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Dear Vickie:

You’re tipsy. No, I’m sober. Then why are you writing this? Because I don’t want to go too long without having him receive a letter even if it’s not what he wants. Give him what he wants, Vickie. No, Victoria, I don’t know what he wants from me. You do, mostly. What do you expect, a list of rules? Do this, don’t do that? Pour your heart out to me, screw around all you want but leave me your soul. Write me intense romantic letters every Sunday over tea and biscuits. Scent your letters. Discuss your erotica. I’m tired. Who isn’t?

In twenty years I bet I’ll have breast cancer. I wonder what it feels like to lose a breast. If I’m going to be unhealthy I’m not going to live. Yes, you’ll show them, won’t you? Lung and breast cancer, kidney disease and maybe a goiter, and you’ll just go and die. You’re unstable, aren’t you, Vickie? I admit it. Not everyone does. After I’m done with prettiness, I know what I am — silly as it is. Vickie, no one thinks I’m a rock of security, but do they know you’re compulsive, self-destructive, paranoid? Probably.

Will this amuse him?

Are you amused?

I’ll tell you, Vickie, when he answers.

Will he answer?

Sure, he’s probably cross at me but he’ll answer me.

Love,

Toria.

P.S. My mother has a tumor in her breast. I hope it isn’t malignant. Selfishly, I’m worried not only for her but for me and the children I’ll have.

P.P.S. I’m still getting the great American suntan in my wholesome sexy swimsuit and Riviera sunglasses. You in your hijacker sunglasses and me in mine, what a pair! I’m reading The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, The Hite Report, and The Total Woman. I’ve decided to become a man — grow hair on my chest and cultivate a tight ass.

P.P.P.S. Purge the earth. Kill every third person. No, every fourth. No, just all those that protest.

37

Luke’s friend Raymond had sometimes spoken quite calmly and freely of his first wife, the one who had left him and whom he still loved the most. And Luke used to take pleasure in speaking of Eve, whom, as he freely confessed, he loved because he never knew her; some years it had seemed as if he loved her more than Stephanie, out of self-spite or something more glorious. By the time he had thinned out, staggering dizzily and clutching at his greying head, he rarely mentioned Eve. As for Victoria, hopefully her husband had both known her and prized her over other women; whereas this formerly seventeen-year-old lover of hers was only now getting acquainted with her. What he had begun to learn from rereading her old letters shamed him: even then she had offered him this knowledge of her, openly and honestly — perhaps because she did not love him, for if she did, would she have been so brave? Or did this conclusion simply indicate how debased his idea of love must be? But then who could be as cruel as Victoria, who when she went away to college liked to calmly, brightly write him about all the boys to whom she opened her legs? As to whether these revelations had hurt him at the time, he had no recollection. After her he had had, among others, a number of prostitute girlfriends, and even when his middleclass sweethearts cheated on him and lied about it, he never felt especially jealous — oh, a little, perhaps. Had Victoria broken him of that habit? He longed to rush off to the cemetery right then; he had many things to ask her. But some of love’s most delicious business takes place behind the beloved’s back — for instance, remembering her. There were times that long ago summer when he got to see Victoria for an hour — and then, while he was with her, he loved her so much that he wished they were already apart, so he could begin to remember her sayings and smiles; if he stayed with her too long, he might forget one or two of them. (Which ones hadn’t he forgotten by now?) Smelling the insides of the envelopes, and sometimes peering inside them just in case there might be something still undiscovered which his dead girl had sent him, he chewed pain pills. He would have liked to ask Luke’s advice: Next time he went to the cemetery, should he, so to speak, go deeper? At seventeen he had a male friend to whom he related everything, while Victoria must have had some other seventeen-year-old girl, or perhaps her younger sister, to whom she confided this or that about him—or had she truly been so strong, or isolated, that she kept him to herself? He wished to describe to Luke what it was like to see Victoria welling up out of her grave like a swarm of fireflies; sometimes her skull grinned at him like a stone lantern before the flesh seethed mistily and milkily over it. Knowing that the dead could come back was one of the great experiences of his life; he yearned to tell Luke all about it. But presumably Luke, being dead, already knew. Anyhow, shouldn’t he have used the green potion to bring Luke back, instead of putting Victoria first? No; Luke would not have wanted to return; that would have been unkind. Then why wasn’t it unkind to resurrect Victoria? Well, she was confined to her grave; it wasn’t as if he had kidnapped her out of oblivion and imprisoned her like a pretty goldfish! Then where was Luke? What if he too were trapped? At least his ashes were scattered in the mountains. And Luke had assured him, he had insisted and promised (although how could he know?) that there was no postmortem consciousness; did that mean that Luke was safe from being one with the old man whose marble head gazed sternly out of the niche in his family skeletons’ landmark?

Victoria, or at least her circumstances, might have intrigued Luke. If nothing else, Luke would have listened to him kindly and patiently. His grief for Luke was as deep as a bullfrog’s voice in a sweltering swamp whose summer evening smell of sunburned live oaks now begins to ooze away at the edges, for fingers of coolness are oozing out of the muck; now the light softens from gold to white, and dusk dances on the triggerhairs of grasses.

(I try to keep my life at arm’s length and just look at it, Luke once said. I haven’t done a lot of things I wanted to do or should have done, but I don’t pretend I have.)

Remembering when he and Luke were young and went hiking in the mountains together, he lay down, chewing more pain pills; the bottle was nearly empty. After that he might have been dreaming. Opening the middle drawer of his father’s desk, he saw the dead moon in the black sky. He loved the sight. How often, if ever, did Luna duplicate herself? Wearily he crept to the window and found another moon there. Then he was sick to his stomach. Once that ended, he lay down on top of his unmade bed and closed his eyes. He saw the moon again. This time it appeared to be falling up toward the blue earth.

38

When he met Mr. Murmuracki again, he realized that he had lately been perceiving everyone else as if through glass, distant and muted. Only this old man did he see true.

He knew enough not to inquire about moonflowers. He said: I’d like to go to the moon.

Well, said Mr. Murmuracki, for that you don’t need me. You need—

Excuse me, but I can’t seem to find anyone else.

Ah. How much time did you say you had left?

I’d guess three months. But how can I know? My stomach hurts—

And why is it exactly that you thought I might be able to help you?

I bought my moonflowers from you.

Yes, I remember, but how does that signify?