their way, and he’d abdicated that responsibility when it mattered most, just when Doris was taking her last steps into adulthood. She’d never been married and never had children of her own, so she’d never considered that at some point parents simply have to let go. Failure to do so, in Bill’s mind, would lead his children to a life of dependence, either on him or on their mother.

And Claire had been so angry with him that she had at first screened out his latest rantings about taking some kind of Offramp. At least she did until she’d talked to Evelyn about what was now at stake.

It had been Evelyn’s idea to buy Summertime, the Sou’wester 42 in Sausalito, and to take the offramp her father was suggesting, but the idea to meet up with her parents in the middle of nowhere was Bill’s. Again, as she’d grown up on Argos sailing was not that big a deal to her, and because her father had taught her everything about Argos, maintaining a boat of her own did not present insurmountable challenges. And in time Claire had come to see the logic in this kind of escape, because just about any other manner of international travel left lengthy paper trails.

But then Ted called Claire when he couldn’t get in touch with his daughter, and he was worried now as he too had seen signs that people were following him around Naples, and on two occasions he had seen a strange boat cruising by outside his house – in the middle of the night. He was now more than concerned, so he’d called Claire. 

Soon it became a matter of coordinating the outlines of the offramp without giving too much away, which had meant Ted visiting Claire a couple of times to set up dates and times.

So one day Bill and Tracy were sitting in the cockpit of their Hinckley enjoying some fresh veggies from the market when a white hulled sister-ship sailed in through the pass and anchored off the village. Tracy had looked at Bill and both had simply smiled, even though Tracy heaved a sigh of relief. Now she had her family by her side so all was right with her world. 

After Claire raised the Q flag and customs cleared them, everyone went ashore – and the first thing Claire did was to get down on her knees and kiss the earth, vowing to never step foot on another boat as long as she lived. That lasted about an hour, and after dinner she gladly went back to Moonlight and fell into a deep sleep.

But so too did they all.

And once again the dream came for them, all of them but Ted. They had gathered on Argos the next morning to make plans for the day when Maria, Ted’s new girlfriend, claimed she’d had the weirdest dream during the night, and that she had seen strange things in that night. 

“Strange? How so?” Bill asked, but he already knew the answer.

“I was on the boat,” Maria said, pointing at Moonlight, “but it was anchored, well, not here, but it felt so real…so real…and…until this thing appeared. Like a pink fairy, but huge. And the face was off. Really different…”

Claire looked at her, then at Tracy. “You had it too, Tracy?”

Tracy nodded. “Yes. Bill slumping over, everyone rushing out to him…”

Ted suddenly looked upset as he coiled away from Claire and Tracy. “The same dream? Oh, come on! What kind of bullshit is this!”

Claire turned to Bill, then Evelyn. “You both had it again?” she asked.

And both nodded.

“I felt death last night, for the first time,” Bill sighed. “The Pink was sitting by my side again, asking if I was ready. And this time I didn’t try to run away from her question.”

“What happened to you, Dad?” Evelyn asked, now concerned because in her dream all she could see was her father slumping over.

“I was getting cold all over and then I was back in the cockpit falling towards the sea. The same two sailboats far below but getting closer as we fell to earth…”

“And then?” Tracy asked. Ted was looking at Bill as if he’d suddenly sprouted two heads.

“And then…nothing. Just the cold.”

Maria was shaking her head, trying to come to terms with what she was hearing. She was younger than Ted by almost 20 years, but when they met Ted said that ‘something inexplicable had clicked between them.’ He mentioned that he was going on a sailing trip with friends and out of the blue he’d asked her to come along. Ever the empath, Evelyn had accepted her with open arms, but Claire had regarded this stranger warily. They were, after all, trying to keep away from strangers.

Soon everyone had settled at the cockpit table and everyone was staring at the breakfast tacos Tracy had just made, not sure what to say next. “It felt so real, Dad,” Evie said, looking directly at her father, as if looking to him for reassurance. “I was watching you on the boat, which was normal enough, I guess, but then you were in a jet, back in one of those big things you used to fly…”

“I saw that too,” Maria said, shocked by the realization – because she had just met Bill the day before and was now dreaming of him? “You were out over the ocean but coming into land. At night. And I could see the lights of a large city ahead, far ahead in the distance. Then everyone was screaming…”

“You were falling,” Tracy sighed, looking at her husband, “falling towards the ocean. I could see two sailboats below, and the airplane was falling right towards them.”

Claire looked around and nodded, then she’d looked at Ted. “What about you, Ted? Anything?”

He shook his head as he added pineapple salsa to Tracy’s tacos. “I never dream,” he’s said, his voice flat, dull, emotionless, “so I can’t even relate to what y’all are talking about…”

“Never?” Bill asked, incredulous.

But Ted had just shrugged it off. “Maybe I was just wired differently at the factory,” he added ruefully.

“Bill?” his sister asked. “Did you see the boats, too?”

Bill shrugged. “I didn’t see anything, Claire. I just had a dream, remember?” he sighed.

“Uh-huh. What did she say to you?” Claire continued.

Bill had looked down and tried to hide the sudden revulsion he felt. “I guess so, yeah.”

Claire looked around the group, her eyes lingering on Maria as this new member of the group asked the next question. “What happens next?”

And everyone but Ted and Maria looked away, as if no one was willing to even look at Bill, who looked pained as the dream replayed in his mind. Falling, he was always falling, it was so cold. And who was in the two sailboats? Was he leading them all to their doom? Or had they been doomed by his fate? 

What had Freud said about falling dreams, Claire asked herself? Falling was the so-called manifest content of a dream, while the latent content, or the symbolic undertones of the dream, represented repressed feelings such as a loss of control or helplessness surrounding life events. Fear of failure, of feeling vulnerable. In other words, everything that everyone in the group had been feeling for months, really since they’d had to come to terms with Ann’s murder. Yet Bill, not Ann and not even Doris had become the locus of their feelings.

But why?

What was Bill to Maria but a stranger? Why had he come to personify their fears?

Then Maria spoke. “Who is that tall, pink creature?”

“Oh, God, I can’t take this anymore…” Bill sighed as he stood and walked forward to the bow. He swung out and hung onto the forestay, his feet on the bow but his body leaning far out over the water, and he was staring straight down into the turquoise water, of course, just as the orca swam by, perhaps ten feet beneath the surface. He watched it swim away, but then it circled back and returned to Argos, slowly turning on its side and coming to a stop directly under him.

“What do you want with me?” he whispered. “Why have you been following me?”

Images of stars filled his mind, vast fields of stars studded with pinkish nebulas.

“What are you telling me?”

More stars, then planets. 

“I don’t understand?”

The orca surfaced and cleared his lungs, still resting on its side, motionless but for the comings and goings of the water around him, his deep brown eye focused on the human.

And just then Bill dove off the bow into the water and everyone onboard ran to the lifelines and looked down at him. At Bill and an orca, face to face, side by side, eye to eye.

“What in God’s name…?” Ted sighed, stunned by the sight. “Isn’t that the same one we saw in Southwest Harbor? The markings around the eye sure look the same…?”

“Because it is,” Claire said, her voice tinged with a finality that suddenly felt very out of place.

“How many years ago was that? Almost ten?”

Bill looked like he was in a trance. So too, for that matter, did the orca. Only the differences in size seemed to matter right now, as Bill was absolutely puny compared to this massive animal. Bill’s head looked the size of a melon, while the orca’s was more like a small car; Bill looked naked and alone down there…

…but then the orca swam away, and Bill turned over on his back and simply lay there, afloat, his eyes unblinking, his body inert…

Evelyn and Tracy dove in together and swam to him while Claire went to the boarding ladder amidships and dropped it down along the hull. She and Ted waited there to help, never taking their eyes off Bill, and then helped pull him back up on deck.

And as the group worked they learned that Maria had been an RN, a registered nurse.

A nurse in an oncology center, taking care of patients receiving chemotherapy, at an infusion center. And that was where she had met Ted. Taking care of him while he received chemo.

For a cancer he had largely kept to himself. Especially from his daughter.

And as Tracy received this news, and as she tried to process her father’s mortality, she was covering Bill with a beach towel as echos of his mortality echoed through her mind. Getting his clothes off and drying his skin, the skin she had held onto and loved half her life, she realized she had always assumed Bill would always be there. No his skin felt precious and infinitely fragile, like something to be cherished – cherished while it was still here. When she looked at her father in minute later she spotted the signs she had, perhaps, willfully suppressed. His skin on his fingers now almost hard, his eyes sparkling, yet haunted. 

Ignoring Tracy, Maria professionally assessed Bill, at one point holding an eye wide open to check his pupils, yet what she saw made her jump back and scream.

“Look at him!” she cried as she fell into Ted’s arms. “Look in his eyes!” she hissed as she turned away from the sight.

Claire went to her brother’s face and sat beside him, then she looked down. This was something new, she thought, but not totally unexpected. After living with the pinks shaping her life she was used to the unexpected.

But his eyes were full of stars, endless vistas of countless stars, so Claire turned to the orca swimming nearby and went to the rail, reaching down to it, hoping to make contact.

Stars soon filled her eyes too, then the pink creature appeared for a moment and Claire understood that things were coming to an end. Their lives, their deaths, all of it, everything, everywhere. Coming to an end.

How long do we have? she asked.

But the pink creature had already disappeared, and even now the orca was making for the open ocean beyond the pass. She watched it go feeling almost bereft and forlorn, and, for the first time in her life, utterly alone.

+++++

Yet in a way Bill and Tracy had come full circle, even though it had taken them 25 years to get back to where this dream really began. Walking along the boardwalk between the little Papeete Marina and the Place Jacques Chirac, Bill and Tracy stood amongst a group of people gathered there to watch the setting sun, the orange orb silhouetting the jagged spires on Mo’orea, the sky an impossible layering of purples and lavenders above the pink horizon. Lightning flickered in distant clouds somewhere to the north, and the warm breeze caressing them almost tasted of rain.

Tracy had cancer. That was the short version. The longer, more complicated version of her story was that her immediate treatment involved surgery, but then a rather complex regimen of chemotherapy. This might last three months but could possibly continue up to six months, yet the odds were better than ninety percent that her disease would be permanently cured. If, on the other hand, she was in that last ten percent group and the disease returned after the first round of chemo…well, this was something neither wanted to talk about. “PMA, Bill. Gotta keep smiling, even when it hurts!” Tracy kept saying. “Positive Mental Attitude,” she’d add, for emphasis. “Anyone could die,” she liked to add, “but you really gotta want to live!”

But just now, watching her watch this sunset, Bill regarded the simple miracle of her.  The shape on her hands, the graceful nature of her smile. The blue color of her eyes, blue flecked with green and gold, the gold an echo of her hair, and as he looked at her he still felt humbled that she had said yes when he asked her out that first time. Back at JFK, right after clearing customs. How had he ever been so lucky? He reached up, caressed the side of her face. “I love you so much,” he sighed as she turned and looked into his eyes.

She nodded, trying to sound reassuring. “Don’t be afraid, Bill. I promise you, I’m not.”

He smiled. “If you’re not, Baby, then I’m not.”

They walked over to the Polyclinique Paofai early the next morning, listened as two oncologists  and a surgeon laid out Tracy’s treatment options, because in the end Tracy had decided to stay in Tahiti, and said he Bill understood, or at least he thought he did. Tahiti had become larger than life to Tracy, not merely a place or a destination; the islands had instead become a calling, a type of instinctual yearning, what he now knew was an end in and to themselves. Tracy possessed a yearning to explore, “to see more of this world than time affords the timid,” as she’d put it once, especially when she was on Bill’s case about putting off the journey. 

But that didn’t explain her desire to stay here for treatment. Even her oncologists were a little surprised by the decision, and after they left the clinic Bill decided to ask her why she felt so strongly about this place.

“Maybe we’re drawn to the places of our death, Bill. Did you ever think of that?”

“Drawn? To death? I mean, maybe – I’ve heard of people with a death wish, but…”

“Maybe I put that wrong,” she said, stopping him mid-sentence. “But no, well, maybe we’re drawn to the place we’d like to be when we pass…”

Bill nodded as he choked back a rising tide of bile. “I’d like to be in Delmonico’s, in New York, eating a Porterhouse. And I want to face-plant into a bowl of steaming creamed spinach.”

“Asshole.” At least she said that with a smile.

“Hey, I can hope, can’t I?”

“Seriously Bill, is food all you ever think about?”

“Depends on the time of day.” He looked at her as she shook her head and heaved forth a loud sigh, the exact same way she had when the kids got on her last good nerve. “Tracy, look, there was a lot of tension in that office…you could cut it with a knife…and I just wanted to…”

She nodded her understanding, held up a hand to stop him. “Okay, Captain America, I hear you. Still, if you wouldn’t mind talking about things, you know, as they stand right now…”

“As they stand?” he sighed.

“I can’t get that goddamn dream out of my mind, Bill. And you, in that falling airliner, the two boats below…”

He shrugged with his eyes, shook his head as he fought to control the images that were coming to him. “Images of stars,” he said, his voice so quiet she barely heard him.

“Stars? You mean…”

He nodded. “Something to do with that whale…”

“Bill, he’s not a whale.”

He scowled again. “Are you telling me you don’t want to go back to Boston because you want to die here?”

“Why would I go back to Boston, Bill? Seriously? I mean, why did we leave?”

“Okay, okay, but why not Auckland?”

“Why not here, Bill? You don’t like the surgeon?”

“No, it’s not that…”

“Then why? Because she’s not white?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“She went to school in France, Bill. She trained there. She’s qualified. So what’s wrong with that?”

He looked at her, concerned. “Tracy? Are you okay?” She turned away – hiding sudden tears – but he came up from behind and wrapped his arms around her, rocked her gently in his arms as he kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, babe,” he said as he held onto her. “That was obtuse, even for me.”

“Damn right that was insensitive. Man, Bill, you know…for a sensitive guy you can really be a dickhead…” She began rubbing his forearms, letting him know she accepted his apology, then she turned to face him. “So, you want to go out for breakfast, or go back and cook me breakfast in bed?”

“That place there, right across the street, smells just like heaven. Want to check it out?”

+++++

Tracy had been in the hospital for almost a week. Her white counts were low and her doctors wanted her out of circulation while they transfused her. Infections, they said, could have fatal consequences.

Nearing the end of her first round of chemo, scans had detected enlarged lymph nodes in her lower back, all around her pelvis and spine. There were, her lead oncologist stated emphatically, no overt signs of metastasis – yet. The way she spoke said it all. Tracy’s chemo wasn’t doing the job.

He was walking back to Argos when he saw an airliner on final approach to the airport on the far side of the little harbor, an old TriStar in the blue and white livery of ANA, or All Nippon Airways, only the airlines name had been painted over. The air was rather calm but the pilot was struggling, the aircrafts right wing dipping so low on touchdown that it almost touched the runway, and he shook his head in disgust. Whoever was flying the old bird didn’t know their stuff. 

Evie and Claire were waiting for him in the cockpit, and as he climbed onboard he saw they’d laid out a breakfast of croissant and what smelled like a carafe of rich black coffee. Fresh fruit and cheese, too. And yet he still did not feel like eating. 

He hadn’t for weeks now. Ever since Tracy began deteriorating as the effects of the chemo tore through her, weakening everything about her – other than her will to endure. He worked on boat-chores, the never ending to-do lists that all sailors put up with to keep their vessels running, or he walked over to the hospital…with his head down and his hands in his pockets.

But that hadn’t kept Evie from trying. 

There were a few really good bakeries nearby – this was, after all, France…or a part of it…so bakeries were in the town’s cultural DNA. Once Evie figured out who had the best croissant she figured she’d discovered the secret of life, or at least her father’s life, because he had always been mad about croissant with Nutella and bitter orange marmalade. And, she now understood, it was called French roast for a reason.

Her father smiled as he stepped over the coaming and into the cockpit, and he sat wordlessly and poured coffee from the carafe, cupping his hands around the warmth as he looked down into the deep black within.

“Dad? How is she?”

He shook his head, looked away. Thunderstorms lined the northern horizon, the remnants of a typhoon almost a thousand miles north of the island that was still barreling its way across the Pacific, heading for Guam and Taiwan. “Anything new on the morning weather report?” he asked as he watched lightning flickering in the angry clouds.

Claire looked at him and nodded. “Nothing new. Nothing expected to come this far south.”

He nodded. “How’s Ted?”

“The same.”

Ted’s cancer had never really gone away, but a few weeks after their arrival in Papeete it had come roaring back with a vengeance. And it hadn’t been lost on anyone that both father and daughter were fighting the same devilish foe. Or that just now it seemed that both were losing their war.

But as he sipped his coffee the old TriStar taxied to a rarely used ramp at the airport and an ambulance approached as an old air-stair was pushed in place. The forward door opened and Bill could see medics rush up the stairs, and a few minutes later one of the flight crew emerged and stood out there, arms crossed, face turned into the wind. A few minutes later a gurney appeared, then the medics and firemen helped wrestle it down the stairs. Whoever was on the gurney, he saw, had apparently passed in-flight, as sheets were pulled up over the person’s head. If the captain had passed, he thought, that would account for the crappy landing. An hour later the TriStar was sealed up tight, and, it seemed, not going anywhere. Perhaps its journey was at an end, too.

He finished his coffee then filled the water tanks from the public supply, then he made his rounds. Check battery charge and voltage. Check the bilges for leaks. Then the raw water strainer and the Racors beside the old Westerbeke diesel. Turn on the engine for bit, check the exhaust for the traces of white smoke he’d seen a few days ago. Nothing. Walk the deck, check the standing rigging and their mooring lines, then head downstairs to fill in Argos’ logbook.

He took comfort in such things these days. The minutiae that demonstrated his attention to detail had not slipped from his grasp. Because he was concerned that it might.

He had been depressed before. Not bad, but bad enough. After Doris. When it felt like the whole universe had fallen into an infinite darkness. And Claire had, as she always had, come to his rescue one more time.

“This is situational, Bill. It’s not biochemical. There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing that any other human being would feel in the same circumstance. It’ll pass…”

And it had. Life, he kept telling himself, just goes on and on. What had the ground-pounders said in the Nam? Lead, follow, or get out of the way? Wasn’t that the essence of living? And he’d always been a leader, hadn’t he? Since his third year at Annapolis? In his squadron? Even in the Hanoi Hilton, when Colonel Thao tried to beat him down. Lead by example. Lead when everyone around you is giving up. Because that’s just what you do.

He wasn’t ready for the dream that night.

The TriStar’s systems failing one by one…electrical…hydraulics…the only thing left were the engines and they were responding but when he looked up all he saw was onrushing water, windswept waves and two sailboats filling his view out the windshield before…

And then she was there. The pink creature. Her amber owl’s eyes searching his, probing his reaction to the moment of his death. Even if it was just a dream.

Just a dream.

Just a dream?

What was life but a dream?

‘Is that what you really think?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

‘Why do you wake up?’

‘Because I’m afraid…?’

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘Death. Not existing. Infinity without awareness. Nothingness.’

‘Do you remember Captain Phelps?’

‘How do you…you mean my ethics prof at Annapolis?’

‘Yes.’

‘How could you possibly know…?’

‘I read your thoughts and experiences as you might a book.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything of consequence.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Everything chemically encoded into long term memory.’

‘Ah.’

‘During his first lecture you seemed to experience a kind of revelation. Do you remember what that was?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, of course, his thought experiment.’

‘Tell me what you remember.’

‘Imagine the universe, he said to us. The universe in all its infinite glory. Now imagine all that being swept up in a dustpan and put into a suitcase. All of it. Everything. And then imagine snapping your fingers and even that suitcase is gone. Then, he asked us what would remain?’

‘And you raised your hand, did you not? What did you say to him?’

‘I said nothingness cannot exist, or something like that, because nothingness implies observation, and with nothingness there could be no observer.’

‘And what did Professor Phelps say? Do you remember?’

‘He asked us something like: “What if God is the only thing left?” But for that to be true, that would mean that God is nothingness. Therefore everything is nothingness. Even God.’

‘Do you remember how that made you feel?’

‘Empty. Hollowed out and breathless. Like a punch to the gut.’

‘Do you think he was incorrect?’

‘I didn’t then.’

“And now?’

‘I think he was a fool.’

‘So, you do believe in nothingness?’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘My name is of no importance.’

‘That doesn’t feel right to me?’

‘Why?’

‘Because you know everything about me…’

‘No, I don’t. If that was true I would not be here.’

‘Here? But I’m dreaming all this so how can you be – here…?’

In the next instant he was in the water and the orca was next to him, and even in the dark he could feel its deep brown eye regarding him…but now the pink creature was beside him. In the water. And she was still staring at him.

“Is this real enough for you?” she asked, and he heard her voice now, very near, almost intimate. She was, he realized, no longer just a detached series of thoughts in his mind. This was real.

Then the memory, or was it a dream, appeared and he spun around in the water, saw the turquoise waters and dark coral heads from the harbor in the dream, then the two sailboats at anchor and his wife in the Zodiac rushing to him after he slumped over in the cockpit, all of it as real as real could be.

“Where am I?” he asked the pink creature.

“This place? Don’t you know?”

“No, of course I don’t know! I’ve never been here before, so how could I know?”

She regarded him cooly, dispassionately. “This island was called Mangareva. It was not from where you were a moment ago. It was in a place once called the Gambier Island Group.”

“So whoa, wait a minute, are you telling me you’re showing me the future, or the past?”

The pink creature smiled inscrutably, never taking her eyes from his. “No, I am not allowed to do that,” she finally said, then she paused as she experienced his feelings for a moment – before quietly adding: “But he can.” She said that, of course, smiling as she pointed to the orca.

+++++

Walking back from the hospital early one morning, a few days after his encounter with the pink creature, he was hardly able to think. Evie was pressed into his side, crying softly. Her mother was in that 10 percent, the group with a poor response to chemotherapy. There were two new solutions that, after having secured FDA approval, might be available soon, so Tracy’s oncologists remained hopeful.

Claire was waiting for them on Moonlight, and while she had made breakfast for them she appeared agitated as Bill stepped aboard, and she immediately pulled him aside and led him up to the bow. “There’s been a man walking by,” she said anxiously, “and he looks like trouble.”

“Trouble?” he replied. “You mean…?”

She nodded. “Not a local, dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. That kind of trouble.”

“Okay,” he said as he looked around the little marina, not sure how seriously to take this. “How’s Ted?”

“The same. On that new laptop of his, writing all the time now.”

“Writing?”

“Instructions to lawyers. That kind of thing. He’s even got email running onboard now.”

“No kidding? I didn’t know he was so tech-savvy…?”

“Are you serious? Bill, he re-wired the nav station just for fun on the way to Hawaii. He’s still improving stuff, and I’ll tell you what…the man knows his stuff.”

Her eyes darted suddenly, and she stepped behind her brother as she stared intently at the stranger – and he appeared to be walking directly towards Moonlight.

“He’s coming, Bill. He’s about twenty yards from us, looking right at you.”

“Still carrying a briefcase?”

“Yes?”

“Which hand?”

“Left.”

Bill turned around slowly and he regarded the stranger carefully, looking for unusual bulges under his sport coat, or perhaps on his belt – but nothing seemed out of the ordinary as he walked up to Moonlight’s stern.

“I say,” the man said, his British accent refined, old school, “is that you, Captain Tennyson?”

“Dawson?” Bill said, surprised to see someone from his days flying to and from Heathrow. “Terrence Dawson? What the devil are you doing here?” He walked back to the stern and extended a hand. “Come aboard. We’re just having breakfast.”

“Oh, bother! Should I come back in an hour?”

“Nonsense. Join us! Tell us some lies that involve bawdy women and scotch whisky…!”

Terrence had a stiff upper lip borne in London’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and he was as Patrician as they came. He’d been flying for BOAC when Bill first met him, and he’d come to Kansas City for his initial and recurrent training over the years, and they’d spent hours together in both the simulator and the classroom. On more than one occasion Bill and Tracy had taken Terrence out to dinner in Boston, and they’d been to the Dawson house in Surrey a few times.

Seeing this, Claire relaxed and went down to the galley to prepare her scrambled eggs, and Evie went down to help.

“Bill, I’ve heard rumors about Tracy. Is she alright?”

He shook his head and they both let it be. “So what on earth are you doing out here?”

“Looking for you, as a matter of fact.”

“Me? Do tell.”

“Well, I’m with Marshall Aerospace…”

“That’s the outfit in Cambridge doing TriStar mods for the RAF, right?”

“Just so, and that old ANA bird parked over there is now the property of Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force. She was being ferried from Malaysia when the captain passed en route, and the FO just managed to get her down here before skedaddling back to Kuala Lumpur. They sent me out but I learned a few days ago that you were here, taking care of Tracy. Anyway, I thought I’d come and see if I could twist your arm long enough to help me fly that crate back to the UK.”

“Terrence, I’d love to help but…”

“Now before you say no, I’ve got it all planned out. Leave on Friday, we refuel in Miami, arrive at Cambridge late afternoon on Saturday. We can get your return on Air France Sunday afternoon and you’ll be back Tuesday…”

“Terrence…”

“Your medical is still good and believe it or not your still listed as Orbital’s Chief Pilot, so there’s no issue with entry or insurance, and the thing is, Old Boy, that we’re losing tens of thousands of pounds every day that airframe sits here, so I can hand you a decent paycheck for your troubles.”

“How much qualifies as decent these days. Old Boy.”

“How does fifty sound?”

“Pounds, or dollars?”

“Pounds, of course. Are you in?”

“You have an engineer?”

“Two, actually. Both RAF, air engineers they call them. And we’ll have an RAF co-pilot with us for relief. All the other qualified L-10 drivers have been snapped up for this business in Iraq.”

“I can imagine. ATA must be making some serious money right now.”

“Quite. That’s why the MOD snapped up this airframe.”

Claire carried up platters of eggs and croissant and fruit, then still sizzling bacon appeared and the three of them sat around the cockpit table while Evie, Ted, and Marie ate down below. Claire seemed interested in their conversation, but Bill knew better. Any discussion involving airplanes bored her to tears, but as she was standing in for Tracy she played the doting sister.

“Well, what do you say? Are you in?”

Bill shook his head. “I just can’t, Terrence. Not with things as they stand right now.”

Terrence nodded. “And what if I could pay you a hundred?”

“For three days work? You’re joking…”

“Look, Bill, we’re in a bit of a fix. I’m not current, haven’t flown in almost ten years. I can’t take the left seat and, actually, you’re the only available pilot. And Bill, a hundred large doesn’t drop in your lap like this just every day…”

Ted had been listening and he came up the companionway. “Bill, go ahead. I’ll hold down the fort here, so go and make some money.”

Bill looked at Ted, then Terrence. “Well, have you had a good look at her?”

+++++

He walked up the air stairs and into the upper galley, and dropped his overnighter there. He looked around, immediately saw that all the first class seating had been removed, and only five rows of coach seating remained, and those were the over-wing emergency exit rows, and that made sense. The forward galley was a shambles so he could only imagine what the lower level galley looked like. He walked aft, noted that the wall cladding had already been removed just ahead of the aft galley, but the pressure bulkhead behind the heads looked good, with no corrosion visible anywhere he looked.

He heard the RAF engineers working in the lower level galley as he walked up to the cockpit, and Dawson was already in the right seat, arranging his checklists and fiddling with the flight manifest and fuel load out. One of the engineers walked in and nodded to Terrence.

“Ground cart is a go,” the engineer said as took his seat behind Dawson. “You can go ahead and power up the INS. And oh, here’s the inertial reference,” he added, handing over a chit with their latitude and longitude scribbled on it.

A minute later the APU was starting and all four electrical buses came online, so Bill went back down to the ramp and began his walk around. 

“Funny how fast it all comes back,” Terrence said as he walked up.

“Who was using this one, Terry?”

“Oh, it went from Eastern to British Airways to ANA to Thai, then back to ANA. They were going to convert it to a cargo hauler but decided not to, and that’s when we picked her up. She just had her C-check and the engines just had their hot sections replaced. Her bones are good, anyway.”

Bill shrugged. “Panel looks in decent shape,” he said as he walked up to the nose gear. “Any word about why the FO had so much trouble landing her?”

Terrence chuckled when he heard that. “The kid had about 300 hours total time and maybe a half hour of instruction before takeoff. I hear the engineer flew of the approach, and he wasn’t exactly qualified, either.”

“Lucky they didn’t break anything…”

“Oh, did you see the landing?”

Bill nodded. “Dreadful. No roll control at all. I wonder why they just didn’t let the plane shoot the approach…?”

“You’d have to assume they knew how to set that up…”

“Neither of them did? Seriously?”

“We were very lucky they didn’t crash.”

Bill stopped and looked up at that, then shook his head. “What happened to their captain?”

Dawson shrugged. “Report lists heart attack, but who knows? But that’s right…I recall that happened to you once?”

“Yes. That was a bad night.” He sighed as he remembered the call from the galley, then diverting to Iceland, then all that drama in Oyster Bay. But then he met Tracy and his whole world changed in a heartbeat, so one life came to an end as another really came together.

“Well, this’ll be a walk in the park.”

Bill smiled as he keyed the mic. “Faa’a Ground, Romeo Alpha One on ramp x-ray-delta one, ready to start one.”

“Romeo Alpha One, clear to start one.”

He worked through the checklists, kind of amazed how it was all coming back. He’d lived so much of his life in this cockpit…it was like muscle memory…everything was engrained in the circuitry of his mind…and the script he recited up here was a language unto itself. A stranger listening to these short, clipped phrases wouldn’t recognize half of what was said, but Terrance spoke the same language they’d learned together two decades ago in a classroom in Kansas and that made all the difference. They had literally roamed the earth after that, like sea captains of old. Athens in the morning. Rome for lunch. Dinner in New York. All in a day’s work.

“Romeo Alpha One, clear to taxi to T1, hold short of the runway for the Air New Zealand 744.”

“Romeo Alpha One, to T1 and hold short.” They watched the heavy on short final to runway 22, then it touched down and its reversers roared as the 747 passed them. Because the airport was so constricted by geography there were no taxiways parallel to the runway, necessitating a long taxi out the runway then a turnaround at the end to point into the wind, and after the heavy passed the tower gave them clearance to taxi out the runway to the turnaround. This was more than a mile away and at 12 miles per it took a while, and the flight engineer working the panel behind Terrence seemed to be humming a tune, apparently already bored.

“Nice day,” Terry said absently, then: “What’s it like living in paradise, Old Boy?”

“I’ll let you know when I get there,” he replied caustically.

“And on a boat, too. Funny, William, but I never took you for the type.”

“They type?”

“Oh, you know, run away to see the world, run drinks under palm trees and all that.”

“You’ve clearly not spent a lot of time on boats,” he sighed.

“Oh? So it wasn’t what you thought it would be?”

“Terry, when has life ever been what you think it would be?”

“Too true.”

As the TriStar approached the turnaround he thought he could see Argos and Moonlight almost dead ahead, and as he used the nose wheel paddle to steer through the turnaround he looked up for a split second and could just see the hospital where Tracy was…

‘Oh, my love…?’ he sighed, an image of her in the tiny room with bags of IVs hanging from the little metal tree…

“Romeo Alpha One, climb to 3000, turn right to zero-four-zero, contact oceanic departure one three five decimal three.”

“Uh, One to three thousand, right to 040, departure on thirty-five-five.”

He changed the frequency and checked in.

“Roger, Romeo Alpha One. Cleared to flight level two one and Victor Airway one-niner-four.”

“One to level 2-1, Victor 194, Romeo Alpha.” He engaged the autopilot, watched the flight director for a moment, then leaned back as the computer took over, massaging their rate of climb to eke out the optimal burn, then he looked at Terrence. “She seems solid enough,” he said, nodding approvingly.

“Lockheed built good ships, William. A shame they quit the business.”

“Last of her kind.”

“So, I’ve been wanting to ask, but why did you quit?”

Bill shrugged. “Tracy wanted to get out and see the world from ground level, and I think once our youngest moved out she thought that, well, this was the time to make it happen.”

“Sorry about all this, William. Truly sorry. Such a vibrant soul. But you’ll be back before you know it.”

Bill smiled. “She is that.” He loved the view from up front, and he always had. Learning with his dad, buzzing rafters on the Colorado as they flew through the Grand Canyon, tearing across the Mojave at almost 200 knits indicated so low they kicked up dust behind the Baron. Flying into Heathrow, looking down at Big Ben through puffy grey clouds at six in the morning, or the amazing green patchwork of fields and forests coming into Frankfurt. And now, nothing but blue. Blue skies and the deep blue sea. He’d cross this patch of the Pacific in a few hours, but not long ago he’d crossed the same ocean and it had taken weeks. Most people, he thought, measured travel through the destinations visited – and rarely the journey itself. Argos had taught him the meaning of both.

“Did anyone load something to eat in the galley?” Terrance asked the engineer.

Yes, they had. In face, they’d picked up some passengers for the trip. Four engineers working on some kind of radar array returning to home, and a dozen or so RAF personnel headed back to their squadron in Oxfordshire, at Brize Norton. With so many aboard they’d had to take on one flight attendant, and with that came complete meal service. “And I had that Italian place by the Hilton pack a picnic basket for us,” Terry added. 

There routing took them past Tahuata and then Acapulco, then Veracruz before coming in over the Everglades on their final into MIA. After their mandated rest period they’d fly over Freeport on their way to Bermuda, then pass Cork to their north on the way to Cardiff and Bristol before entering their final routing to Cambridge, just north of London.

But just now, right off their starboard wingtip, were the islands where his father had, for a time, worked. Testing the second generation of atomic warheads, then the first hydrogen bombs. So many people displaced. So much cancer. But these days cancer was everywhere. Not surprising, he said to himself, given the radiation and chemical soup we lived in. He looked to the left, thought he could just make out a couple of boats far below and he remembered the anger he’d felt that night, watching an airliner overhead and then looking at his speed readout on Argos.

“Different means to the same end,” he said aloud.

“What was that?” Terrence asked.

“Oh, nothing. My mind was wandering.”

“I was thinking about that barbecue place in Kansas City,” Dawson added. “What was the same of that place?”

“The old place?”

“Oh yes, that’s the one!”

“Rosedale. Out on Southwest Boulevard.”

“I dream of those ribs, William. And the fried green tomatoes. Outstanding! Nothing like it!”

He smiled, because that’s where he’d taken his dad that time he flew out, ‘that night when I was thinking about quitting.’ His father had his flaws, and they were big ones, but his heart had always been in the right place. At least until it finally gave out on him.

The lights of Acapulco appeared, twinkling like Christmas tree lights in the distance, then Puebla, with the looming lights of Mexico City to their north and Veracruz dead ahead. As they approached Campeche Bay he pulled out the Enroute Charts for the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and began thinking about their approach into Miami. It would be in the middle of the night so few passenger aircraft but tons of trash haulers, or air cargo jets, usually DC-10s and older 747s, so a lot of Heavies in the pattern.

Terry had eaten his way across the Pacific, snacking on carpaccio with shaved Parmesan cheese that stank up the cockpit for hour. Then, of course, Terry had started farting. Gentle little tree frogs at first, but after a pile of lasagna made its way into the mix big rumblers hit, and hit hard. The flight engineer excused himself after a bad one, and Bill had grimaced and looked away.

“Terry? What the fuck is wrong with your gut?”

“Had my gall bladder cut out. Nothing works anymore.”

“Well, something’s working, and it don’t smell right.”

“I know. Sorry.”

A few minutes later the cockpit began to reek of burnt sulphur and limburger cheese, so Bill double checked the AP then got out of his seat and went aft to get the relief pilot to take his place for a while, but when the poor bloke walked in he gagged once and retreated.

“What the foockin’ hell happened in there,” the Irishman cried. “Who took a foockin’ shite on the floor?” He turned and vacated the cockpit, howling in disgust as he retreated. “No foockin’ way, mate. I ain’t goin’ in there with no fookin’ pig!”

Bill sighed as he rummaged through the fridge in the galley until he found some kind of sandwich that looked recently made, so he unwrapped it and took a tentative sniff. He tossed it in the trash then returned to the cockpit.

“Terrence? You can stop now,” he said as he stepped into his seat, but Terry hadn’t answered.

He was holding onto his side, and his forehead was slick with running sweat.

“Terry, where does it hurt?” Bill said. The flight engineer heard the tone in his voice and leaned forward, grimacing as another fart ripped through the cockpit, the smell now beyond putrid.

Terry pointed to the lower right part of his belly and just managed to say: “Sharp. Pain. Intense.”

He turned to the FE then and looked at the kid. “Okay, get someone to give you a hand, then get him in back. Fold up some armrests and lay him out, and see if there’s a first aid kit onboard with a thermometer.

“Right.”

The Irishman came in a few minutes later and took Terry’s seat on the right side. “Whoot’s with Terry? Got any ideas, Mate?”

“My guess is a hot appendix,” Bill said as he checked their position. Now out over the gulf, it was a coin toss between MIA and Corpus Christi, because he sure wasn’t going to take Terry to Cuba.

The FE returned, red-faced and winded. “His temp is 103 on that thermometer. I assume that’s in Fahrenheit?”

“You best hope so, Mate,” the Irishman snarled, “otherwise he’ll sure enough be cooked well-done, and soon, too.”

Bill rolled his eyes. “Man, I’d kill for a can of air-freshener.”

“Yeah, them was stinkin’ up the place, alright.”

An hour out of Miami, still out over the gulf and well north of Cuba, he called TRACON and declared he had a medical emergency onboard and expedited clearance into MIA, and sure enough about ten minutes later a Navy F/A-18 appeared off their right wingtip. That was the norm since 9/11, when all emergencies generated an intercept anywhere near the continental ADIZ. 

Key West appeared, then Homestead. The sky was clear, the full moon shimmered off streaks of water in the Everglades.

“Romeo Alpha One, Miami approach, descend and maintain seven thousand, come right to zero-niner-zero and one-niner-zero knots.”

“Descend maintain seven, right 090, and 190 knots for Romeo Alpha One,” Bill repeated, and he entered the new heading in the flight director and the L-1011 began a gentle turn to the right…

He heard a loud thud, then in the next instant the grinding of metal on metal followed by the sound of inrushing air. The Irishman was looking out the right side windshield, his face illuminated by fire. “Half the fookin’ wing is gone!” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the sounds made by the disintegrating aircraft.

“Fire in three!” he called out, and his co-pilot’s training kicked in. “Come on. Let’s work the problem…”

“Fire three,” the co-pilot answered.

“Okay, I’ve got pitch and yaw but no roll…”

The TriStar began rolling to the right. Ailerons did not respond.

He applied left rudder and the aircraft crabbed, slowly responding until…

More metal tearing away, then the sounds of inrushing silence as the cockpit ripped away from the fuselage. The flight engineer had disappeared and the Irishman was screaming but there was nothing but silence now as his brain began processing the moment.

‘This is it. All that I am, all that I was, is coming to an end.”

He looked around the shrieking remnants of the cockpit and for a moment he could just make out a large segment of the aircraft not so far away, on fire and slowly tumbling in the darkness, then the remnants of a Navy fighter breaking apart into a billowing orange blossom. And so it was, the last thing Bill Tennyson experienced was the sight of two dangling parachutes between clouds, and he wondered if the pilots would be okay as they fell gently to earth, falling like the last flowers of autumn in the moonlight…just before the coming of snow.

Coda

He heard her voice. Far away. Calling his name.

He opened his eyes and realized he’d been napping. He stood, the boat’s steady motion almost reassuring. Something was wrong. A pain in his chest. He shook it off, then went to the head to get the bottle of baby aspirin, but the medicine cabinet above the sink in the head was empty. He went to the galley and opened one of the cabinets behind the refrigerator, but it too was empty. He turned, sat at the chart table and flipped the breakers. Nothing. He turned on the chartplotter and the screen remained black. He stood again and went to the mahogany steps of the companionway ladder and climbed up into the cockpit and Tracy was there, with Claire on the little road perched above the water’s edge.

“That feels better,” he said to no one in particular. Then he looked down at his hands. Age spots everywhere, the texture of his skin looked almost like burnt parchment.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

He turned to the voice, thought he recognized Evelyn yet she had to be about his age, maybe in her fifties, but he nodded even as he slumped back onto the cockpit seat hard by the companionway. He knew what came next. Tracy hopping into the Zodiac then rushing out to him. Evie too. She would be jumping down into the Zodiac tied off Moonlight’s stern, starting the little Yamaha and motoring over…

He sighed deeply, massaged the muscles above his right breast, then leaned back, waiting.

Then she was beside him.

The pink creature.

And she was sitting by his side, then running her fingers through his hair.

“Do you still not want death?” she asked, her voice so sweet and gentle, so understanding. “Even after all you’ve seen and done?”

“No, I want life. I want to live.”

“Why?” she asked.

“What do you mean, ‘Why’?”

She touched his chest and the pain went away, and with the passing he felt strangely different. He looked at his hands and the skin was smooth and supple. His vision seemed better, too, so he sat up and looked around.

The sky was strange. Almost pink along the horizon then turning redder and redder as he looked up, but the sky overhead was dominated by the sight of a vast blue gas giant, ringed like Saturn, its atmosphere roiled like Jupiter’s. 

He stood and it felt like his head was in a vice. The air pressure was different. Heavier. He looked around again and Claire and Tracy and Evelyn had disappeared, but this place was different. 

He was anchored well offshore, several hundred yards from the water’s edge, but he saw a field of wildflowers and another field that looked like wheat. Beyond that, a long line of trees, and bright lights flashing beyond this forest. To his left…a vast range of snow capped mountains, and when he turned to look behind Argos he saw several small islands. He turned again and looked past the bow to a headland in the distance and it appeared to rise gently above the fields of wheat and wildflowers. 

But there was a settlement on the headland, and the buildings looked faintly Japanese, like one of the tightly clustered villages one might have run across in medieval Japan.

Then he heard someone whistling and turned to the sound.

Two men were walking along the shoreline, and a Golden Retriever was running back to them through the field with a stick in it’s mouth. The two walked slowly, obviously deep in conversation, but soon enough one of the men was clapping, then slapping the tops of his thighs as the retriever returned to his side. He watched as the man praised the pup, then took the stick and threw it again, only now both turned and looked at Tennyson on his sailboat. And then they waved. At him.

William Tennyson had not the slightest clue what to do, so he waved at the two strangers.

“Where am I?” he asked the air around him.

“Where you were,” can an unexpected reply.

It was the pink creature again, hovering a few feet above him. He turned his head slightly and looked into her eyes. “I am where I was…was? And just when was that…?”

“None of that matters now,” she said, her eyes smiling, “but you must pay close attention to the world around you.”

“Okay, sure, but why am I here? Did you bring me?”

“I did not.”

“Excuse my stupidity, but if you didn’t, who the hell did?”

She pointed down at the water, to the orca waiting expectantly there. “He did.”

“Hey Bill,” shouted one of the men on the path beside the sea, “come on! Let’s get going!”

He wheeled around to face the voice, now utterly confused. “Who is that?”

“You don’t recognize him?”

“Uh…no…I…oh crap, is that Dad?”

“It is.”

“And that whale brought him here?”

She shrugged. 

“Can you at least tell me one thing?”

“If I can.”

“Is this heaven?”

“No.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”   

“Afraid?”

“Uh, well, am I dead?”

She laughed gently at the question. “You look alive to me, William.”

He turned to his old man and shook his head, then looked at the creature again, confused. “Is my mom here?”

“No, she was not needed here.”

“Needed? I don’t understand…”

The creature smiled as she bowed, perhaps a little obsequiously. “We saw no reason we you should.”

“Who is that with Dad?”

“Oh, his name was Henry. You have much in common.”

“Did I know him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

His father waved again and seemed to say something…

He turned back to the men on the shoreline and shouted “Sorry! What?”

“Come on, get the lead out! We’ve got work to do.”

He looked around again only to find that the pink creature was gone again. There wasn’t an inflatable tied off the stern and he had no idea what the water temperature was…so how was he supposed to get ashore.

But then the orca swam around to him and it seemed to be waiting for him to make up his mind.

He dove in and found the water refreshingly cool, neither too cold nor too warm, and he tasted it tentatively and thought it less salty than he remembered, and the water hardly burned when it splashed in his eyes. He got his bearings and swam to the orca’s side, then put his face against the orca’s, his ear pressed hard against the smooth black skin. He listened for the longest time, listened as the universe opened up to him, then he turned to his father and smiled.

© 2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkühnwrites.com | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple, which could mean that the names of the guilty have been changed to protect the innocent. Or not. And yes, this has been but one more part of the TimeShadow sequence, and this sequence of the arc, Book One, will be followed by two more. As always, thanks for coming along and we’ll see you next time.

Last part here, a few twists, time for tea I think.

Music matters? Even In The Quietest Moments. Then When the Levee Breaks.

Part III: Truth

Sara Rosenberg was an anomaly. An aberration. She was Jewish, a progressive white liberal, a Democrat, and the valedictorian of the latest class to graduate from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police’s rigorous Academy. She was physically fit and tough, both physically and emotionally. At five foot six inches and 110 pounds, she was about average height for female graduates of the academy, and a little lighter than that average. She was all muscle and ran a six-minute forty-second mile. Long blond hair and freckles, blue-green eyes over a pleasant enough smile, most considered Rosenberg cute, and most of the guys in the academy had tried hitting her up for dinner or a movie and been shot down. With no known boyfriend, it didn’t take long before the rumors started: she didn’t have a guy so she had to be a rug muncher.

Sara Rosenberg grew up in a progressive Jewish American family, which meant that she went to temple a couple of times a year, but only if absolutely necessary. Her parent’s home was in the Fox Chapel neighborhood, on Fairway Drive overlooking the Pittsburgh Field Club’s golf course. Everyone in her family was liberal, everyone watched MSNBC and everyone looked forward to Rachel Maddow’s nightly take on the state of the American political landscape. She was a graduate of the Shady Side Academy, with highest honors. She aced the SATs with a 1600 and had offers from Harvard and Princeton. She decided to stay in Pittsburgh and took a degree in History at Carnegie Mellon. She’d been exposed to public service in high school, at Shady Side, doing everything from working in homeless shelters to riding with ambulance crews and Pittsburgh cops.

And it was riding with the cops that had stuck with her.

It was plain enough to see that the world was coming apart at the seams everywhere you looked, but somewhere along the way Sara Rosenberg had decided that enough was enough. The world didn’t need more teachers or more accountants or lawyers. Pittsburgh needed cops. The bureau had been designed to function with about a thousand sworn officers on the street but by the mid-2020s that number had slipped to six hundred. The police were confronting deteriorating conditions throughout the city just at the time when young people had tuned out. To say that things were bleak was an understatement, but the commitment to public service inculcated at Shady Side, when combined with the experiences she shared during her many ride-alongs with Pittsburgh’s finest had been enough to make the decision easy.

Her parents were stunned. And furious.

They’d always assumed Sara would go to med school, preferably at Harvard where both her parents had studied. Becoming a cop was so far beneath their expectations that they both simply began to tune their daughter out.

And Sara knew then that she’d made the right choice.

Academy was tough, the hardest thing she’d ever done. Physically demanding, emotionally draining, yet most of the academics required little more than rote memorization and was not all that demanding. Tests were, however, stressful, because failure meant dismissal. Her academy class was interviewed by the local NBC affiliate for a segment on recruitment challenges faced by law enforcement agencies in Allegheny County, and when the reporter discovered who she was and that Cadet Rosenberg’s parents were the Rosenbergs of the Rosenberg Cardiovascular Clinic and that she had grown up in Fox Chapel…well…the story changed a little after that. It soon became a story about how everyone had to do their part, pull their weight if the city was going to survive the onslaught of criminal immigrant gangs invading the city. Sara did her best to answer all the reporter’s questions but hated being in this spotlight. But people recognized her after that, and some people even came up on the streets and thanked her.

Used to being the best at whatever she started, she took highest honors in the 33-week-long academy, and she thought she was well prepared to face life on the city’s mean streets. In order to find out whether or not this was in fact the case, she was slated to finish out her year of training by riding for three months with three Field Training Officers. First up, a month on Third Watch, or Evenings, working from four to midnight, then First Watch, or Deep Nights, from midnight to eight, and finally to Second Watch, or Days, from 0800 to four in the afternoon. At the end of that three-month rotation, she would ride with one of the department’s senior FTOs for a week, this being the last test before being cut loose and assigned to a precinct, or Zone.

All the senior FTOs had reputations. Some were on the mean side and these liked to create a tense, high-pressure atmosphere and see how the rookie handled stress. Others were the exact opposite, easy-going, almost laid-back officers who were no less observant, often taking their rookie to high-pressure encounters and seeing how they handled the change. There was a third type, as well. Cerebral. Nonjudgmental. Cold. Calculating. And almost all-knowing but like an empath, able to read people – like a book. There was only one FTO in the department like this third type, and he had a reputation. A bad one. Few people were assigned to ride with this FTO because few could take the pressure, and in the end, few rookies met his standards and ended up leaving the department.

Thomas Jefferson Warren, also known as Doc, was this third type of FTO.

He was an eighteen-year veteran of the department and the word around the academy was he’d been a Green Beret over there, in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’d been a medic and that was why people called him Doc. He was educated, had a Master’s degree in something esoteric, and apparently was still single and unattached, though in his mid-to-late 40s. He’d worked with the feds on an anti-gang task force and on drug interdiction programs with the DEA. He taught Aikido and the department’s street survival course and had been a motorcycle officer for five years before moving back to patrol after an accident. Most of the female officers in the department thought he was a hunk, which meant that most had tried to go out with him. None had succeeded. Word was he lived alone and spent all his off-duty time working one-on-one with kids before they got scooped up into livin’ the life. The word on the street was that no one in the department knew more about the city’s gangs than the Doc, so riding with him meant instant immersion in how gangs operated, and that meant working either in Zone 3, aka Shit City, or the projects and the hood around Garfield in Zone 5. And those two areas were parts of the city where cops were always walking on very thin ice.

And yet the Doc seemed welcome in the ‘hood.

Sara Rosenberg wanted to know why the Doc was so warmly accepted there, and how he’d pulled that off, because like everyone else she didn’t understand?

+++++

And yet when she first saw Thomas Jefferson Warren that afternoon he seemed disheveled, almost exhausted, like he’d been up for days. His eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy; his uniform looked slept in. This first impression was not at all what she’d expected.

She was already in their assigned patrol car, an almost brand-new Ford Explorer, silver and black with yellow accents. Parked under bare trees in the Zone 5 precinct parking lot at Washington and Highland, she was filling out the header information on their DAR, their Daily Activity Report, in the process making sure the computer terminal situated between the two front seats was linked to the computer in central dispatch.

Warren was walking out of the station with his briefcase, and her second impression was that this guy didn’t look like some kind of bad-ass special forces kung fu warrior. No, this old cop had gray hair and was as thin as a rail. Thin, as in sickly thin, like maybe too much exercise or not enough food. Or both.

The Doc opened the rear hatch and put his briefcase back there, then slammed it shut and went up to the front passenger seat. “You inventory the vehicle?” Warren asked softly.

“Yessir. Good inventory. The 870 and the M4 both checked, safeties on, rounds chambered.”

“Spare battery pack for your radio?”

“Uh, no sir. Do I need one?”

He nodded. “Yes, always.” His voice was distant, careworn and distant. Like ‘why don’t you know this already?’

“You want me to go back in and get one?”

“I brought two. I won’t tomorrow.” His meaning was clear, and he was letting her know she was still green, still a rookie.

“Yessir. Understood.”

“Okay. South on Washington, to Bennett. Hang a left and go slow, real slow.”

“Yessir. Did I miss something at briefing? We looking for something?”

His cell phone chirped, his personal phone, and he answered. “Tugboat. Go,” he said, then he listened, starting to cry at one point and a few seconds later he hung up.

“Sir? You alright?”

“Do I look alright, rookie?”

“No, Sergeant. You look upset.”

“Yeah? Well? So you have astute powers of observation, rookie. Any chance you know how to drive, and if so, would you? I’ll sort this shit out.”

She put the Ford in drive and turned out of the parking lot onto southbound Washington Boulevard. Traffic was afternoon rush hour heavy, thunderstorms had blown through an hour ago but the streets were wet, the air humid, lost somewhere between cool and turning colder. Third Watch units checking into service, dispatch already on the air, sending units to calls that they’d been holding during shift change. Accidents, a couple of bad ones. An in-progress burglary. An old man, naked, standing in the middle of the intersection at Broad and Center, screaming about the coming apocalypse to shoppers coming out of the Target there, paramedics already in route. The usual crap. Endless. Just fucking endless. And most of all, most of these calls were mindless. Stupid people doing stupid shit. Endlessly. Mindlessly.

Warren looked at his watch. One of those ‘smart’ watches stupid people suddenly couldn’t live without. An alarm had buzzed on his wrist, his pulse was almost one hundred so he leaned back, shut his eyes and did a minute of deep breathing exercises. “Okay, Rook, coming up on Bennett,” he sighed after he stifled a yawn. “And remember, go slow.”

“What are we looking for?”

“We aren’t. I am. You keep your eyes on the road and try not to run over anyone.”

She looked away, suppressed the desire to tell him to fuck off. For the last three months everyone she rode with had wanted to let her know just how dangerous and inexperienced she was. Not just her, but every rookie just out of the academy. But she already knew that. Already understood that academy was just the first step. And she had desperately wanted to earn her FTO’s trust, to show them that she was ready to watch and listen and learn, so why did these so-called training officers want to belittle her. Was it like in the Kubrick film about the Marines? Full Metal Jacket? Did belittling rookies, stripping each recruit’s ego bare, in effect dehumanizing them, and then rebuilding each one in the image of their drill sergeant, really make for better Marines? Or, in this case, cops? Apparently these FTOs still thought so, but this new one, Warren, was supposed to be different. He was the FTO who could wash her out with the wave of a hand, just because. His reputation, and the respect he commanded throughout the department – and around the city – was immense. She wanted his respect, of course, but wasn’t sure what she needed to do to get it.

“Slower,” Warren said. 

She tried to see what he saw but nothing registered.

“Okay. Right on Lang,” he added, speaking so softly she could hardly hear him now.

A couple of blocks and as they approached the St. Charles Lwanga parish church he looked around attentively. “Turn into the lot across from the church, real slow, and stay close to the fence.”

As she turned into the lot she saw a black kid, sitting with his back up against a gray vinyl fence, almost invisible in the overgrown corner. 

“Stop. Unlock the doors.”

The kid stood slowly and walked up to the Ford, got in behind Rosenberg. Warren turned and looked at the gangbanger; Sara Rosenberg just sat there, eyes scanning.

“How ya doin’, Broadway?”

The kid shook his head. “It’s bad out here, man. These Trennies, man, they be some mean shit.”

“You guys behind the hit?”

“Yeah man. They was waitin’ for us. You know how many of my homeys got dead?”

“Four. Last I heard, anyway. Three more in ICU, not looking real good.”

The kid shook his head. “They got my crib, shot it up good. Kid next door, his grandmother got hit too.”

“She need help?”

“No, Doc, she dead. What about Dres’?”

Warren nodded. “Yeah, it was his daughter.”

“Oh, man, that’s the shit.”

“What about the kid’s grandmother? Where’s the body at?”

“Trennies took the body, man. Like no crime, ya know?”

Doc nodded. “You got anything new?”

“Yeah, Doc, yeah. They got two more kids in they basement, more of that cuttin’ up shit goin’ down.”

“When was their last shipment?”

“Thursday. Last two Thursdays.”

“What about the kid next door to you? He okay?”

“Naw, man, he fucked up. Lost his mama in a drive-by, now this shit. Doc, he be like twelve, ya know? Go to school and all that shit. Don’t seem right, ya know?”

“Where is he now?”

“He hidin’, Doc. They after him.”

“Why?”

“He saw they faces, man! They gonna git him too so he be hidin’ deep now.”

“There’s too much rain now, Benny. He can’t stay down there.”

“It ain’t da rain, Doc. It da snakes and shit. Warm down there, ya know?”

“You with him?”

Benny Broadway nodded. With his gang decimated he had nowhere left to go but the sewers and nobody trusted the cops enough to go with them. Not even the Doc.

Warren pointed at the church across the street. “You need something to eat or just want to get out of the cold, Father Boyle will help. Door on the back, three knocks, pause, then one more.”

Benny nodded. “You gonna git them Trennies, Doc?”

Warren didn’t answer the question. “We’ll be back later, like around nine or so, if you need anything.”

“Couple of burgers if ya can, Doc. And something to sleep in.”

Warren nodded. “Okay. Be careful, Benny.”

Rosenberg watched as the kid slipped out of the Explorer, even here taking care to be quiet, to move quickly into the shadows.

“Okay,” Warren said to her, his voice now even softer, “up to Frankstown, take a right.”

She u-turned out of the parking lot and turned left, headed north. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” she said sarcastically. “Or would you rather I be a good little girl and just sit here with my mouth shut?”

He ignored her, then pulled out a small UHF radio, one that was definitely not department issue. “Tanker, Tugboat.”

“Tugboat, go.”

“15-25, echo-1”

“Echo-1 received.”

Warren put the radio away and started scanning the road ahead. For lookouts, primarily, but also for anyone who looked like they might be flying a drone.

Rosenberg sighed, paid attention to traffic and kept her mouth shut. Warren was obviously working some kind of undercover op and she wasn’t going to be in the loop, at least for now, and she assumed he was playing her, seeing how she responded to these unconventional moves.

“Speed up a little, and look off to the left.”

“At?” she asked.

“Anything. Just look left.”

‘Now what?’ she wondered.

“Okay, slow, then right on Hale, then hang another right, on Kelly.”

“What going on?”

“Lookouts. Mexicans. With radios.”

“Where? I didn’t see anything…”

“I know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You don’t know what to look for, but you’re doin’ fine.”

“What? You mean, just sit here and look dumb?”

He nodded. “They know our patrol routes and routines, they know me and they know who’s riding with me this week, which means they already know who you are.”

“What? What are you talking about? How do you even know shit like that?”

“Because that’s what they do everywhere. Penetrate the locals. Get their people inside. Usually dispatchers, PSOs, sometimes just buy cops on the inside. They start gathering intel before they move into an area.”

“What did you mean by they know me?”

“You. Your family. Your parents are rich so they know not to bother trying to compromise you, but you’ll make a pretty good target if they want a hostage or to make a statement.”

“A statement?”

“Yeah, kill you, to send us a message to back the fuck off.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter now. They’ve probably got a file on you and your family.”

Sara Rosenberg suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

“Don’t worry, kiddo. You’re not alone, not by any stretch, but I’ll need you to pay attention when I talk. No daydreaming, no inner voice shit. Listen. When I tell you stuff you gotta listen to everything I say. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“We’ve been working Tren de Aragua in Pennsylvania for a while, a couple of years, anyway. They absorbed parts of the Sinaloa Cartel on the North Side last year, and that marked their first big move into the city. We’ve been on ‘em ever since.”

“Who’s ‘we?’”

“The feds and the locals in the task force, and the relevant state agencies.”

“Do you know if what you said about my family is fact?”

He shrugged. “We’re never one hundred percent sure of anything, Rosenberg, at least not until we get one of their captains. Sooner or later we get our hands on someone who’ll sing.”

“You mean, like, what by that?”

“People always talk, Rosenberg. And their MO is the same, wherever they go. Penetrate the locals, find out who’s vulnerable, who’s broke, which cops gamble or do drugs, where the weak spots are inside local agencies, identify high value targets. The LAPD mapped all this shit out 20 years ago when they penetrated the cartels; Tren de Aragua is just following that playbook. Same shit when they move into a new neighborhood. ID the key players, the lookouts and mules, where meth is cookin’ or who’s cutting horse, and with what. ID the weak spots, the vulnerabilities, then take out the mules, cut off supply, negotiate with leadership and decapitate if they don’t go along.”

“You make it sound like a formula…”

“It is. The funny thing is…the same shit is goin’ down in Afghanistan, in Myanmar, Central Africa, you name it. It’s the basic counter-intel playbook. Nothing new. Man, it sucks when they don’t follow the playbook, sucks the big one when they pull off a surprise, even a little one. That’s when people get fuckin’ hurt.”

“Funny? You think this is funny?”

“Yeah, sure. Funny. Funny, as in funny as Hell. I’ve been doin this shit for more than 20 years and it never changes, they were doin’ it in ‘Nam and before we got there, too. And everyone says the spooks were financing their war and then brought it home to pay for the next one, but I doubt that’s true. Anyway, one way or another the stuff came home to roost, and we’ve been fighting it on our streets ever since. Like a poetic injustice, ya know; it’s a disease that never goes away. Like a wasting disease, eating us from the inside out.”

“I had a professor, an intro to international relations. Her thesis is that drugs have always been used by governments to control low income groups. Here, in France, all over Southeast Asia.”

Warren nodded. “Yeah, and one more time the whole thing is so tragic it’s funny. Like the Democrats were above that kind of shit. Right. And now that’s come back to bite ‘em in the ass.”

“Like a genie, once she’s out of her bottle you can’t get her back in. Why the Chinese keep flooding the market. No way to tear apart a society faster than to flood it with drugs.”

He looked at her and nodded. “You did History, right? At Carnegie Mellon?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, make a right here, keep an eye on the Yukon behind us.”

“The white car back there?”

“Yup. You gotta start memorizing front grill patterns. Helps you ID the soldiers they put on your tail. I think we just picked up Beni Navarro,” Warren said, reaching for the UHF radio. He flipped it on, then keyed the mic: “Tugboat, Lighthouse. Gonna need an airedale. Bravo November, black is white. Repeat, black is white.”

“Lighthouse received.”

“Excuse me,” Rosenberg said, “but what’s going on.”

“We’re moving a drone in to take a look at our tail.”

“Who’s this Ben Navarro?”

“Beni. He’s head of Tren de Aragua in Pennsylvania and Ohio, hangs out mainly in Pittsburgh these days, and Cleveland. Nasty son-of-a-bitch, right now he’s moving into Homewood and Hamilton, pushing out the Crips. Dos Hermanos. You’ll hear that a lot, the Lemon brothers, Porfirio Limones and his brother. We think his name is César. They just bought six houses on Oakwood, we’re picking up indications they’re tunneling up there, setting up a distribution network and safe houses.”

“What? Tunneling? Are you kidding?”

“Lighthouse, Tugboat, eyes on target, imaging now.”

“Roger,” Warren said.

“Lighthouse, Tugboat, positive ID on subject Lincoln Paul behind the wheel, Bravo November right front, two more in rear, thermal image only at this time.”

“Okay Sara, speed up a little, then turn on the overheads.”

“You wanna run code?”

“No siren for a minute; if they don’t break off we’ll go code-3 and see if that won’t shake ‘em.”

She accelerated to 50 miles per hour and turned on the overhead strobes, and almost instantly the white Yukon broke off and turned off on a side street. Warren keyed the mic again: “Tugboat, Lighthouse, follow target, track to and ID destination.”

“You want to slow down now?” Sara asked.

“Go to code-3, take Washington to the Highland Park Bridge, go to code-1 in a minute or so.”

She flipped on the siren and sped up, turned right on Washington and went silent about a minute before they passed the Zone 5 station. She slowed to 30 and kept in the right lane. “I think we picked up another tail,” she said, “when we turned on Washington.”

“Turn into the station, now.”

She just made the turn and Warren watched as a silver Suburban passed by, the driver staring at them as the large SUV roared past. There were at least four men in there and he was sure at least one of them had a rifle. 

“Okay, get behind them,” he said, hanging on as she whipped the Ford into a tight u-turn, busting back into the northbound lanes, the silver Suburban now almost a half mile ahead. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, northbound Washington, silver Suburban ahead, armed men inside, now at the curve, now westbound towards the bridge.”

“Who’s Lighthouse?” Rosenberg said.

He ignored her. “Okay, they’re going for the bridge, northbound on Highland Park.”

Lighthouse acknowledged.

“Lighthouse is the command center, DEA/FBI anti-gang task force. They’ll be moving the Predator now, get eyes on the license plate.”

“The LP is 789 IPG2,” she said.

“You saw it?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He read off the info to Lighthouse and entered the data on the Ford’s mobile data computer, and the registration came back to a plumbing supply house out by the airport.

“That figures,” Warren sighed. 

“Why?”

“They’ve got several cars plated there, some they use for legit work, others less so.”

“How close do you want me to get?”

“Two hundred yards for now. Lighthouse, subject vehicle now turning east on 28.”

“Airedale has the vehicle, you can break off now.”

“Roger.”

“Why aren’t we going to follow them?” Sara asked.

“We know who they are, where they’re going, so why provoke a confrontation when they’re not carrying product. They are sending a message. They know who you are and they’re letting us know they know, so like I said, you’re a target now, which means they know all about you and your family. We’ll have to put details on your father’s house and on their clinic, but we’ve got dozens of people under protective details right now, just here in the city.”

“I can’t fuckin’ believe this,” she sighed. “I don’t know you from Adam but you’re telling me a cartel knows all about me and my family?”

“As soon as you were assigned to ride in Zone 5, yeah.”

“Which means the department is penetrated?”

“You obviously weren’t listening to me.”

“I was. I just can’t believe it.”

He shook his head. “The reason these guys are doing so well is that most of their leadership has military experience, and when they need training they get it from the best. Retired Mossad. Wagner. Even retired Army. Just because they’re mean and ruthless doesn’t mean they’re stupid. By the way, in present circumstances, stupid means not learning from your mistakes.”

“You talking about them, or me?”

“If the shoe fit…”

“You saying I should quit?”

“Not at all. I am saying if you want to play in this league you need training. You need more training, more school, new skills.”

“Such as?”

“Put in two years here then go to the feds. Spend five years with them, more if you like the work. Come back here and make a real difference. You’ve got the basics down, now you need to sharpen your instincts, get to know the street. What goes down there, how people survive. You grew up riding horses and going to country clubs and summer camps. The street is an abstract concept to you right now so you’re dangerous, to yourself. If you want to change that, let me know by the end of our week together. If you don’t, no big deal. Go to traffic and work wrecks, or go to CID and work homicide. If you want to work gangs, let me know.”

“I can already answer that one. I’ve never been interested in gangs, and I’m still not.”

“Okay. What are you interested in?”

“Just patrol. Working a district.”

“The street, you mean?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Where? Fox Chapel? Where you grew up?”

“No, not at all. Here in the city.”

“And if the streets are being taken over by gangs, just where does that leave you?”

“Is that what it comes down to?”

“No, not really. You could work a beat downtown or over on the strip, do traffic control, take reports, put in your twenty, maybe get married along the way, have a couple kids. No shame in that. Then again, not too many History grads from Carnegie Mellon join the bureau. With your GPA you ought to be at Harvard or Georgetown but you’re not, so there must be something else going on.”

“You read my file?”

“And your transcripts. I even talked to a few of your professors.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Nothing but good things to say about you, too. Though everyone I talked to was disappointed in your decision to join the force, said it was a waste of talent. So you tell me. Is it?”

“Is it what?”

“Is this the best possible choice for Sara Rosenberg? Could she do more meaningful things, such as, say, become a physician like her parents? Or a lawyer? Or work for the FBI or CIA?”

“Or…why not just be a housewife? Is that what you’re telling me?”

He grinned. “Pretty big chip on that shoulder, Sara.”

“Or maybe I should run off and be a stripper? Huh? Would that make you happy?”

He laughed at her anger, shook his head as he looked out the window at the passing landscape. “Never considered that one, Sara. You’re cute, but somehow I don’t see you dancing.”

“I’m cute?”

“Yeah, of course you’re cute. You not notice that before?”

“Me? No, not really. I always thought I was kinda frumpy.”

“Frumpy? Now I haven’t heard that one in a long time. Frumpy, huh. I’ll have to think about that. No. No way. You’re cute, not frumpy.”

She glanced at him quickly then back at the road ahead, and she shook her head, too. “You look almost like you’re sick. Way too skinny. Are you?”

“Am I what? Sick?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You been to a doc recently?”

“Few months ago, but I run, Sara. I mean I do marathons and triathlons, stuff like that.”

“Oh. I guess that would explain it, but even so you look pale. Like I said. Sick.”

“Okay. I’ll get a checkup.”

“Thanks.”

“See? Your instincts are maternal, protective, and grounded in empathy,” he said. “Like you’re a born physician.”

“Why are you pushing that on me?”

“Because you look out of place, the uniform doesn’t look right on you.”

“Wow, Warren. That’s harsh.”

“Call me Doc, would you? All my friends do.”

“We going to be friends?”

“Never know.”

“Why Doc?”

“Medic. The name stuck.”

“Now there’s some major league irony for you, ladies and gentlemen!”

“Yeah, ain’t that the truth.”

“So, why didn’t you go to med school?”

He sighed, leaned back a little and looked ahead, then at the computer screen between them. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, is the target on 76 now?”

“Affirmative.”

The sun was going down and darkness was coming on fast. He looked at his phone, checked the current temperature and the forecast for the night. “Shit, going down to 20 tonight. Hard freeze.”

“Yeah? What are you thinking?”

“Those two kids, hiding down in the sewers in sub-zero conditions. Weather will kill them before the Trennies can get to them.”

“Options?”

“None that would be worth a damn. Get ‘em to a shelter and they’d get it there. Take ‘em into protective custody and odds are someone on the inside would get to them. Best option is probably sleeping bags and a small camp stove with some food, but now I’m not so sure we didn’t blow their cover.”

“You think we might have led them to the kid?”

“It’s possible.” He double-checked the time again, seemed to make up his mind about something. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, code zebra.”

“Lighthouse, Tugboat, four hours.”

“Tugboat to all units, stop repeat go. Say again, stop repeat go.”

“What was that all about?” Rosenberg asked.

He turned and looked at her. “So, what do you want for dinner?”

“What?”

“You like Thai? The place on Ellsworth is in-district.”

“What?”

Doc shook his head, sighed. “Man, you got to put shit where it belongs. Compartmentalize, prioritize. Time management. Our slot to eat begins in twenty minutes, miss that and you won’t eat ’til tomorrow morning. We’re going to be writing reports all night as it is…”

“What? Wait, how do you know that? We haven’t even been on one report call.”

“It’s early, Rookie.” He looked out the window and a chill ran down his spine. “And our night hasn’t even started yet.”

+++++

After dinner, green curry and spring rolls times two, he took over driving. After checking back into service he waited about five minutes then called in again: “3 X-ray 77, show us out sixty-one Union Charlie.”

“2130,” dispatch replied with the time checked out.

“I’ve never heard that one before. What is it?” Sara asked.

“We’re checked out on a special assignment, narcotics related.” 

He was pulling into the massive homeless shelter at Lincoln and Trenton, then under the carport. “Wait here,” he said as he got out of the Explorer and disappeared inside the door that read Men’s Shelter. He came back about five minutes later with two trash bags full of stuff, and he put these in the rear cargo compartment. Back behind the wheel he took off for the ‘hood again.

Rosenberg knew now not to ask. ‘Just sit back and pay attention,’ she told herself. 

And a few minutes later he pulled out the little UHF radio. “Tugboat, Lighthouse. Has the party started yet?”

“Lighthouse. Party started.”

He put the radio away then turned on Oakwood and drove by the Limones brother’s house slowly, giving their lookouts time to respond, then Warren turned down Hamilton before making a left on Hale, but he stopped at Mumford. There was a plumber’s van parked outside the little Baptist church, and Warren looked up at the top of the three-story crenelated tower and her eyes followed his. Two men were up there with some kind of tripod mounted device, but he made a left on Mumford and drove back up Hamilton until the Ford was facing the Limones house again.

“Do you smell gas?” Doc asked.

She rolled her window down and took a sniff. “Yeah, I do.” 

He made a right on Oakwood. “Call it in, would you?”

She got dispatch, told them to call the gas company and the fire department, and Warren made another turn, right this time, and he circled around to the little church again and parked behind the plumber’s van. She saw the men up there again, only now the two men were aiming a bright green laser at the Limones’ house.

“You’ll want to shut your eyes now,” Warren said, and as she turned to look at him a concussive roar filled the night sky. She turned in time to see a huge fireball erupting from the Limones’ house, then heard windows shattering all over the neighborhood. A second later the house next to the Limones house went up in a second concussive blast, then the next house went, and the next.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” she yelled. “What the fucking Hell was that!?”

“Gas leak,” Doc said as he watched the two ‘plumbers’ hop in the van and drive away. “You better call it in. Advise four houses are involved.” He drove over to Hamilton and got as close to the raging inferno as he dared, then he stepped out of the Ford, pulling out the UHF again and calling it in. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, Charlie Echo Paul high order zero.” He put the little radio in his coat pocket and watched as the first fire trucks arrived on scene, then he leaned in and spoke to her. “Okay, let’s go take some notes for our report.”

She looked at him, shellshocked. 

“No? Okay, why don’t you just sit there. I’ll be back in a few.”

She sat there for a minute then got out and followed him up Hamilton. Warren was up there talking to the Fire Department’s on scene incident commander, telling him about the gas leak, and she listened to his explanation with a growing sense of unease. Like he was lying his ass off. And the Assistant Fire Chief was doing his part, taking information he knew was a lie and dutifully writing it all down. Four pumpers were on scene now, flooding the hillside with water and fire retardants, getting the four fires under control, and she looked around at all the gawkers that were gathering on the sidewalks across the street from the blazing houses, then she looked back through the trees, noted the clear sightline between the little church and the houses.

Sara Rosenberg had zero military training. She had never heard of a laser guided bomb, had no idea what kind of ground or aerial support was required to use these devices, but any idiot could smell the air and this air smelled all wrong. Strong chemicals lingered in the air, but once again she had no idea what it was she was smelling, or where this foul odor had come from. 

Could it have come from a gas leak? Sure. Maybe.

‘Just what the hell was that?’ she asked herself. ‘Who were those guys up there? Why was Doc so interested in them?’

Yet she had no idea she was being played.

Several vans appeared, local TV stations. Cameramen got out and set up tripods, reporters roamed the crowds, looking for eyewitnesses. One of them spotted Sara; this reporter had done the first in-depth report about Sara in the academy and immediately recognized her. Warren watched this and smiled.

The reporter was just doing her job, the narrative was simply being massaged a little in real time, shaped as circumstances warranted. Doc watched the interview, noted how easily Sara slipped into the role. Authoritative, easy going in front of the camera, a natural.

“So what can you tell us?” the reporter asked. “Do you know what happened?”

“My partner and I were patrolling the area and we smelled gas. We called it in but less than a minute later this house went up, then the next three, over there. As soon as these fires die down a little we’ll search for survivors…”

‘And there won’t be any,’ Warren said to himself as he walked over and stood behind Sara. Very deliberate. Very visible. When regional leaders of Tren de Aragua saw him standing there they would understand that this was no gas leak. They would understand that they needed to pull out of Pittsburgh, move on to greener pastures – while they still could – because the gloves had come off. This was just the next phase in the constantly evolving war on drugs, but things change. They always do.

+++++

Back in their patrol car. Sara behind the wheel again. Still clueless.

The UHF radio in Warren’s pocket chirps. Incoming call. He pulls it out, puts the earphone in his right ear, away from her. “Tugboat. Go.”

He listens. His jaw clenches. He pulls out a notepad and starts writing.

“Just three?” he asks. “Okay. On our way.”

She looks at him as they pull up at a traffic light.

“Turn here,” he commands.

“Left?”

“Yes, left.” Anger, frustration. But way more anger. “Wood to Moosehart, turn right and go up the hill.”

Soon they are patrolling behind the house on Oakwood. And it soon becomes clear that three vans are up here searching, too. Dark gray vans, no windows. They stop at a stop sign and one of the vans pulls up alongside, driver’s door to driver’s door. Window rolls down in the van. 

“Window down, please,” Warren tells her. She complies.

Sara hears radio chatter. The van’s interior is dimly lit – blood red.

The driver speaks. He ignores Sara. “He’s in the silver Yukon, on 76 eastbound.”

Warren crosses his forearms over his chest and scowls, then he nods. “Parker know?”

“Aye, sir. You want him? Need to talk to him?”

“No, not necessary.”

The van drives off. Sara sits there, speechless. “So, Navarro got out?” she asked.

He looked at her slowly, carefully, measuring her, then he nodded. “They’ve got tunnels all under this hill, safe houses everywhere. He must’ve been down there in one of them.”

“When the bombs hit, you mean?”

He made eye contact again, as he turned up the heat on the AC panel. “Getting cold out, isn’t it?”

“You enjoy speaking in metaphors, don’t you?”

“No, actually, I’m cold.”

“Oh. Why don’t you put a heavier coat on?”

“Forgot to bring it.”

“That’s a rookie’s excuse, Warren,” she said, smiling.

“Ain’t that the truth. So, I asked you earlier, where do you see yourself in a few years.”

“I said I wasn’t sure yet, didn’t I…?”

“That you did.”

She’d made up her mind an hour ago, but here it was. “I want to know what you know. I want to be able to pull off what you just pulled off.”

He sighed, nodding his head as he slouched back in his seat. “After I came back from The Stan…”

“The what?”

“Afghanistan. After I came back to the city I enrolled at Pitt. Sociology. I was so sure I wanted to go into social work. You know. Make a difference. Man, there were drugs everywhere, and everywhere we went we ran into that shit. Homeless people? Homeless because of drugs. People getting out of prison? In prison on drug charges. Even when a crime wasn’t obviously about drugs you could dig a little deeper and find out drugs were behind whatever it was that landed them in jail. And the cops, they’re like the little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dyke, ya know. You plug one leak and two more start on the other end of the dam. Every time we thought we’d made progress another torrent would break open and wash away all our progress, and pretty soon we realized there was no way to keep up. You know, back in the 90s there were more than a thousand cops in the bureau; now there are barely six hundred. Kids aren’t interested, even though the money these days is pretty good. Same with the armed services. Can’t meet enlistment goals, sometimes by fifty percent. We can’t fill an academy class. Used to be 40 in a class, then 30, and now it’s 20-something.”

“I know. That’s why I…”

“I know that’s why you joined, Sara. Believe me, I know. But we need 300 more just like you and that ain’t happening. And because it’s not happening we’ve had to change tactics. Another executive order, from the White House. Get the drugs off the street. At any cost. And this order is off the books. Secret. Go after the dealers and if that doesn’t work we’ll go after the end user, but Sara, there aren’t enough jails in the world if we go down that road. We have to make this work or society is going to be fundamentally altered. As in militarized.”

“Logical,” she said. “And probably inevitable. Half the country has been sliding down into the sewers for damn near a hundred years, ever since the Chinese started flooding California with opium.”

“Yeah, I know. They did it to the British in Hong Kong, and then in Burma and India. And it worked, too. The Brits are gone from Asia now, and pretty soon we’ll be gone from the world stage, unless we can turn this ship around.”

“So,” she said, “what you’re saying is that action speaks louder than public policy pronouncements, feasibility studies, and congressional subcommittees. Is that about right?”

Warren took out his cell phone and quick-dialed a number. “You still up?” – then – “Mind if I come over?” He rang off and turned to her, then nodded his head. “I want you to meet someone.”

“Okay. Now?”

“Yeah. Your old neighborhood. Raynor Road. Let’s go.”

It took a half hour but he directed her to a huge estate behind a stone wall, entry blocked by a motorized wrought-iron gate, open at the moment, and the reason why soon apparent. There were a half dozen black Suburbans parked beside the massive three-car garage, and at least one armed guard standing beside every window or door Sara could see. She parked the Explorer and followed Warren up to the front door; the door opened before they reached the brick porch and Sara immediately recognized Senator Andre Lutz. His wife, Judge Amari Brown-Lutz, was by his side. Both were distraught.

But when Dre’ Loos saw his old friend he came forward and the two men hugged. Both were soon crying; Sara Rosenberg was confused. She followed the men into the house, noting that the judge had suddenly disappeared. They walked into an immense living room, a huge, lighted swimming pool visible on the far side of the room, on the far side of the largest windows Sara had ever seen. Her father’s house was not far from this place but it wasn’t even half this size, so she was kind of impressed. The furnishings were kind of ‘country-French’ and quietly elegant, the art on the walls looked expensive, like they’d be in museums one day. Federal agents with earpieces dangling stood by the windows, another was just visible out by the pool wearing night vision goggles.

Judge Brown returned with two young boys in tow; when they saw Doc Warren they ran across the room and jumped into his outstretched arms as he knelt to catch them. The judge introduced herself to Sara, then the Senator did, as well.

“We’ve heard so much about you,” Andre told her. “We were hoping we’d get to meet you, just not under these circumstances.”

Warren stood and kind of coughed a little, interrupting his friend. “Dre’, she’s still in the dark about Alex. I’m still getting her up to speed.”

“I thought she started with you last week?” he said, startled.

“No, sorry, but this was her first night riding with me.”

“Ah.” The Senator turned and faced Sara, his eyes boring into her. “How was it out there tonight?”

“Informative, to say the least. And instructive. Sergeant Warren is a good teacher.”

“Always has been,” Dre’ said. “Would either of you like something to drink? Ginger ale, a Coke?”

Both shook their heads; the two little boys were clinging to Warren, begging for attention. He knelt and picked them both up and walked to the windows that looked out over the swimming pool, leaving Sara with the Senator and his wife.

“So, the story here is they got our daughter about three weeks ago. I was in D.C. and our nanny was supposed to pick up Alex, uh, Alexandra, from kindergarten. Turned out the girl worked for this Navarro character, for Tren de Aragua. We got a ransom note a few days later. We learned last Friday that they killed her…”

Judge Brown excused herself, walked off into the house.

“My wife is not taking this well. She feels it was her fault.”

“Why?” Sara asked.

“She’s refused protective details for over a year, ever since we started getting threats from them. I don’t think any of us ever figured they’d go after our kids. That’s always been off limits, but these guys have been rewriting the rules for a while now. Well, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The President has said ‘no more,’ no more Mr Nice Guy. Use whatever means are necessary. So tonight was our first move.”

“Are we going to wait for them to respond?”

Dre’ shook his head. “No. We’re moving against them in Florida and Texas tonight, too. Tomorrow the attacks will escalate to known hideouts in Venezuela and Panama. We’re also coordinating with agencies in Spain and Portugal, and we’ll be hitting them there this week.”

“I’m sorry about your daughter, sir. I, well, I don’t know what else to say.”

“I appreciate that. All in all, we just wanted to meet you, but after you’d been with the Doc for a week…”

“Tonight pretty much decided things for me, sir. I’m all in.”

“Well, you finish up your week with Thomas and we’ll have our conversation then.”

“Thomas, sir?”

When he heard that, Senator Lutz started laughing until he was red in the face.

+++++

“He said I’m supposed to call you Hooker from now on.”

“Oh he did, did he?” Warren sighed.

“Why? Why Hooker?”

“Oh, who knows? You’re not, by any chance, a William Shatner fan, are you?”

“Who’s that?”

Warren smiled and looked out the window as she steered the Explorer over the Highland Park Bridge one more time on their way back to their district. “You know, I’m not sure.”

“Oh. Okay. Those kids sure seem to love you…”

“I’m their Godfather.”

“Really? How’d that come about?”

“Dre’ and I go way back, all the way to grad school.”

“In sociology? Both of you?”

“That’s a fact.”

“So, you knew Alexandra?”

“Yup.”

“Well?”

“Yup.”

“And you don’t want to talk about it, right?”

“Yup. I do want to get those sleeping bags over to the boys.”

“Back to that church?”

“Yup.”

She shook her head and drove back to the ‘hood, to the empty church parking lot, and as they pulled in she was the first to see the boy. He was face down in a pile of leaves, and the boy wasn’t moving.

“Oh, goddamn, no,” the Doc sighed, grabbing the M4 carbine from under his seat and then running over to the body.

He rolled the still-warm body over, and saw the catastrophic bullet wound in the center of Benny’s forehead. “Turn off the headlights, now!” he shouted. “Get the 870 after you call us out on a homicide at this location, then take cover…”

The window inches behind her head exploded; a split second later the sound of the gunshot arrived and she felt little chunks of tempered glass rain down on her back as she ducked low and pulled her door to. Another round slammed into the dashboard and bits of plastic splintered the back of her neck as she reached for the radio’s mic.

“3 X-ray 77,” she yelled into the mic, “33 our location, shots fired at our squad, one vic on the ground…”

Another round slammed into the Ford’s door and everyone listening heard her scream in pain as the bullet tore into her thigh. She pulled herself over the center console and out Warren’s door, then turned and pulled the Remington 870 out.

“You hit?” she called out.

No reply. 

Two more rounds fired, then four more, different sound from this one. Four more of the same, then two more. Sirens converging. A helicopter getting closer. She pulled out her hand unit and tried to talk: “3 X-ray 77, I think I’m hit…”

Sirens getting close, engines under heavy acceleration. Tires squealing, Someone over her, moving her gently. She opened her eyes and looked up, saw Warren bent over her legs and wondered when she’d fallen. She tried to say something, anything, but everything was turning cold and white and she hated to admit it just then, even to herself, but she was starting to feel a little afraid.

Coda

Damarius King was at a crossroads, because he’d never seen anything like this. Never, in all his thirteen years. The Christmas tree was huge. The number of presents under the sagging branches was perplexing. Daunting. Because some of them had his name on them. Nothing made sense here, like sometimes his dreams made no sense.

He’d always loved football and knew he was supposed to love the Steelers, but like everything else in this place he didn’t understand why. Because he had two brothers now, even though they weren’t really his brothers. He had a mother, too. A real mother, even though she wasn’t really his mother. But bestest of all was his dad, even though he wasn’t really his father. But his dad had been a Pittsburgh Steeler and that made up for a lot.

He’d never had a big dinner on Christmas Eve, had never watched old TV shows about Christmas, and everyone had looked around like they were kind of sorry when he told them this was his first Christmas tree. His grandmother had never been able to afford a tree, or even Christmas presents, for that matter. He was sorry he’d mentioned it because he didn’t like that look on their faces, that look caught somewhere between pity and regret. Every time he saw that look on their faces he felt like he didn’t really belong here, even though his new dad said he did.

He was sitting beside the tree now, looking at the lights. His little brothers were sitting beside him, staring at the tree then looking at all the presents spilling out onto the floor, and his dad was sitting in a chair not too far away, looking at the tree with grim satisfaction etched across his face. Weird music was playing, some old man dreaming of a white Christmas. His mom came in with hot chocolate and he loved that stuff, then she went and sat with her husband. 

A while later and his dad said it was time for bed and he followed his brothers down the long hallway to their bedrooms. There were big windows here, windows with real glass that didn’t need to be boarded up because no one shot up this ‘hood. He had his own room now, too, and his own computer. He had a nice collection of astronomy programs on it and he was learning the names of all the constellations, and the names of all the planets in the solar system. His dad had taken them all to the planetarium and that had been the best day ever, and when he got lonely he looked at the pictures he’d taken that day and he remembered his grandmother at times like that. He remembered the drugs and BennyB and those last three or four nights in the sewer after she was killed.

How Benny had told him to stay put, to not leave the sewer no matter what he heard. Then all those gunshots, all that screaming. Helicopters and those lights that were so bright they almost looked blue, sirens and more gunshots. He’d climbed up that rusty old ladder and looked around and it had been snowing then. And someone was looking for him, calling his name. A cop, an old white guy, and the sun was starting to come up then and the cop had seen him.

And everything had started to change after that.

The old cop. He’d made all this happen. Uncle Doc.

Damarius King still didn’t understand, and while he liked having a room all his own in a way he liked his old room better. He’d been able to lay there in his old room and look up through the shattered ceiling at the stars, and he missed that.

+++++

His brothers got him up early. Way too early. Some shit about Santa Claus.

And they couldn’t go to the living room yet, couldn’t go see the presents under the tree. Mom was making pancakes, huge suckers bigger than a Frisbee. And bacon. And oh God, the maple syrup…that stuff was so good.

And then Uncle Doc came in with his girlfriend, Sara. She was still walking with a cane and she wasn’t a cop anymore. She was going to go back to school to be a doctor. Uncle Doc came over and hugged his mom, then the same with his dad, then he came and sat down beside Damarius.

“How you doin’, kiddo?”

“Good.” He didn’t know why, but he still felt small next to his uncle, almost afraid to talk.

“Looks like some good presents out there. You must’ve been a good kid this year.”

Damarius nodded.

“I got you a present too, if that’s okay…?”

Damarius looked down and shrugged. Warren looked at Dre’ who just shook his head.

They went out to the tree after that and Damarius saw a big orange telescope over by the window that hadn’t been there last night, and his uncle told him Santa had brought it for him because he’d been such a good boy and that didn’t make sense because why had Santa never come before? Had he been bad? And what was he doing now that made him good?

He had other presents. A Steelers helmet, a real football just like the pros used, some new programs for his computer. Math programs, and more science stuff like an atlas of the Moon and he couldn’t wait to get them loaded but that telescope seemed to be calling his name so he went over and looked at it. And Uncle Doc came over too. He explained how everything worked.

“Will you come over and help me use it?” Damarius asked.

“Sure. Sure I will. You know it, kiddo.”

“Like tonight?”

“If the sky’s clear, sure, but we don’t have to wait until tonight. You’ve got a special filter that lets you look at the sun.”

“I do?”

“Yup. Sure do. I made sure Santa brought you one, ‘cause you’ve been such a brave kiddo this year…”

“Brave? What do you mean?”

“Well, lots of bad things happened, right? And you didn’t give up. You kept trying hard in school, and you’ve been trying real hard ever since that night…”

“That was a bad night.”

“Yes it was,” Doc sighed. “Yes, it surely was.”

Sara was watching them and there it was, the reason why she loved Doc, and always would.

+++++

MaryAnn and Aaron were in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on their Christmas Dinner. Sarah Caldwell was in her room, still getting dressed, still stressing about her clothes. She finished her hair and then went downstairs. She plugged in the lights and their Christmas tree came back to life, though all their presents had been cleared away.

The little bell rang and Sarah scampered off to his room.

Peter Wells looked regal, though he habitually wore turtlenecks these days – to hide the scar on his neck. Still, he had that manner about him. Wealthy, like a patrician. And wealthy people wore navy blue cashmere turtlenecks, didn’t they? She helped him into his wheelchair and pushed him out to the living room, to the big window next to the Christmas tree.

“You three did such a marvelous job this year,” Peter Wells said as he gazed up at the tree, “I do so hate to take this one down. Maybe we could leave it up for a while? To the New Year, perhaps?”

“There’s no law that says we can’t,” MaryAnn said as she carried a platter of something to the dining room table.

“I’m with you, Dr. Wells,” Aaron sighed. “You know, they grow on you.”

“When are our guests arriving?” Peter Wells asked.

“They should be here momentarily,” MaryAnn said. “They’re just looking for a parking place.”

“And what have you two been up to down here?” Wells asked. “It smells just heavenly…”

Aaron and MaryAnn smiled. “Gravlox, lobster bisque, endive salad, and prime rib.” Mary Ann sighed seductively, adding coquettishly: “And a special treat for dessert.”

“Dear God, how on earth could anyone top that!” Wells smiled expansively, as always admiring MaryAnn’s skills in the kitchen, and letting her know how much he appreciated them. And her.

The doorbell chimed and Sarah took off, and came back a moment later with the evening’s guests of honor, Sergeant Thomas Jefferson Warren of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and his fiancé, Sara Rosenberg.

“There he is!” Wells cried. “My hero!”

Warren looked down and shook his head, his arms full of Christmas presents he’d wrapped himself; he carried the loot over to the glittering tree and put them there. “None of that hero stuff tonight, Dr Wells. I was just doing my job and you know it.”

“Such modesty does not become you, my lad. If not for you at least two of us wouldn’t be here to enjoy this night, and you have our eternal thanks, young man.”

Warren walked over and took his new friend’s hand. “Right place at the right time, sir. Now, how are you doing.”

“Me? I’m doing quite well, thank you. Yes, quite well. And Miss Rosenberg, you’re looking elegant tonight, and walking much better than the last time I saw you.”

“I am, thanks,” Sara said. “Still, I have days…”

“Ah, yes, don’t we all,” Wells replied warmly. “Now, would either of you care for something warm, or perhaps something with a little kick to it?”

Soon they were all gathered at the table, enjoying the feast MaryAnn had prepared, then the conversation turned to more recent events.

“So, Sergeant Warren,” Peter Wells said, and he always addressed Doc formally when the Senior VP of Intelligence for the Rand Corporation wanted to discuss matters of state, “now that the president has invoked war powers how are things progressing?”

“Well sir, the so-called ‘soft war’ in Mexico has been partially successful. The Juarez cartel in particular has been hammered into irrelevance, but our insertions have been limited to cross-border ops so far and that limits us to moving only about a hundred miles into the interior. What many in Washington don’t understand is the terrain in the northern Sierra Madre has many of the same characteristics as the foothills west of Da Nang, in Vietnam. This is air-cav territory, sir…”

“Yes, I know, I know, but I’m more interested in progress here in our cities.”

“That’s harder to quantify, Dr Wells. Using Predators and Reapers over our cities has generated some serious political pushback, despite recent successes. For example, our strikes out on Oakwood were more than effective. Those deep penetrator warheads got down to the depth where most of their tunnels were located, and as you’ll recall, we sent in Delta Force to take out the rest of the Trennies in the area…”

“How many got away?” Sarah Caldwell asked.

“The two that jumped you, Dr Wells, including their regional leader and his kid brother…”

“And that was good shooting, Sergeant,” Peter Wells said.

“I’m still not sure how I did that,” Warren sighed. “That ball lightning…man…that scared the crap out of me…”

“You’re not the only one,” MaryAnn added, a shiver running down her spine as she remembered bailing out of the Subaru to help the stricken Wells, only to see that thing floating across the lawn and vaporizing Navarro.

“Anyway, We had about fifty Delta Force operators working Hamilton and Garfield going door to door, house to house, and it was just like Fallujah. Cartel and Crips dug in like ticks.”

“What was the final tally, do you know?”

Warren nodded, cleared his throat. “Sir, these figures are still classified.”

“You can speak freely here, Sergeant. We’re among friends.”

Warren looked down, and nodded. “Aye, sir. We lost twenty men, and took out 270-plus. Most of that latter figure includes gang members under 17 years old, all heavily armed but undisciplined and with no effective leadership cadre. Unsophisticated, I guess you could say. No booby traps, no hidden mines. It was a straightforward op, sir, but we’ll never really know how many of those people were collateral kills. Several elderly women are in that body count, all unarmed…”

“But do you have any proof that our men killed them?”

“Not really, sir. Most of the gang members were using the 5.56 NATO round, same as our guys, so there wasn’t any real way to differentiate at autopsy.”

“And if not for you, Sergeant, I would have been on the coroner’s slab. Don’t you ever forget that? We’ve been at war for three decades, only we’ve just now responded. It will take time to root these invaders from our cities.”

“I know, sir.”

“Now, how was the boy? Damarius?”

“I guess I’d call it PTSD, sir. He’s still withdrawn and suspicious…”

“You must learn to put yourself in his shoes, Thomas.”

“I know, sir. Still, it’s difficult. His experience of our world was limited…”

“From the photographs I’ve seen, Thomas, those people were living almost like animals. Fearful and in hiding, not sure where the next barrage would come from. Who was a friend, who was a predator? Impossible way to live, really. We can’t have an engaged democracy while people are living like that.”

“I think this will be the work of generations, sir. If we have the political will to restore these people’s lives and not to simply blame them and shove them aside.”

“Oh, that will happen,” Wells said, “but then again I’m a pessimist when it comes to the relations between races. And it’s not just our problem, is it?”

“No sir. Immigration crackdowns in Europe have proven that beyond any reasonable doubt.”

“Oh, it’s not limited to just Europe, Sergeant,” Wells sighed. “Religious intolerance plays its fair share, too. And it’s odd, don’t you think, that no one offered to take in the Palestinians?”

“Nobody wants that kind of trouble, sir.”

“Exactly. But is that not racism?”

Warren smiled. “No sir, it’s realism.”

Wells smiled too, steepling his hands over his chest as he looked at the police officer. “Realism has always been a loaded word, Thomas. Rooted in the word reality and so often at odds with words like idealism, and even pessimism, yet how do we proceed if we don’t first acknowledge the reality of the current situation. I fear most of all that we don’t have time to waste coming to terms with all our inadvertent climate modifications, to adjust policy to meet the realities of the current situation. Fighting wars wastes the time available. These conflicts distract us from the work that needs to be done to mitigate what we can, while we still may. We must build resilience and sustainability as we confront this future, and not fight endless brush wars…

And in an air conditioning duct above the dining room table, a small blue sphere no larger than a mote of dust listened to this exchange. The listeners far, far away took note of what was said – and wondered what to do next.

(c)2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is fiction, every word of it.

 

 

 

Next part of the story, and don’t give up on it just yet.

Music? Slack Hands, by Galliano. Yeah, you heard right. Just go with it. Maybe put it on repeat while you read, maybe try something stronger than tea this time, too. Round this out with some Summertime, just because Wakeman does it better than just about anyone these days.

So right, off we go, into the second of three parts.

Part II: Temperance

He wasn’t a little kid anymore, but he still wasn’t exactly a teenager, not quite. At 12 years old, Damarius King was at a crossroads and he wasn’t really up to making decisions like this – yet he was smart enough to know it. He’d seen a lot already, more than someone his age should have. He was living with his grandmother right now, and he had been for a few months, but she wasn’t much better than his mother. And he was smart enough to understand that, too. The thing is, he didn’t want to end up like his mom, or his grandmother, or like any other people he knew around the ‘hood.

He’d actually done pretty good in school, until this year, anyway. A couple of good teachers along the way had gotten through to him, got him to look past the gangs and their drugs, the gangs and their guns, and the gangs and the way the new cartels were shaking things up. There’d always been gangs in The Five, as this part of Pittsburgh was called, but for the most part, it had been a Bloods and Crips deal. Maybe a few members of the Vietnamese gangs were still hanging on, but those gangs were old school now, almost gone and hardly anyone remembered them. The Latino gangs had never really been a factor – until recently. Yet for as long as Damarius had been around, the cartels had been right in there, too.

Never really organized, though, not on Hamilton Ave. But that was starting to change.

Gangs were usually neighborhood affairs, at least they used to be, and to Damarius King that was exactly what they were. No more, no less. A few kids worked the block, protection money, running bets to bookmakers. Making sure young girls were kept busy. That’s the way it had always been. And that was true enough now. Gangs had always been around. In Ireland and Sicily. In Londontowne and Shanghai. Osaka, Edo, Saint Petersburg. New York and Philadelphia, then Chicago, where a new twist emerged. Gangs that formed in these states prison systems remained intact, and a few of them merged with the Vice Lords Nation, a ‘charity’ ostensibly operating as an anti-poverty outreach program in and around the slaughterhouses clustered around the rail yards found in Chicago’s South Side.

There was a saying back in the sixties, a euphemism popularized by black radicals, that goes something like this: ‘The whiteys who came to America landed on Plymouth Rock, but Plymouth Rock landed on us, and we’ve been carrying it ever since.’ There’s a lot of anger and frustration tied up in those words. Maybe some nihilism, too. And it’s important to understand where that anger comes from. It’s too easy to just say that some people are racists and leave it at that. It’s also too easy to say that the Africans imported to the Americas simply could not, or would not integrate into mainstream society, for whatever reason racists, and racists not just limited to the American South, implied.

More than anything, for these African Americans all the promise of the Fourteenth Amendment was as yet unrealized, and all the blood spilled in the American Civil War did not lead to a just resolution, yet by the time JFK came along American society seemed – seemed – ready to close the deal. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was crafted to be the instrument that finally shattered the last shackles of slavery. LBJ, with his background teaching migrant farm workers in the Rio Grande Valley, fully enjoined this War on Poverty. Yet within a few years, as prominent African American leaders were being gunned down or lynched, more wars loomed on the horizon. Vietnam first, then Nixon’s War on Crime, which led to waves of mass incarceration. This was followed by Reagan’s War on Drugs, with even more people being incarcerated. More people meaning African American men. From the late 60s through the early 80s, the basic premises of the Civil Rights Act were whittled away, and the generational idealism of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream devolved into a spirit of revolutionary suicide as dispirited young black men faced down police wherever they went.

And, not coincidentally, that period marked the emergence of the first two organized black gangs in North America, with the formations of the Bloods and the nearby Crips in South Central Los Angeles. And, again not coincidentally, these gangs first formed on the neighborhood level, just as almost all gangs always have, yet these two new gangs were being politically and militarily energized by a constant stream of young men being released from prison.

My, how the pendulum swings.

In simple mechanical systems, the momentum of any given part of the system is conserved unless acted upon by some external force. In practical terms related to gang warfare, this is best expressed as action equals reaction, or, to put it in more succinct terms, if you fuck with me I’m gonna fuck with you.

In this worldview, The Man is the system and the system has declared war on you. And in this war, local police officers are the foot soldiers of The Man’s occupying army. So…action, reaction.

And yet Damarius King knew absolutely nothing about this. Rather, he had been taught to distrust authority, any and all authority, and so with that worldview drilled firmly into his mind, about the only authority he ever saw could be found driving around the ‘hood in a Ford Explorer, and the whiteys inside those police cars apparently liked to fuck people up. Give ‘em an excuse and they’d kill you, too. Damarius knew that was true because he’d seen it happen, and more than a few times.

This is a worldview, of course, that is completely at odds with popular perception, the popular perception of mainstream America, anyway, because most people in America cannot relate to that earlier idea about Plymouth Rock. Most people learn all about the Mayflower Pilgrims and their arrival in the New World, and starting in first grade, too, and those happy early lessons focus on rosy images of peaceful coexistence with friendly natives culminating in a joyously big Thanksgiving meal, with the ‘Indians’ being the invited guests of honor at the party. The idea that from the very beginning these settlers brought slaves with them seems foreign, out of place, and so probably, on some level, just not true, so the very idea that a kid like Damarius King might be carrying around a chip of Plymouth Rock on his shoulder seems inconceivable. Besides, that kid probably doesn’t even know where Plymouth Rock is. Ya know?

Damarius lived in a red brick row house on Hamilton Avenue. The windows on the ground floor had been boarded up with plywood for so long the wood was covered with black mold. Windows in the two upstairs bedrooms were covered with aluminum foil in the summer, to help keep the heat out, and with trash bags and blankets in winter, to keep the snow out. He slept with his grandmother in the rear bedroom because bullets peppered the bedroom up front from time to time. When his grandmother’s check came from the government they bought food; if there was enough left over she paid the electric and water bills. Neither had seen a real doctor in years, just a nurse at the free clinic. Many of their neighbors died during the Covid thing, whatever that was, but they didn’t get sick.

She’d made sure he went to school, too, even after Covid, and Damarius could read some, and write a little, too. When the police drove by they looked at him from time to time, but they didn’t smile, and they sure didn’t wave, and he didn’t understand. He’d asked his grandmother once and she didn’t want to talk about it, so he asked his teachers at school. Again, he just didn’t understand why they turned away from his question. One of them, Miss Millet, even cried when he asked.

He liked to go fishing with Mr. Jenkins. The old man had fishing poles and sinkers, and those red and white things that bobbed up and down when a fish bit the hook. On Sundays they’d catch the bus and ride over to the water; Mr. Jenkins called it the Monongahela River, and they’d walk down the steep banks, careful of the snakes that rattled, then fish all afternoon. Mr. Jenkins shared what he caught with Damarius so he and his grandmother could enjoy some fresh caught fish, and those days were the best he’d ever known.

There were other kids in the neighborhood, of course, but most of them had guns and didn’t seem like they were interested in baseball or football or the other things Damarius liked, but that was okay. They didn’t bother him if he didn’t bother them, and besides, his grandmother told him to keep away from kids like that. They were trouble, she said. And she was usually right about stuff like that.

Things got weird after the virus. 

The police had gone over to some man’s house over on Garfield Street and the man shot at the police, then the police shot at the man’s house. According to something in the newspaper, the police shot that house 4,000 times, and they killed the old man in the house. He was wrong in the head, too, at least that’s what Damarius heard. He’d seen that before, too. Lots of times.

Police cars didn’t come to Hamilton Avenue often. In fact, they only seemed to show up after something bad happened, usually when someone was shot or after a ‘drive-by.’ Drive-bys were the worst, and that’s how the boards on the front window got shot up and why his grandmother stayed off the front porch, and maybe, he thought, that was why the police didn’t wave at him when he waved at them.

Maybe because it wasn’t easy to keep score on Hamilton. You could always find the Blood Gang (Gangster Bloods) working the area, which meant the Crips would be there too. But you could find members of Pirus working the corners on weekends, but Damarius knew that the Black Disciples, and the Renegade Black Disciples, not to mention the Blue Fin Disciples, the Gangster Disciples, the King Cobras, the Renegade Gangster Disciples, the Renegade Insane Racine Boys and the Renegade Insane Campbell Boys showed up too, and that’s when the action picked up. But every now and then the Insane Black Souls would turn up, or the Almighty Latin Stones, or maybe the Arkhos Flip City Kings or the Convict Gang, or even the Law Gang which, believe it or not, was an actual gang and not related to the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, which was a different kind of gang. 

But now there were some new kids on Hamilton, and these new guys were mean as snakes. They weren’t black but they worked the night, and they weren’t playing around. The usual kids that worked the corners, the usual black kids, were disappearing. Sometimes their bodies were found and sometimes they weren’t, but the word was when a body was found there wasn’t a head attached anymore. Word was, well, someone was collecting skulls.

One of the Crips in the neighborhood lived in the house next door, the row house on the end, right next to the boarded-up store on the corner of Hamilton and Collier. The crips in the ‘hood looked up to Benny Broadway and he sort of ran this part of Hamilton, and the vacant lot across the street was his. He kept a couple of girls in the old store, and even a couple of old mattresses for guys not content with some head, so Benny had a couple of kids working as lookouts and at least one kid picking up new product, leaving him to keep an eye on the street. You never knew when the competition would show up, or what kind of crew might be in the next car, so Benny had guns stashed all over the place, just in case.

But Benny had lost kids recently, to that new gang working the end of Hamilton, out where it ran into Oakwood. There were good trees on Oakwood, good places to hide – if you could handle the rattlesnakes – but now this new group was inching closer to Benny’s territory. So Benny dialed up the chain of command, pulled in some reinforcements, and last weekend Benny and this crew drove out to Oakwood and shot up a couple of these new guys, and they brought one of them to Benny’s house.

Of course Damarius heard everything.

There were two new groups looking to push the Crips off Hamilton. One was MS-13, and even Damarius had heard of those guys, but the second group? Damarius hadn’t heard the name before, but Benny seemed shaken when he heard the name, and even listening through the walls, Damarius could hear the fear in Benny’s voice. In fact, he sounded scared.

The name was Tren de Aragua, and Benny’s informant said they liked machetes, and that they liked to look their victims right in the eyes as they killed them. The kid also said he knew where they kept the skulls.

+++++

Dos Hermanos. That’s what they went by. The two brothers. César and Porfirio Limones. The Lemon brothers and they were mean, even by the usual standards on Hamilton Avenue. Word on the streets was they’d taken a girl and used her for a few days, then cut her tits off before they took her head. In order to become a part of their gang you had to do the same, so now the cops were investigating a bunch of disappearances of girls all over the east side.

So far they’d left BennyB alone. Benny was small time, not worth the trouble, but now the word was the Lemon Brothers were planning on moving in, so Benny was on to his brothers in the Crips. A war was shaping up, and Benny was looking for kids on Hamilton, new blood to take the place of the kids he’d just lost. 

“What about Damarius?”

Benny Broadway wasn’t sure about Damarius. The kid seemed smart enough, but in a way he seemed slow, slow like he was a retard, ya know? Still going to school, and who the fuck did that? Damarius wasn’t the type you could count on when things got bad, and he didn’t need that kind of trouble. Then again, if the brothers moved in they tried to recruit him, and if Damarius didn’t go along, they’d probably kill him.

But he was already running low on shit. That meant he needed to get some bucks together, try to line up some product from his brothers uptown. Out here on Hamilton, meth and cocaine were done; what he needed now was some Chinese food and brown sugar, what others called fentanyl and heroin. If he was flush, he tried to keep some footballs on hand for whitey in his BMW, which was also known as Xanax, because whitey loved that shit, couldn’t get enough of it. If whitey had some trim up front, he might want to get out of the car and try to score some ‘roofies,’ otherwise known as Rohypnol, to mix with some booze to put the girl out, guarantee an easy score. He sold a lot of that shit come Friday night, all year too.

See, Benny Broadway was just a businessman, just trying to take care of his customers – the best way he knew how. And like any other businessman, he needed shit to sell, and a network of people to help make it go down easy.

Benny looked at his phone, checked the time. Damarius would be getting off the bus soon, up at Homewood, and he’d try to get to him on his walk home. It was time to get the kid involved.

He saw the school bus, saw Damarius struggling with his book bag, and that was perfect. He’d go down and help him carry the load, because wasn’t that exactly what he was about to ask the kid to do? To help carry the load? To start carrying product from the drop-off to his crib?

+++++

César Limones looked out the window, looked right down Hamilton, and even from here, in this shitty old house on Oakwood, he could see that shithead Benny Broadway walking up to a little kid. Kid was carrying something, too. Probably loading up for the weekend. So Broadway already had a new soldier? Too bad for the little kid.

Benito Navarro, though he was called Navi by close associates, pulled up across the street and parked his ride, a shiny new Chevy Tahoe, on the sidewalk. The truck was white as a cloud, all the glass blacked out but chrome everywhere, even the wheels. César watched Navi carefully, looked at his coat, especially up by the armpits, looked for the bump that meant he was carrying. Usually a ghost, but sometimes a blade. Navi had a source, someone printing up Glocks with no serial numbers, and he was supposed to be bringing some today. These ‘ghosts’, or ghost guns, had really changed things because they made guns easier to toss. Spray some silicone on the grips and trigger and no fingerprints, too. And yeah, Navi popped the tailgate and grabbed a gym bag, then looked around before he turned and walked over to the new house.

Big concrete steps led up the steep little hill, and afternoon sunshine was flooding the broad front porch with warmth. Porfirio was out there, basking. The brothers missed home, missed the sun and the warmth, and right now Pittsburgh was anything but warm. After two years in Florida, Pittsburgh was fucking hell. But Pittsburgh had money, and Pittsburgh had kids. Lots of kids with money, and all those kids wanted what the brothers had.

César and Porfirio had grown up on Venezuela’s north coast, above the small fishing village of Puerto Cruz. The family had a farm along the river, the El Limon, but when opportunity called the brothers listened. Soon they were selling to the sailors at the naval base in Puerto Cabello, then they hit the big time, selling cocaine in Curaçao and Aruba. During some time in Tocorón, they made it into Tren de Aragua. Now they were Navi’s enforcers, his captains. 

They were supervising the construction of a network of tunnels in the hill that ran alongside Oakwood, and up the hill to more houses on Sickles and Fargo. Many of them were boarded up, condemned, and perfect to stash product that was always coming in. This area was perfect. The alleyway behind the house was an overgrown mess, a tangle of vines and shrubs, and a couple of the houses along the alley had garages in back and they were moving stuff in during storms, backing right into the garages and moving shit down into the basements, and then into the tunnels for distribution. The trick was to never let the Five-O pick up a pattern, always keep ‘em guessing. If they got too close, well, too bad for them.

Navi had a girl in the basement, some kind of payback going down. Girl’s mother was a judge, but a stupid one who ignored warnings. She didn’t have protection, not even for her family, so the girl been an easy mark, no problem to pick up. They’d had her for a week and so far there hadn’t been anything in the papers or on TV. Then a spoofed call from a house out by the airport, a botched rescue attempt by the locals and the FBI, and Navi had watched from afar, smiling. They’d tried to fuck with him, so now it was time for some payback.

When Benito Navarro made it up the steps he greeted Porfirio and handed off the gym bag to César before he went down to the basement. They had a bench grinder set up down there, and other tools, too, but Navi started in on his favorite machete, working the edge until the cold steel was as sharp as scalpel. Then he went into the tunnel to start in on the girl.

It took about an hour, and the only thing left was one of the girl’s hands. Navi mixed up something he said he’d learned from an Israeli spy, something he called caustic soda, and he’d chopped up the girl and put her in a vat of the stuff. In a few days, there wouldn’t be anything left but brown fluid and bone fragments, but you could turn the bones into sand just by rubbing them between your fingers. He took the girl’s hand and later that evening mailed it to the judge at her home, using the judge’s favorite restaurant’s address on the shipping label.

+++++

Dre’ Loos was an imposing man, and in more ways than one. At six feet six inches, he was considered tall, and he carried his almost three hundred pounds on a frame of solid muscle. Most people remarked that he looked like a professional football player, but that was probably because he had been, once upon a time. He’d played for the Oakland Raiders then the Pittsburgh Steelers back in the 90s, and after Andre Lutz retired, in ’05, he stayed in the city. He was bald now, his head the kind of shiny bald you could spot from across a crowded room, and only the beard he wore gave away his age. These days it was turning a little white, you see. Not that it mattered.

Dre’ had grown up in the city so coming back to the Steelers had been like a dream come true, because, he liked to say, what most people didn’t get was that Pittsburghers loved their city, and with a passion most people just didn’t get, and never would. He’d gone to Penn State where he developed into a formidable middle linebacker – most considered him downright mean – so he was a perfect fit for the Raiders’ brand of football. When he began to slow down he found himself back in Pittsburgh, and while he managed to play five more years everyone still considered him mean as a snake.

The Steelers public relations department got Andre hooked up with the local United Way chapter, and he got involved with crippled kids, then sick kids. Kids born with club feet or cleft palates, kids with cancer, kids that had been burned in terrible accidents. He used his fame to help the United Way raise money for these kids, and the experience changed him. Pretty soon, most people could see Dre’ for what he really was: a real gentle giant and one with a heart of gold. 

Yet a lot of people saw Dre’ as an angry black man, a radical with that chip on his shoulder.

While at Penn he took a sociology class and the subject interested him; after a few more classes he declared Sociology as his major. He took psych classes too, enough to take a minor in Psychology, and he graduated with high honors before heading out west. Right after he retired he went over to the Graduate School Admissions Office at Pitt, and, of course, everyone there knew who he was. And everyone there was shocked when he told them he wanted to go back to school. He had a degree in Sociology with a minor in Psych and, he wondered, how could he best put his skills, and his interests, to use. To best use, he said, because he wanted to get involved to stay involved.

Social Work, they said. Start there. Maybe go for LCSW certification, as in Licensed Clinical Social Worker. He could go onto any number of organizations from there, and he could go into policy planning or get involved with people in need – in one-on-one settings. There were tons of opportunities, more for someone like him. He started classes when the next term started, and everyone in his classes, even his professors, knew who he was. Some wanted autographs, some even brought jerseys to class, asked if he’d sign them – and he always did. With a smile. Because he really was just a gentle giant.

Dre’ kept working out, taking care of himself just like he always had, and every afternoon, right after class he went to the gym on campus and lifted for a while, then went for a five-mile run. Pretty soon he recognized a guy from one of his classes, a little younger than him but another guy really in shape. TJ Warren. He’d gone to Pitt and right after 911 had gone into the Army. Picked for Ranger School, he was chosen to go through further training, first for Special Forces, then the 18D program, to become a Special Forces medic. Soon everyone was calling him ‘Doc,’ and most everyone still did.

And pretty soon Doc and Dre’ got to talking in the gym, sharing experiences. Working out together, running. Working on classwork, soon becoming friends. Then best friends. When Dre’ hooked up with a girl and marriage was on the way, he asked Doc to be his Best Man, because that’s how close they’d become.

Doc was Catholic, and Catholic with a capital C. He wasn’t sure what path he’d take but he was pretty certain he’d end up going to seminary, sooner or later becoming a priest, one way or another. Dre’ started going to church with his friend, started getting into it. The God thing. Doc said he wasn’t looking for answers, that life was a mystery, and that God was just one way of looking at all those mysteries, and of maybe trying to understand your place in the grand scheme of things. Doc never talked about girls, at least not like most guys talked about girls, but he wasn’t gay, either. 

“Dude, you celibate or something?” Dre’ asked one afternoon while they jogged up what would have given pause to a mountain goat.

“No, of course not.”

“You ain’t gay, and you ain’t got no girl, so what’s the score?”

But Doc had just shrugged. “If the right girl comes along, then…who knows?”

“You been with a girl, right?”

“Do my mother and sister count?”

“Fuck no, mother fucker!”

“You mean, like a girlfriend?”

“I mean doin’ the deed, the hunka-chunka, gettin’ down and dirty, man.”

“Oh. That.”

“So?”

“Yeah, Dre’, I’ve done the deed.”

“And, like, you liked it, right?”

“What’s not to like?”

“So, shouldn’t you be out there perpetuating the species? Maybe havin’ some fun before you take them vows?”

“Like I said, if the right girl comes…”

“Man, you fucked in da head. You, like, know that, right?”

Doc pulled ahead, his legs churning like pistons. “As long as I got you here to remind me,” Doc tossed off over his shoulder as he sprinted ahead, “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to let me forget.”

+++++

Benny walked up to Damarius and they exchanged hand signals, acknowledging they lived in the same hood, and Benny reached out and took the heavy book bag off the kid’s shoulder.

“Man, what you got in here? Feels like bricks or rocks or something…?”

“Just books.”

“You ain’t got no stuff? No Bombers? You ain’t carryin’ for nobody?”

Damarius wondered where this was going. BennyB never, ever acted nice unless he wanted something, so Damarius was already on guard. “No, just books.”

“So, you still learnin’ what the man tell you to?”

“Miss Murphy is my teacher.”

“Okay. So, you learnin’ what this bitch tell you?”

“Benny, I got to get home. I got to give my grandmother her shot.”

“Man, what you shootin’ her up with? I hear there’s some Mexican Brown comin’ in…”

Damarius shook his head. “Insulin, man. I give her insulin shots.”

Benny didn’t have all day so he pressed his case. “Look, D-mar, you wanna make some hard cash, like a lot of it?”

Damarius shook his head. “You mean like Bobby, don’t you?”

Bobby was the mule who’d disappeared last week. “Yeah. You know about that shit?”

Damarius nodded carefully. “Everyone around here knows, Benny, but…”

“But what?”

Damarius looked down, still not sure he wanted to tell Benny, but what he’d overheard might save his life, so that decided it. “There’s some shit going ‘round school. I heard some of it at lunch. You know those Tren guys? That new cartel?”

Benny started to turn and look up Hamilton to Oakwood, but Damarius was quick to stop him. “Don’t be lookin’ up there man, ‘cause they lookin’ right at you. The red brick house, right up at the end of the street, they in there and they watchin’ everything you do. Guy I know lives just down the hill and he’s seen ‘em. They use them glass things, them things you hold up to your eyes to see far away and they been watchin’ you for a while.”

“You shittin’ me, D-mar?”

Damarius frowned. “Another dude, white kid, he live up on Singer, like right behind them, and he seen ‘em doin’ weird shit in da middle of da night, and his old man has seen some of this shit too. ‘Bout a week ago, middle of the night, he seen ‘em takin’ Bobby in they house, and he was all fucked up, Benny. I mean like dead fucked up. His father thinks they diggin’ under the house, like they got trucks comin’ at night haulin’ dirt out of the house. I mean like in da middle of da night, and why would they be doin’ that, Benny?”

BennyB looked at the kid with mean, angry eyes. “You ain’t fuckin’ wit me, is you? You ain’t fuckin’ wit my head?”

Damarius looked at Benny, looked him right in the eye as he shook his head. “No way, man. I ain’t gonna haul no shit for you, but that don’t mean I want something bad to happen to you…”

“Alright, D-mar. We straight, we straight. You say you know both these kids? Like from school?”

Damarius nodded. “Das right.”

“Okay. Thanks, bro,” Benny said as he gave Damarius his book bag. He looked away, then spun around and walked off. Damarius walked to his grandmother’s but once he was inside he looked at Benny in the vacant lot across the street. He was behind some bushes, between a dumpster and a concrete block wall, talking on his phone.

He knew it then. There was going to be another drive-by tonight. The Crips were going to hit those Trens, and that meant there was going to be another war. How many this time? How many kids would die this time? Didn’t anybody want to stop this?

Well, it was time for him to start watching the street again. Just like he always did. Watching and listening. Watching and waiting kept you alive. If you stuck your head in the sand you died, simple as that. And that meant it was time to move some more stuff between the walls and where his grandmother slept. Anything to stop the bullets, ya know?

He went into the house, the same red brick row house he’d lived in since his mother got killed in a drive-by. He went to the fridge and picked up a fresh vial, then walked upstairs to her room. She was in an easy chair, snoring gently. He went over and got her meter, then bent over and got to work. Get a test strip in the meter, swab a finger. She hardly stirred as he went about it, so used to his kind, gentle ministrations that now she almost took his easy-going kindness for granted. The lancing device popped and he got the sample on the test strip and waited for the little meter to do its thing, then the results popped up on the tiny display.

“325, Grandma. What you have for lunch…a candy bar again?”

She nodded and he grumbled as he looked at the sliding scale, drawing her insulin then swabbing the soft part of her upper arm. He knew how to do it so the needle didn’t hurt and she hardly felt it this time, too. A minute later she was snoring again, asleep in the same old recliner she almost lived in these days.

He looked around, then started stacking whatever he could between the walls and her chair.

+++++

Last semester. Internships. Dre’ working at an outreach center on Garfield, working the work with kids already fallen through the cracks, livin’ low on the street. Girls turnin’ tricks at twelve, boys too. Anything to make a buck, maybe buy something to eat. Or something to shoot. Didn’t much matter, the hole in their stomach never really went away. Meth was the thing on these mean streets, little burglaries still an equal opportunity employer.

Still runnin’ with the Doc, too. Now Doc was working with some Catholic charities, doin’ pretty much the same shit. Three times a week they got together and lifted, ran the hills. Dinner, usually with the three of them. Beverly, cool woman, lawyer. Now she was his wife. She loved the Doc too, was always tryin’ to find him a woman. Said he’d be a good dad. The dude was takin’ philosophy classes now, gettin’ all intellectual but he was still grounded. But wound up tight, ya know? Like real tight.

You didn’t find a kid that needed help; the kid found you. Some kids wanted help, wanted off the street, and knew there had to be a better way. But there were boundaries, maybe too many boundaries, and never enough money. He’d put his money away, too. All that money from twelve years of football, invested, then in ’08 came the crash, and that hurt. Hurt big. He had his house, nice house, nice neighborhood, and Bev was making decent money downtown in the D.A.s office. Prosecutor. Tough job, hard money, but they kept their head above the water.

Graduation. Both he and the Doc with highest honors. Which way to go now? United Way wanted him and was offering good money, but Dre’ wanted to keep on goin’. Get his doctorate, maybe teach. But every time he thought like that he saw those kids, the kids that wanted help, and weren’t they the reason he’d started down this path? Did the system really need another teacher when he was so good with the kids? It wasn’t like the work made him happy, because when you lived with these kids happiness was rarely part of the deal. Maybe he was satisfied. Satisfied when he pulled a kid up just enough to teach them how to help themselves. One life at a time.

Too many gangs. Like maybe a thousand just here in the city. Some no more than a few kids on a block, but they were gangs. Some had links to national gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, some were just extended families fightin’ to survive in their little corner of the universe. One thing they had in common, though. All these kids had fallen through the cracks of a system that didn’t know it was broken, and there weren’t nobody tryin’ to fix what needed to be fixed. Only way to fix this shit was from the inside. 

“One city, one ‘hood.”

That was it. He had to get these kids together. Rebuild the city, one neighborhood at a time. Get everyone together, on the same page. These kids needed more than drugs. They needed a new reality, not a way out. Hope. The kind that ain’t just a slogan you hear every four years.

He and the Doc, lifting one day, then getting ready to run.

“What would you say if I told you I wanted to run for office?” Dre’ asked his best friend in the world.

Doc stood up straight and nodded. “I can see that happenin’, man. You’d be good.”

“Would you vote for me?”

“Fuck, bro, you were a Steeler. Everybody’ll vote for you.”

“But would you?”

“As long as you keep up with the whole deodorant thing, then yeah, maybe.”

“Doc. I’m bein’ serious man. Be straight, alright?”

Doc turned and looked at him, shook his head. “Man, you need me, I’ll be there. Alright? Like any time, anyplace.”

Dre’ swallowed hard, nodded then turned away. “Yeah man, I hear you. What about you? What you gonna do now? Still thinkin’ ‘bout going to med school?”

Doc shook his head, looked down at the city. “You ain’t gonna like this, Dre’, but I’m taking a different path this time.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Doc shrugged. “I started lookin’ into it a few months back, took the civil service test, went through the process. I got into the police academy, Dre’. I think I’m gonna go that way, see what I can do on that side of the street.”

Andre nodded. “Yeah, I can feel you doin’ that. You’re a warrior, man, always will be, I guess.” Dre’ looked at his friend and smiled, and in a way he felt happy for his friend, despite all the shit he was about to go through. “Yeah, you’ll be a good cop. I feel that, ya know? When you start?”

“Three weeks. Then 33 more in the classroom. I think three months more after that, riding shotgun with a training officer.”

“So a year? Man, you down with that?”

“I’m spinnin’ my wheels, Dre’. Gettin’ nowhere fast. I don’t understand what’s happenin’ out there, but things are broke. Broke bad. And I know one thing now.”

“What’s that?”

“I ain’t no social worker, Dre’. And neither are you.”

“I know. I’m feelin’ it too. This is, hell, I don’t know, like takin’ Band-aids to a knife fight. Ain’t no way to put things right. Still, I was hopin’ you’d do the medicine thing. You’d be real good at that, Doc.”

“I’m keeping up with my ratings, only through the fire department now.”

“So, you’ll like be a cop – and a paramedic?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Yeah. That fits. All you be needin’ is that red cape and all.”

Doc sighed, shook his head as he grinned. “And I’ll never be a Pittsburgh Steeler, Dre’. Don’t be telling’ me about capes, ‘cause you wore the biggest there is. You can make a difference. Hell, you will a difference.” 

They ran longer than usual that afternoon. Their twelve-mile run, down to the river…

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but. (gang names, drug slang both from DEA source material, not classified)

New Year, new story. Inevitable, I reckon. And I am going to do my level best to keep my mouth shut about current events. All that seems a pointless expenditure of precious oxygen. That said, perhaps a little Yes music today? The More We Live, Let Go?

About 12 pages here. Perhaps time for tea.

Three Rivers

Part I: Tolerance

Peter Wells was a morning person. He routinely got up an hour before sunrise just so he could shower and dress in time to watch the darkness of night give way to the budding light of a new day. He particularly enjoyed those partly cloudy mornings when the rising sun created sunbursts of radiant light vaulting toward heaven, and he often wondered if that light did indeed reach God.

Yet he understood that was a meaningless question.

For Peter Wells was a complicated man. He was an educated man. And Peter Wells was a lonely man. By choice, and circumstance.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania just after the Second World War, Peter Wells had never known a moment of physical discomfort in his life. He had never been sick, never been a patient in a hospital so took pride in the simple fact that he had all his original pieces and parts. Even his wisdom teeth. He had never known hunger, had never been abandoned by a parent or a friend, and had never been without the means to provide for himself. He had, in fact, been what most of those who knew him thought him to be: simply a wealthy man. Wealthy in the extreme.

Oh, but never idle.

He had never, to his knowledge, wasted one moment of his time. Indeed, he simply could not abide those who wasted time – his time or even their own.

Peter Wells was also a rather fastidious man. He bought his suits and shirts and shoes at the same shops his father had. And, presumably, these shops had served his grandfather as well, for these businesses had been in the neighborhood at least that long. The same went for all his possessions, really. He saw no need to strike out on his own, to make some kind of statement, or to parade around like a peacock. His one concession to that rule, however, was his automobile, a Mercedes 500SLC his father had given him when he completed his undergraduate studies. Though the Mercedes was now 42 years old he still drove it from time to time, when he chose to drive at all. Which was infrequently.

He belonged to all the right clubs, Longue Vue and Rolling Rock chief among them, and he kept a chestnut at an equestrian center near Rolling Rock for their fall outings

Oddly enough, he had lived in the same place for almost that long, in a two-floor condominium on Dithridge Street, in the North Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Sandwiched between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, each about a mile or so distant, the Hampton Hall condominium building was an older property with quaint Tudor styling and a convenient location for those who worked at either Pitt or Carnegie-Mellon. 

Of more importance, his two-story penthouse possessed a spectacular view of both the Heinz Memorial Chapel and St Paul Cathedral, two of the most impressive neo-Gothic structures in the Americas. And both were within walking distance of not just his home, but his office, as well.

Peter Wells loved to walk. He despised most automobiles, most of all those which imbued passing fads and fancies. He appreciated understated elegance, and he appreciated people who appreciated understated elegance almost as much as he despised the aimless, flashy boorishness of youth.

Peter Wells stood beside the window in his dining room, entranced with this morning’s light. Amber-hued tendrils bathed St Paul’s twin spires, while slate gray thunderstorms building to the south lent an apocalyptic air to the blue morning light. He felt a shiver run down his neck and then the goosebumps came – and as he usually did, he wondered why. He felt something lurking in the shadows, something predatory and feral, yet something completely unknown, and so, perhaps, unexpected. As he watched, lightning flickered within the passing cloudscapes and time seemed to stop, and again, he wondered why.

Peter Wells was the product of another time, yet a time not yet forgotten. A time of privilege and of a chivalrous, if misbegotten, misogyny, as well as a time of lingering, malevolent racism. But it was also a time of great wealth and privilege, and yes, a time of savage, widespread poverty. His maternal grandfather had been into railroads and banks; he had in fact owned several of each; his father had returned from the Second World War as something of a hero. A pilot before the outbreak of war, Preston Wells had flown B-17s during two tours. Stationed in Britain, he had participated in 50 missions over France and Germany from 1943 through the end of hostilities. When Colonel Wells came home from Britain he married his high school sweetheart and declared his true intentions; he wanted to fly for a living – yet this was something his new father-in-law would neither understand nor allow. Instead, Preston Wells received an airline as a wedding gift, to go along with his managerial position downtown working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. But of course, within a year he was working out at the airport, coming home after midnight with grease under his fingernails. Soon he was flying DC-4s from the frozen north to sunny Florida, and by the time he retired the Pennsylvania Railroad was dead and gone, while his airline was flying 747s to Europe and the Orient, in addition to the sprawling domestic route network he had pioneered.

Peter Wells knew nothing about the Pennsylvania Railroad – other than his grandfather had made a bunch of money from his interests in it over the years, somehow, before he passed. He’d taken trips on the Pennsy, of course, to New York and Chicago – before Amtrak took over. After Amtrak took control of the bastardized Penn-Central’s passenger operations, his mother’s side of the family refused to get on the ‘new’ Broadway Limited…their refusals grounded in a mortal loathing of anything that smacked of socialism.

Peter Wells attended The University of Pittsburgh and studied international relations, concentrating on Russian studies. After graduating – at the top of his class – he went to Boston, to Tuft’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy before moving on to the Department of State. After additional training, he was posted to Moscow, in 1978, just before all the excitement in Iran and Afghanistan. He remained in Russia through 1996, returning to Washington to take a position in the White House during Clinton’s second term, and after Bush won in 2000 he returned home, and to his beloved view of the Heinz Chapel. He took a teaching position at Pitt, as well as the house Russia specialist at the RAND Corporation’s Pittsburgh office, conveniently located a five-minute walk from his front door.

He played golf regularly and always walked the course, whether at Longue Vue or Rolling Rock, and on Saturday he always, come rain or shine or snow, took his chestnut out for a ride. He walked to his classes at Pitt, and to his office at RAND. He walked to his beloved Heinz Chapel at least once a week, and he preferred to walk to restaurants whenever feasible. His Mercedes did not yet have twenty thousand miles on the odometer, a fact he was most proud of. 

Peter Wells was soon fully engaged in the ongoing efforts to revitalize Pittsburgh after the long decline and sudden collapse of the steel industry in the city. He was invited to serve on the boards of directors of several local charities and businesses, and he was admired throughout the upper tiers of Pittsburgh society as a fully engaged member of the dynasties that had guided the City for well over a hundred years.

The neighborhood around his home wasn’t particularly wealthy; it was, rather, a typical urban area that catered to two large, highly regarded universities; in some respects, the Oakland neighborhood was not unlike the Cambridge area around Harvard and MIT in Boston. Less desirable neighborhoods, however, bordered the Oakland area, particularly just north of his residence, as formerly middle-class areas fell into disrepair. Two of these neighborhoods were increasingly being overrun by gangs selling narcotics, and fully radicalized Islamic militants were not unheard of in these blighted neighborhoods.

Peter Wells was no longer a young man, neither was he middle-aged. At 75 years old, he was considered elderly, yet it was not in his constitution to bow to age. He was teaching two courses this semester, one on the history of Russian literature and the other, in the graduate school, concerned Russian foreign policy objectives in the Putin era. He led two teams at RAND, both concerned with American foreign policy objectives in both Russia and the Baltic.

And Peter Wells was a bachelor. He had never married, nor had he been involved personally with anyone, at least not that anyone could recall, so the Wells line would end with him. Oddly enough, he thought this was as it should be, for despite current trends he held a dim view of Gilded Age politics, whether in the 1880s or the 2020s. He was a Democrat and he believed in democracy, and not unlike many with similar views, as the election of 2024 approached he despaired for the future of his country.

+++++

Dressed as he always was, in a pressed black suit with a white button-down oxford cloth shirt adorned with black wingtips and a pale yellow tie, Peter Wells put on his camel hair overcoat and, after consulting the Post-Gazette’s forecast, decided against an umbrella – though he knew this was risky. Rain, and potentially heavy thunderstorms, were in the offing later in the afternoon, but his foreign policy class concluded at noon, his office hour at one-thirty, so that ought not present a problem. 

It was but a short walk to his classroom, located in the University’s Cathedral of Learning, in room 153, the Russian ‘Nationality Room’. His walk took him past Heinz Chapel and as always he stopped for a moment to admire the building’s gorgeous symmetry – and its sublime theological messaging. The chapel was the equal to any in European Christendom, and that such a thing had sprouted above the Allegheny River was a testament to the vision of the city’s benevolent founders, his own family chief among them. When he thought of such things, which happened more frequently these days, he was filled with a peculiar mixture of pride and humility – and, perhaps, not unrealistically so. His grandfather had brought the Pennsylvania Railroad to the city, and had helped in the creation of this university and the medical center. Peter Wells had good reason to be proud, and as a crisp autumn breeze buffeted the quad beside the chapel he gathered his overcoat tightly around his neck and set off across fields of slumbering grass to his classroom.

+++++

As he always had, Wells had assigned Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks to the students in his graduate seminar. The novel concerns the decline of a merchant banking family in nineteenth-century Lübeck, one of the original Hanseatic city-states of the medieval European world. The decline of the family over four generations, with each successive generation falling deeper into moral and physical dis-ease, had been crafted not only to depict one family’s descent but to allegorically present the predictable decline of autocratic regimes, with each succeeding generation of leaders falling deeper and deeper into their own dis-ease. Using this allegory as his guide, the American diplomat George Kennan had, in one of those key inflection points in History, used the model presented in Buddenbrooks to chart the decline of the Soviet Union. He did so in 1947, in the so-called X Article, published in the July issue of Foreign Policy magazine. In The Sources of Soviet Conduct, Kennan presented the policy of strategic containment, advising his readers that by using the patient application of judicious amounts of limited military power to contain Soviet expansion, the West could frustrate the Kremlin’s plans to export communist ideology around the world. Kennan postulated that the life of the Soviet Union could be measured in the passage of four generations, and he predicted the Soviet system would collapse in the 1980s, perhaps as late as the early 90s; writing from his vantage point in 1947, Kennan’s work was beyond prescient. It was, Wells thought, inspired.

And now a new generation of diplomats was needed to combat Putin and the new generation of autocrats taking root around the world, and Peter Wells now thought that it was his mission in life to do just that.

+++++

After class, Professor Wells sat for office hours, which usually meant getting caught up on waiting correspondence, but today he actually had a student waiting for him when he arrived. Her last name was Caldwell. That much he remembered. And she stood when he came into his ante-room and asked if she could talk to him. He smiled, barely, then unlocked his office door and held it open for her.

“Do come in, Miss Caldwell.”

Impressed that he had actually remembered her name, she nodded and walked into this storied inner sanctum. It was, she soon saw, as amazing as she had heard. The room was solid oak, everywhere. Deep, pictured-framed paneling, three vast walls of shelves lined with books. A palatial desk of dark oak, and it too was massive. Even the room’s entire ceiling was made of oak, the space criss-crossed with deep beams. The room was overwhelming, just like the man. She’d been afraid of him before the seminar had even begun; his reputation was that of a fierce taskmaster who brooked no fools in his classroom. She knew he was ancient yet she thought him elegant, too; tall, thin, and yet muscular, with longish hair now white as snow, and always dressed like someone caught out of time, totally from another era. He was, in other words, the exact opposite of her father and both her grandfathers.

She stood as he made his way around the massive desk to his chair, a dark green leather thing that also looked like something from another period, until he indicated a chair. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you for seeing me, Professor Wells.”

He shrugged. “That’s what office hours are for, Miss Caldwell. Now, what might you need to talk about?”

“I know it’s early in the term, but I was thinking of applying to the Fletcher School next year and I wondered if I could talk to you about it?”

“It?” Wells growled, turning red in the face. “What on earth does ‘it’ mean?”

“Uh, the school. You know, what it’s like, what it takes to succeed there.”

“You must love indefinite pronouns, Miss Caldwell. Are you interested in diplomacy, perchance?”

“Yes, I think so…”

“I see. Well, there is no place in diplomacy for indefinite anything. You must strive for absolute clarity in everything undertaken, and everything said. Everything. Whether in writing or spoken. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Professor Wells.”

“Now, would you care to rephrase your request?”

By the time she left his office Sarah Caldwell had almost been reduced to tears, yet Wells had spent a good half hour building her back up, reforming her confidence in herself, and she left feeling very much better about deciding to meet with the old lion. She was still terrified of him, but she had seen something unexpected in him too, something like an easily accessible wisdom. And she wanted to understand where that came from, and how she too could develop her own wisdom.

+++++

Just before his office hours ended, the department secretary advised that the Dean had asked if Dr. Wells could come up to his office, so Peter Wells put away the classroom notes he had been working on and closed up his office. He took the elevator upstairs to the humanities office and stopped to admire the view of the city spread out before him, here atop this glorious Cathedral of Learning. How profound were the aspirations of his forefathers that they would have the audacity to even conceive of such a thing, but then they had gone ahead and done it. There was nothing else like this building in America, perhaps even the world, but then again the people who built this city never stopped with the impossible. The impossible was merely that which they had not yet tried.

And those rivers! The Allegheny and the Monongahela joining in the city center to form the mighty Ohio. How perfect for the ends these titans had hoped to achieve, fleshing out this New World, taking veins of ore and their furnaces pouring rails that shot out like arteries across a naked continent. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but these furnaces of Manifest Destiny had built the world that all the Sarah Caldwells out there now took so casually for granted.

+++++

His team at RAND awaited him on the third floor. Acolytes and disciples of pure data analysis, they were scheduled to go over the latest output figures from a cluster of arms factories east of Moscow, in the foothills of the Urals. Some figures were estimates, others came from ‘friends’ that Wells had made over the years. Friends that were concerned about the trajectory of recent events. His teams’ work would go straight to the NSC, and, if warranted, to the White House. All his analysts had been students of his at Pitt, but only the best and the brightest were asked to apply here. All but one had been on the team for fifteen years.

And that worried Peter Wells.

He had experienced firsthand how many incoming freshmen could barely string enough words together to form a coherent sentence. Few had ever read even one complete book; they had instead been provided with anthologies of prominent works that contained ‘highlights,’ so instead of reading books by F Scott Fitzgerald or Mark Twain they had often read no more than two or three pages from one of the assigned authors works. Raised on video games and their walls adorned with participation trophies, these new students had not the slightest ability to concentrate on anything that wasn’t flashing and beeping in their hands. More troubling still, they knew almost nothing of the world around them, aside from the location of the nearest sushi bar or, perhaps, where the nearest phone store was located.

So when he was confronted with a graduate student like Sarah Caldwell…? Well, he sat up and took note. He would cultivate her, bring her along on visits to RAND, pique her curiosity a bit, and see where things went from there. If she indeed had the intellectual grit he would indeed write the inevitable letters of recommendation she would need to get into the Fletcher School, or Georgetown, or, heaven forbid, the Kennedy School.

But, he had to admit, time was running out. He figured he might be able to teach for five more years, assuming his health held. And RAND? He was already down to just two afternoons a week, the bare minimum needed to produce meaningful intel, but for how much longer could he do so? Could he, in all fairness, try to mentor a girl like Sarah Caldwell when he might not last the time needed to see her assume productive duties at State or the NSC? Or here at RAND?

He looked out the window across the street to St Paul Cathedral, its twin spires deliberate copies of those that formed the magnificent cathedral in Köln, Germany. There was something about them, and every time he looked at these spires he was overcome by the same feeling. He had spent a brief period working at the embassy in Bad Godesberg, just south of Bonn on the banks of the Rhein, and on his days off he walked the region. One spring day he was walking near the small village of Oberpleis, just east of Bonn, while keeping an eye on two thunderstorms. He was walking through parts of what was then called West Germany, and he remembered that Napoleon had marched across the same plateau almost two hundred years before, and he was looking down a broad Rhine valley at Cologne, or Köln, at the cathedral there. He had to have been fifteen, maybe twenty miles away from the cathedral, but even from that distance, those twin spires had captivated his imagination. Had Napoleon looked down on the city from this vantage point? Had he seen much the same thing? Those twin spires? If so, what had he felt? What had run through his mind? And what of Beethoven? He had been born in Bonn, and had walked those very same hills and vales, and not long before Napoleon. Had he gazed in wonder at those two spires? To, perhaps, escape the abuses of his alcoholic father?

But when Peter Wells stood out there on that grassy plain as thunderstorms danced near and far, he felt caught up in the flow of time, in the ebb and flood of history, if only for a moment. He had never shared those moments with anyone because, in a way, those feelings had frightened him. There had been a hallucinatory element to that moment, a split second when he had felt himself actually standing out there in the early nineteenth century, and the feeling of disorientation had felt like a rip running through the fabric of his conscious awareness of time and place. He’d felt lost, lost in time, if only inside those few, fleeting moments – yet those moments were most precious to him. Perhaps as important as any he’d had.

+++++

He left his offices promptly at six, but hesitated when he stepped out onto Fifth Avenue. He hadn’t had much of anything for breakfast and no lunch at all, so now he was hungry and he didn’t feel like cooking. He turned around and looked down Craig to the little crêperie there and smiled. A spinach crêpe sounded nice, with a glass of something quiet, a riesling, perhaps, or a Piesporter if they had one. And a salad. He walked down and sat at his favorite table and looked at the specials chalked on the board, then tried not to appear too surprised when Sarah Caldwell approached his table, with pen and paper in hand. ‘Working here as a waitress?’ he thought as she walked up and smiled.

“Well, well, so we meet again,” Peter Wells said. “I take it you work here when not attending to your studies?”

“You got it, Professor Wells.”

He grimaced. “Just Peter, if you please, when off campus. You’ll blow my cover,” he added with a disarming smile of his own.

“Sure thing, Pete. Watcha havin’?”

He laughed at that. “Touché!” he said at her thrust.

“So, Peter, let me guess. You’re a German beer and ham and cheese guy, right?”

But he shook his head. “Hardly. A glass of riesling, a small Greek salad and two spinach crêpes.”

“Extra kalamatas on the salad?”

“Am I so transparent?”

“I can read you like a book, Doc.”

“I see. Well then, I suppose I’ll need to remember that.”

He smiled and she smiled right back at him, then she turned and thudded off to the kitchen. Perhaps it was those heavy, black Doc Martens shoes she wore? She brought his wine and salad, then his crêpes, and then she left him to eat in silence. When he had finished and after she’d cleared his table she came over and sat across from him. “So, crêpes au Gran Marnier for dessert?”

“Are you insane?” he cried. “After that meal!”

“Doc, you ate enough for a bird. A small bird. And anyway, when’s the last time you indulged?”

He sucked in a deep breath and looked away, lost in thought. “You know, the last dessert crêpe I had was from a little street vendor near the Sorbonne.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Ah, well, probably sometime back in the early Pleistocene, but don’t quote me on that.”

“So…?”

“Alright. One crêpe, and just one, if you please.”

“Cappuccino?”

“Oh, why the Hell not?”

And this became their routine. He came to the crêperie twice a week and she took his order twice a week. Academics never intruded on their time, but he watched her. Watched her when she dealt with strangers and with the crêperie’s owners. She was good with people, easygoing and friendly when friendliness was called for, yet calm and collected when things got busy. When he came in later than usual she wondered where he’d been but had the good sense not to ask, and he appreciated that, too. One evening, one of the late arrivals, she stopped by after she’d cleared his table and sat heavily, and he could see that something was wearing on her.

“What is it, Sarah? What’s happened?” 

“Does it show?” she replied.

And he smiled then: “I can read you like a book, kid.”

Which brought a smile to her face. “You remember that, huh?”

“I remember everything,” he’d said, and he’d meant it, too, because it was the truth.

“Everything, huh?”

And he’d nodded. “Everything.”

“Okay, wise guy. What was I wearing in class last Tuesday?”

“Jeans, Levis I think. A yellow Pitt sweatshirt and pink Converse hi-tops. Little socks, pink, with cats on them.”

“Jesus Christ,” she mumbled.

“I never met the man, but I understand he was quite bright.”

“Why do you stop and stare at the chapel?” she asked quietly. And seriously.

“You’ve noticed, have you?”

“I notice everything, Doc. Every little thing.” His eyes smiled at that, and she enjoyed the way his eyes sparkled when he smiled at her.

“I think it’s the sense of accomplishment more than anything else. That we can create such enduring beauty when we set out to, which leads me back to my original question. Something’s bothering you, and I’d like to know what that is.”

“The chapel led you back to that, huh?”

“Oh, yes, very much so. Anytime anyone tries to evade a question by changing the subject, well, that always gets my complete attention.”

“I’m losing the roof over my head, Doc. I’ve been sharing a place, splitting the rent with a friend but she’s getting married and that’s that. I’ve got to find a place by the end of the month, but so far nothing affordable is popping up.”

“The University’s housing office can’t help?”

“Not much, at least not in the middle of the term.”

“I used to let out the rooms on the second floor of my place, had them listed with the housing office for years. Stopped doing so a few years ago.”

“Yeah? Affordable?”

“Oh, quite. You see, I traded room and board in exchange for housekeeping services. In other words, I kept the kitchen well stocked and expected a spotless house and two meals a day, five days a week. Interested?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, not in the least. The only thing is that I’d need to re-list with student housing. That affords both of us some protection, in case one of us turns out to be an axe murderer or something.”

“You don’t look the part, Doc.” 

“Nor do you, Sarah.”

“That means I could quit waiting tables…”

“I rescind the offer!”

“Well ain’t that something…”

“What?”

“You like me, don’t you? I mean, just a little?”

“I do. Yes, Sarah, I do. You are without a doubt the best waitress this place has ever had!”

+++++

So Peter Wells listed his three vacant rooms with graduate student housing, and under the same conditions he always had. Even before the Thanksgiving break his rooms were taken again, with Sarah Caldwell taking the largest. Though Wells was himself a fastidious housekeeper he appreciated the new help, especially in the kitchen. His new ‘tenants’ in the other two rooms were both second-years in the medical school, and one of these, a sweet girl from Louisiana named MaryAnn Albright, was an excellent chef, though with a strong Cajun background, her meals had a kick he wasn’t used to.

And so without any real planning on his part, Peter Wells had a kind of new family around; while many considered Wells a closet misanthrope nothing could have been further from the truth. He enjoyed having people, especially bright young people in the house again, and he enjoyed getting to know their routines and idiosyncrasies.

The girls wanted to put up a tree for Christmas and he went out with them, helped them pick out a tree and get it set up in the living room on his floor and, as it seemed none would be going home for the holiday this year, he went out and bought presents to put under the tree. When he overheard Sarah talking to MaryAnn and Aaron, the third inmate in this new asylum, about wanting a puppy but being afraid to ask, Peter broached the subject the next morning.

“You know what we need around here?” he said at breakfast that Saturday morning. “We need a big, fat puppy. How would you all feel about that?”

To Sarah Caldwell, this all seemed to be too good to be true. She’d had a tough upbringing; divorce, her mother’s alcohol problem, her father’s absence from her life, and suddenly Peter Wells was becoming the family she’d never had. Now her life had, she admitted to her roommates more than once, never been better.

The week before Christmas they hopped in Peter’s ancient Mercedes and drove out to a breeder and when one particular Bernese Mountain Dog puppy covered Sarah with sloppy kisses Peter Wells smiled almost like a father, or, perhaps, maybe more like a grandfather. Sarah held the pup in her hands all the way back into the city, and watching her, Peter realized he had never known such happiness.

The realization left him breathless, and full of a gentle regret.

Christmas Eve was priceless. MaryAnn cooked, Aaron hauled split logs up to the fireplace, and Sarah tidied up the big living room on the main floor, stopping every now and then to wipe-up puppy-piddle from the hardwood floors. The little group ate in the formal dining room then sat in front of the television and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas before settling in to watch White Christmas by the fireplace.

At midnight, Peter poured four flutes of a rare Champagne and they toasted the occasion before heading up to bed, and everyone gathered around the Christmas tree early the next morning for presents. The girls gave Peter scarves and neckties and he laughed at their audacious choices – one necktie featuring the lyrics of the Beatles Back in the USSR in gold splashed on a crimson silk background. Peter had wrapped presents for them, little things he’d overheard like headphones and iPads, but he also handed a small box to Aaron.

“You open this, Aaron, but this gift is for the three of you.”

It was a key fob for a Subaru.

“I’ll keep the car in my name and pay the insurance, but it’s for the three of you…to run errands or to go to movies.” They went down to the lot beside the building and he showed them around their new car, and he watched like any proud parent might as they made appreciative noises and tinkered with the settings.

All in all, it was a good day, and Peter Wells felt most pleased.

+++++

One morning early in the following spring, Peter Wells stood by the window watching thunderstorms building in the distance and he smiled. Storms brought water and water was life. Water brought green grass and blooming flowers and nourished budding trees, and yes, all those were wonderful things, but what he loved most about storms like these was their drama. The building clouds, lightning jumping about, the potential danger that often accompanied such storms, especially this time of year. He recalled the great stories his parents had read to him when he was just learning to read, about the mythologies surrounding the gods who lurked about in such storms. He looked at these freshening storms and could feel his mother by his side, hear her voice as she read to him, feel the mystery once again. How easy it had been to believe those stories, how difficult they were to unlearn, even now. How easy it was to believe in things we could not see.

MaryAnn was cooking, Sarah and Aaron setting the table. It was Eggs Sardou this morning, a beautiful creole breakfast of poached eggs, artichoke bottoms, creamed spinach and Hollandaise sauce, served with a strong chicory blend from New Orleans. He pulled himself away from the storms and drifted to the table, as ever in awe of MaryAnn’s skill in the kitchen. “If you keep this up I’m going to explode,” he sighed as he looked over the table. “Even so, I will pass with a smile.”

He looked at his little family just then, if that’s what it really was, with a sense of detached awe. Did these kids just seem to want to take care of him, or was there something deeper going on? MaryAnn had been an enigma, for a few weeks, anyway. She was plump, not fat, but time and a few babies would see her blossom into a large woman, yet she professed to want a career in internal medicine and had pointedly mentioned she never wanted to marry. So yes, she was a contradiction, one not unlike many of the undergrads he taught, and he always seemed to find less-than-happy childhoods behind many of these choices. Strange, too, because his childhood had been more than happy and yet he’d made the same sorts of decisions, and as a historian, he wondered what academics a hundred years hence would make of the early 21st century. This was, after all, the era of grievance-filled politics, or supposedly so, anyway, yet he couldn’t recall any era that wasn’t filled to overflowing with similar grievances. Was it the volume of information these kids had to deal with, or the cognitive dissonance that resulted from so many competing narratives?

Aaron had already turned into Wally, Beaver Cleaver’s older know-it-all brother who always seemed to lend a steady hand until Ward, their father, showed up to provide fatherly wisdom and a handy resolution to the problem at hand. The odd part about it? MaryAnn doted on Aaron. She acted just like a heat-seeking missile around the boy. Was it genetic programming kicking-in, as perhaps some kind of maternal drive seeking fulfillment? But recently he’d been picking up similar vibes from Sarah, too. Like maybe she had a thing for Aaron, too. Was there trouble brewing?

He had already dressed for the day and planned to walk to the chapel for morning services. He’d never been particularly religious but had gone, when the impulse hit, simply to participate in the communal rituals that had, for centuries, bound people together. And yet, lately, he’d been doing so with increasing regularity. ‘Isn’t this an elective affinity?’ he wondered. ‘But if so, why now? Is it the kids? Am I responding to some need in them, or is it just because I’m getting old?’

MaryAnn planned to take the Subaru out to Costco to do some shopping, and Aaron wanted to tag along; Sarah needed to go to the library to plow through items on a reserve reading list. After their plates were cleared and the dishwasher loaded, they all headed to the elevator and down to their appointed rounds.

Peter Wells stopped to check his mailbox while MaryAnn and Aaron walked off to the Subaru, while Sarah took off out the front door, heading to the library. Peter followed her out a moment later, his practiced eye suddenly drawn to the building thunderstorms now towering over the city, probably just now reaching the three rivers. He saw Sarah up ahead, already crossing Fifth Avenue at the light, but turning now to walk towards the chapel and the shortcut across the quad to Hillman Library.

He saw them in the next instant. Two boys, young, probably teenagers, but something about them looked off because it seemed like they had very deliberately fallen in behind Sarah after she passed the shadows they’d been lurking in.

She crossed Bellefield and made a left along the sidewalk beside the hedgerow and he quickened his pace to catch up, but the light caught him and he watched, now helpless, as the two boys jumped her from behind and pulled her behind the hedge. 

Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe it was testosterone. 

Maybe it was pure rage that mindless hooligans would defile both a gracious young woman and the University, and not far from his beloved chapel.

He darted through traffic as he ran after them, and arrived just in time to push one of the boys off Sarah. Then the other boy, dark, swarthy, and with malevolent pale silver eyes, pulled out a pistol…

…just as the earth shook under the hammer blow of an immense crack of thunder. The kid flinched and pulled the trigger just as a shattering crack of lightning struck the chapel’s steeple; bits of molten metal arced through the morning sky as cascades of sparkling embers settled over the quad…

…Peter Wells was aware of falling. Then the pain registered. Pressure, hot boiling pressure. Radiating down his left arm and up his neck, settling behind his eyes. He was aware of hitting the grass, of his flaccid head bouncing off the turf, but now he could see his beloved chapel in the distance, yet something looked wrong. The air was on fire. Sarah was on her knees, crawling towards him and one of the boys was staring from Sarah to him to the other kid, the kid with the pistol in his hand…

…and that’s when the sphere appeared. Out of the trees. The shimmering orb fell to the ground but stopped short and hovered there, then it advanced on the boy with the pistol. Peter Wells couldn’t believe his eyes.

“That’s ball lightning,” he whispered as recognition penetrated the last remnants of consciousness. The lightning drifted across the grassy quad like it was drawn to the boy, or was it to the pistol in his hand? He wanted to shout out a warning but couldn’t. Drop the pistol and break the ground circuit! You’ll be safe then!

But the boy froze and then started shooting at the hot sphere.

And the sphere simply ran into and then through the boy, whose body simply exploded. Only his hands and feet remained, and Sarah Caldwell started to scream and cry.

But Peter Wells was up there in the clouds now, looking down on the world his father and grandfather had helped build. He watched as a white car pulled up on the curb, and he recognized MaryAnn and Aaron running to the stricken man on the grass, but his mind was on the three rivers now, and where they might take him.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but. And here ends part one, of three.

Perhaps more Yes is in order here. Close to the Edge might do the trick.

 

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: History never treats kindly those who try and rush her. I suppose the same can be said for baking a cake, or writing a story that contains multiple diverging storylines. A story that took shape in my mind almost thirty years ago, deep in the middle of the night while standing watch on my first real sailboat. So many things roamed through my mind, and yet the startling thing about all this is that I remember the night, and that story, with absolute clarity. The process of putting this together has been like building a model sailing ship from scratch (and I’ll not mention that I tried that once, which is why I took up writing).

Music matters all the more these days, because everyone needs some Help from time to time.

5.19

“There’s no way you’ll ever get me to kill anyone,” Henry Taggart said to Frank Bullitt.

Roosevelt took his seat at the head of the conference table and looked at Taggart with a weary sigh. “Tell me something, Henry,” Roosevelt said, his almost high-pitched voice raspy from too many years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. “From the perspective of your place in time, you understand Adolph Hitler’s actions in the second war to be monstrous. Would that be a fair assessment?”

Taggart nodded. “Yes, of course. Who wouldn’t come to that conclusion?”

“Well, obviously the members of Hitler’s inner circle didn’t seem to think so,” FDR muttered, “but that’s neither here nor there. The point I’m trying to make is elementary, Henry. If you could go back in time and, say, kill Hitler when he was a child, or even kill his mother or father, you would kill that monstrosity, that virus, before it ever had a chance to take root. You’d save tens of millions of people from the misery of genocidal warfare, a human misery grounded in one man’s tortured ego. Are you telling me that, if given the opportunity, you’d not go back in time and do just that?”

Taggart nodded. “That’s correct; I would not.”

“Why?”

“Murder is evil. You don’t stop evil with evil. You only become evil.”

FDR looked at Taggart and nodded. “And if a madman breaks into your house in the middle of the night and he’s about to kill your sleeping children with a hatchet, would you allow him to continue, or would you try to stop him, even if that meant killing him.”

“I’d kill him.”

“So you don’t really believe in a blanket prohibition against killing, do you?”

“Obviously not, but one circumstance is exigent, the other enters the realm of the hypothetical.”

“How so,” Roosevelt said.

“Your belief is that one man alone, in this case Hitler, was responsible for all the suffering in Europe in the Second World War, but isn’t that naive?”

“Naive?”

“Sure. I mean, look at it this way. You’re saying the Holocaust was the result of one man’s obsession with Jewry, yet a huge percentage of the people in Europe were anti-semitic. Hell, they still are, or were when I was last there. And no matter what, Hitler alone didn’t make the Holocaust happen…”

“But if you removed him from the equation…”

“My completely uneducated guess, Mr Roosevelt, is that it would have happened anyway. If I remember correctly, Germany was being crushed by reparations and hyperinflation, not to mention industrial policies being rammed down their throats by Britain and France. Jews had been scapegoated into taking the blame for all this, and in the Nazis retelling of this story, the Weimar Republic became a Jewish construct because a few of the leaders of the Republic happened to be Jewish, so the republic took the fall. But again, if I remember my history, the same thing had happened in France like sixty years before, which leads me to think that when bad stuff happens in Europe, the standard European reaction has been to blame it all on the Jews, so what I’m saying is if you went back and killed Hitler the odds are still real good that someone else would come along and light the exact same fuse.”

Roosevelt looked down and nodded. “Maybe so, Henry. Maybe you’re correct, but I’m still not convinced, but then again History has put me in a fairly unique position. I’ve had to learn to live with the decisions I made, which were made with the best information I had at the time, yet I’ve been holed up in that office over there reading and rereading the pertinent histories of the war and I’ve been stunned by how many mistakes historians thought I made. Some of these things I can refute, but others make for very uncomfortable reading. For instance, if we’d had better intelligence on the Wannsee Conference, might we have picked up on other signs regarding the construction of these death camps? On the other hand, there were apparently hundreds of antisemites in the War Department who were simply quashing the earliest reports…”

“You did the best with what information you had, sir.”

“Precisely my point, Henry. You view this Sorensen girl as damaged goods, a Daddy’s Girl? Is that about right?”

“Yessir.”

“And now we know that she, like Harry and Frank here, has developed the ability to jump around through time. And her father knows this and plans to use her to do something. This something we do not quite understand yet, but we first assumed it had something to do with the sinking of the Titanic. Now we have reason to believe she’s going after the battleship Bismarck, in May of 1940. The what and the why still elude us, but let’s assume for a moment that she’s successful. Everything will, in an instant, change. All history after that moment will change. Are you following me, Henry?”

“Yessir?”

“Excellent. Now, what would you make of this if you were given to understand that Adolph Hitler was once again alive, in the exact same way that I am alive in the here and now. And what if you were given to understand that Mr Hitler is once again calling the shots.”

Taggart looked at the faces around the room, looking for signs that this was some sort of Princeton debating society hypothetical, but no one was smiling. “Is this for real? I mean, are you on the level?”

“Oh yes, quite,” FDR sighed as he took a pipe out of his vest pocket.

“Well…fuck,” Taggart sighed.

“Precisely, just so. You took the words right out of my mouth, Henry. Now, what do you propose we do about it?”

+++++

“Does anyone know how she developed the ability to time travel?” Taggart asked after Roosevelt and one of his aides left the conference room.

One of the other men in the room, someone name MacKenzie, nodded and spoke first. “There’ve been experiments going on in the field for decades,” MacKenzie said. “The first, oddly enough, came together after several unexpected results were discovered in another line of enquiry, and in Canada. A professor at Laurentian University, a neuroscientist by the name of Michael Persinger, was doing temporal lobe studies, eliciting what some subjects called contact with God when his subjects used something called a Koren helmet. Subjects predisposed to religious experience sensed God, while those not so inclined still felt some kind of presence, and both types entered into a very relaxed state…”

“Is that the so-called God helmet experiment?” Taggart asked.

“Yes, exactly. Later experiments in neurotheology, using induced electromagnetic fields, yielded similar results, with some subjects reporting out of body experiences and, more to the point, out of time experiences.”

“You mean time travel, right?”

“Yes, and no. There were reports, I believe, of a generalized feeling of being in some other time reference, but nothing specific was mentioned in the literature about travel.”

“You know, it’s strange, but I think I felt something like that once.”

MacKenzie nodded. “In the ARV. I’m not surprised. That craft employs a massive electro-magnetic coil…”

Henry was sitting bolt upright in his chair now, listening intently as MacKenzie spoke. “Excuse me, but who the Hell are you, and how the fuck do you know about that?”

MacKenzie leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands over his gut. His eyes met Taggart’s and he did not look away. “Because I sent you and Rupert Collins to Kamchatka, to the Sukhoi facility, to steal that vehicle.”

Taggart’s eyes blinked rapidly as his blood pressure spiked. “So…you killed me. And General Collins. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“We didn’t know about the radiation leak, son, but yes, it was my decision. And Rupert concurred, in case you missed that.”

“Is that why he went with me?”

MacKenzie nodded. His eyes never flinched, never looked away. “You weren’t the first men I send to their deaths, Mr Taggart. When the responsibility is yours, well, you don’t know that death is a certainty, but it’s always a possibility.”

“So, it just goes with the job, huh?”

“You could say that,” MacKenzie said, his head canted quizzically. “I never got used to it, no one does, but even so, bad stuff happens. I hated that most of all, the not knowing…”

“You should try dying from multiple metastatic neoplasm disease. Now that was fun.”

MacKenzie nodded. “I understand your anger. Try putting yourself in my shoes when you get a chance.”

“No thanks, I’m trying to quit,” Taggart said with a grin, suddenly walking away from the table and out onto the hangar deck.

He looked around, saw Ellen Ripley standing by the shuttle she’d piloted from Pak’s ship, and noticed she was working with a tech on something in the shuttle’s instrument compartment so, not knowing anyone else here he walked over to her.

“Say,” he said as he stopped in front of her, “you wanna go somewhere and get laid?”

She turned to face him, the expression on her face unreadable, but he didn’t see her fist balling up behind her back. Nor did he have time to react when her haymaker came. He flew back and skidded across the studded metal floor, and though he was seeing stars he sat up and flipped her the middle finger. “I take it that means no?” he said, adding: “What? You a rug-muncher, or something?”

He saw her turn and face him again, then she was walking his way, with what looked like a ten kilo crescent wrench in her left hand.

“Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me,” he sang as he stood and made for the nearest airlock.

+++++

Roosevelt and Nimitz watched all this, of course, on the Gateway’s internal surveillance net, and Roosevelt wasn’t happy about what he was watching.

“Just like his dossier, Chester. No impulse control, erratic, and he uses humor too much…”

“He’s deflecting, Mr President. Just immature, yet I see something in him. Something durable, maybe even dependable.”

“Oh?”

“The truth of the matter is, Mr President, that half the pilots we had at Midway could have been described just as you did Mr Taggart. What remains to be assessed is his ability to make good decisions under pressure, but to tell you the truth I don’t think we’ll have that luxury. Sorensen had too many irons in the fire, sir. If this doesn’t work out, he’s going to try again. And because the Grays are watching, and waiting to see the outcome, Sorensen may act instantly, and without warning.”

“What are you trying to say, Chester?”

“I think it’s time we consider taking out Bariloche. Get Hitler, Sorensen, all the bad apples in one stroke…”

But FDR shook his head. “No, Chester, someone always gets away, and you’re forgetting Peter Weyland. Some unforeseen element always gets missed, so when you show up they’re gone, or they’re ready for you. And don’t forget, in this context surprise is almost impossible.”

“In this context, sir?”

“We’re playing 4-D chess, Admiral, not checkers. Our adversary can, and will, jump around in time to evade us if he thinks we’re coming. It’s just a matter of time before they can, you know.  This Sorensen girl points to that one simple truth. Besides, we have one critical advantage right now. They don’t know where we are, but more importantly they don’t know when we are. And I’m more worried about losing that advantage than anything else. What did Captain Ripley call that detection device? The one Dr. Balin is working on?”

“Hyperspectral Data Detection. It looks for E-M signatures beyond the UV and IR spectra.”

“Quantum something, I thought?”

“Yessir, it picks up radical shifts in quantum entanglement. Disruptions in time are the most likely cause of that, so the presence of a time traveler can be inferred by such a shift.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to take your word for it, Chester. Just the thought of it makes me long for an ice cold martini. Why is there no gin on this vessel…now what’s he doing?”

Nimitz saw Roosevelt was watching Taggart on the screen again, so he looked too…

+++++

Taggart was walking aimlessly down the main A Deck corridor, but he’d just stopped at a large viewport that looked out over the port-side hangar deck. His head was down and he was leaning against the window, and he appeared to be talking to himself.

“Can we pick up the audio feed?” Roosevelt asked Nimitz.

In the next instant the image shimmered and turned to static, then a strange new General Quarters alarm started ringing throughout the Gateway complex.

“That’s the HDD alarm, Mr President. There’s a traveler onboard the ship.”

Roosevelt nodded. “There. Right there. It’s that woman, Chester!”

Nimitz studied the screen, and it only took a moment before he recognized her. It was Deborah Sorensen, and somehow she’d just discovered their whereabouts. “It’s her, Mr President. The Sorensen woman.”

They watched as Taggart jumped back in surprise, then as she ran into his arms, and a few seconds later they both winked off the screen and out of the present. And just like that, just that fast, they were gone.

Roosevelt took a deep breath and looked away, clearly angry. “Well, Chester, it looks like we’ve just lost the initiative. It’s Pearl Harbor all over again. Recommendations?”

“We get you to Hyperion, for one. Then we disperse our ships.”

“What about Pak and his people?”

“Until we’re sure they haven’t betrayed us, I suggest minimal contact.”

Another alarm started blaring.

“Now what?” FDR said as Nimitz switched screens to the command net in the Gateway’s CNC center. Radar screens were resolving new plots, sensors were busy classifying the new contacts, and mid-level officers were analyzing all this data as it streamed in. They watched Denton Ripley run into the CNC, watched him watching the situation develop before he walked over to an intercom. The intercom here in Roosevelt’s study chirped and Nimitz picked up, then switched the call to a large, wall-mounted screen.

“We’ve got about thirty ships inbound,” Admiral Ripley said as they watched another much larger wave of ships appear onscreen, then another. “Okay. Now developing tracks on one hundred twenty starships, all approaching Earth and it looks like at their current velocity the first wave should reach their orbital insertion points within three weeks.”

“Can you tell who they belong to, Captain?” Nimitz asked.

“We can infer they’re Weyland-Yutani ships, Mr President, so this is the Co-Dominium’s fleet, the new fleet we’ve been hearing about. Their fields are still up and the first, smaller group came in through the New Chicago jump point, while the larger fleet jumped from New Sparta.”

“There’s nothing of consequence left on Earth, Mr President,” Nimitz said, “so they’re here for you…”

“I disagree, Admiral Nimitz,” Ripley said. “My fleet is all that stands between the Co-Dominium and complete control of this part of the galaxy. It makes the most sense strategically that they’ve come to take it out.”

“So what are you suggesting we do, Admiral Ripley?”

“Formalize our relations with the Pak. Get out of here before the Co-Dominium arrives.”

“Abandon Earth, you mean?”

“Sir, there are only a few areas of arable land in the southern hemisphere right now. Current indications are solid that the planet is about to enter an extended period of almost complete ice cover. Parts of Australia and New Zealand, and the two capes might remain ice free, but there won’t be enough room to sustain any kind of industrial civilization for hundreds of years. Pak has identified dozens of worlds we could go to, and…”

“What about the people on Mars,” FDR sighed, “and out in the asteroid belt? Are you suggesting we leave them to the Co-Dominium?”

Ripley looked down, shook his head. “Mr President, we simply don’t have enough ships to move several hundred thousand people out of the solar system, and we never will, especially not in the time we have available.”

“Which leaves us with only one viable option,” Roosevelt muttered.

“Are you sure you want to do this, sir?” Nimitz sighed.

“No, of course I’m not sure, but it seems to me the best possible solution, given current circumstances.”

“Alright. I’m afraid I agree.”

Roosevelt turned to the screen, his voice grew cold and hard. “Admiral Ripley, gather the necessary personnel and commence Operation TimeShadow.”

“Yes, Mr President.”

“And get me a shuttle, will you? I need to go have a chat with our friend.”

+++++

And so, here ends First You Make a Stone of Your Heart. This story © 2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | and as usual this is a work of fiction, plain and simple, and nothing but. The third, and final part of the tale will conclude in TimeShadow.

If you’re still here, well, Tomorrow Never Knows just might do the trick. Adios for now.

So the beat goes on. Confrontations loom. Volcanos erupt. News at eleven.

Music matters? I thought this was interesting. Then again, so is this.

5.18

Deborah Sorensen never really understood why she visited the Titanic, let alone how it happened. These experiences just came to her, and she had no apparent control over them. Yet her father had pointed out one condition that seemed to be a common denominator: she ended up in a shower each time one of these events happened, and her arrival in the shower was followed by a rush of seawater and, usually, remnants of shattered icebergs. But…why the Titanic?

She had been sitting in her stateroom onboard the Disco Volante lost in thought, and had been since leaving the shipyard. She now understood a little about Harry Callahan and how he’d mastered using some sort of tonal inducement to enter the necessary mental state for a jump, but she had no idea what he did or even what his abilities were, and if she was going to be completely honest with herself she remained in the dark about how she’d managed her Titanic viewings.

“But they aren’t really viewings,” she said to herself. “Somehow…I was going there. The seawater and the ice are proof of that…”

No. She wasn’t simply viewing, she was traveling through time. Her first experiences had taken place in Los Angeles, and the location of Titanic’s sinking had been more than 3,600 miles distant – yet she’d been there, and at the moment of impact each time she’d been. 

There was a 21-inch chartplotter on the wall above the desk in her stateroom and she could plainly see the Disco Volante’s position on the current chart as the little ship advanced westward across the Mediterranean. Corsica was now almost 200 miles behind them, but her mind ranged over the chart and soon settled on Naples Bay. She’d never been to Italy until a week ago, yet she’d always wondered about Pompeii and what those first shattering moments must have been like. To have lived through such a thing…what must it have been like?

The earthquakes. Small, but increasing in frequency. Puzzlement, maybe? Had people grown so used to Vesuvius’s rumblings that they just stopped for a moment then got back to what they were doing. Maybe one or two people looked up at the mountain, before…?

She read a passage online from Pliny the Younger’s account, an eyewitness report from someplace called Paestum, a village south of Vesuvius. People there felt the earthquakes but late in the afternoon on that fated day they heard an uncommonly violent explosion – the type of explosion not at all common 79 years before Christ came along – just before Vesuvius blew it’s top, literally. The volcano had erupted before, of course, but never like this, and as people came out of their houses, or turned in the market square and looked past the Temples of Hera and Athena, she imagined they would have stood in awe as great gouts of cloud and lava jetted into the evening sky.

She closed her eyes as she tried to imagine their surprise, or their horror, and she felt a tremor of recognition as the Disco Volante rolled atop a large swell. She felt that familiar wave of nausea she had always felt on the first day or so of a long passage, and she knew the best thing she could do would be to get to the rail and focus on the horizon…

…but when Deborah Sorensen opened her eyes she saw she was no longer aboard the Disco Volante; no, now she was standing in an open air market surrounded by men and women, most wearing rough togas and crude leather sandals. A startled boy herding goats jumped back when he saw her appear out of nothingness, and he cried out in a language she had never heard before, and in the commotion several people turned to the sound of his despair.

They saw a woman easily a foot taller than the tallest man among them, and she was wearing strange gray pants and vibrant yellow things on her feet, but the strangest thing of all was her tunic – a maroon and gold thing with peculiar writing on it, and an image of a warriors head emblazoned across the front. Stunned first by the earthquakes rocking the area throughout the afternoon and now the sudden appearance of this Goddess, they watched as she pulled something from inside her clothing, and then, aiming some kind of device at the village, she swung the thing in her hand slowly in an arc…

…but just then Vesuvius let go…

Deborah watched as several hundred feet of the summit literally disappeared in the concussive explosion; smaller house-sized rocks vaulted into the sky while much larger fragments of rock and snow started rumbling down the southeast side of the volcano. Steam vents opened near the summit, and lava began streaming out of dozens of long, narrow slits under the new summit, and just then another earthquake hit, this one bigger than anything Deborah imagined possible. The ground underneath her feet seemed to come alive, the air seemed charged with impossible energy as a high-pitched grinding sound penetrated the core of her being. And then, another explosion.

She thought it must have been an atomic bomb detonating nearby, but no, it was Vesuvius, coming alive again.

An impossible column of roiling, dark gray clouds was boiling up into the evening sky, and she realized the sound had hit several seconds after this latest eruption began, but most of the violent energy was now on the northwest slope of the volcano and so just out of view. Another equally cataclysmic eruption began, another equally thunderous clap of explosive energy hit her and she realized she was no longer standing. No one was standing. And yet everyone was staring in open-mouthed fear not just at the erupting volcano, but at her.

She had obviously made the mountain explode and now everyone around her was drawing back from this strange creature, for they were clearly terrified by this sudden appearance of one of the Gods…

She looked at her iPhone, saw that it was still recording so she aimed the camera at the erupting volcano then hit the red button on the screen to stop recording, then she powered-off the unit before she put it back in a pocket. The boy, the young shepherd, was now kneeling at her feet, his outstretched hands palms-down on the cobbled stone square, and then another explosive gout of lava and flame erupted from the seething fissures as she watched, yet most of the men and women gathered there were pointing at her, awestruck that a God had come to them. Then a handful of the woman cried out and ran away, the overwhelming despair of the moment suddenly filling their eyes with pure adrenaline-charged terror.

“Oops,” Deborah sighed…

And in the span of a human heartbeat she was back on the Disco Volante, only now she was on the foredeck – while flaming embers and black ash rained down on her. She saw the man at the yacht’s helm scream and jump back, then she heard his voice over the ship’s intercom.

“Emergency! Fire on the forward deck. All hands to fire stations!”

She wondered where the fire was, until she looked down and saw flames licking at her face.

Henry Taggart looked around the cubicle, his entire world in the here and now, still not really knowing what to think. The blue walls, blue as in the shifting colors of the sea, gently curving and with one large viewing port in the exterior wall. The moon, Earth’s moon, filled his view, and when his eyes had first opened here he had looked out over the stark shadows cast by the jagged peaks of Shackleton Crater near the South Lunar Pole – and he’d never been as afraid in his life.

A man, well, maybe not a man, had been standing at his bedside, looking at what just had to be medical instruments of some kind, only this man had to be eight or nine feet tall, and his skin was pure white. White like snow was white, yet his eyes were as black as night. All in all, the man – or was he a man? – reminded him of Michelangelo’s David, that statue he’d seen once in Florence, yet its actions were human, his mannerisms were too. But he – it? – certainly wouldn’t be speaking English.

That was when he’d first noticed the viewport, and the moon beyond, and right then he’d wanted to scream. Then again, he remembered all the times growing up in Newport Beach when he and his friends had rumbled up to Anaheim and gone to Disneyland, and how he’d always run straight to Tomorrowland, right to the Mission to the Moon attraction. When the Douglas Corporation took over ‘the ride’ from TWA they’d added a realistic Mission Control room, complete with animatronic technicians manning the consoles, and then there was the ride itself. Blasting off and looking down at the receding Earth, then looking up at the moon as it got closer and closer, but then with Armstrong and Aldrin everything had changed, and for a few years anything had seemed possible.

And now, here he was. Looking down on the moon. In orbit in some kind of space station built by…who, exactly? He wasn’t sure. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, either.

All he’d known, up until a few minutes ago, was that he was half-past dead, his body eaten up by cancer, and now some creature had him hooked up to weird looking medical instruments and it was injecting something that looked an awful lot like that silver liquid, was it mercury? that they’d used in oral thermometers when he was a kid. Whatever it was, the fluid was thick as concrete so they’d had to insert a catheter into a fat vein under his collarbone and the stuff burned like hell going in and all of a sudden he didn’t want anything to do with this place!

He started to move but found he couldn’t. He couldn’t even move his hands.

Then the real panic set in.

The instruments beeped once and the creature looked down at him. “Please relax,” it said, but the inflection, or was it the syntax, was all wrong. Taggart wanted to ask it a question but while his mouth moved a little he couldn’t form words – and then his panic ratcheted up a notch.

And the creature really didn’t like that. It took out some kind of doohickey that looked like an old metal tire pressure gauge and then held the thing up against his forehead, and he felt himself falling again, falling into an infinite darkness, just like he was falling down into those shadows on the moon.

+++++

When his eyes opened he looked around at little bumps and protuberances on the ceiling and it hit him then: ‘Wherever this is, it isn’t human.’ The scale of things was all wrong, and then it hit him: this placed smelled, and bad. Like dirty feet that had been camped out in the same pair of sneakers for about six months. Sharp, acrid filth, in other words. He hadn’t noticed before, but then he remembered: his sense of smell had been compromised for months, well before they’d arrived in Paris. Maybe right after Amsterdam, after the bomb.

He tried to wiggle his toes and to his surprise they felt fine, so he experimentally flexed his wrists. Both hands responded, and he felt a wave of euphoria wash through his sense of anticipation. He lifted his head and that worked too, so he pulled his arms up a bit and lifted his torso up on his elbows and looked around. His head felt clear, clearer than it had in months; no headache, no blurry vision clouded his sight, so he lifted his legs and saw them respond under the thin transparent membrane that served as a sheet. An alarm chirped and a moment later Michelangelo’s David walked into the cubicle again, and the statue actually smiled at him when it saw he was awake.

“Look better. How feel?”

“Good. I feel very good. What did you do to me?”

“Bad cells, gone now. Body can heal.”

“Bad cells…?” Taggart sighed. “You mean the cancer?”

“I mean bad cells. Errors in replication, fixed.”

Taggart’s eyes welled up as he struggled to regain his composure. “Where am I?”

“This ship belong Pak. Your people close.”

“My people?”

“Your people coming. You go ship. Your ship send shuttle. Soon come.”

“My ship?”

The creature pushed one of the bumps on the ceiling and the transparency holding him in this ‘bed’ disappeared, and after a slight electric jolt Taggart felt himself floating free, drifting up towards the ceiling. Another wave of panic came for him but the creature grabbed his arm and pulled him over to the viewport. “Ship there,” it said.

Taggart shrank from this new world. This Pak, whoever he was, had a ship that was at least two miles long, and the flight deck below this viewport had at least a thousand shuttles docked in neat, orderly rows. He could see some kind of orbiting space station, minuscule next to Pak’s ship, just beyond the flight deck, and it too was orbiting the Moon, and there were several small ships docked to this station. What had to be his shuttle was drifting between this space station and Pak’s ship, slowly heading this way, and right now he could see Earth in the distance, well beyond the Moon.

“Do I have any clothes?” Taggart asked.

The creature looked at a display on his wrist, and Taggart assumed it was a translating device of some sort. “No. Shuttle bring.”

“Do you have a name?”

Again, it looked at the device on his wrist and nodded. “Yes. I am Physician. Much pleased treat you.”

“My name is Henry. Much pleased being treated.” He looked out the viewport and saw the shuttle was much closer, and that it was headed to a docking port above this room, which was itself above the massive flight deck, so all things being equal he had to be in some sort of tower that overlooked the rows upon rows of docked shuttles. He found it difficult to move again, but then realized that movement in zero-G had to be radically different from walking about on land, and this ship was most definitely in zero-G. He pushed off the wall beside the port and went sailing across the room… “Oh, shit,” he cried, but the physician deftly pushed off and caught him.

“Maybe sit best,” it said.

“You got that right.” The creature deposited Henry on the slab that seemed to be the equivalent to a bed, and with another tap on the ceiling a field of some kind settled over Taggart and he was glued to the surface again.

“I go, bring human,” the physician said as it disappeared into the corridor beyond his cubicle, and it seemed that now his bowels were getting with the program and kicking into gear. He looked nervously around the cubicle for something that resembled a toilet, then started to sweat…

A few minutes passed and a girl, a human woman entered and the look in his eyes must have said it all.

“You feeling alright?” the woman said.

“Poop-chute is waking up, fast. I gotta go something fierce, and soon.”

She went to the wall and hit a protuberance and something that might have been a toilet, in a Daliesque nightmare, morphed out of the wall. “There ya go, Sport,” the woman said. “Hope you don’t need privacy. They aren’t real big on that here.”

“Uh, is that a toilet? It looks, well, kind of alive?”

“It is. It’s an organism, been genetically altered to absorb waste. It excretes pure protein.”

“Right. And how does it do its thing?”

“Just sit on it.” She reached up and hit the protuberance on the ceiling and he drifted free, then he pushed off and rocketed over to the wall above the…toilet. “Whoa there, cowboy! You don’t need much force to move around up here,” she said as she grabbed him, then she helped get him settled on the…toilet.

The…organism wrapped itself around Taggart’s midsection, then he felt warmth down there. Everywhere, as a matter of fact. 

“Just relax,” the woman said, smirking. “I know, it takes some getting used to.”

Taggart’s eyes crossed as something grabbed his penis, then his eyes shut when he felt something form-fitting around his anus. “This ain’t right,” he just managed to say as his bowels cut loose.

“Beats shitting in your spacesuit in zero-G,” she deadpanned.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he moaned. “You bring some clothes for me?”

“In the shuttle.”

He shook his head. That meant he’d get to strut through this ship in his birthday suit, but one more indignity surely wasn’t going to make a difference now. “Great,” he sighed. “So, what do they use for boom-wad up here?”

“Boom-wad?”

“You know…toilet paper?” an exasperated Taggart sighed.

The woman laughed at that. “Never heard that one before. Just hang on tight, because it’ll…”

But Taggart’s eyes crossed again as the organism set about cleaning him up. “Oh, no way man, this can’t be right…”

+++++

“So,” Henry asked the woman as she helped him into his seat in the shuttle’s tiny cockpit, “you gotta name?”

“Ellen,” she said as she struggled with one of his shoulder harnesses. “And you’re Henry, right?”

“Taggart. Just call me Taggart, okay?”

“Well then, I guess that makes me Ripley.”

“I think I like Ellen better.”

“And what if I like Henry more?”

Taggart sighed. “Then Henry it is,” he said as he held out his hand. She took it and smiled as she worked her way into the pilot’s seat to his left. “You fly this thing, too?”

She nodded as she worked switches on the overhead panel, then she shot a ‘thumb’s up’ to one of the creatures standing inside the nearby airlock, and a second later he heard the shuttle disconnect from Pak’s ship. Ripley hit the thrusters in the shuttle’s nose, and the big central display kept updating the shuttle’s vector as it swung away from the massive ship’s gravity well, but Taggart didn’t recognize the technology on the shuttle’s panel.

“You mind if I ask a personal question?” he said.

“No. Fire away.”

“What year is it?”

Ripley looked at him and smiled, but she didn’t answer the question.

“So, I’m not supposed to know, is that it?”

“I’m not sure that’s been decided,” Ripley replied. “Anyway, you’ll be briefed when we get to the Gateway.”

“The Gateway?”

“That space station,” she said, pointing to the odd looking jumble of cubes and toroids dead-ahead.

“Are those ships docked to it, or part of the station?”

“It is hard to tell, I guess,” Ripley said. “But yes, there are two ships docked there right now.”

“When I, when I was about to die we hadn’t even made it back to the moon.”

“I know. A lot’s happened, I guess. Still, I can’t even imagine what you must be feeling.”

“Other than freaked out by that toilet thing?”

“That scared me the first time I had to use one.”

“Scared? You were scared?”

She looked at him quickly and nodded, then got her eyes back on the central display. “Yeah, scared.”

“I can’t imagine you being scared,” Taggart said with a brief shrug.

“Oh? Do I look that tough?”

“No. You look confident.”

She looked at him again and smiled. “I read your file. You’re kind of an anarchist, aren’t you?”

“Me? An anarchist?”

“What they called a tech bro? Didn’t believe in much, no close attachments?”

Taggart nodded. “Yup. That’s me. No close attachments.”

“Well, at least you’re looking better now.”

“You’ve seen me before?”

“Yeah, a couple weeks ago one of the Pinks deposited you on the hangar deck and disappeared. You were just about dead, too. The medics onboard didn’t know what to do so the decision was made to get Pak’s people involved.”

“Who are they?”

Again, Ripley just shrugged. “We’re not really sure who they are…yet. They appear to have taken our side…”

“Side? Is there a war going on?”

“Isn’t there always?” she smirked. “Anyway, urPak got you to his father’s ship and we didn’t hear much for about a week. After Pak told us you were going to make it, well, we’ve been trying to figure out why the Pinks brought you to us.”

“Pinky.”

“What?”

“Pinky. One of the Pinks. She’s been protecting me for years.”

“Sorry, got to concentrate now…” she sighed, lining up one set of vectors with some kind of landing approach aid on the display, and suddenly this Gateway didn’t look so small, and neither did the ship docked overhead.

“Hyperion?” he said, reading off the name painted near the ship’s stern. 

“That’s right,” Ripley sighed, struggling to match vectors on what appeared to be the approach’s vertical axis and then, when the shuttle was perhaps a quarter mile out a huge hangar door opened, revealing a fairly large shuttle landing area actually inside the station. Men in spacesuits were inside the hangar, and Taggart realized the shuttle he was now in was actually like some kind of four man craft, because there were two really large shuttles inside this hangar. “The Gateway is much older than Hyperion and was built to handle the first shuttles transiting to and from Armstrong Base…”

“Armstrong Base?”

“The first American base on the lunar surface.”

“Ah. Of course. You know, when I was a kid I went to the moon every month or so.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. At Disneyland, the first one, in Anaheim.”

“I haven’t been?”

“To Disneyland?”

“To Earth.”

He looked at her again, not sure if she was kidding or not, then, deciding she wasn’t, Henry Taggart thought better of asking her any further questions. He was already sure he wouldn’t like the answers.

+++++

He was sitting in a conference room by himself. Earth appeared to be about the size of a kid’s marble when held at arm’s length, and the pale blue dot rotated into view about every two minutes. At least, he said to himself, up was up inside this room, and down was down. The gravity here onboard the station was, Ripley told him before she left him here in this room, about eighty percent of Earth’s, so walking was not only possible, it was also almost effortless. Playing football up here would be, he thought, hilarious.

A door opened and two military types ambled in and took a seat; a moment later two short men in civilian clothes entered and sat across from him, and one of these, the younger one, was staring at him. This character had short blond hair and looked like he’d been plucked right out of the sixties: houndstooth sports coat, Levis, old school Adidas sneakers, RayBan Wayfarers on his forehead. Piercing silver blue eyes that looked like laser beams, and those eyes looked angry, too.

And then Harry Callahan walked in and he didn’t know why, but the sight made Henry Taggart bust out laughing. Callahan stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Taggart like he’d suddenly grown a second head.

Then it hit him. Callahan looked like he was about thirty years old, and the last time he’d seen him Callahan had been much older. Like fifty years older. Taggart stopped laughing, then crossed his arms over his chest.

Then two Navy admirals walked in – just ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Who appeared to be about thirty and who was walking, not in a wheelchair.

Taggart looked away. Looked at the Earth coming onto view again. He felt light-headed, like he was lost inside a dream…

“This the man, Callahan?” Roosevelt asked this much younger version of Harry Callahan.

“Yessir, it is.”

“Detective Bullitt? Anything you want to add to your report?”

“No sir, not at this time.”

“This ship she’s on? It was still in the Mediterranean? I mean, when you last saw her?”

“Yessir. She made a jump, apparently to Vesuvius around the time of that big eruption. When she returned her clothes were on fire.”

Roosevelt turned to Taggart. “Detective Callahan tells us you were once close to Miss Deborah Sorensen? Is that about right?”

Taggart was speechless. “Excuse me, but are you Franklin Roosevelt?”

Roosevelt looked around the room, exasperated. “Has no one briefed this man?”

Shrugs all around. Everyone was suddenly avoiding eye contact, too.

“Well, dammit,” FDR grumbled, “why am I not surprised?” 

“I knew her,” Taggart said, trying to take some of the heat. “What’s she done now?”

Roosevelt wheeled on him. “What are you implying, Mr. Taggart?”

“Deborah was kind of a world class screw up, sir. Like everything she touched turned to shit. A dilettante.”

“More money than sense? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yessir. Classic case. Sweet as could be but absolutely no self understanding.”

“Easily manipulated?” Roosevelt added.

“That’s right,” Taggart said, stifling a burp.

“You alright, son?”

“I haven’t eaten in…well, I don’t remember the last time I held down food.”

“You were pretty sick when you got here. Some kind of cancer, they tell me. How are you feeling now?”

“Great, sir. Never better.”

“Pak’s people are world class,” Roosevelt said, missing the irony completely.

“Does anyone know what they did to me?”

Roosevelt turned to one of the naval officers. “Captain Ripley? Care to explain?”

The younger of the two officers nodded and stood. “Pak’s civilization has mastered all forms of genetic manipulation. When they go after cancerous disease they simply go after replication errors, but you’ll soon begin to feel other effects, as well?”

“Oh? Such as?” Taggart sighed.

“The first thing is you’ll feel younger. You’ll also feel, well, more easily aroused…”

“Sexually, you mean?”

“That’s correct,” Captain Ripley said, smiling a little impishly. “And you’ll perform better in that department, as well.”

“Oh,” Taggart deadpanned, “joy. I can hardly wait. So, when will the disease return?”

“It probably won’t,” Ripley said, confused by Taggart’s reaction. “You’ll likely live without any further disease for the rest of your life.”

“Great,” Taggart sighed, clearly depressed by this news. “Now, can anyone tell me why I’m here?”

“Detective Bullitt?” Roosevelt said. “Care to tell our guest?”

Bullitt stood. “I’m going to take you there, get you as close as I can. You’re either going to talk her out of her current mission or you’re going to have to kill her.”

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but.

Oh yeah, try this if you’re feeling lost.

Another brief section today, nothing fancy, nothing too startling. Music? The Who’s Bargain.

5.17

Deborah Sorensen walked around the stateroom of her new home, an almost 50 year old Feadship – that had seen better days, probably 20 years ago – with a sense of foreboding. The upper decks aft of the bridge had been gutted, at least on the inside of the superstructure, so while outwardly the yacht looked unchanged, this was in fact far from the truth. The main salon and galley were gone, but so too was the sun deck with it’s hot tub on the deck above; it it’s place she saw heavy Cor-ten steel plate on the decks and walls that had been freshly installed and crudely painted with gray primer, leaving only the barest framework of a ceiling in the main salon. Two container-sized launching tubes would be placed in this new open space once the yacht arrived in Rio de Janeiro, and only then could their real mission begin.

Her father had made his case and in a way she had agreed with him, agreed with his reasoning for this action – but also his reasons behind the formation of the Eagle Group. The group was, he’d told her, nothing more than a collection of concerned businessmen working in concert to manage a vitally necessary contraction of population pressure, resource depletion, and environmental degradation. All of these things were now self evident, but they had been for decades and nothing had been done. And she’d had to agree – because even to her conditions were already terrifying – and growing worse by the day. So, what was the best apolitical anodyne? 

Instead of a protracted period of decline and collapse, a period that could, literally, play out over a hundred years – or even longer, the founding premise of the group was to accelerate this collapse. Do it now, quickly, so that there would remain a nucleus of humanity left to start over again. To get it right the second time around.

Looking back on her father’s life from her current place in time she was stunned by his prescience. Her father had, almost by himself, foreseen the consequences of explosive population growth and calamitous resource extraction back in the 1970s, and instead of sitting idly by and doing nothing he had acted. He’d created the Eagle Network to prepare the way ahead, to desensitize select groups of people, to help prepare them for the difficult choices ahead.

She had been blown away by the scope of what she heard from him. The Eagle Network had morphed into a sprawling effort to accumulate political power to further the ends of the group, to manage the contractions ahead, but along the way the group had accumulated enemies, too. And now these enemies were gathering, about to act, but the group had developed a new, very bold way forward.

Her father had carefully watched the way, as a child, she’d developed her own unique abilities. She could not only ‘see’ other places and other times, she had also left the current timeline and repeatedly journeyed back to 1912. But where else had she gone? And when else had she gone? He soon understood that these first journeys had been involuntary, that she’d had no control over when or where she went, or even the timing of these events – until she’d met that orca, in Tahiti. An old male orca, and he’d shown her how to harness her abilities, to direct her energy. 

And Ted Sorensen had been terrified of her ever since.

She’d thought herself special – for a while, anyway – until she realized that there were a handful of other people with this ability, and then she’d learned that this pool of people was constantly growing. Slowly, at least in the beginning. But when would this ability reach a kind of critical mass? When would it go from fringe to mainstream? And what would be the consequences of at first hundreds of people jumping around through time, altering timelines, to eventually more and more people jumping?

Absolute chaos would result. Time itself would become meaningless. 

And then her father had told her one last self-evident truth, the one truth that had rocked her conception of reality to her core.

This incipient chaos held growing implications not just for life on Earth. Conceivably, life everywhere in the solar system would be impacted. And then members of the Eagle Group, her father among them, had been contacted by an off-world civilization, and the final implications of this growing ability had taken on alarming new dimensions.

Not only was life on Earth at stake, but now members of the Eagle Group understood that these growing abilities threatened life through not only the galaxy, but conceivably even the entire universe.

And now the universe was reacting. Much like antibodies swarm to attack an infecting micro-organism, a vanguard of off-world, spacefaring civilizations had been monitoring developments here on Earth, and perhaps for thousands of years. Once humanity’s incipient abilities became apparent to them, one by one they started to watch us more closely – and to then draw up their contingencies.

But this period of monitoring was rapidly coming to an end.

And now, Ted told his daughter, at least one of these off world civilizations was preparing to act.

But members of the Eagle Group had convinced this group to delay taking any action – for now. Because the Eagle Group had a plan, a new plan. The Group was going to act decisively to rewrite recent history, to put an end to not only explosive population growth but to put an end to the ability of some people to bend the laws of time.

But this was proving to be the most difficult part of her father’s plan, yet now Sorensen thought he had the solution.

He was going to bait a trap. Get everyone with this ability into one place, and then destroy them all.

And if the Group failed, the Grays would act. Quickly, and decisively. 

“How?” she’d asked her father.

“They will use the Earth to destroy the Earth. That’s all we know, Deb. If we fail, they will act.”

“So, if I understand what you’re saying, you want me to use my abilities to change our history? Is that about the size of it?”

“Yes.”

“Have you thought about what might happen to us? I mean, all of us?”

And when she looked at her father he’d started crying, crying as deeply as she’d ever seen anyone cry in all her life, and yet the true depths of his love had shone through this despair. 

And in that moment she could finally see the way ahead, her destiny, what she’d been born to do, and the journey she was doomed to fulfill. 

Perhaps, she said to herself, this path led to oblivion. She could feel that in her bones now. Perhaps there was no other way to change the world, but thanks to her father she could see that now. People would never act on their own. People had to be led.

By men like her father.

+++++

Baris Metin watched as America Eagle pulled away from the wharf, Captain Mendelssohn still steaming for Marseille to take on fuel, and this had left him nominally as the new captain of the Disco Volante. His contract with the Eagle Network had been amended to take account of his new rank – and he was more than pleased with this new salary – but this woman – a woman! – was officially in charge of the vessel. Peter Weyland himself had made that much clear to him.

She’d come onboard and gone directly to her stateroom, the last untouched space on the yacht that still retained all of her former glory, right down to the solid gold bathroom fixtures and mirrors on the ceiling over the king-sized bed. The yacht’s large engineering and deck staff was still onboard, but only a lone cook and two stewards remained, though they were here to look after the woman. 

Yet she’d not left her stateroom once since boarding.

The inter-phone chirped and he picked it up.

“Bridge here,” Baris said.

“Captain Metin?” the woman said.

“Yes, speaking?” He noted her voice carried the weight of someone in charge.

“Please set a course for Gibraltar that takes us north of Corsica and just south of Minorca, and get underway at once. Please maintain radio silence for now, so shut down the AIS for now, and all personal cellphones are to be switched off.”

“Yes Ma’am,” he’d just managed to say before the line went dead, so without thinking he dialed up the engine room. “Prepare to get underway,” he told the Chief Engineer before he rang off. He pulled up Corsica on the huge, though quite old, Raytheon chartplotter and studied the coastlines of Corsica and Minorca; there were few obstructions on the north coastline of Corsica aside from a few charted rocks off the northwest point, off the tiny island of Giraglia, and he’d keep those well to port when he passed Corsica. Then there was nothing but 320 miles of blue water to the island of Minorca, off the southern coast of Spain. Assuming there were no mechanical issues or need to refuel there, the last leg to Gibraltar was another 610 miles, so call the entire trip roughly 1200 miles, and the Disco Volante’s range, according to her logbooks, was 33-to-3,500 nautical miles, so refueling wouldn’t be necessary.

The Disco Volante’s ‘X-O’, or executive officer, was an eager kid from Buenos Aires whose great claim to fame was taking some kind of seamanship courses when he was still in preparatory school. Still, Baris saw that Diego Gardel was bright and eager to learn, but more importantly he understood that the kid was what he had to work with right here, right now. In a way, he told himself, the kid was probably a test, and as such he knew that Peter Weyland would judge him by how well he handled the kid. 

‘Tough, but fair,’ he reminded himself, the same way his best mentors in the navy had handled him.

Gardel had been on American Eagle for a long time. If the kid had a problem it was conceit, because with his blond hair and blue eyed good looks women considered him irresistible, and Baris thought the kid was vainglorious in the extreme. The scuttlebutt was that the kid was banging Britney and one of the other female stewards onboard, and Baris assumed that was why the kid had been transferred with him. With no female crew members onboard the Disco Volante…the kid would cause no more problems for Britney, and therefore Dr. Weyland.

The inter-phone chirped again and he picked up: “Bridge?”

“Ready to get underway down here,” the engineer said.

Baris chafed. The engineer should have addressed him as Captain, so the man was testing him, staking out his turf. “Who are you addressing?” Captain Metin snarled.

But then the line went dead.

He turned to Diego. “Please go to the engine room, Mr. Gardel. Have the engineering crew report to the bridge.”

“Aye, Captain.” The kid grinned and scampered off down the stairs.

Then he did as he’d been told; he called the chief steward and reported the transgression.

And now the chief steward was on the bridge as the chief engineer slouched his way up the stairs and onto the bridge, obviously taking his time, pushing the limit for all it was worth. His underlings appeared equally unenthusiastic

And before Baris could say a word the steward took out a silenced pistol and shot the engineer in the head. The man dropped like a sack of rocks and the other crewmen jumped to attention. But not Diego, Baris noted; no, Diego simply pulled the fallen engineer out of the way, making room for the steward to address the silent men from the engine room after he told them to come all the way up the stairs.

“Insolence on this ship will not be tolerated,” the steward said. “This man is the captain, and this is the executive officer, and when you address them, you will address them as such, by rank. It is Captain Metin, and X-O Gardel, and I understand this is something the former chief engineer decided not to do. So just a word of warning; we have an important mission to complete and we will maintain proper discipline for the duration. You will be paid handsomely, of course, as per your contracts; but break ranks and you will meet the same fate as Mr. Bartok. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Now, who among you feels ready to assume the chief’s duties?”

One man raised a hand.

The steward nodded at the man. “Miller, isn’t it?”

“Aye, sir.”

“You are now the chief engineer.”

“Aye, sir. Thanks you, sir.”

“Captain?” the steward said, turning to his ashen-faced ‘captain’. “Any further orders for your crew?”

“Prepare to get underway, Chief Miller,” Baris Metin said to the man, though he felt ill and that his world suddenly made no sense. “And everyone is to switch off their cellphones.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Dismissed,” Baris added, though he was not at all sure what the hell was happening on this vessel, but sure he wanted nothing more to do with these people. He watched as the steward and Diego pulled Bartok down the stairs, then he turned to the helm, doing his best to ignore the spreading pool of blood on the teak and holly floor underfoot. “Cast off all lines,” he said to the deckhands over the intercom; the three deck hands sprang into action, and a few minutes after American Eagle cleared port the Disco Volante followed in her wake. An hour later Baris changed course, making for their first waypoint.

When the kid returned to the bridge he sat silently, though he was looking at Baris with a strange grin in his eyes. “You want me to get that stuff off the floor?” the kid asked.

“Sure. Why not.”

“No problemo,” the kid said, still smiling. “This your first time?” he added.

“First time for what?”

“Company discipline. It can be a little harsh.”

“Harsh?” Baris said sarcastically as he pointed to the spreading stain. “Is that what you call this?”

“Yeah,” the kid said as he got a mop and some disinfectant from the cupboard opposite the stairwell, “my grandfather’s been with the group since the early days. He said it’s always been like this.”

“A television network? Really?”

“No, no, not the networks, the group. You know, the Eagle Group?”

“Oh,” Baris said, but he’d been in intel long enough to know when and how to play along. “How long have you been in – the group?”

“Oh, all my life, really. I grew up on the main campus.”

“Oh, that must’ve been interesting. Have you always been interested in boats?”

“Yeah. I belonged to the Youth Corps, and we had a big boating program. I learned navigation and stuff like that when I was ten years old…”

“At the main campus? Really?”

“Yeah. When did you do your initiation?”

“I haven’t been yet.”

The kid stopped what he was doing and looked at Metin suspiciously for a moment, then finished cleaning the floor before he disappeared down the stairs.

Baris usually felt good when he returned to the sea, but not today. After setting the autopilot when the ship reached its starting waypoint, he cycled through all the CCTV screens, looking at the crewmen in the engine room for the longest time. None of them had seemed particularly surprised when their chief was gunned-down right in front of them, and he wondered why. A few minutes later he watched the kid and the chief steward dump the engineer’s body overboard, then he watched the kid mopping up more blood on the aft deck and swim platform, and with that same vacuous smile on his face.

‘A campus? Something called the Eagle Group, with a campus.’ His mind was racing, chasing shadows while thinking about all the things he just didn’t know, yet one thing was certain. These weren’t good people; in fact, when he looked around this ship he felt nothing but evil and suddenly something like cold dread gripped his heart. ‘Why gut the ship aft of the bridge? Why had he been instructed to make this journey with the AIS switched off? And who the devil was that woman in the main stateroom?’

He cycled through pages on the chartplotter and stopped at the main radar screen. He saw a contact dead ahead and about ten miles ahead so picked up the binoculars and took a look.

It was American Eagle. And a large helicopter was landing on her helipad.

He put the binoculars down and looked around the bridge; suddenly he felt small, and very alone. 

And he wished he could talk to his brother, but radio silence meant no phone calls allowed and he didn’t want to end up like the chief engineer – in a spreading puddle of blood on his way to a watery grave.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but. And no, no…We Won’t Get Fooled Again.

A short riff today, just a little connective tissue so hardly time for tea.

Music? Sure, why not? Have a go at some well aged Cream, a little well worn Badge.

5.16

Baris Metin got Peter Weyland to the shower on American Eagle’s aft deck and then to his stateroom, and there he left him with Britney, Weyland’s personal assistant, before he made his way up to the bridge. He wanted to go through all the security camera footage, and quickly, because he still couldn’t believe what he’d seen.

Metin had been keeping an eye on Weyland, wanting to be ready when Weyland and his new guest left the restaurant, but then he’d seen Weyland and the woman disappear while seated at their table, only to reappear not quite a minute later, preceded by a flash of blueish light and a thunderclap – inside the restaurant! – and then the two of them were flowing through the air down to their table and onto the patio floor. He’d been too stunned to move – until he’d seen them thrown out of the restaurant and started their way to lend a hand.

He cycled through the CCTV camera views from the aft deck until he found one with a clear vantage point of the patio, then he rewound the playback about 15 minutes and watched intently. ‘Good, but not great,’ he sighed, but the next camera’s sightline had been perfect. He played the event over and over, then he inserted a thumb drive and transferred a copy of the file.

The engineer’s mate, Heinrich, came in from hanging Weyland’s latest acquisition in the owner’s stateroom, and Baris played the event for the Austrian – who simply shrugged before he retreated down the access way to the engine room, and all without saying a word. That shocked Baris almost as much as the event in the restaurant, and it left him wondering…why? Was Heinrich simply dull? Did the man lack imagination? Or had he already seen so much while working on this yacht that this was just one more bolt out of the blue – and so nothing to get worked up about?

So just who the hell was this new passenger?

Captain Mendelssohn came onto the bridge in a huff. “Prepare to get underway,” he muttered.

“What? I thought we were staying the night?”

“Plans change.”

“What about our fuel?”

“We’ll refuel at the yard,” Mendelssohn said angrily. “Now, go and standby on the stern.”

“Aye, sir.”

It took a few minutes to get the fuel pre-heated and polished, but soon both MANN diesels rumbled to life – though in truth you could hardly hear them anywhere on the yacht – and after the engines heated a little Mendelssohn gave the order to cast off all lines. American Eagle moved slowly, almost imperceptibly through the tiny harbor, and Baris helped secure their lines and fenders before returning to the bridge…

…but he stopped on the bridge deck and looked at three men swimming in the crystal clear water off the little rocky headland to starboard. He was a little surprised, as it seemed that at least one of the men was talking to a dolphin.

+++++

Spudz MacKenzie  was simply annoyed. 

One moment Frank Bullitt had been talking to him and the next he was gone. No preamble, no warning, just here one moment and gone the next. Callahan had pulled the same stunt a few times, and he’d been just as annoyed.

Yet he was learning to see there was a kind of meaning behind their mayhem. They’d ‘seen’ something, as hard as it still was to wrap his head around the concept. The CIA had been conducting ‘remote viewing’ operations for decades through Operation Grey Fox, and he’d read synopses of several viewing operations, including the retrieval of an America General kidnapped by the Red Brigade in Italy, that had convinced him that there was something to this stuff, yet at heart he remained a skeptic. Just the idea that someone could close their eyes and concentrate – and then listen in or even see conversations taking place halfway around the world – had clouded and befuddled his sense of reality.

Obviously, both Callahan and Bullitt were doing so, whether they were consciously aware of the process or not. MacKenzie had seen enough now to accept this new reality, and he hated it.

And, sure enough, about a minute later Bullitt reappeared inside the VW Golf, and MacKenzie did his best not to jump out of his seat.

“God damnit! Can’t you at least warn me when you’re going to do that?”

Frank grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. No. Sometimes when I get these flashes, well, if I don’t act I lose it.”

“Flashes?”

“Yeah, that’s about the best I can do to describe it. I saw Sorensen, uh, Deborah, make a jump. She was with Peter Weyland, and that’s Junior, not Senior, and I think they were in Italy. A restaurant, they were in a restaurant called Lo Stella, and when they returned she followed Weyland onto a yacht. Big fucker, too, maybe two hundred feet. Name is American Eagle. It was cool outside, some leaves turning, small harbor, I mean real small.” Bullitt looked over, saw Spudz entering a name into a search window and a moment later he nodded. Restaurant by that name in Portofino, Italy, and he held up his iPad and showed Frank the posted images of the place.

“Yup, that’s it.”

“It’s too early for the leaves to be turning there,” MacKenzie muttered under his breath – as he pulled up an AIS tracking program, one used to track maritime movements globally. “American Eagle,” he mumbled as he hunted and pecked his way across the little virtual keypad, and a few seconds later he nodded. “Currently near Izmir, that’s in southwestern Turkey…and God Damn!” Spudz screamed as Bullitt disappeared again. “Fuck! I hate this shit!”

It wasn’t just that Harry and Frank were zipping everywhere with just a thought, no, they were jumping through time as well. Back in time, and even into the future, as improbable as that at first seemed…and then it hit him.

Frank had just said he’d watched Deborah Sorensen make a jump, so did she too possess these capabilities? His stomach rumbled and he pulled out a roll of Maalox tablets and popped two of the antacids onto his tongue…when just like that, Bullitt was back again.

“They left Portofino but just went a few miles across the bay, to a place called Sestri Levante, to something called…” he was saying as he pulled out a tiny notepad, “…the Cantiere navale di Riva Trigoso.”

MacKenzie sighed. “That’s a Fincantieri shipyard. What are they doing there?”

“Sorensen, uh, Deborah, transferred to another yacht waiting there. I think maybe some modifications are being done? – and Weyland sent one of the ship’s officers with her. A young kid, maybe Turkish or from the mid east. Anyway, she’s onboard now and on her way to Rio.”

“Rio de Janiero?”

Bullitt nodded dryly as he rolled his eyes. “Yup. That’s the one.”

MacKenzie leaned back in the Volkswagen’s seat and sighed as another piece of the puzzle slipped into place, then he started the motor and drove back to airport outside of Bariloche.

“Why are you returning the car? You could just leave it in town, you know?” Bullitt asked.

“Because I put it on my credit card,” Spudz grinned.

“Leavin’ a paper trail, man. You shouldn’t do that, ya know?”

Mackenzie turned to an almost microscopically small blue sphere floating in the narrow space between the rear view mirror and the car’s headliner, then he nodded and said “Abracadabra”; a woman walking from the car rental return office watched as two men inside a dirty VW disappeared right in front of her of her eyes. She stopped in her tracks but did not seem in the least surprised, then she pulled out her cell phone and made a call.

+++++

Ted Sorensen picked up the phone and looked at the display; the call was from the security office in town so he answered.

“Yes?”

“Security at the airport witnessed a jump, at the airport, in the car rental return.”

“Leased to?”

“Last name MacKenzie, first name Everett. Annapolis, J-2, SecDef, last seen in Georgetown, South Carolina on his yacht. Name is Amaranth, current location unknown.”

“So they’ve shut down their AIS?”

“Yessir.”

He said not a word but merely hung up the call and speed-dialed the Reichskanzler’s office. “Sorensen here. I need a meeting of the executive committee first thing in the morning. Yes, this concerns Dr Weyland too, so he’ll need to attend, as well.” 

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but.

You might top this off with Here Comes the Sun, just to see how sharp your memory and listening skills are.

Ah yes, so Happy Christmas and Merry New Year, or…have I got that wrong…?

A modest chapter today, long enough for a cup of tea, too brief for popcorn. A few zigs where zags might have been expected, but c’est la vie.

Seen this bit of wordplay, or should we say Coldplay? Not a helluva lot to say after that, you know?

5.15

He closed his eyes as even the images came for him. Honfleur, Amsterdam, Paris at Christmas. Rupert and his Swan. Dina and Rolf. 

Then he heard that music. It played and played, the same nightmare soundtrack. He tried to turn away from the sound but now it was everywhere: ‘Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirates life for me…’

“Oh, no, not again…” Henry Taggart moaned as he opened his eyes and looked around, and then his mind connected with the ancient female by his side.

‘Others call,’ he heard the orca say to him.

Then the images, again. People he’d never seen, places he’d never been.

“This is absurd,” he said to the old orca. “Everything is meaningless here.”

‘You see only one. Must see many.’

“Many what?”

Her face slipped underwater and in an instant the old orca was gone. He looked around, saw only darkness. No land. No ships or sailboats.

But overhead?

He saw Orion. At least it looked like Orion. Only here, the massive hydrogen clouds were closer than close. He felt like he could reach out for one and grab hold… 

“This can’t be right,” he sighed, and in the blink of an eye he was in the Seine again. Honfleur just a few yards away. And the water was cold as hell. People on the shore, in that park, were waving at him. He grew lost in waves of remembering. Cancer. Dying, then death.

So? This is death?

‘You see only one. Must see many,’ the old orca said again.

He jerked around, saw his old friend. “Why? Why can’t they leave me to my death?”

‘Need great. Time breaks.’

“Breaks? What breaks? What do you mean?”

‘Great pain for all. Must go.’

More images came. Sea battles between great navies, but with strange vessels like Greek triremes in one image, then Ohio-class ballistic missile subs in the next. Then men on horseback charging helicopters, men in starships battling vast swarms of black, insect-like monsters…

‘Understand? Time breaks.’

“Understand.”

‘Others call. Must leave.’

Taggart looked around again and saw only stars, millions and millions of stars. First there was no pattern, no movement, then there was nothing but movement. The stars began to swirl, forming little clusters. Clusters began to swirl, forming new groups, new clusters, and for a moment he thought he was looking at the formation of the universe, like time had reset and everything was starting over, then he saw the pink sphere and her careworn eyes searching for his.

+++++

“It’s going to happen, you know, and there’s nothing you, or anyone, can do to stop it.”

Deborah looked at her father as he paced around his library, and now she was sure he was as mad as a hatter.

“Look at them, Deborah. Just look at them!” He pointed at a wall of television monitors, dozens and dozens of news feeds coming in from all around the world, each feed full of descriptions of chaos and mounting human misery. Climate breakdown, innumerable hordes of people from undeveloped countries fleeing to the industrialized north, civil wars, famine, disease literally raging on every continent save Antarctica. Trump’s walls overrun. Helicopter gunships patrolling the border with Mexico, on some days hundreds of people killed trying to push their way past border checkpoints. Saudi Arabia’s grand experiments in planned megacities collapsing under the energy demands of 140 degree temperatures – at night. People from southeast Asia making their way north, first into China, then pushing their way to Siberia, anything to escape the broiling humanity falling by the wayside. “At any one moment now almost three billion people are on the move, trying to escape the heat, or trying to move inland as coastal cities disappear under rising tides. Snowpack disappears, rivers and reservoirs turn to sand, and farmland blows away. Where will it end, Deborah?”

“And yet here you are,” she said, “stoking the fires…”

“Governments have failed us, Deborah. Democracy has failed humanity.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t.” Ted Sorensen turned and looked at his daughter. “You don’t because you can’t. You were brainwashed from the beginning to see democracy as the lone just path, the righteous way to freedom, even as democracy stripped your freedoms away one by one, even as democracy tried to sell itself around the world as the only way forward. And Hell, why not? The Marxists were out there doing exactly the same thing, and failing just as miserably…”

“And your television networks are somehow going to…”

“Yes? Go on?”

“You’re going to fix all this?”

“Fix it? Hell, no, we’re not going to fix it, but that’s the point, Deborah. These systems can’t be fixed, yet we’re locked into perpetual combat between these two competing socio-economic models,  between capitalism and communism, and between these two ways of thinking about civilizational progress.”

She shrugged. “So, what are you up to?”

“Ever hear of the term ‘accelerationism?’”

“I’m not sure. Maybe some kind of alt-right thing?”

Sorensen sighed and looked away. “They borrowed the term, I think, but what I’m talking about originated in the 70s, but rather than describe the term I’d rather ask that you read a couple of books and essays.” He went to the reading desk in his library and picked up three books, then carried them over to her.

“Homework again, huh Dad?” she said as she took the books from him.

He smiled. “You might think of them as such, but I would hope that you find something in these words more of interest to you. Now, we’ve got dinner to think about. Does trout amandine sound about right? With a spinach soufflé? And I have a Chilean Riesling that really is quite special.”

She looked at one of the books and groaned as it was in French: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L’anti-Œdipe, then she looked up at her father. “Is this some kind of medical text?”

He smiled. “Not hardly, though one of the authors was a psychoanalyst. The other was a philosopher, and together they came up with a very different way of looking at the world.”

She put that book down and looked at the second, a book of essays. “The Dark Enlightenment, by Nick Land,” she said. “And what is Mr Land selling?”

Her father smiled again. “The idea that freedom and democracy are in truth antithetical to one another.”

“Oh? Truly?”

“Yes, truly. And he maintains that capitalist corporate power makes the best organizing principle for a working society, because that type of culture best leads to true freedom. That may sound fringe, but Peter Thiel, as I’m sure you’ll recall, mentored a younger J D Vance before he drove these two books straight into Republican orthodoxy, and then right into the White House.”

“I see.” She put this second tome down and looked at the third. “The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, by Benjamin Bratton? Okay, what’s the low-down here?”

“Bratton discusses how rapidly evolving information technologies undermine what are in fact ancient ways of organizing societies, and how these anachronisms are being distorted into irrelevance by rapid advances in these technologies.”

“Sounds yummy.”

“Oh, hardly, yet the process has been underway since long before you were born.”

“And so you, and this whole Eagle Networks thing, have been…?”

“Collapse is inevitable, Deborah. We’re just helping things along, trying to guide events to, hopefully, influence a just outcome.”

“You make all this sound so benign, yet…”

“Yet what you’ve seen to date hardly seems benign.”

“That’s about right.”

He nodded gently, then walked over to a large window that looked out over a huge lake, and to a spectacular mountain range in the distance. “That’s because what was first envisioned started out in one direction, but this has been – well, I’ll put it to you this way – in any organization that manifests great power, there will always be power struggles…”

“And there’s one going on now?”

He nodded. “Yes, yes there is. And a very big, very dangerous situation is developing.”

“Dangerous? How so?”

“Unpredictable. Things are rapidly becoming unpredictable, and I fear all this effort will soon dissolve into unrestrained chaos.”

“Dad? Are you saying you need my help?”

Ted Sorensen looked away, tried not to remember the nights when she was little. Those terrible nights when she had disappeared while taking a shower, only to reappear minutes later inside a cascading rush of shattered sea ice and cold seawater, and then evidence that she had visited the Titanic in the moments just before that fateful moment. “I do,” he sighed. “Very much, as a matter of fact.”

She got up from her overstuffed reading chair and went to him. “Do you know that’s the first time you’ve ever said anything like that to me, Dad. I don’t know what to say.”

He took her hand in his, though his eyes never left the mountain beyond the lake. “I know, Deborah.” He shivered, then shook his head. “I’m afraid it won’t be the only time. I know this will be difficult, but you need to trust me; things are not quite as nefarious as they might at first appear to be.”

“Okay, Dad. What can I do to help?”

“I need you to meet someone. An associate and, I dare say, a good friend of mine. His name is Peter. Peter Weyland.”

+++++

Baris Metin Didn’t need binoculars to see that the tiny harbor was too small for American Eagle, but as Dr Weyland wanted to tie up at the stone quay, it was Captain Mendelssohn’s job to maneuver the huge yacht into harbor, to get the job done. And to make matters worse, Weyland was on the bridge this morning, watching them both. Baris adjusted the forward scanning sonar to get a better picture of the shoaling seafloor ahead, while Captain Mendelssohn used the joystick to make tiny course corrections. ‘Eagle’ was a hundred and seventy feet long and her keel was fourteen feet beneath the waterline, yet the water’s depth at the quay was just sixteen feet. The bigger problem was the turning basin near the quay, which simply wasn’t large enough to handle a boat this length.

“Captain,” Baris sighed under his breath, “I really do not recommend you do this.”

“Why is that, X-O?” Weyland snarled, stepping closer now, right into Baris’s space.

“Sir, there are too many small vessels moored near the turning basin, and even without them in our way this ship is simply too long.”

“And what do you recommend we do about that, X-O?” Weyland said, now somewhat less annoyed.

“Anchoring out would be safest, sir. Or we could back down through the harbor, all the way to the quay.”

Mendelssohn shot him a quick, sidelong glance. Backing a yacht through this crowded harbor would mean relying on video cameras and all the other instruments up here on the bridge while using the aft docking station above the swim platform to actually maneuver the ship. Doing so wasn’t impossible, merely very difficult, but this would also be a good test of Metin’s skills – and he knew that was exactly what Weyland wanted out of this exercise.

“I want to be tied stern-to the quay,” Weyland growled. “You’ve been working up here for a month now. Do you think you can get me there or not?”

“Yessir, of course I can. Captain, permission to go to the aft steering station?”

“Go ahead, X-O,” Mendelssohn sighed, more than a little surprised and grinning as Metin left the bridge.

Weyland waited a moment then turned to Captain Mendelssohn. “So, you’re sure he can pull this off?”

“If I didn’t, sir, I wouldn’t even let him try.”

“This really is a beautiful setting. I wonder why I haven’t come here before…?”

“Well sir, Portofino is a little touristy, on the beaten path, I guess you could say. We’ve always tried to steer clear of such places.”

“Sorensen’s orders, I take it?”

“Yessir.”

“And so here we are, sent to fetch his daughter…”

Mendelssohn opted to remain silent, and he sighed in relief when Weyland went out onto the starboard bridge deck, no doubt to watch all the people in the tiny village staring up in awe at his massive ship. Vanity, pride, whatever you wanted to call it, Weyland had it – in spades.

+++++

Weyland stood on the aft deck, watching Metin extend the hydraulic passerelle to the quay, in spite of himself admiring the man’s skill. Metin seemed in his element out here, happy, almost content. He walked over to the starboard rail and looked down on three sailboats docked at the quay, and he waved absently at an old man and a springer spaniel on the closest one, then strode off ‘Eagle’ like he was Patton taking Sicily once again.

Mendelssohn followed him down the teak passerelle with the Ship’s Papers, off to the harbor master’s office to take care of those tedious formalities, so he took a deep breath, admired the autumn sun and all the angled shadows retreating from the piazza. He looked at his watch, saw it was not quite noon so figured he had at least a half hour before Deborah Sorensen arrived. He walked over to a gallery, saw several interesting paintings on display through the window so went inside. A few mundane abstracts, a handful of predictably banal harbor scenes by local painters, but an odd piece tucked away in a small alcove all by itself. The painting was small, perhaps ten inches square but even from across the room he could see that this painting was the work of a master. It was of a small cottage framed by lavender and azaleas, very simple, but he could tell it was something special even before he saw the artist’s name. “A Sisley? Here?”

An old woman walked up behind him, yet she remained at a discrete distance and said not a word as she watched the man appraising the work, and after a few minutes he turned to her.

“If I may,” the man began, “has this been authenticated?”

“Yes, sir. By Merritt at the Royal Academy in London, as well as Sartre at the Louvre.”

“Where on earth did you find it?”

“He gave it to a friend who eventually moved here. The family has decided to part with it.”

“Do you have the letters of authenticity?”

“Of course. I’d be happy to get them if you’re an interested party.”

“If I may be so indelicate, what is the asking price?” She handed him her card. The price – fifteen million euros – was engraved on the rear. He took out his iPhone and snapped a picture of the painting then forwarded the image to a number in Geneva, and while he awaited a reply he asked to see the letters. He imaged these as well, and sent them on to Geneva. A few minutes later he had his answer, so he turned to the woman again. “I’ll need payment instructions, if you please?”

The woman opened a leather-bound portfolio and handed Weyland an engraved card from Credit Suisse, and he imaged this and sent this addition on to Geneva, then he called Britney, his personal assistant on the yacht, and told her to have Heinrich in engineering prepare lighting for the painting this afternoon, then he turned back to the woman. “Could you recommend someplace for lunch?” he asked.

“Yes, of course. Just next door, the Lo Stella. I’d be happy to call and tell them you are coming.”

“Would you? Thanks so much, and for your understanding.”

“It has been my pleasure.”

“Call my assistant when you’re ready for her to pick up the piece,” he said, handing the woman a card with his assistant’s information. “Her name is Britney, by the way.”

“Very well.”

“Well, thank you, and good day,” he said before he abruptly turned and walked out the door. He saw the sign for the Ristorante Lo Stella and decided to give the woman a moment to make her call, knowing that word of his purchase would spread like wildfire through the tiny village. He walked down the quay towards the boats moored at the far end, where he’d seen the old man and his dog earlier, and soon he saw the man’s boat was named Diogenes, and that brought a smile to his face as he walked along to the next boat. This one was named Springer, and it was locked up tight. The next boat in the line was named Sonata, and he heard someone playing the piano below and wondered what the tune was. He’d never heard the piece before – which he found strange as he thought he was well versed in the classical canon. He saw a young woman in blue surgical scrubs come up the companionway a moment later, and she made her way out of the boat’s center cockpit to the rear of the boat then walked down the passerelle and onto the quay. He smiled at her as she passed, taking note of the stethoscope around her neck, then he turned to watch her walk through the village. He looked at the yacht’s stern again and found her homeport – Annapolis, MD – painted on the port quarter, and that surprised him. He shook his head and walked back to American Eagle’s stern, perturbed that this Sorensen girl was already ten minutes late. 

A tan Mercedes taxi appeared almost as if on cue, and the taxi came right to him. The well dressed driver, an ancient man of indeterminate origins, stepped out and opened Deborah’s door, then collected her luggage from the boot before he got back behind the wheel and disappeared.

“Miss Sorensen, I assume?” he said to the woman. He noted she was almost attractive, but she affected the studious academic airs of the perpetually insecure – right down to her round, tortoise shell eyeglasses and frumpy, worn out Doc Martens. Her smile was rather nice though her skin had the appearance of someone who had spent too much time out under the sun, and for some reason he thought her hands looked strong. ‘How odd,’ he thought.

“Yes, and are you Peter Weyland?”

“I am Dr Weyland, yes,” he said stiffly. “I’ve not had lunch yet and wonder if you’d care to join me?”

“Sure. Airline food still bites the big one, so I’m game.”

Weyland’s eyes twitched as her boorishness penetrated. “Ah, well, excellent. Do follow me.” After this suburban drone’s performance he was ready for a little fawning deference, so hoped the woman in the gallery had indeed called the Lo Stella. He walked under the green awning and noted the salmon colored stucco and green trim, even on the tablecloths here on the patio, and as an immensely old man approached, obviously the maitre’d, he sighed when he saw a complete absence of interest on the man’s face. Indeed, the man had a regal, almost leonine countenance that seemed to defy easy characterization. Ivory colored slacks, white shirt, subdued gold tie under a pale blue sport-coat, Weyland thought the old man exuded raw energy and was not at all what he’d been expecting.

“Dr Weyland, I presume?” the old man asked as they walked up. His smile was genuine, his eyes magmatic, full of hot power.

“Yes?”

“I see there are two of you? Would you care to sit out here on the patio this afternoon, or in the dining room?”

“Deborah? Any preference?”

“Out here would be great. I’ve been cooped up in airplanes for the last twenty hours…”

“Would you prefer some sun?” the old man asked, his concern obvious.

“Maybe, yes. That’d be great…”

The old man walked them down to the far end of the patio and pulled out her chair and helped her get seated, then he pulled her napkin from the table and handed it to her. “Champagne for you this afternoon?” he asked Weyland. 

Weyland nodded. “Have you Taittinger, the Prelude Gran Crus?”

“Of course,” the old man said as he handed over menus before he walked away.

“Strange man,” Sorensen said. “Something in the eyes, I think.”

“Indeed. What did you see?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’d say there’s more to him than meets the eye.”

“More what, do you think?”

“Power? Maybe the ability to facilitate, no, that’s not right…perhaps to meditate between warring factions?”

“I felt rank hostility.”

“Do you want to leave?” she asked.

“No. I want to understand.”

“Perhaps he simply hates tourists?”

“No, this is something deeper, like he’s done…like he’s hiding something monstrous. Something he’s done…in the past.” 

A younger waiter returned with their champagne and took their orders, and curiously enough the old man was nowhere to be seen. 

“So, did your father take you to the campus?”

“Yes, and I’ve been to the Wolfsschanze and the Berghof. He wanted to get me up to the Kehlsteinhaus but we ran out of time.”

“Indeed. You must’ve made quite an impression on a few people.”

She shrugged. “I found the facilities quite fascinating, especially the engineering campus.”

“Oh? Why fascinating?”

“Seriously? Well, for one thing, how about particle accelerators larger than CERNs. And, oh yeah, working ion drives for starships. Not spaceships, mind you, but starships…”

Weyland smiled because he hadn’t expected this reaction, or this level of exposure. He’d been expecting some kind of droning, daft airhead with no understanding of science at all, yet this woman seemed to be at least conversant in a few of the more important subjects being tackled in Argentina. Still, their work in New Zealand and French Polynesia had to remain off-limits, and he was to be the firewall that kept such secret projects from her. He shrugged as he innocently held his hands out: “If not us, then who?” he said, paraphrasing Hillel the Elder with a sly grin.

“I liked the Nick Land essay,” she said more seriously.

“Did you indeed?”

She nodded. “Any fool can look at our southern border and see how completely government has failed, but that’s just the most glaring example.”

“All democracies collapse,” Weyland said with a shrug, “and always under the weight of their internal inconsistencies. It is inevitable, but nevertheless America had a good run; she postponed the inevitable longer than most expected.”

“Longer than you expected?”

“My feelings are irrelevant.”

“Which means they are anything but,” she countered.

“Please don’t patronize me, Miss Sorensen. I’ve little tolerance for such obsequiousness.”

“Oh, that I do not doubt,” she said, the tone of her voice a direct challenge.

“Listen, I’m not sure I like the…” he started to say, but he stopped in mid-sentence when she closed her eyes and held her hands out to him.

“Take my hands,” she whispered.

“I’ll do no such thing…”

“Take my hands, now,” she said, her voice suddenly full of latent power, “and close your eyes.”

Curious now, he reached across their table and took her hands, and in the next instant he felt it. Nauseating vertigo, his heart spinning in a vacuum, then bitter cold. A deep, biting cold.

Then: “Open your eyes,” he heard her say.

And when he did he saw that he was at sea on a great ocean liner, now perched in a crow’s nest atop the ship’s foremast, and they were in deepest night. The ship was moving fast, fast enough to make his eyes water, and as the tears ran down his face they froze to the skin under his eyes. There were young men below playing some kind of football on the foredeck, and when he turned he saw the officers on watch talking to the helmsman inside the bridge.

“What have you…”

“Look there,” she said, pointing dead ahead.

He turned and in a heartbeat saw the iceberg. He heard the lookouts screaming “Iceberg, dead ahead,” and Peter Weyland forced himself to watch as his looming death approached. His heart was racing now, he urinated uncontrollably, and he fought the impulse to hide his eyes as the Titanic slammed into her appointment with destiny, then he turned to Sorensen, his voice full of panic, and he screamed “Get me out of here! Now, please!”

“Are you begging me, Dr Weyland? Begging me for your life?”

“Yes, please, I’m begging you! Get me away from this place!”

And in the next instant he felt himself crashing through furniture on the ristorante’s patio, this followed by huge, cascading waterfalls of near-freezing water and ragged chunks of blue ice that came crashing down with them. He heard screaming, saw the other people seated on the patio get up and run out onto the piazza, a few of them drenched from head to toe, then he took stock of his own situation: soaking wet and shivering, cuts on his forearms from the falling ice, and his heartbeat was still wildly out of control so he started taking deep breaths as he closed his eyes again.

But then the old man appeared.

And he walked straight up to Deborah, the fury in his eyes manifest, and as yet unspent.

“You must not do this here!” the old man hissed. “You must control these things!”

Weyland looked up at the old man, feeling like the bastard had suddenly grown two heads. “What did you say?”

“I said nothing to you, fool! Now the both of you, leave immediately, or there will be consequences!”

The words hit him like sharp physical blows and he shook his head, tried to clear his mind. “Who the devil do you think you are!” Weyland snarled as he pushed himself up from the floor, and now he turned to let the old man have it…

Until he saw the maelstrom in the creature’s eyes, a building cyclonic fury he had never seen before, not in anything, or anyone. The old man’s form was shimmering now, and raw, white gold power seeped from his skin, burning the air. Then the old man seemed to grow before their eyes, and he leaned close, his eyes dripping with molten malice: “Leave – while you still may. While I still let you…”

Weyland started to say something but he felt Sorensen take his hand and literally pull him away from the old man, then she was pulling him towards American Eagle. There were people waiting there, waiting for Weyland, she surmised, and when they saw him being pulled out of the ristorante they ran to his aid.

“Get him to a shower,” she said to them, clearly winded. “A hot shower, as fast as you can!”

Which turned out to be right there on the aft deck. Baris Metin popped the little cabinet door open and pulled out a shower head on a long metallic hose, then turned the hot water on and waited for it to warm, then Britney and Deborah held Weyland’s shivering body as the water poured over him, the bitter cold floating away on clouds of steam.

+++++

Ludvico – the Old Man – watched all this from his ristorante’s patio, a smile on his face. Two waiters walked up to him to see if he was alright, while others worked to clean up the ice from the floor and move all the ruined furniture from the patio. He saw the concern in their eyes and nodded.

“I’m alright now,” he sighed.

“Patron? What was that all about?”

He looked at the oldest and shook his head. “Have you ever killed a Nazi?” he asked the boy.

“Patron?”

“No, of course you haven’t, but what a pity. I did love doing so, once upon a time.”

The boys stood back and watched as Ludvico went to the cloakroom; he came out a moment later in his green loden cape, and he also had his cane, the fancy wooden one with the silver filigree, and that could only mean one thing…

“I know it’s a little early for passegiatta, but I think I shall walk out to the rocks.”

Ludvico walked along the Molo Umberto past the dozens of little motorboats tied-off to the ancient stone sea wall, and then he came to Diogenes, to Malcolm Doncaster hunting and pecking his way across his little laptop’s keyboard. “Good afternoon, Poet!” the old man called out to his friend.

Startled, Doncaster looked up and smiled when he saw his Ludvico. “It’s a little early for passegiatta, isn’t it?”

“Not today,” Ludvico sighed. 

“Ah, yes indeed. Well, I suspect Elsie is in need of a little exercise. Care for some company?”

“Yes, please. Ah, Berensen, is that you, my friend?”

Lev stood from Sonata’s cockpit table and shut down his laptop. “Who is that asshole?” Podgolski said, pointing at American Eagle.

“Oh, just your basic run-of-the-mill Nazi,” Ludvico said, smiling broadly now.

“Here? Now?” Lev said, now getting into the swing of things. “My, my, where’s Mel Brooks when you really need him…?”

“Come on,” Ludvico sighed, finally relaxing a little, “we’re going out to the rocks.”

“Should I bring towels?”

“Damn right you should,” Doncaster growled, his bulldog jowls flapping on the breeze. “And one for the dog, damnit all!” 

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites.com | this is fiction plain and simple, and nothing but.

Okay, take me to the pilot, wouldya? Or, maybe we should be walking the dogs?