Funny maybe. Sad certainly. But off the wall sometimes as well, her own freak show exhibit one. What more Lorraine knew about strange goings-on than did her corkhead hubby was that people were having trouble these days keeping John’s bride, so long in the middle of things here, within their field of vision. She sort of was there, like always, and she sort of wasn’t. At least that was what Lollie was picking up around town — picking up, that is, as in picking up a radio station when spinning the dial or punching the scan button. No one was talking about John’s wife’s tendency these days to come and go without actually coming or going, almost as though to mention it might bring bad luck, some sort of taboo or something, but they were thinking a lot about her and it, and of late, ever since that weird night at the club when Maynard had barked out his love inside her head, Lorraine had found herself, though she didn’t know why and on the whole didn’t like it, increasingly privy to their unspoken speculations. Which at first she’d thought were being spoken, making the mistake of asking, “What? Beg your pardon?” and getting sharp squinty gazes in return, irritable thought-motes sifting through that were anything but generous toward her person. Not that she was served much better when she kept her mouth shut. Some things you just didn’t want to know. That line about wishing to see ourselves as others see us was a crock of shit. So fearful was Lorraine of what her last best friend Marge might really think of her, in fact, she’d been avoiding her recently, even though Marge had called her twice now to tell her she was making a very big decision and she needed—please! — Lorraine’s help, but she did run into her milquetoast husband out at the country club one afternoon when Marge was out on the course, and learned, tuning in while he stared absently out at the practice green, that, one, watching John’s wife walk her clubs to the first tee a while ago, Trevor had been able to see only isolated bodily parts shifting along, never the whole person, and, two, her point on his “action aerialgraphs” (had Lorraine heard him right?) had vanished altogether, whatever that meant. Stopping in at the little downtown drugstore for her summer supply of antifungal cream and foot powder, Band-Aids, calamine and sunburn lotion, antibiotic ointment, bug spray, antacids, moisturizing cream, and an over-the-counter hemorrhoid treatment that Lorraine hoped the crippled pharmacist in there with the Coke-bottle lenses who always looked like she had a cob up her ass would think was for Waldo (she did), she overheard, so to speak, an account of how someone (had to be John’s wife from what she could “see” of her) came in earlier, stepped up onto the old penny weighing machine Oxford had installed in there half a century ago, and then, more or less abruptly, wasn’t there anymore — but the machine still registered her weight as though she were. This was supposedly similar to something that had happened when she “lumbered into the doctor’s office”(?) a few days ago. Certainly old Alf seemed worried about her (there was a squishy tactile image that meant nothing to Lollie, though it made her shudder when she flashed on it, or it on her, a night ago out at the club), the police chief did, the woman’s hairdresser, her odd son’s teacher likewise. Beatrice had a story about her from church choir practice (Lorraine could hear her thin and thinning voice, but could not see her, not quite aware that this was also Beatrice’s own sensation), though it only leaked in fragments through Trixie’s overwhelming preoccupation these days with the unfathomable mystery of her pregnancy, which Lorraine gathered was more than mere uncertainty about who the father might be. And so on around town, Veronica, Daphne, even John’s mother, a pattern emerging, fading, reassembling itself, much like the subject of that pattern herself. But what to make of it? Lollie didn’t know, knew even less what to make of this newfound gift of hers, call it that, more like a collapse of some part of her immune system, in truth, and capable, she knew, of driving her batty. Did she truly want to know about Brother Beans’s obnoxious performance at a stag party eighteen years ago? No, she did not. Her boys had got into a fight at bedtime and, breaking it up, she’d discovered she knew everything that was boiling up in their hateful little minds, including their intimate loathing of her just at that moment, thanks a lot, guys. Too much. Peace, please. And, so beseeching, Lollie had quietly slipped into bed beside her dreamless spouse, who, having saluted her fulsomely from beneath his big tent, now snored peacefully beside her (nothing but utter darkness there when she turned in — damn him for his unearned peace of mind!), wishing she’d brought some matches to bed with her so that she might light up one of his salutes and give his butt something to think about even if he remained impenetrable between the eats.
Fire! The forest is on fire! Oh my God! All is lost! Where’s my—? No, no, the Artist (author) was just dreaming, it’s all right, calm down, get a drink of water. Ellsworth staggered from cot to sink and ran the cold tap full blast as though to douse the still vivid flames, his heart pounding. It was so real! The Artist, too, terrified, his heart pounding, lying there on the riverbank where he’s thrown himself: he plunges his head in the water (the whole damned forest was ablaze!), thinking: The Stalker’s not the truly dangerous one. I am. He stroked his face. In the dull silvered mirror over the sink, Ellsworth saw the suffering writer, eyes hollow and cheeks unshaven, thready hair unwashed and tangled, and he was reassured. What day was it? Night, rather. He didn’t know. Next issue of the Crier probably due. Or overdue. He’d rerun an old one. Remember when. What did it matter, always the same news anyway, they’d probably not even notice. Well, the new brides would. The newly promoted and the newly bereaved, damn their black relentless souls, their pride of names. And there was the one-man mayoral race, heading into its silly season now with Pioneers Day just around the corner, and pool hours to be announced, Little League box scores, the repaving of Sixth Street to report. Now Ellsworth saw the abused writer above his sink, the unappreciated one, the one forced to hack out his miserable worldly pittance at the expense of his art, a more tragic character than the suffering one, though not as appealing. He gave the abused writer a sympathetic nod, the suffering one an ironic smile, turned to his old painted kitchen table whereon his gathering opus lay, and saw in an instant that the Model had vanished. This was the meaning of the dream of raging fire, and the panic it had stirred in the Artist’s heart. Had he really wished to destroy it all? Just because she’d — because she wasn’t — because he can’t find her? But she might still be here, after all, just hiding, playing a game, as in the old days. There were old days? He hadn’t thought about them, but probably there were. Now the Artist rolls over on his back, there at the bank of the dark glittering river where he’s flung himself, and he sweeps the wet hair out of his face, gazes up through the branches of his forest at the vast and vaulted sky above, where all is nameless and nothing is. His fate without her. Perhaps she’s vanished to remind him that there were old days, that there is an ancient bond between them that he, in his intransigent pursuit of beauty, has tended to forget, or ignore, and that he must recover these lost connections, these buried feelings, if he is to plumb his true creative depths. That’s assuming the child left freely, of course, and on her own. He holds his breath and listens for the Stalker’s vile laughter. His insinuating wheeze, his sinister steps, any sign would do. Silence. A terrible emptiness all around. He seems to remember now her desperate cries, muffled by a ruthless hand clapped to her tender mouth, her bare limbs flailing through the undergrowth. What then? Well, he must rescue her! His art depends on it! The Artist lies sprawled on his back by the rippling stream under the scattered stars, considering the heroics that face him on the morrow and contemplating meanwhile, as he prepares to drift off for a bit so as to refresh himself for the coming ordeal, the unspeakable things the blackhearted Stalker is no doubt doing now with and to the captured child. Ah! No! The villain …!