The Count laughed, Contesa did, also, a little after him, as if against her will. I'd recounted the story easily, all set in my memory, so I knew I'd never forget it, until I did, when I no longer needed it or couldn't retain it.
— There's your darkness, Contesa said.
— A gallows humorist, the Count said.
I lay my head on Contesa's lap, the Count fed the fire some more, and it leaped up energetically, exhausting me further with its dizzying patterns, so I shut my eyes.
The Turkish poet was in the room, I was having sex, with him, "Why do you wear a bar?" he asked. "Don't you mean bra?" I asked. "No," he said. I was nineteen, his name was Adam, his long hair hung in waves, and in the room, there was a perfect chair, it was beautiful, but was it mine? I wanted one, and what would it mean about my life if I didn't have one. I could design it, so I searched for materials in a desert, but where was I looking, there's nothing to use. "Why do you need a perfect chair?" someone asked, maybe Contesa. "That's a tall order," someone said, not me, I'm tall, but not tall enough, and I climbed a high chair. Many cats played underneath, all of them black with white paws, but I had to care for an abandoned dog, when my father appeared and said, "Don't look…"
— Helen. Helen. Wake up.
I heard my name.
After I had rested my head on Contesa's lap, I instantly dropped off, briefly but completely, and I wanted to keep on sleeping, but the Count said I had to wake up, we had to go, it was getting dark, soon it'd be dinnertime in the residence, and I remembered I'd made an appointment for drinks with Spike and the Turkish poet. The Count and Contesa had flashlights, there was nothing to worry about, nothing at all, and I brushed myself off and traipsed after them sleepily.
— We're nearly there, just a few more minutes, Helen, Contesa said.
— Where are we?
— Near the main house, the Count said.
— What do you mean?
— We walked in a very wide circle, then smaller ones, behind, around the community. Actually, more like an ellipse.
I have no sense of direction, and, when the main house came into sight, the Count was beside me, he was returning, after all, if he was, but when we were leaving each other, to prepare for dinner-I thought I might check the mail first-I wished I'd told a story about the family cat instead of the one I did, I wasn't sure what I had told them, really, but I wished it'd been something else. I'd rarely thought of wishes before, now I was thinking about them often, Moira's dictum lodged in me, not so much about a wish to speak to the dead, but about the wish itself, and I realized that, if you have wishes against all reason, immune to reality, if you have wishes no matter what, then the wish trumps everything, always, and so in a sense, nothing else matters as much. There it was, the triumph of the wish. This notion satisfied me, though if valid or true, it wouldn't permit satisfaction, because most wishes don't come true and instead ache like unanswered lust. Still, wishes foment relationships, history, design, there are so many wishes, unacknowledged longings for the impossible precede every endeavor, and consequently, there are so many failures, but then there are significant exceptions, history often tells the story of exceptions. I might wish to make my skin immaterial and stop itching.
To mark the day with the Count and Contesa, as well as to humor myself, I called it Triumph of the Wish and imagined that very soon I'd design and build a chair that deserved that title, so that I might sit upon a wish. I might also unfurl the Fabric Monolith, not now, but someday, because it was a wish. I contemplated doing it, spreading out the cloth, or unrolling the material past itself, and, as I entered the main house, I avoided the gaze of certain residents, especially the demanding man, signed in, and walked along an imaginary straight line to the small, woodsy, cedar mailroom, to see what news awaited me.
I can live with, among, and in almost anything anywhere for a while, most arrangements satisfy for a day, a week, six months or more, occasionally not at all or never, not even for an hour, if, for instance, you're being suffocated, starved, or tortured, but mostly free of restraints, I want to start over and try something else, because I'm dissatisfied, restless, form an opinion about the possibilities available, and reach the end of my rope. Not long after Triumph of the Wish, I awoke to the clock radio, listened to the mellifluous, empty radio voices, turned them on and off with increasing agitation, avoided breakfast until I couldn't stand the idea of not eating until lunch, which is usually poor, and also chose, maybe arbitrarily, choice often is, if you have a choice, which is deceptively uncommon, but nevertheless I decided, as I dressed quickly in lightweight one hundred percent cotton black slacks and a gray and black striped, long-sleeved cotton boatneck jersey, to leave the community. Its residential flux no longer compelled me, instead, it grated, the view outside of my window as I worked or contemplated palled, a silly story, which involved Henry, Arthur, the kitchen helper, and myself, exasperated me, but it implicated me, in a sense, in more of the same, an expected occurrence in a small community, indicating also it was probably time to leave. Spike, whose wit and humor I relied upon, whose ramrod straight posture my father would've liked, had turned peevish and severe as a Shaker chair, while the Turkish poet rarely left his room, the disconsolate women fought at dinner, and the tall balding man shifted his desire to a new resident, a prematurely gray-haired and attractive vegan, whose occupation I couldn't figure out. I considered mentioning to the tall balding man, more than once, the new moisture-management fabrics, such as Coolmax and Moistex, that quickly absorb and dry sweat, knitted from polyester fibers, an aid to sufferers of primary palmar hyperhidrosis, but when he clasped my hand in his wet palms, with a sincerity I didn't know he felt, I didn't tell him, because usually it's better not to say anything. Even the demanding man felt familiar and bearable, so in opposition to what I might also become, especially to myself, I knew it was time to go, though it's impossible ever to grasp time's truth, if it has any, which is dubious, or discover with absolute surety the right idea, but the staff encouraged me. Soon I prepared for my return to the place I call home by spending a good week deliberating about and sorting my clutter, a day or two burning what was no longer necessary, which entailed building many fires by the Count's method and making more decisions than I wanted to make, and often I tossed small cardboard objects, bits of paper, doodles for designs, notes, quotations I collected (Curt Flood, "I am pleased God gave me black skin. I wish he'd made it thicker;" Oscar Levant, "I can stand anything except failure;" Sigmund Freud, "Consideration for the dead, who, after all, no longer need it, is more important to us than truth, and, certainly, for most of us, than consideration for the living;" Hannah Arendt, "Appearing beings living in a world of appearances have an urge to show themselves;" Ralph Waldo Emerson to Oliver Wendell Holmes, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him") into cardboard boxes labeled "Miscellaneous." I instituted a novel system to allow for contingency by which I filed shapeless or promising concepts into colorful folders, whose colors corresponded to my color/number system, at last employing that idea usefully, and washed my clothes in one hundred percent Ivory Snow for sensitive skin, my lamb's wool, angora, and cashmere sweaters in Woolite, and packed them, actually rolled them to avoid wrinkles, in two sturdy, black nylon suitcases with wheels.