Category: Murder Confessions

Chapter Eight — Malevolence

Monday arrived, as Mondays will. I lay late in our new bed, allowing Trevor to bring me my coffee, luxuriating like a Jane Austen heroine conserving strength before The Big Dance. The greatest luxury was watching Trevor ‘armor-up’; sliding on his boxers, locking his French cuffs into place, buttoning the vest of a (thankfully) clean suit and positioning his Phi Beta Kappa key to maximum effect. What thoughtful being could grudge Oz a romance with the young male body? There is nothing in the world so beautiful. Women are fruit on the edge of spoiling; men are sculpture. Is there anything as glorious, as evocative, as the male clavicle? It’s a boat, a cave, a tunnel, a whirlpool. Trevor’s is taut like a bow anchoring his shoulders.

“See you downstairs,” said Trevor, peering into the mirror, not really seeing himself but pressing down his cowlick, which sprang back instantly. I pulled the covers over my head. Damn. I had to “armor-up” too; this was the battle even women have to fight. It couldn’t be so bad today; I had Trevor. This time I really had him. I had him before and I fully intended to have him again. I get why couples long to have a child (though it’s a longing I don’t share); that human yearning for incarnation. They need to see a physical embodiment of their attraction. Every coupling, every recombination of DNA is a new person, with fresh powers. And when it’s your foster brother you’re coupling with it’s your very childhood you’re rewriting. We were the children our own selves created.

I for one would never be my old self again, and I was glad of it. The thing I most like about being young is that you can wear a different face every day, and yet it can really be your face. Teenagers are always Walt Whitman. We contain multitudes.

I dragged myself to Colleen’s closet to study the possibilities. What mask to wear today?
I ran into Craig clutching his forehead and wearing an embarrassingly small “happy coat” across his embarrassingly hairy person. Probably the correct translation from the Japanese would be “gag coat;” both meanings of the word intended, I am sure, by the Japanese flight attendant who passed it along to him. I diagnosed a hangover, or possibly a particularly savage case of jet lag; to him I was just one of the many ghosts haunting that part of the mansion. I doubt he even recognized me.

The ghost was gone from Colleen’s closet; Trevor successfully exorcised it. Goodbye Colleen, wallowing in the light. Leave life to the living. They were just dresses and did not speak. I quelled my thirst for color; Trevor was so generous sexually, here was a tiny gift to give him compared to those he heaped on me. Colleen had so many “little black dresses”; I guess that’s female armor; so from the possibilities I built our child; combination of the pair of us. He was the little black dress; I was the cropped red jacket. Colleen said mourning has phases. In my opinion, when your whole family is on trial for murder, you’re in the fire phase.

There was frenzied cooking going on downstairs. Mina, steamy hair sticking to both sides of her face, was making individual omelets to order.

“We’re going to need more eggs,” she said.

See? Why go shopping in the first place if you know you’re only going to have to go shopping again? Why contribute to what is obviously a vicious cycle?

I found Trevor seated at the eighteenth-century secretary in the foyer, raving about the price of oil.
“We have heat?” I teased. “Really? Can’t tell in the servants’ quarters.” Skylar’s fireplace had come in particularly handy last night. I leaned down, hissing in his ear, “Time to burn the place down and collect the insurance?”

He knocked over his chair rearing up; face red, cords standing out in his neck, eyes blazing the coldest blue. Spitting.

“You of all people should appreciate what it is I’m trying to do around here! As if I would split another dime with Skylar!”

“Jeez,” I said, “Excuse you. I was only joking.”

Was it a clause in the mysterious honeymoon contract that I could no longer rib Trevor? Arson isn’t worse than murder. He wasn’t this worked up about Colleen’s death. The more I thought about my idea the better the idea sounded, a sort of Roman justice. They get revenge; we get hotels with room service! “We’re not admitting anything, but would it make you feel better if we burned down our house?” Let the jurors tour a smoking ruin. I could play tour guide. “This is the very place Trevor pulled my panties down.”

“Spoils claim the victor,” I snapped and Trevor said,
“Don’t you go all Beautiful and Damned on me.”

I was sure my quote came from a different novel but at that moment Spike appeared to tell me my omelet was ready.

“Better leave him alone,” he warned, whispering. “You’ll get more out of him later. You can heat him up, but you can’t cool him down.”

I was so angry I was almost speechless. Because Trevor was sitting at the check-writing desk Spike assumed I wanted something, when all I wanted was to play with the tendrils lying unguarded along Trevor’s beautiful neck.

“Paugh,” I said. Pronouncing it correctly.

Even Mina was in a bad mood – Jake said her omelets were too “set.” The only thing he likes hard is his own self. See? Doesn’t take much to rev up the whole gift-giving resent-a-thon.
In the limo I consulted my notebook. I was considering a poem cycle to be called: “What To Do If You Wake Up In a Dostoevsky Novel.” The first poem would be: Expect Brain Fever. Maybe I could ignore the court proceedings entirely and just sit there scribbling. I had to be there but I didn’t have to pay attention.

My prose seemed stilted, flat and precious. Girly. Katharine Mansfield says that when you find yourself in the boat of death, pulling inexorably away from the shore you must uncover your eyes and look. This case was the only thing I could write about.

Trevor slid in beside me, bony hip against mine, arm around me, holding my hand. Just as if he’d never yelled at me. If I closed my eyes I could imagine dissolving into him, the way a baby kangaroo becomes its mother. He gave me the reassuring smile, the shoulder clasp. No oil, no anger, no arson. Spike was wrong. With me, he could always cool down. Courage bubbled up within me. The two of us could take the rest of them on, no matter how many of them there might be.

The monsters were proliferating, springing up the steps of the courthouse like dragon’s teeth. Craig said there was a special entrance the prosecution could have let us use, but they made a choice to let the press assault us, hoping we would back away from Oz’s side and leave him twisting in the wind alone. They underestimated us. Thank God for Spike and downfield blocking.

There were people from France, from Africa, from the BBC. It must be a slow news day indeed when people care so much about some Virginia woman falling into her swimming pool. Then Skylar appeared out of nowhere and grasped my arm. Spike didn’t protect me from her. In all the years we lived together we had never been so close. We could have been having sex. She pushed her face right into mine.

I saw a nonsensical glitter of face powder drifting across her pores. She looked worse, if that was possible, bony, but with her skin puffed up, doughy and swollen, maybe the antidepressants had finally kicked in. She pressed my hand; we were passing notes in school. I looked down; but it was my own note, coming back, a bad penny. To her it was worse than contaminated, a curse you could only get rid of by passing it on.

“Take everything,” she hissed at me. “The clothes. My mother would have wanted you to have them. You look good in them.” Tears scored her cheeks; her fingers encircled my wrist like handcuffs. I felt rather than saw Trevor approaching in rescue, but the demon inside her gasped in my face, “He killed your mother, too.” And then she was gone.

“What did she say?” asked Trevor, sheltering me, gazing after her retreating back, scurrying back to the bride’s aisle. I felt a flush of sorrow over the reality of a honeymoon contract, that even although Trevor and I were closer than we had ever been, there were things I could have told him before that I could no longer say. Now we were hostage to each other’s pain and progress and the oath of protection our bodies took foreswore total honesty.

“She said I could have her mother’s clothes.”

I looked down at myself as if surprised to find myself dressed like a Junior Leaguer. This was my dress now. I had wanted to wear the dress because it was Colleen’s. I didn’t want to wear it if it belonged to me.

“Was she nasty about it?” Trevor gazed after her angrily, his jaw locked. The hatred in his face was unmistakable. It’s too late, I thought. We’ve been corrupted by “sides”. We left school and joined different teams, and I can’t cross over and join Skylar just because she looks lonely.

Oz was already in his place, the only figure seated at the defense table as the lawyers milled about. To me, suddenly, he looked little and sad. Was he shrinking or was I growing? Oz too, I suddenly realized, had taken the oath of protection when love took him hostage; he’d had to drink the Kool-Aid. Was he just pretending to be brave because we were there? He must be able to feel how much they wanted to convict him.

I felt so guilty. Caught up in our honeymoon we never did visit. I know Trevor called him but Trevor’s not the same as me. To him it must have seemed a long weekend, that same weekend I had hoped would last forever. I put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him and he grasped it gratefully; Trevor leaned across the wooden bench to whisper in his ear. I wished I’d asked him not to tell about us but it was probably too late now.

I don’t know what he said. Men’s much vaunted “honesty” can be just a need to brag. Oz used to say we would hook up one day; why deny him the pleasure of being proved right? I saw Oz expand and glow under his son’s words. The curse of the freckled; I blushed as my foster-father winked at me.

The judge came in and we dutifully rose. He didn’t care what we were really feeling just so long as we demonstrated obeisance. He wasted no time but handed down his ruling in his plummy voice; photos of the Barringer autopsy were too inflammatory and would not be admitted. The prosecution could use drawings. Craig tried to object again but the judge cut him off sharply with a “Let’s get this show on the road” demeanor. He too, apparently, had had a bad weekend. Golf rained out? Country club crowded? Prime rib less than prime? I knew he’d had the gall to pity me and I hated him.

Craig didn’t look happy but clueless Mina gave us the “thumbs up” sign, just as if no artist could create anything as ghastly as a photograph. I imagined the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch introduced as exhibits, passed around and laser-pointed, I guess she wanted me and Shelley to feel excited and victorious about seeing some dauber’s “take” on our dead mother. Now I held Trevor’s hand, and he was holding mine. I was the one responsible for the blue shadows around his eyes. They were happy blue shadows, and I felt better. We were now the keepers of each other’s sleep; that exhausted sleep that comes from every muscle locked in synergy with its opposite.

This court was convened to expose secrets; I exulted over everything they didn’t know. I was an initiate into the ultimate grown-up secret; the power of naked versus clothed. I was the only one to precisely count the hairs that marched like soldiers from Trevor’s bellybutton to his pubis. Even if tortured, I would never share. Someday I would transform these truths to a greater truth, but now I was invulnerable. I felt I could bear anything, now.

Trevor smiled and squeezed my hand; he knew what I was thinking. Spike slid in beside me and we all moved down, like the kids in the lullaby. Trevor and I melted, blissfully, into each other.
The jury trooped in, gazing at us with hushed glee as if touring the set of a reality show. No prime rib for them. They looked as if they might have been interrupted while dining on the local specialty; stuffed raccoon. (The joke is it’s stuffed with your neighbor’s garbage.)

Fawna Fryssen, wearing a skintight royal blue short-skirted suit that looked catalog-fresh, (probably in every color), stood up and claimed the center of the floor.
“The state calls Vinca Verna,” she said.

I saw Jake dig his elbow into Trevor’s other side, “She’s got a rockin’ hot bod,” he said, meaning the assistant prosecutor, not the witness. Also the triangular nostrils that scream “nose job”, I wanted to say. But Jake doesn’t care about “modifications”. To him it’s just “customizing”.

No modifications for me. It’s a subtle battle of the wills; who’s on approval and who’s “the approver.” If they can get you to admit that you weren’t “quite right” to start with, they’ve got you forever. You never will be “right”; there’s always one more thing in need of fixing. I know I’m a mess; it’s adorable that Trevor doesn’t notice. Call it the “palimpsest” effect; he not only sees every me I used to be but all the future possibilities. Trevor thinks I’m perfect. I guess love is as rare as they say.

Vinca Verna was a tall whipping-post of a woman with a sad sack expression that she probably considered appropriate courtroom demeanor. She spelled her name and took the oath, touching the Bible in a distant manner like someone allergic to books.

“Where do you currently reside and what is your employment?”
“I reside in Taos, New Mexico, and I am a spiritual healer,” she said.

There was a moment’s pause while Fryssen was stayed in her flight. Either this was news to her or she had never heard it put exactly that way. Like a cat spotting a flutter, Craig stiffened and leaned forward. Something good for our side.

I’ve overheard Craig comparing litigation to a “cockroach race”. Only God knows what your cockroach is going to do. If you rehearse them too much they sound stilted, but if you let them be spontaneous they risk opening up a line of questioning the other side can drive tractor-trailers through. In other words, you can lead a cockroach to water, but you can’t make it think.

Chapter Seven — Marriage

When I woke in the morning, we were stretched out side by side in my narrow bed, holding hands, the marble knight and his lady atop the tomb. Shouldering each other aside the better to spring into the afterlife. In the morning light I could give his beautiful body the attention it deserved, tracing with my fingers the snail tracks of my own slime. So sharp, so hairless, so spare; all bone, like the curve of a boat. So glad he was still beside me, proving it hadn’t been wishful dreaming. I know it’s traditional for the male to skulk away unless awakening on his own terrain: then it’s her turn. It’s a skulking race; last cadet through the door gets punished. Glad we didn’t have to play that game.

I needed to see just how he’d act to adjust my own grip on reality. Trevor usually has a firm attachment to the stuff. Had we become surgically sealed conjoined twins, pasted romantically together; or could I unstick myself and make it to the bathroom? I found it easier to wake him up.
“Go to the bathroom for me,” I moaned.

“Are you awake?” His hand tightened on my thigh as if to prevent escape, but he spoke guiltily; a sentry accused of leaving his post. Sleep was a crime. He sat up so fast he tore a hole out of my side.

I had other questions. “What time is it?”
“Seven. But there’s no court today.”

He fell back, remembering. Our hips barely fit on the narrow bed; easier if I twist sideways; pulling myself out of the frame. His eyes searched out the absent pack of Camels. I raged inwardly at the notorious distancing technique.

“You regret it,” I accused. It was my fault; I hate having no escape hatch. Never enter a room that hasn’t at least two doors. Says Oz.

But Trevor gifted me with the rarest Trevor smile, years falling away to the unselfconscious glee of childhood. What a different face he had then! Nobody meeting him now would recognize him. He maneuvered an arm behind my shoulders and drew me to him.

“Au contraire,” he asserted. “I’ll never be sorry again.”

Glad, glad, glad. Guilt is sick-making, a most unpleasant feeling. I’ve gotten this far pretty much guilt-free; relief to return to the edenic state. Trevor tells me what I should worry about. I mean, it’s not like we’re related or anything.

“Don’t squeeze,” I said. “I have to pee.”

He ripped off the sheet so fast my breath went with it; he tossed it to the farthest corner. Suddenly the room was just a bed full of naked people.

I clambered awkwardly over, as he doubtless wanted, sensible of his perusal.
“Don’t ever wax your beautiful pink fur,” he chastised.
“What? Not even in bikini season?”

Crazy talk. I’m not going to the beach looking like a radioactive gorilla for him or any man.
“It’s such an astonishing color,” he said. “No painter could do it justice. It’s like a sunset.” He corrected himself. “Maybe Raphael.”

He followed me into the bathroom. I tried to close the door on him.

“Amscray.” I share this antiqued white emporium and its massive Victorian fixtures with Shelley. She could show up any time.

“Oh, relax,” he said, striding to the mirror, “I won’t peek.” Sniffing, commented, “I smell like a girl,” and grabbed my washcloth.

There’s a fair amount of “clothes-optional” casualness at our end of the house – Oz calls it “the nude beach” but we don’t usually pee in front of each other. But you know what men are like. Whip it out at any opportunity.

Handy thing to take to a picnic, as the old lady said. Fortunately Trevor made so much noise splashing water over his head and shoulders that I was able to go.

“This is a horrible bathroom,” he said, flicking me away from the toilet with his wet towel. “Hasn’t been updated since the nineties. And I don’t mean the nineteen-nineties.”

He was at least well behaved enough to lift the toilet seat up and to put it back down again.
“I thought you only liked houses where everything is original,” I challenged.

Oz rhapsodized routinely about the majesty of Vermillion; it hadn’t been ruined (the last owners were too poor.) He liked showing off the spur marks of British soldiers on the wide wooden floor boards; the diamond scratchings on the mullioned kitchen windows, the fact that the logs holding up the whole thing up in the basement still wore bark. Think of it! Three hundred year-old bark full of three-hundred year old worms.

“One is deserving of a decent style of comfort,” said Trevor. “Without submitting to brick-face and shag.”

He means kitchens and bathrooms with all the latest gizmos. Skylar’s bathroom had been redone at least twice in memory, Jake’s and Trevor’s once. Skylar needed a Jacuzzi because she played hockey and Jake and Trevor needed one because men don’t know how to clean themselves. And Jake is at constant risk of sex injuries. I almost gave him some.

“I like old things,” I said. I have a magnificent Victorian claw footed tub with its own copper boiler.
“What’s that, guvnor?” said Trevor. “Can’t hear you through your tongue stud.”

There’s the old Trevor. Miming the swollen-lipped, twisted-tongue diction of the deaf mute and pretending that it’s me. Throwing in a cockney accent for no reason at all. When in fact it’s a point of pride with me that no one can tell about my piercing. Not by ear.

When he returned to the bedroom I was trying to squirm my way into a t-shirt. He put a hand out to stop me.

“What are you doing? Don’t.”

“I thought I’d get us some breakfast,” I said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yes,” he told me, “But not for food.”

Before breakfast would come again, so would I, and many times. He was kissing my neck now; erecting all the tiny hairs and making them sway to his baton like an orchestra conductor.
Afterwards we subsided blissfully against our sticky sheets, stickier even than the hottest Virginia summer when koi boiled in the pond. He lay between my legs, stroking my glistening pudenda.
“I don’t think you should ever get dressed again,” he said.

Uh oh. Don’t like the sound of that.

“You’re right,” I teased. “If I show up naked in court, of course they’ll Oz go. Why didn’t we think of this before?”

He sighed as he rolled over. “You’re such a buzz-kill.”

“Well, I hate it when you act like I’m your prisoner.”

“Who ever acts like that? I’m your prisoner.”

“No, sir!” I saluted him. “I insist on surrendering to you, sir!”

He jostled me, laughing. “I haven’t left my senses, if that’s what’s worrying you. I’m trying to leave something on the plate for the other guests. I know you’ll get married someday.”

I pulled back haughtily. “Poets don’t get married.”

“They do. Again and again. And when you do…I’ll give you away.”
All this sex was making me giddy. I mock-gasped, “You’ll tell?”

No shaking his seriousness.

“I mean I’ll be there for you. I want you to know, I’ll never stand in your way. This is about what you want. What you need. I’m not going to let this…” sifting pink fur through his fingers…” ruin your life.”

Sex ruins people’s lives? Lament of the deflowered. No more flower. All gone.
“I knew it,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t respect me in the morning.”

He seemed not to recognize my teasing.

“Not true.” He flew up against me, chest to chest, a man in the bed where only boys had been. “You can’t help but worry this will change our relationship and I’m trying to tell you, nothing ever can. You’re not just safe with me, you’re invulnerable. Nothing can touch you. Solemn promise.”
Strange Jesuitical rationales. Everything had changed forever and only a dummy wouldn’t see it.
“I trust you utterly,” I harrumphed. “When do we eat?”

“In a minute. I need you to write to Sunstroke U.”

A little creepy, don’t you think? He’s so determined! Brings out the bull headedness in me.
“I don’t have a computer,” I balked. “The police took them all.”

Oz said Lenny Bruce died from an overdose of police. I could see what he meant. I’m surprised Homeland Security didn’t get involved. They took Oz’s Koran, a personal present from His Majesty Moulay Hassan Deux, King of Morocco, plus the priceless eighteenth century de Sade annotated by the Scary General himself. If we ever get it back it’ll be covered in day-glo fingerprint powder and human yum-yum juice. Oz says that to the cops sex itself is a crime scene.

“You’ll be needing a laptop anyway,” Trevor told me, “And probably a car. You and Shelley can use it while you’re here, and then when you go to college, you can take it with you.”

I was impressed. He wouldn’t give Fayette a friendship bracelet and I was getting a laptop and a car after one night’s tumble! Of course as head of the family he’s supposed to take care of me, but it did feel kind of uncomfortable getting all these things after sex. Although honestly, the perfume I got before. Did it make a difference that I hadn’t asked for them?

“What if Oz isn’t acquitted?”

I whispered this forbidden worst-case scenario. Because then we wouldn’t get Colleen’s estate.
“I swear to you he will be,” Trevor said confidently. “He’s innocent.”

Glorious having the kitchen to ourselves for a long, leisurely breakfast. We made eggs, bacon and toast; Trevor fried tomatoes; a heart-stopping feast. Unlike Trevor, I leave nothing on my plate for the next person. Fuck ‘em, I say. Besides, I usually am the next person, and as I think I said before, I am uncommonly hungry.

“Oh I’m going to be a fat little poetess,” I hummed, blissing out. “Completely spherical.”

“Greed is a great quality in sex,” said Trevor. “Don’t lose it. Now that I’ve finally experienced someone who has it besides me, I have to say it seems essential.”

Another peek into a different Trevor.

“So…. how long have you thought about doing… what we did?”

He shrugged. “Forever. I used to pretend Fayette was you.”

“Really,” I was amazed. I felt almost sorry for that bitch Fayette. I wonder if he told her he keeps that Arthur Rackham print beside his bed because the redheaded sprite looks just like me.

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

He closed his eyes, the better to reminisce.

“There was one day in the swimming pool that I especially remember. The first time you wore a thong. You were thirteen. I was nineteen.”

I remembered too.

“The pink bikini,” I said. “I never did get up the nerve to wear it away from home.”

Never did. Buttocks are just too problematic, and in looking over my shoulder into the mirror, I thought I spied some extra pairs. I recall noticing Trevor noticing me, and it gave me confidence, especially coming from his hard athleticism. I recall his chest hypnotically shiny with the water streaming down it. We were both in slow motion, then. He seemed like a grown up man, diving and diving. It occurred to me now that he was showing off. Showing off for me.

“You didn’t do anything about it.”

“Who says?” He sighed. “I ravished some poor unsuspecting girl.”

And I knew who she was! Betsy Urquhart. In the pool house, while I listened. I had been jealous of her too, because she had real breasts with little pointy ends to snare Trevor’s full attention. What if I drowned without him there? His hands were all over her; she glistened like a mermaid.

“Not that she was any competition for you,” Trevor finished.

“Do you think she knew?”

“Probably could tell something was off. But it always is at that age. Take it from me, the teens is a desert to crawl through. Emerge alive on the other side and it’s a miracle.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I have two years to go.”

“I was thinking about men,” he said, then, because of Jake, “Sentient men. God only knows what girls go through.”

I wasn’t willing to let him off this delicious hook.
“I don’t believe you really felt that way about me.”

But he was thoughtful. Remembering.

“They could always tell I was pining for somebody,” he recalled thoughtfully. “Alexa used to tease me about “the one that got away.” Fayette called me “The Man Who Wasn’t There.”

Alexa…what was her last name? She was an import he met at a Washington youth leadership conference and took to the Napier senior prom. Colleen gave her Skylar’s room to dress in; I discovered the erotic thrill of voyeurism as I spied her preparations. Men should realize that when women anoint their bodies they’re imagining other hands, so dressing is an act of masturbation.

Alexa too was my exact opposite …tall, calm, soignée. Watching I became frecklier, stubbier and snottier. What sane person would trade that goddess for a dappled, scruffy little tagalong?
But even if Trevor was rewriting his own past, maybe we have to, since life is only understood backward.

After breakfast it was up to the Children’s Attic to drag down the Christmas decorations. It’s called the Children’s Attic because it can only be reached by the sort of miniature door usually encountered in fairy tales. I guess in the old days servants were a race of miniature people, probably growing more and more stunted through abuse and starvation until extincted, like pygmies. Poor Colleen complained about their absence. She ended did most of the work herself.
Vermillion is a cool old house, no question. Living in the midst of all that history is wonderful and we’re all very fortunate, yada, yada, yada. But when Trevor got the termite bill I thought he was having a coronary. At twenty-five! Let’s face it, at least a third of the rooms are unlivable at any given time, and when it finally dawns on you how expensive historically-certified non-leading plasterers, beveled glass restorers and boutique carpenters are, drywall and vinyl siding start to sound pretty good.

When I was growing up, the thing I liked most about living here was that it never mattered what the weather was like. Plenty of places to play out of sight of the grownups. Those dynamics of interior play – (The French Resistance versus the Columbian Guerillas; the Stupids versus the Smarts) — stand us in good stead now when we can’t step out of doors without seeing statues sporting telephoto lenses. Not the effect Colleen was going for.

It also meant that if you ever needed to be really alone, it was easy enough to arrange, although I must say Trevor showed a psychic ability to locate me when he needed to. Big Brother Global Positioning. Still, he would retreat when I yelled, and he never gave my hiding place away.
I’m ready to move on. It’s not like it’s some ancestral estate. We’ve only lived here fourteen years. There are other cool places in the world – such as the rafters of Paris or the dockside of San Francisco. I don’t mention these heresies to Oz, or even Trevor. They both act like a pair of vampires forced to seek the magic dirt every evening. Masculine blindness is akin to gambling; when the stakes keep doubling, they only want it more.

We sent the decorations down in the dumbwaiter that used to be my favorite hiding place (I was the only one who could fit inside) and suggested trying Oz’s recipe for Tom and Jerries but Shelley said we’d get salmonella. Neither of the Stupids were any fun. Jake said an international murder trial is an ideal opportunity to throw out all the crappy homemade ornaments from our childhood and buy less shame-making things. I think the whole point of Christmas tree decorating is laughing at the old stuff. (I decorated a carrot with glitter!) I whispered to Trevor that we should have Christmas alone next year but he said that isn’t Christmas.

Trevor defended the gaudy, glitter-soaked paper chains I made when I was five and what he says, goes. Arguing, too, is traditional at Christmas time, especially with two Memory Keepers together in the same room. Maybe trying to recapture the past is always a bad idea.

Dealing with Trevor’s groceries was another level of scary. First, he totally forgot cat food, but perhaps it doesn’t matter, since either they have gone completely feral or the neighbors are feeding them. Oz kept them from the vet, fearing if they got fixed what would they have to live for? Probably they prefer it outside; we can hear them in the bushes, the sounds of breeding and fighting are virtually indistinguishable. Shelley says maybe they attack trespassers. It’s a charming thought.

What he had bought were huge bags of rice and beans and potatoes and onions like we were getting ready for the siege of Stalingrad. Food in its raw state needs so much preparation. Who has that kind of time any more, especially when you have to rest up for more sex?

When it was time for dinner, of course no one wanted to cook. That’s the thing he didn’t buy. Colleen’s recipe book is in some kind of shorthand – I doubt even Skylar could make sense of it. I pulled out Mrs. Beeton because at least she’s always good for laughs – (my favorite recipe says “Take a trout from the tank and stun it with a bat” — now that’s freshness)– but I didn’t want to cook either. Plus no trout to hand, not in the milk, not anyplace. It’s a whole lot easier to just collapse in front of a movie with a nuked pile of chicken, but I couldn’t talk Trevor out of a full-blown dining room meal with six kinds of forks. At least we made our own barbecue sauce out of lime salsa, pineapple marmalade and ketchup and it turned out to be pretty good, with the worthy assist of a Riesling Sylvaner from Oz’s cellar. Wine upgrades any event. Trevor brought up extra bottles to put in the fridge, including a bottle of Tattinger, though it’s plenty cold down there. But there are spiders. I didn’t ask him what the champagne was for. I thought I knew.

I soaked the labels so I could enter them in Colleen’s wine book. That’s a tradition I’m happy can get behind. All the great celebrations are in that book, menus, seating plans, thank you notes. Sometimes she added photos and other mementoes if she had the time.

Dessert was cherry vanilla ice cream; no Moolage bars for Brontë, alas. Away at college, he hadn’t noticed my taste upgrade to diet cappuccino. Oz says we always want what we can’t have. Or maybe he said we only want what we can’t have. Anyway it seemed heartless to complain when Trevor tried so hard.

All and all, a superior weekend. Considering. At any rate I’m spoiled for honeymoons. One is all you ever really need. Maybe one is all you can stand. The only rule we used was that the Desires of the Other are sacred. Mostly I want to experience everything and he wants to do everything to me so I’d say we’re well-matched. The worst moment came when he tried to talk me into moving into Skylar’s room, because not only is Skylar’s bed bigger but she has her own fireplace. And a private bathroom. No Jake, no Shelley.

I hated agreeing to a situation where returning to my own room would seem like an act of secession, but I knew if I fought, I’d lose. Serves me right for making such a big fuss about letting go of the past during dining room versus coffee table debate. (I lost that one too.)

My feeble revolt was why not his room; he ruled that flatly out. And why, do you think? Not because of Jake in the bathroom, but because it was the room he and Fayette shared. “Ruined by post-coital tristesse.”

A new word on me (Trevor is full of them) but when I asked for a definition, he said, “Buyer’s remorse.” Kind of funny considering he bought Fayette “consumables” only; never any valuables. Subtly reminding her she’s a consumable, I daresay.

So, out of arguments as usual (force majeure) I grudgingly schlepped my stuff over to Skylar’s. It was kind of a painful admission that childhood was over. She would not be coming home. But because of all her mother’s decorating Skylar’s stripped-down boudoir had a hotel-like quality that made making it ours so much easier. No tristesse in sight. So far, anyway.

On Sunday morning, after a breakfast of Trevor’s only specialty, egg foo yung (which seems to be an omelet with salad in it) Trevor forced all of us to go to church. Trevor loves church.
When Jake wailed, “I just hate all that fucking dogma,” Trevor said, “It all comes down to love, bro. Read the gospels. You’ll see what it’s all about.”

“Well, I’m down with that part of it,” said Jake.

“I hate the way those hypocrites stare at us,” Shelley protested, but she was already dressing. She knew when she couldn’t win.

“We’ve got to go, to help Oz,” said Trevor, and I understood what he meant, in spite of the fact that to Oz religion is at best an adorable antique folkway, and at worst, a bizarrely murderous superstition. He was prone to shouting out, “The king must die!” when he was supposed to say, “Hallelujah.”

I don’t like church either. I think it’s a conspiracy to ruin spirituality the way marriage is a conspiracy to ruin sex. Colleen said, “Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”

The people in the sin hospital didn’t appear to know that they were sinners. They stared at us so much it was like that scene in Village of the Damned where your mind is a brick wall crumbling brick by brick. I survived by thinking possessively and pleasurably about Trevor’s body beneath his clothes. My body, now. The first male body ever to belong to me. After church old Mrs. Urquhart came over and said comforting things about how Oz couldn’t possibly have done it and how everyone envied his relationship with Colleen. The whole time she was talking I was thinking of the things Oz said about her, that she was a “carpetbagger” and that all her taste was in her mouth. She didn’t know about that. It’s a benefit of having your foster-father on trial for murder that people stop asking you to smile. Don’t say, “Why the long face?” They expect you to be miserable.

After church Jake wanted to go out to eat but I couldn’t bear being looked at one more minute, so we compromised by driving to Wal-Mart where you can buy the boxed macaroni and cheese Jake loves and will eat by the gross, just so long as it’s mixed with garlic and sour cream.

Trevor was the commando we sent in to do the dirty while Jake and Shelley huddled in the Lexus faces averted, so no one would think they ever shopped at Wal-Mart.

When Trevor came out, he had an extra bag he refused to show me. A present. A consumable? No. I thought it might be a cookbook since everyone had been so rude about poor Mrs. Beeton, but when we were alone and I unwrapped it, it turned out to be queen size white flannel sheets covered with hearts for Skylar’s bed. They really did look kind of sweet with the white canopy and all that mosquito netting. Our own private world.

We brought in personal items to home-ify the place, but inevitably got into yet another argument about decorating. Trevor’s tastes are rather staid; “beauty” is “symmetry” in his book. He claims he can prove this. I rushed into the argument all unprepared (which you should never do with him) insisting its just the opposite. Beauty is surprise. Shock, even. You should be all stirred up, not soothed.

Fortunately champagne is the adult’s Band-Aid; blesses the boo-boos and makes them go away. Holding teetering glasses, we collapsed exhausted into the oyster satin wing chairs on either side of Skylar’s gas fireplace. Press a button and the logs are roaring. I noticed Trevor didn’t argue for old-fashioned values here — who wants to haul logs up three flights of stairs? Even if you have a dumbwaiter (which is really too small, you’d have to cut the logs to bits) it would get messy. I gobbled the damn champagne, trying to feel I was gaining a new room, not losing an old one. It’s like going away to school, isn’t it? Changing old things is much harder than getting something new entirely. Somehow you want to believe the past exists somewhere, and it just doesn’t. Some things are gone for good — like Colleen — and it just seems so brutal. Maybe it’s time for me to cultivate an artistic detachment from possessions. It’s going to be hard when I’m so greedy and I want everything. This is why couples go away for the honeymoon. If they tried merging their pasts at the same time as their bodies there would never be anything but divorce.

Of all the Goddamned things, Trevor wanted to talk about the trial. As if it wasn’t coming soon enough.

“The worst hasn’t even happened yet,” he said glumly, as if my mother’s long-ago death couldn’t possibly be the worst. So what could it be? Would they produce those letters Oz wrote to the local paper, calling the police Nazis for interfering with our underage drinking parties?

Trevor topped off our anti-depressants. “Craig says they’re going to play the gay card. It’s so horrible I haven’t told Jake.”

I groaned. It’s a basic tenet of Oz’s philosophy that everyone’s “polyamorous”. I’ve never felt even a flicker around girls, but Oz says lacking a mother has made me too masculine. He said ultimately it’s a good thing because writers have to be “coldhearted” in order to “pare down”. But enough about me. The question before us is how to explain that Oz took the rugged camaraderie of all-male societies and up-down hierarchies just a little further than a Virginia jury might be comfortable with. No use appealing to their respect for the ancient Greeks. Oz’s taste for soldiers would not look good in open court.

“It’s irrelevant,” I moaned. “What does it have to do with anything?”

“Craig says you can rely on the state to throw all the muck they can dig up, and in seventeen years there’s plenty of muck in anyone’s life. They’re making it a motive.”

Oz likes muck — because of its fertility — and says people fear the primitive because it reminds them of being out of control. But the point is that Oz would never trade Colleen’s home-making competence for having some macho schoolboy around 24-7, nor would he want to live in a society exclusively of men. He’d hate prison.

“ Colleen knew all about it,” I protested. “It’s the opposite of motive.”
Trevor seemed surprised. “How’d you figure?”

“Well, she was tired of sex. Wasn’t she? Going through menopause? ”
“Maybe. But she was still jealous.”

“Who could be jealous of hired escorts? Oz didn’t bring even any of them home. I used to think it would be better if he did find a nice boyfriend with some domestic skills. Give Colleen a break.”
Trevor laughed out loud. I had cheered him up, anyway. He looked at me fondly as if my naiveté was just too, too adorable.

“But Brontë, he needed four hundred dollar an hour hookers for his “specialized tastes”. Wouldn’t that make you jealous?”

I considered. The problem was S & M. Colleen was not into that and Oz was. I wouldn’t be with a guy whose tastes were so different. Certainly I knew what jealousy was. It meant you didn’t want to share. Colleen just did not seem to me like a jealous person. She shared everything with everybody. She put up with so much.

I tried organizing my thoughts but realized I was just too drunk. Trevor can argue when he’s drunk; I can’t. I’m out of my league. What would I do, for instance, if Trevor suddenly developed a fascination with threesomes? That’s the chic thing nowadays; even though Trevor is just the last person on the planet you can imagine splitting his intensity in half. Never say never. So what would I do? Well I would back off, because it would be a totally different deal.

Colleen liked the way Oz was. Lots of people did. He was too big to be confined to just one person. Testosterone poisoning makes some men want sex that’s more like fighting, but not that many women are into the rough stuff. If they are, it usually means they are suffering from testosterone poisoning too. Colleen was too tired all the time. She used to fall asleep over her computer. Just thinking about it made me yawn. I was the tired one now.

Trevor picked me up and carried me deep into the mosquito netting. “Time for bed, sleepyhead.”
Like so many people, what he said was not exactly what he meant. As he undressed me, he was facedown in my belly, kissing it. I was almost not in the mood for sex; my mind was so full. It required a special adjustment. Trevor used to be an Eagle Scout. He knows how to be patient. He can start a fire from practically nothing. Starting without so much as a spark, he soon rewarded both of us with a satisfying blaze.

Chapter Six — Monogamy

When I woke it was dark. You know that moment of inchoate panic coming out of a dream, when you’ve forgotten who you are? I could be a character in a novel or the philosopher’s dreaming butterfly. Maybe Trevor’s right and my imagination’s a runaway horse – but am I the horse or the rider?

I admit I like thinking that poets get to be always partially disembodied, like souls in Limbo awaiting incarnation. Who wants to ossify? Once you’re “set”, you’re done.

A shape moved around the window against the light and I sat up in bed and gasped but it was only Trevor lighting the scented candles along my windowsill.

“Thanks.” Fell back, relaxed. Trevor knows I don’t like sleeping without a light.

He came to sit beside me. His tie and jacket and shirt were gone and there was a hole in his t-shirt. I put my finger through it and shook loose the comforting smell of his lemony sweat.
“So how are you feeling?”

Through the semi-darkness his eyes boiled at me, like this was going to be a question very hard to answer. He always meant so much more than he said. If words are symbols, his are clues.
“Better, thanks. Maybe a little funny. Do you think I should make myself throw up?”
“No,” he said. “It’s so bad for your teeth. I brought you a ginger ale.”

In a Tom Collins glass. I accepted it gratefully, enjoying the spark of prickles up my nose. He was right. Enough throwing up already. There had to come a time to learn how to keep things down.
As I drank, I admired his avian profile in the half-light. Talk about a palimpsest! – I could see not only his face now, but the way he had looked as a boy and how he would look when he as old. A sharp, spare, dignified old man.

“Did you buy a Christmas tree?” I asked him.

“Did,” he said. “I bought everything you asked for and some things you didn’t.”
“Was it a forty-footer?”

Trevor always went for the biggest trees. It was given to Oz to cut his dreams down to size, using a chainsaw.

“No. Twenty feet I swear. Just a little guy.”

He stroked my face, the little bit of goldish fur along my cheek-edge. A legacy, says Trevor, from my bobcat ancestors.
He sighed, “A mourning tree.”

“A mourning tree…” how Colleen would have appreciated that! Her Regency desk in the kitchen bay was well-stocked with mourning cards and notepaper for every degree of closeness and respect. Mourning is a Southern art form. Our wakes and funerals are legendary. The food is fantastic, better than at any other kind of event, weddings included. It is just when you are most bereft and suffering that you need to force down peaches, marshmallows, ham and whipped cream for the good of those who must remain behind.

In my mind’s eye I saw Colleen writing, writing with her mother-of-pearl fountain pen on a dove-grey notecard in her backward-slanted script, “Sorrow doesn’t last forever. Love does.” Believing it, too.
If she had really loved the lost one, she would enclose a pressing of one of her “resurrection” irises, flowers no one can transplant or plant, flowers which come up when they want to all by themselves. That’s how we know it’s spring. For Colleen irises, not lilies, were the “resurrection flower”.

“Are you crying?” asked Trevor. He touched my tear.

“I guess so,” I sighed.

“That’s why I’m giving you your present early,” he said, lobbing a black and gold gift-wrapped box into my lap.

I sat up and squealing with glee. “But it’s not Christmas yet.”

“Oh,” smiled Trevor, the delayed-gratification poster child, “Call it an Advent gift. You should get one every day of Advent. Why wait?”

“Why wait for breakfast when the eggs are scrambled now?” That’s what Oz would sing, so that’s what I sang. I tore into the package.

It was a huge bottle of perfume. Trésor.

“See how its name is almost like mine?” he teased me. “When you’re away, it will remind you of me.”

When you’re away…I shivered. I wanted to travel, I wanted to conquer, I wanted adventure. I didn’t want to be “away”.

“Must have been expensive,” I said feebly. It weighed a ton.
He shrugged. “The best things always are.”

If he had given this perfume to Fayette, would she have left? He wouldn’t give poor Fayette a dime-store ring.

“So where is everybody?” I asked.
“Mina’s driving Craig to the airport, Shelley and Jake unpacked the groceries and ordered a movie.”

“Lean forward and let me fix your hair.” His cowlick was acting up again. It’s short everywhere except for the little piece at the front, which stands up like a steeple above his face. It’s not enough hair for a true faux-hawk, so it’s often crooked. I’ve been “fixing” it with water, gel, spit — anything I could find — since I was three; loving the submission on this tall man’s face while he bent down allowing me to play with it. For that moment I’m the boss, and I’m in charge. The universe is my toy-box and Trevor is my unicorn to ride. He can take me anywhere.

“There,” I said, “That’s better,” dragging my fingers over the prematurely silver paths.
“Feels good,” he said. Surrendered while he closed his eyes.

That’s the moment I decided. Why wait indeed? Oz says men have an extra, primitive brain in the penis. Evolutionary holdover from when dinosaurs needed a special brain to control their tails. I dropped my hands and threw back the covers.

Trevor opened his eyes and looked at me. I let my hand run down his shoulders into his lap. He was hard, all right. I was thinking even if I had him only once that would make him part of me forever. I would never be “away”. Or maybe I thought that later. Anyway, nobody ever needed to know, and actions unseen can be mentally canceled. It has been definitely proven that Trevor keeps his secrets.

He shuddered at my touch but didn’t pull away. He clamped his hand over mine. I sat up, feeling the trapped heat pouring off my naked body. I pushed my chest forward and he brought up his against me. I wanted that t-shirt “gone”.

“Why shouldn’t we comfort each other?” I suggested. A line too good to waste. Jake doubtless got it from someone else and I was just passing it along. Trevor groaned, but clutched me so tightly I was almost afraid. They say a girl can always pull back, but we ladies know that isn’t true. There’s a point of no return, and it always comes sooner than you think. Had I reached the point of no return with Trevor?

“God I want to,” he moaned.

Lovely giving someone something they so badly want, extra nice to banish that customary moment of regret before someone sees me naked. Trevor knew my body well. He wouldn’t be disappointed that I didn’t have the biggest chest in the world.

“Tell me you’re not a virgin,” he gasped.

Poor Trevor! He wanted me to be a virgin, yet if I was, he couldn’t touch me. Cleft stick! Poor guy! If you ever get trapped into answering a question like that it’s lose-lose. They’re angry whatever you say.

“I’m not a virgin,” I said in my siren voice, tearing off that repellent t-shirt and throwing it away. Dust to dust and dustcloths to dishcloths. Trevor has such a beautiful chest. I had to do something pretty outrageous. Oz told me that when I grew up I would have to “beat them away with a stick”, and Trevor had always been my stick. Trevor went all “stick” on me.

“Was it that dude with the dreads? The guy you were with at the graduation party?”

Yes, Indio, the “dude with the dreads” whose snakebite piercing and plethora of ink seemed so glamorous to me at the time — Indio and others. A girl has to experiment. I mistook Indio for a revolutionary, but even revolutionaries have a line for you to toe. Can’t admit any of this to Trevor. Duck and cover.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I teased. This bed was too small for two people, much less four. Or twenty-four.

He shook my shoulders like an angry parole officer. “What about birth control?”
“Shelley and I are both on the pill.”

“Do you take it every other day and twice on weekends, like Fayette? Couldn’t trust that woman, so I had to use two rubbers. Tell me you take those pills as recommended.”
“Strictly as recommended.”

I was determined to kick Fayette out of this bed and I was not looking for the rubberized boyfriend experience. In my opinion, condoms are too “penocentric”. Sex goes wrong when it becomes penis worship. Once the condom appears, foreplay’s officially over. And how can that ever be good? You’ve lost the battle to get the guy to take his time. Who wants to race a timer just about to go off?

Speaking of racing, in a flash he was naked beside me. No different from Sardines, crammed in close together; but this was an adult, more pleasing game. My choice; if I wanted to stop being the baby, the orphan, or the invalid, and become a sophisticated poet reeking of Trėsor. It was all up to me.

With my thumb I traced upon his back the nettle-rash of scars acquired by hauling me out of every briar patch. My scars soon faded; Trevor’s never do. Maybe he re-opens them secretly; and counts them like stigmata. They say in a big family the eldest doesn’t get a childhood.
We had kissed many times, but this was the first time I felt his tongue. Seemed so odd, when everything else was so familiar.

“You’ll never know how much I wanted this,” he whispered.
But I knew.

My faith, my hope, was justified; Trevor is a pore-explorer. He knows how to take his time, consecrate each part of me, not just pouncing on my jennies like a townie. A dream lover, like a prescription badly needed I could write myself.

He overpowered me with his desire, so I fell back, allowing him to bless and tenderize my freckly, scabby, leathered hide. That inner voice, the narrator’s voice each of us drags around to comment on our lives, said, This is the way it’s supposed to be.

Trust and surrender, two games of sex I’d never played. He kissed me everywhere, suckling at my inner creases. When he dragged my labia through his teeth I convulsed like an electroshock patient. It was like that moment in Free Bird when your eyes roll back and the top of your head flies off. I submitted while the fireworks tore me apart, a pleasure previously experienced only alone, by using fantasy, Johnny Depp and elbow grease. This is the way it’s supposed to be.

We woke up upside down and turned around, our heads at the foot of the bed, our feet locked like the claws of eagles connecting in flight.

“Wow,” said Trevor. “I never knew it could feel like this. It’s true what they say about tongue-studs.” He sighed. “I came too fast. I’ll be better next time.”

“You were perfect,” I told him. “Couldn’t you tell how much you made me come?”

“Don’t talk like such an old pro.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to tell with girls. Lots of them fake it.”

“I bet Fayette always faked it.”

He gave me a dirty look. Well, he was the one who brought her up. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Yes I mind,” I said. “Unless you give me one too.”

“Well, too bad.” He lit a Camel with trembly, nicotine-stained fingers. “They’re bad for you. And I’m only having one.”

Ours is the house of the Secret Smokers. Supposedly Oz only smokes Macanudos with his port, but I knew about the Gauloises arriving in the mail. Both Skylar and Jake are constantly sneaking half-filled packs from his jacket pockets, then ratting on each other. Colleen used to sneak outside in the evening, pretending “the children” – that’s us– couldn’t see her pack of mentholated Newports.
“I thought you gave those up,” I lectured Trevor.

“Just till I get my soul back,” he puffed. “It seems to have wandered away.”

Away. I knew where it had gone. It detached in our frenzy, and bounced up against the ceiling like Peter Pan’s untethered shadow.

I tried to snatch a smoke.

“No way,” he said, jerking away. “I’d sooner cut off my own arm.” He crushed the cigarette out in a candle bowl. “See? All gone. Last one ever.”

“But I need one if you smoked one,” I wheedled. “To match tastes. Or you’ll taste like an ashtray. What if I can’t stand kissing you?”

He shook the pack. “All gone,” he swore, “You’ll just have to put up with me. I’m going to kiss you everywhere and there’s nothing you can do about it,” and he kissed my leg from ankle to knee. He gasped.

“Look how perfect you are.”

“Except for my obese knees.”

He kissed each in turn. “Don’t be silly. They are uber-knees. They are the pattern of everything a knee should be.”

“But see how fat they are? How they stick out?” I pouted just to coax more praise.
“They stick out because they’re supposed to stick out. They stick out because the rest of your legs are thin.”

“Jake says my legs look funny because you carried me so much when I was little and wouldn’t let me walk.”

Many photos do exist of the distraught, red-faced toddler astride the bony hip of the pale-faced boy. Look closely; you can see her furiously beating heart synchronize to his more reassuring beat.
“Jake!” he scoffed. “That’s the fetal alcohol syndrome talking.” It’s Trevor’s contention that their mother’s alcohol consumption in her second pregnancy explains everything that’s wrong with Jake.
“And I’m practically a dwarf.” I whined.

“Don’t say that.” He surged over me. “It’s blasphemy. You’re perfect.”
Blissfully I surrendered to worship and the exorcism of every painful childhood taunt.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I gasped. “More of that.”

“Well, I have things I want, too,” he said, Big Brother again, back in control. “I want you to write a letter to the University of Arizona and tell them you’re not coming.”

“I did that already. They know all about it. Delayed matriculation. Until the trial’s over.”
“No.” He glared at me over my pelvic ridge. “I mean tell them you’re not coming at all because you’re going to Georgetown.”

Trevor is a Georgetowner. He’s obligated to think the sun rises and sets over its gothic campus.
“Wow. You’re kidding. Can we afford it?”

“You let me worry about that. We can afford anything once Colleen’s estate is probated.”
“Stop kidding. I can’t get in. My SAT’s are only 1430.”

“I told you, I’ll take care of it. Besides if you don’t go to an Ivy League school there’s really no point in college at all. You’ll disappear into the desert of mediocrity and never be heard from again.”
I knew that wasn’t true. It was after Georgia O’Keefe disappeared into the desert that everything exploded for her. It’s the sort of self-serving thing they used to say at Napier. If you can’t graduate from the Big Seven, Eight or Nine (depends who’s counting) the only course is suicide.

“It’s my job to see you to fly as high as you possibly can,” said Trevor. “On your own you’re unfocused to the point of impossible. Your sense of direction just hasn’t been cultivated. Maybe it’s the curse of the poetic temperament. You know you need a business manager.”

Curse Trevor for knowing me better than I want to know myself. It would be so lovely never doing numbers, not having to keep track of things. I would lift my hand and a glass would appear. What a fantasy! I felt obligated to point out things he hadn’t considered.

“Maybe I would hate it there.” More truthfully, “Maybe they would hate me.”
“Not if I’m with you. I’ve been thinking of going back, can’t get anywhere with just a bachelor’s. We could share an apartment. Georgetown’s the perfect place for you to build your street cred and become a poet.

“Plus, I know you. You need looking after. I know all about college boys’ brains, damaged through drink. Believe me, they’re not interested in leaving you a finer, better person. They’d eat you up like gravy on a biscuit.”

Here was a delicious prospect to privately consider. Now that I knew how to make gravy, I fell back against the pillows in a second orgasm. Would a relief to shirk the hard stuff, like paying bills and arguing with bureaucrats. Too much practicality clogs and shatters the fragile artistic mechanism.
Or maybe I’m just lazy. Trevor says I never do anything I don’t want to. But according to Oz you must pick your battles and tackle them nourished and well-rested.

In my mind’s eye I summoned up tall apartment windows opening out over a leafy quad; sun glittering across the hardwood floors, desks pushed together in the intense focus of a pool of light. So much much nicer than the cell block basement pullulating with fractious roomies that I’d get on my own. Damn Trevor for a seductive devil. Who’s devil’s advocate now?
I reached my arms up to him. “I’d love that,” I sighed.

He entered me so fast I wasn’t really ready this time. I gasped. He put his mouth against my mouth as if to knock the wind back into me. “God, I love you,” he gasped. “I love you so much.”
Another first. I mean I know Trevor loves me, but nobody’s said it during sex. It’s not a word you hear bandied about in public school hookups. Truth surprises. The sympathetic gush between my legs acclaimed the gravy, the long- missing ingredient.

I said it, meant it, sighed it.

“And I love you, Trevor.”

I’ve always loved him. It’s love that brings the magic gravy, baby.

Chapter Four — Malfeasance

It was worse than yesterday. The rule against cameras in the courtroom made the press go crazy; they didn’t seem human. They threw themselves at our vehicles like jackals, with one last chance at a meal. They wielded their orbs and proboscises like slingshots and spears. Pygmies are right about soul spearing, I thought, as they jabbed and jabbed at us. Don’t give your picture away unless you know where it’s going. These people are looking for what they can steal and mark and soil. We huddled together, instinctively. That spiky-haired reporter who’d had the nerve to refer to us as “the Aristobrats” threw herself across our hood like an auditioning stuntwoman.

It was going to be horrible without Trevor. We clung like survivors barely afloat on wreckage. Jake was no help. Preening for the TV cameras he put arms around Shelley and me as if we were his bitches. No substitute for Trevor. I told myself the martinet and the libertine in Oz’s explosive personality seemed neatly divided between his sons.

I hoped for a chance to speak to Skylar, and I would have, too, even if she was sitting actually at the prosecution table, but in the end even I was intimidated. She was so thoroughly enmeshed in a thicket of foes. I feared I would burn up and shrivel like paper too close to a fire. Who knew we had so many enemies?

There was Colleen’s sister Ashbel Claridge, her lacquered frosting of Jiffy-Pop hair topping a face like an anvil. Oz called her “The Pechvogel” which I think means “harpy.” And who sat next to her?
Someone creepily familiar, a gypsy, a face from my dreams. An older woman with messy white birds’ nest hair and a Kabuki countenance: black brows drawn together. I thought she might be one of my mother’s sisters, the one named Shea, but if so her red hair had gone pure white since last I saw her. Trevor, who cares as much as his father about thoroughbreds says the bad thing about a mutt, is there’s no “blueprint for growth”. You don’t know what you’re getting. I hate predictability, but still. She was on the other side. I shot Aunt Shea twice with my tongue stud.

I ripped a piece of paper from my notebook and scribbled the following message: I need to borrow some of your Mom’s clothes. I promise I will take care of them and give them back. Of course you can say no. Love, Brontë. I could give it to Spike whenever he finished parking the limo. Spike never minded running little errands for me. As a former high school football star the thing he most hated was having to sit still.

There was Oz, no Lord of the Hurricane today, but mild and professorial in tortoiseshell reading glasses and heather-mixture sports jacket. He reached out to hug me even before the bailiffs removed his chains. He was bony. He’d lost so much weight it was as if he was on a hunger strike. We were not doing any better feeding him than feeding ourselves, but I wished someone would give me all the hush puppies and fried bologna he’d probably turned down.

Jake handed him the leather bound Spinoza he’d requested; his favorite philosopher. No time to exchange many words; he just squeezed our hands and gave us each a meaningful look.
“Where’s Trevor?” he mouthed to Jake and Jake mouthed, “He’ll be back.”

The judge came in and favored us with his lipless substitute for a smile. We rose and then sat. The jury trooped in next, just to show they put in the time so they could get their $37.50. I found I could not look at the individual jury members. They looked plenty at us. They got an eyeful. They seemed so ordinary, black and white, male and female, old and young, dressed as if for some sporting event. But the “event” was Oz’ life; all our lives, maybe.

Then the jury trooped out so the lawyers could argue. We rose and sat, rose and sat. It was as bad as church, really.

Craig had hired a jury consultant to try to figure out what kinds of human beings would be least likely to confuse Oz’s many peccadilloes with murder. The answer’s so obvious the founding fathers already thought of it: a jury of his peers. None of those here.

Of course Craig petitioned for change of venue and of course it was rejected. This jury pool wasn’t just poisoned, it was too damn small. Oz’s peers are internationally based. Start with the stage and screen – playground of empathic chameleons — or better yet, the pages of history; warriors and scholars, soldiers, poets, lovers, raconteurs.

In England when a lord committed a crime, he could only be judged by other lords. That was the reason the English made Lord Byron come home, so he could sit in judgment on Queen Caroline. Yes, if Queen Caroline was lifting her skirts a bit too high for someone not her husband, Byron was the perfect person to consult.

Oz winked at me, mocking my scribbling motions, not like he was bothered by this at all. He said we were in a race to write a book about all this. His book would be finished before mine; in his head he had already written it. Now I was feeling kind of guilty for doubting him. But he seemed so confident. How could he, looking at the motley crew set up in judgment, ever believe he would be set free?

Surely only guilt-free innocence would be so powerful. Oz doesn’t like being judged, so maybe he, too saw it as a sporting event. Could he escape these bulls ungored? Craig said the government had no evidence really, no evidence at all. They were just following the practice of the ancient Romans, arresting anyone found at the scene. Once the Romans in their infinite wisdom, arrested, tried, and executed a pear tree.

God knows why the press was so interested. Is it astonishment that bad things happen to lucky people, or is it something more sinister? Schadenfreude; sadistic pleasure in the suffering of others. If the lightning bolt hits you, then it won’t hit me. Then I guess there are all those people who need someone they can feel superior to: “At least I ain’t never kilt nobody.”

Mina and Craig joined the prosecution team at the judge’s bench. Whisper, whisper. Boring that we couldn’t hear this part. Craig says it’s “protecting the record”; there’s a concept. Perfecting it by making it imperfect if you ask me. Shouldn’t “the record” be everything?

“In the past people hired champions to settle these things,” said Jake.

“This is different how?” I asked, thinking of Craig’s lists of bills and expenses.

“Completely different,” Jake sniffed. “Both sides hired duelists. The champions fight a duel, and the accused would stand there with a rope around his neck. If his champion lost, they hanged him, and if his champion won, they let him go.”

Jake, swordsman would have loved to fight for his father. He would use the saber, his preferred weapon; because it has more cutting edges and any point above the waist is fair game. He would win too, in just six moves. As he always did.

They were coming back; somebody had lost and somebody won. I studied faces trying to figure out which was which; Craig would never let on within the hallowed walls. He agreed with Oz’s dictum: never let people see inside.

The prosecution was also a male-female pair, — maybe that’s trendy nowadays, trying to get the most out of the jury, but here the female, though admittedly second chair, was far less subservient, probably because the head prosecutor, Buford, wasn’t actually her boss. I had to admit she had mad skills of appearance and persuasion. According to the talking heads of Court TV, Fawna Fryssen was a single mom who had put herself through law school by performing in a “lounge act.” They probably meant singing, but maybe because she was black – (Oz would have called her “a macaroon”– his term for any light-skinned black female) — I allowed my imagination to run wild. Juggling? Fire-swallowing? Swinging from the rafters?

Like me, she favored matador’s colors; black, gold, red.

If she was the matador, Hurley Buford was the bull. I tried to imagine bull-necked Buford fighting a duel with anyone. He wouldn’t, he would throw down the sword and rush forward with a barely human roar. I saw him in animal skins, throttling someone with his bare hands. He’d never stand across from Jake light and free in a fine white fencing suit. The state would lose big time if this dueling thing ever got started. I gave Buford two rounds of the tongue stud. Bam, bam.

Only when they stepped to one side did I get a clear view of Skylar. While her companions talked to one other, she stared bleakly ahead, looking lost. She seemed almost as thin as Shelley now, just as thin as her mother and those college prep coaches nagged her to be. Was the weight she lost Colleen? I wondered if, when you aspire to be your own person, you might actually be better off neglected and ignored, instead of dragging your family like a fat Siamese twin through life. Skylar looked angry and sleepless as well as lost. I was scared of her. Maybe her mother visited every night, raging like a Shakespearean specter, choking and gurgling “Revenge!”

I wished we were alone, so I could argue with her. Maybe she hadn’t heard our side of the case. Since I didn’t have Trevor, I comforted myself by playing his part, anchoring myself with Craig’s story that at least some of those bloodstains came from the police spraying “enhancing agents” to make every drip look worse. Lots of things look scarier than they are.

Craig says we need two experts for every one of theirs. That’s expensive, but we win because the state can’t afford to expert-shop; they’re stuck with the people they’ve got on salary. Craig says nobody with any significant career credentials willingly goes to work for the state.

The police work was shoddy. Right on the scene the junior medical examiner wrote down the cause of death as “accident”; they didn’t change that till later. Nobody prevented Oz from climbing down to hold his wife; so all the “patterns” got messed up. I was less impressed than Craig by the absence of the murder weapon — if the police didn’t find The Scary General’s Luger in its hidey-hole behind the fireplace brick how hard did they really search? Not that anyone got shot.

Our expert said Colleen’s levels of blood thinner, Xanax and alcohol would send anybody nose-diving into the nearest empty swimming pool. Skylar wouldn’t want to hear that. Her mother was feeling no pain that evening, as the saying goes. She may have been humming Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy the whole time she was trying to climb out, falling back, and banging her head repeatedly. That’s what antidepressants are for, exactly so you won’t realize the fix you are in. You try to negotiate a poorly anchored iron ladder wobbling around on an uneven stone wall when you’re high as a kite wearing heels. That’s the field trip the jury should go on – first to The Cold Huntsman for a couple of stiff ones, next to the pharmacy for a bracer of pills, last to an empty double-sized Olympic pool in the pitch dark. See how good they do.

Our other expert attacks the state police lab as a shameful hive of scandal that never did one thing right. This guy is a very famous forensics dude who’s on television all the time although his reputation did receive a recent tarnishing in a high-profile child molester case. As Chekhov pointed out, we all have our blind spots. If he thinks six year olds can act “seductive”; what can anybody say?

I don’t see how argue with a daughter who would rather believe that her mother was the murder victim of an enraged husband rather than a way-too-happy lady who got stuck in a hole. It’s like the theory of Intelligent Design; people need someone to blame. Fundamentalist attribution error, or something like that.

I was feeling a little better when Spike, late as usual, high-fived the bailiffs and slid onto the bench next to me. He always sits too close, but where else can you sit when there’s so much of you? He’s a huge guy; Trevor calls him The Hulk. The marshals aren’t supposed to let anyone in after closing the doors but they make an exception for Spike. As the college-admission coaches say, it’s all about who you know.

Some of the marshals remember Spike before he washed out of the police academy. They reminisce about the dear old days playing wheelies and lockouts with the police interceptor. Spike says it’s the “fringes” of law enforcement where the fun is, doubtless true of any field. Maybe Spike’s habit of threatening to make people’s “eyes pop” got in the way of advancement. He’s a man of action rather than words.

In his spare time he anchors a rock band called The Washouts, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Spike wearing a tie-dyed headband on his bald, pit-bull-shaped head, banging a tambourine and singing Na-na-na for thirty minutes. I am privileged to have seen the video.

The press calls him The Python, (because of the eye-popping thing) but Craig says; “Mr. Munro is a licensed private investigator.”

I like making Spike laugh. It’s hard, like teasing a British Grenadier, but it can be done. You can tell you’ve succeeded when his neck muscles jerk. He rattles me by eyeing me as if speculating on my portability. I am very portable.

So here he was, smelling of some scary drugstore lady-killer cologne, parking his big football ring close to my thigh. He’s not bored yet or he’d be flexing his fingers and cracking the knuckles, but I don’t dare ask him what he’s thinking. Something unmentionable in polite society, and court counts as a very polite society, one where people go to school for years to learn how to openly discuss sex and violence without becoming sweaty and red-faced. Not that they always manage it. Fawna is unflappable; Buford has a leaky thermostat.

Back to Spike. I didn’t grow up in the South for nothing. When you catch a guy checking out your portability it’s time to start asking for favors. I slipped him my note.

“Skylar,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. He pocketed it and nodded.

Spike should be the one sent in to fight Buford, I thought. My money would be on him. I suggest a no-holds-barred cage match. Expect Buford to fold without even suiting up.

The lawyers had been up before the judge, hissing at each other like cats, but now it seemed things were finally getting underway. Trevor says court is oceans of boredom punctuated by moments of frenzy. It looked like a frenzy might be upon us.

Buford was speaking. Everyone in the courtroom leaned forward, either to bask in his deathless prose or to unsnarl his impenetrable accent. Buford is a local, a real down-home country boy. He knows how to say “pew,” and most importantly, when to say it. A picture flashed up on the big white screen.

We all stared at it. Was that us? It was a magical hologram of happy, sunny people from far away and long ago. I knew this picture – there’s a copy in my room – and seeing it floating in the air for strangers to goggle at felt as personally invasive as if it was a snapshot of my underwear drawer. (Which is a mess by the way.) What was Buford saying? Something about witnesses coming from far away and so this part of the case has to be presented first, and Craig was objecting about irrelevant, immaterial, prejudicial and uncharged. Prior Bad Acts, which sounds like a rock band. You could tell it was a Big Deal by the excitement among the press. Some looked ready to fall out of their very own skin they were Twittering so frantically. Mass masturbation.

I chose to disappear into the upper air and lose myself in the picture.

My favorite stories were always the ones where ordinary children find a doorway to another world. Only at certain angles can it be seen; sometimes all you need is faith that it is there. Better be ready to dive the moment you see one.

So here was my magic portal, light-filled and beckoning. I dove.

The world was again reduced to a swimming pool, but this was summer and it was filled with sparkling blue water. It wasn’t ours; the ornate design along the tiled edge suggested foreign climes. I looked up from the row of feet dangling in the water to see the pretty lady in the modest one-piece navy-blue bathing suit beside a gangly boy holding a baby on his lap and squinting anxiously at the camera.

The woebegone freckled infant with the softee-swirl of red, red hair is me, and that’s Trevor’s lap I’m sitting on. I’m not “giving him a lap dance” as Oz suggested. Trevor was afraid Oz might throw me in to test “the infant diving reflex”. He clutched for dear life as Oz snapped the picture.

Trevor at nine looked exactly like himself, the same forehead-transecting crease of worry that he was probably wearing now, at the airport, shooing Fayette towards the plane. Down in the water two other children had been caught in the act of splashing one another, whipping the water white as cake frosting. This could only be Shelley and Jake, Jake wearing glittering braces and Shelley a clown mask of white zinc oxide, juggling between them glittering crystal droplets, frozen forever.
I know I said I don’t remember my mother, but sometimes when I look at this picture, I feel the memories trembling at the edge of my mind, like surrendered dreams.

She was forty-two when I was born, forty when she had Shelley, miracle upon miracle in a barren marriage that had already lasted fifteen years. She was a professor of English Literature at the Franciscan International College of Tunisia. That was where she met Oz, whose first wife also taught there. My father was in the civil service; word was he died from some kind of valve ailment between Shelley’s birth and mine.

My mother’s name was Mary Elizabeth Shortall Barringer and she was short, like me, although it looked more elegant on her. I also know, because Oz told me, that although her hair seems brown and was styled for this photo in a modest bell, her natural color was fiery red. Oz said she dyed it because she considered red a vulgar color, but I think she didn’t like being looked at, like those orthodox Jewish women who wear wigs, accepting it as their responsibility to tamp down male fantasy.

Red hair is eye-catching. As a young girl, trying to get on in the world, I need to be looked at, but as a writer, I need to be invisible. The cat in the corner, says Bellow. So you see the conflict.
Is writing genetic? My mother kept journals, just like me (unfortunately lost). Oz said it was the second-greatest grief of her life that she wasn’t a romantic poet. Of course she was teaching Byron and Shelley and Keats, so her standards were probably too high. I, too, have a trunkful of journals, and easy, experimental standards. In fact, I’m willing to make up my own standards as I go along.
(Oz calls this trunk my “trousseau” and quotes Mae West: “Keep a diary and some day it’ll keep you.”) I went through my own phase of the English Romantics, but now I prefer the Russians. The Russians totally understand about keepin’ it real. The poor old Brits were a pale lot, except for Byron, but there’s virtually no difference between nineteenth century Russians and twenty-first century Southerners that I can see. Our nineteenth century Russian equivalents yearned for Paris, but where’s our escape? Hollywood?

Oz willingly spoke about my mother any time I cared to ask. I could tell he admired her, as much as he could admire a woman, as much as he could admire anyone who wasn’t him. She got a Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, writing her thesis on marriage in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall when she met my father and fell in love. He was the love of her life and his ill health her greatest sorrow. She came from that generation where you live for other people. Fatal for a writer. Don’t give up control of the one thing you have: yourself. Oz says their relationship only flourished because he traveled so much. Proximity is a romance killer.

Here are the other things I know about my mother; her third greatest grief was her prolonged period of childlessness and she adored word games but didn’t care for dirty jokes. Oz said that just before she died she was starting to “free herself to the great wide world.” She was raised Catholic so had all that extra mumbo jumbo stuff to recover from. Oz says it takes those types at least another decade to break the bonds. She was proud of her career but she wanted to be a mother and so when we were finally born her happiness was complete. Until her husband had his fatal heart attack.

Oz said she changed a lot after that; she started talking about going back to the States because she wanted to do whatever was best for us, and Africa was unstable at the time. (I guess it still is.) Oz was the executor of her husband’s estate and he says he backed her up in whatever she wanted to do. He was thinking of going back himself, because he’d heard Colleen was divorcing and he’d always had “a thing” for her. Then my mother got her aneurysm and died. Oz said he’d tried hard to give us the kind of life she would have wanted, and we were turning into women she’d be proud of.

Finally it was Craig Axelrod’s turn to speak. I snapped back to reality eager to hear our side. He was walking back and forth, pumping the air with his arms. Object, object, object. Nothing new there. I tried making notes for my book, but that shimmering picture was just too alluring. I feared losing eye contact with my mother, fraying that magic ribbon of connection. If she was speaking to me, what was she saying? I craned my ears but the portal failed. The picture changed. Now it was a naked skull, spliced with crosshatching.

Buford touched each one with a laser pointer. One, two, three, four, five six seven – the exact same number Colleen had suffered. But this wasn’t Colleen’s skull. What was he saying? That this was my mother’s skull? They dug it up, they shaved it, they counted the wounds, they took pictures, and now they expected me to admire their handiwork. Really, the total absolute disgusting shamelessness of some people is unbelievable. Whoever said how it’s impossible to underestimate the taste of the American public was right on. I knew I was going to lean over the bench and throw up, right in front of all these people.

Shelley was crying stormily into Jake’s shoulder. I tried to stand up. I needed to get the hell out of there. I was angry, too. I had an idea I would make a statement, or at the very least walk up to Buford and vomit on his shoes. Someone needed to tell the judge to put a stop to this. Horrible Spike’s horrible arms were round me in pythonic vise. I would have to throw up on him, instead.
Served him right. I hope I was more trouble than he had planned. I got some good scratching in, I know. He was too big for me. Couldn’t catch my breath. I saw Oz rise to his feet to protest – thank God — and heard the judge order the bailiffs to clear the room.

So I was able to throw up in private, all by myself, decently, in the ladies’ room, with Shelley in the next stall and Spike guarding the door.

This was Trevor’s fault, I remember thinking. None of this would have happened if he’d been there. Or maybe he was smart to stay away. Mina tried to warn me.

Well, I wasn’t going back in, that was for sure. Spike had to partly drag me and partly carry me into the conference room, saying, “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here.” Trevor would never have allowed Spike to manhandle me like this.

In the conference room all hell broke loose. Spike leaned against the door as if to prevent escape or rescue. Oz held me. I tried pretending he was Trevor — now that he was so thin they were more alike. I could hear Shelley yelling until Jake threatened to slap her.
Craig performed an Indian dance, complete with war whoops. He flashed me his nacreous smile, saying,

“You did it, you did it!”

“You set us up,” I accused him. “You knew this would happen.”

Mina handed water bottles. Asked Shelley and me if we wanted a Xanax. Or three. Hell, take the whole bottle.

“Calm down,” said Craig. “Everybody sit.”

We all sat down, except Craig. All eyes fixed on him. Oz had a little grin on his face. I felt Craig sucking, sucking the oxygen out of the room, forcing us to see things his way. I knew we would have to agree with whatever he said if we ever hoped to breathe fresh air.

“Of course I knew he was going to do it.” He pounded his fist on the table. “It was effin’ outrageous, but they might have gotten away with it. They want to show those disgustingly prejudicial photographs of your mother’s autopsy to the jury. Other than an actual snuff film, I can’t conceive of a sight more upsetting or disturbing, particularly if you don’t get out much.

“Yes, Buford told me to prepare you but do I get to prepare the jury? Nooooooo. So if you’d sat stoically through today’s monstrosity – or even covered your faces – or God forbid missed court – the judge might have ruled them admissible. Now, I don’t see how he can.

“If the judge rules those photos out it will be entirely owing to you girls today. This is what it’s all about, darlin’s. Listen to me, listen to me now. This is basic Gamesmanship 101, very important. I’ll bet you a Franklin he won’t let those photos in now. Plus he should be extra vigilant about that entire avenue of testimony. Prevent Buford sneaking things in. Care to make a wager?”

Jesus, I thought, that’s our money he’s betting with.

Oz put an arm around Shelley’s shoulder and a hand on my knee.
“This is war,” said. Oz “I’m so sorry. I wish I could have spared you, but this is war.”

The court clerk knocked on the door to let us know it was time to return. Shelley couldn’t keep her Valium down. This is what comes of having no breakfast. She rushed back to the ladies room.

“No more pictures till he rules,” said Craig. “I promise, no more pictures.”
I said to Oz, “So my mother didn’t die of an aneurysm?”

“Of course she died of an aneurysm. Triggered by a fall. It often happens that way. Falls are a leading cause of death. Or maybe the aneurysm caused the fall. How should we know, after all these years?”

I sought his pale blue eyes behind the glittering glass reflections, trying to read the images flickering behind them.
“But those cuts on her head—”

“Nobody knew about those. Maybe she slipped a couple of times. There were ladders standing around, buckets, rebar. It was a construction site. Something may have fallen on her. You have to realize, there wasn’t an autopsy at the time. Nobody wanted one.”

“There wasn’t a rush to judgment,” intoned Craig and Oz echoed,
“Sensitivity to bereavement. There wasn’t a rush to judgment.”

Their voices echoed falsely, the adults assuring the toddlers that monsters are unreal. If there was no investigation, isn’t that a rush to judgment? They made up their minds too soon. Too soon.
The marshals came in; slapping Spike, collecting Oz. Oz has to return to court through his special door, portal of a different kind. God forbid he contaminate the universe by standing in the public hall.

“I’ll take that Xanax now,” I said. I’m made of tougher stuff than Shelley, I thought.
Spike held the door open for me and said something as I passed through, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking, the cuts came from outside, not inside of her head. You wouldn’t even need an autopsy to find them. Couldn’t they feel them? Didn’t they even wash the blood out of her hair? What did the funeral home people think when they got this body with a death certificate that said “aneurysm” but her head was all cut up?

“Not my job, boss” is what they probably said. Nobody gives a damn about anybody.
Unfortunately the arguments weren’t over. In law, they never are.

Craig went on and on about what a transparent ploy this was to convince the jury Oz was a serial killer without charging him with any other crimes. A trial within a trial, as the Court TV people say. Unconscionable, against precedent, hopelessly prejudicial. Inviting the jury to string him up without true deliberation.

“Why doesn’t the state charge him with this crime if they are so eager to tar him with it? Because they don’t have any actual evidence, that’s why, just a bunch of shocking pictures and innuendoes by persons with grudges and fading memories.”

Buford stood up to say these crimes were so similar they established a pattern of conduct. I tried to listen but the Xanax was kicking in. Both women had died in a swimming pool of seven blows to the top of the head and Oz White was the last man to be seen with either of them.

I thought I was hallucinating. I said out loud, “She died in a –“ before Spike covered my mouth. The judge looked right at me. He was a reptilian old guy sporting eye goggles behind which his eyes floated loose, like bait fish. What was he thinking? I was thinking he had so little hair nobody could get away with cutting up his head and keeping it secret. Listen up. Previously unknown benefit to baldness.

Spike had me under control in the end zone so the judge glanced away. I seriously considered biting Spike on his hand. This was war, said Oz, let the Marquess of Queensberry whirl in his grave. Everyone else was. Xanax fizzed its insidious little bubbles into my blood. I relaxed. Instead of pigskin, Spike had a rag doll.

I don’t do drugs unless really hard up for entertainment. I have the metabolism of a hummingbird so it’s all drugs to me. Booze, coffee, mustard, salt, vinegar, alka seltzer; psychedelics in my book.
The judge said he realized time was of the essence since Buford had gathered witnesses from around the world, and the state was putting them up at government expense, so he would hand down his ruling at nine Monday morning. In my imagination the judge impersonated God, draped in a tasteful bath towel, would hand a stone tablet to Buford and say, thus it is written. Then we would all dance around the tablet, grateful for the decision-making of others so we could allow our own brains to jellify. Follow, follow, follow, sang the chorus.

Spike hoisted me to my feet. I floated away up, up and away, leaving the core of my essential self, that thing Trevor calls a soul, still sitting there, goggle-mouthed, on the polished wooden bench. Soul-struck. As the poet so rightly said, you can check out all you want, but you can never leave.