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19. Duty Calling.

Deep in the distant far side of Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort, Jacki Strell waited on the bed for Councilman Wiggins to finish his cleanup in the bathroom. The excitable Councilman had spilled all over himself inside of twenty minutes. As usual, he had tried to hold out and Jacki had attempted the methods she knew to slow him down: giving it a finger flick on the head, grabbing a single pubic hair and pulling it out, etc. All to no avail. Given that the entertainment was informally scheduled for an hour, Jacki faced the familiar problem of dead air with Councilman Wiggins. Most of the time, they tried half-heartedly to bring him to a second climax, a climax for Jacki, of course, being the furthest thing from either of their minds. He usually just ended up biting too hard on her nipples while fumbling ineffectively with her round bottom.

Jacki sighed pleasurably. She had so much Forum in her bloodstream that Councilman Wiggins could bite away and she wouldn’t even notice until the next day rolled around and salve would be required for her inflamed, maltreated aureoles. Taking Forum was like kicking back in a hot bubble bath you could take along anywhere. The world became one movable, ongoing massage. It was fair to say she couldn’t remember what life was like before Forum, back in those non-prostitute, number-filled days with her sons and ex-husband, but one of the side effects of Forum was the peculiar accompanying belief that all of a sudden there wasn’t a life before Forum, that it was always there, that it would always be there, that no problem was ever too big or too unpleasant that it couldn’t be washed away in the enveloping stream of Forum. She barely registered the Councilman coming out of the bathroom looking both sheepish and peeved.

—I thought you said you were going to learn some new things to keep that from happening.

—It’s okay—

She blanked on his name.

—Darling. It happens to a lot of men.

—But you said you could slow things down, that it wouldn’t be a problem.

—I did slow things down, but let’s face it, you’re a little soldier who wants to shoot as soon as he gets to the firing line.

—Little.

She sighed, but didn’t lose the smile from her face.

—I don’t mean literally little. I meant it as a term of endearment.

—I’m not little.

He was. He was almost six inches shorter than Jacki, a good two stones slighter, and his genitalia, while proportional, were on the smaller side of what Jacki had seen in her most recent business days.

—No one’s saying you are.

—You just did.

—I didn’t, but we were having such a fun evening. Come here. Come back to bed. We’ll have a nice, relaxing time for the rest of the hour.

Wiggins looked skeptical.

—Maybe we can make you go twice.

—You think so?

—Honey, I’m sure of it.

What were these words? Where did they come from? She didn’t even call her children ‘honey', had never addressed her husband during the eleven years they were married as ‘darling'. And what were these clothes? She was a mathematician, for pity’s sake. Mathematicians didn’t wear rubber panties or silicon bras with zippers down the front of each breast. Accountants sure as hell didn’t wear black hosiery attached to a black metal band that gave a slight electric shock when touched. At least not on a regular basis, they didn’t. Who was she? Who was she right now?

Sometimes with Forum came the Lions, and they could kill you if you let them drag you away. Jacki closed her eyes and fought. Forum had a vibration, and while Councilman Wiggins resumed sucking down her nutrient-rich breast milk (also, incidentally, Forum-rich; Councilman Wiggins had quite unknowingly developed his own habit), she concentrated on working her way back into Forum’s vibe. She could even see it when she closed her eyes. It was honey-colored and shimmering and just out of her reach.

Breathe, Jacki, breathe.

The Lions were at her heels, trying to drag her back to the present, if she could just, if she could only, if she could—

There it was. Oh, my, yes. There it was.

Everything’s all right, honey. Nothing could be finer, darling.

Was she talking aloud?

She exhaled slowly, and her unconscious hand tenderly stroked the Councilman’s thinning brown hair.

20. In the Hours Before Morning.

The questions were as old as time itself, but no less rigorous for their familiarity:

Are there reasons for love? And are they all intangible? If not, what if intangibles are the only things I have? Am I justifying all of this for my own wishful thinking? Is that love then, or is it just rationalization? Is this what we do when we’re in love? Is there nothing real? Or is he just beyond my reach? And what does he think of me? Is he reminded of me during the rest of the week? Does my name enter his mind at work? Do I exist for him when I’m not here?

Peter hadn’t slept much. He glanced over Luther’s slumbering neck at the clock. It was still a little while before dawn. Staying for the whole night was another rarity in a clip, especially since Luther had already paid and Peter had logged in a completion over the phone hours ago. He put his face to the back of Luther’s neck, inhaling a funk that verged on the offensive but steadfastly remained deeply sexual. It was a smell only lovers got. A stranger would have wrinkled his nose at the presumption.

Luther stirred.

—Are you awake?

—Oh, sorry, Luther. I didn’t mean to wake you.

—I wasn’t sleeping.

—Me neither.

—Why not?

—Just thinking.

—What about?

—Just things. How about you? You’ve got to get up for work in a couple of hours.

—I know.

—So why are you awake? I don’t go on shift until tonight. I can afford to waste sleeping time.

—It’s not as if I’m choosing to.

—What’s bothering you?

—It’s nothing.

—I’ve heard that before.

—You wouldn’t understand.

—Do you have any idea how insulting that is?

—Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant that I don’t quite understand it, and that’s why I’m awake, because I can’t figure it out.

—Maybe I could help you.

—You wouldn’t want to get involved in my problems.

—Why wouldn’t I?

In the blue darkness, Luther turned to face Peter.

—Why would you?

Luther’s eyes reflected the moonlight that crept in through the slats in the windowblinds. He held on to Peter’s arm and peered deeply into Peter’s face, as if the answer were literally written there and he would have to make it out in the dark somehow. Peter could feel the pressure of full attention. Here was, if not the moment, then certainly a moment, a turning point where wished-for but unexpected advancement just might be possible, where the door opened a crack and a small light flung its way toward the promising. Peter couldn’t catch his breath. He could actually feel the sweat coming off of his brow.

But, curses until the end of time, it was too early for him to rise to the occasion.

—I think … I mean, you’re a great guy.

—Oh. Well. Thanks. That’s very sweet.

He kissed Peter on the forehead.

—I think you’re great, too, Peter.

—I just mean—

—You don’t have to say any more. It’s all right. Just me and my boring problems. Let’s just try to get some sleep, okay?

Luther turned back around, away from Peter. Peter nuzzled closer to him. Neither of them slept during what remained of the rags of the early morning, Luther lost in his thoughts, Peter berating himself for not saying something, anything better. And so neither of them found out what there was to find out, neither of them spoke when the opportunity was there. Which was too bad, because if either of them had had that tiny bit of bravery available right at that moment, so much of what followed could have been avoided.

21. The Crash Before Dawn.

It was still dark, and the sleeping bodies of the herd were scattered across the Arboretum’s wide main field like boulders thrown from a volcano. Maggerty slept in a nervous curl at the base of a tree, somnolently shooing away a murder of dream crows that pecked at his bare dream feet. A clear sky huddled overhead, the stars whispering in urgent tones about some universal matter or other. There was no artificial light on the hill of fields, but the moon was bright enough to cast crisp shadows of the many clutches of snoozing rhino hillocks. All was quiet. It was late enough for the olive bats and Hennington flying foxes to have finished their nocturnal feedings and scoot themselves off to inverted slumber. Even the breeze had settled down to rest.

But she was awake. She wasn’t upset, she probably couldn’t have even been called troubled, but there was definitely a disquiet in her. For hour upon hour now, she had been unable to work it out. She was lying down and had pulled distractedly at the grass within reach of her lips until a bald spot had appeared in a semicircle around her. Even then, she kept at it until she tasted nothing but dirt. Finally, she just sat up, twisting her ears this way and that, listening for the usual sounds of the deepest part of the night, hearing some, not hearing others.

Everything was wrong and nothing was. Her nostrils could smell the hint of dust in the air, yet that in itself wasn’t troubling. The eagles weren’t in their nests, but maybe they had just started mating season a few weeks early. The grass tasted bitter, but maybe something had just gotten into the groundwater. Maybe her anxiety was misplaced. The rest of the herd didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. The birthrate had held steady, and the nine calves that had been born this year were neither more nor less healthy than in previous years. The last animal to die was almost two years ago when an ancient male was unable to pull himself out of a mud bog and the animals had to mill around helplessly while he slowly bleated his way to death by dehydration. There was no disease in the herd, no malnourishment, no hoof or skin malady.

So what was bothering her? The herd might be oblivious but the thin creature that always followed them had sensed something, too. He gave off a horribly forlorn and confused smell in the best of times, but lately it had increased to the point of almost being distracting. He also stuck closer to the herdmembers than he had before, even daring to nap in the middle of the herd while they grazed. It didn’t prove anything, but at least she wasn’t alone.

The sky began to change color, glowing slightly along one horizon. She hadn’t rested all night, but forcing herself, she laid her head down onto the dirt mat to snatch whatever slumber she could before full-fledged daybreak. It was still a long while before she finally slipped off to shallow, fitful sleep.

Part II. There Are No Ends, Only Changes.

22. Marmalade Leviathan.

Eugene’s first job for Tybalt ‘Jon’ Noth was the procurement of a car (—Something black, Eugene, maybe a convertible, a sun roof at the very least), so when Eugene pulled up in front of the Solari in his brother’s seventeen-year-old orange Bisector, the one with the sideboards that kept killing old ladies before they moved the bus benches further away from the road, to say that Jon was non-plussed was quite possibly to understate the matter.

—And just what under the expanse of great blue heaven above is this?

—It’s my brother’s.

—Is he adopted?

—It’s the only car I could find.

—What a curious search that must have been.

—Well, I just thought that, you know.

—Oh, I don’t have even the slightest idea where you’re going with this, Eugene.

—Anyone can get a rental car.

—Of course they can. That’s the whole point. Convenience, you see, matched with desire. It’s called capitalism.

—I thought, I guess, you wanted something, I don’t know, singular.

—Singular?

—Yeah.

Jon blinked.

—Singular.

—My brother’s on a fishing boat for the next four months.

—So this … mobile clown cutlery is at our disposal.

—Look, if you don’t like it, I can get you something different. I just thought—

—I know. Singular.

—Fuck it, I’ll take it back.

—No, wait.

In truth, there was something spectacular about it, if Jon was going to be honest about things. The car was gargantuan with a long sloping roof that ultimately made its way to a third row of seats near the back. The half-dome hood swooped down to meet the twelve-bar radiator with a thud that could have raised mountains. Eugene’s brother had gotten the optional fifth door that served as a convenient escape hatch in case of fire or police stop. And then there were those lethal protruding sideboards. Bisector, It Divides the Road, had quickly entered the lingo as Vivisector, It Dices Wide the Old. Uniambic perhaps, but accurate. Eugene’s as-yet unnamed brother had kept it spotless and buffed to a point where both the wooden and chrome parts shone with equal glare. Such a monstrosity could never have been called beautiful, but it certainly was something. Singular, indeed.

—I’ve either grossly over-estimated you, Eugene, or grossly under-estimated. Either way, I’m curious as all hell as to how things are going to go.

—So you’ll use the car?

—'Car’ doesn’t quite cover it, does it?

—You’re not the easiest person to figure out, you know that?

—You’ve no idea.

Jon opened the passenger side door. Eugene looked surprised.

—I’m driving?

—Wouldn’t you rather drive?

—Yeah, but—

—If I’m going to be seen in this Day-Glo meteorite, I think being chauffeured is probably the only route to take. Wouldn’t you agree?

—Whatever you say.

—That’s what an employer likes to hear.

Eugene shook his head. Jon smiled.

—Good. It’ll be easier if you think I’m loony.

—What’ll be easier?

—To City Hall, Eugene.

—City Hall?

—I have an appointment with the Mayor.

—The Mayor.

—Yes.

—Don’t tell me she’s—

—Yes, she’s the friend.

Eugene turned the key. A sound like a two-story house being shat out the asshole of a zebra ripped through the dashboard. Jon had to strain to hear what Eugene said next.

—She’s married, you know.

—Yes.

They exchanged a long look until Eugene finally shrugged, put the car in gear, and thrust off in a cloud of purple smoke.

23. Comfort for the Uncomfortable.

Jarvis Kingham’s lifelong intellectual ambition had always been academic theology and that he ended up a practicing priest instead was maybe not the ironic hair-splitting that some of his more cynical friends presumed. For was not active ministration simply theology in action? While he had moments where he wished he could spend more time with his books and while the vigor of some of his parishioners sometimes scared the daylights out of him – Head Deacon Theophilus Velingtham to name just one – the benefits, both personal and spiritual, more than rewarded the decision he had made to follow this slightly divergent path.

He actually remembered the exact moment. An already bearded seventeen year old, he had entered the Bondulay Divinity School up in the Mallow Hills southeast of Hennington, a place packed with seminary students, sand blown over the hills from the Brown, and really nothing else save for the occasional chuckwalla or poisonous rattleback. This was six years after Currie vs Madam Montez’ School for the Sensual Arts, so by that point female seminary students were fully integrated into school life. Celibacy rules, even the temporary ones among students not studying for the priesthood, were still in force – no court was ever going to have any say over that issue – but the number of ‘immaculate’ conceptions at the school among female students was less than the all-male faculty had feared and predicted. As a matter of fact, the salutatorian of Jarvis’ graduating class was the one and only Lyric O’Mahoneyham, overthrower-to-be of Archbishop Carl Sequin, and probably on her way to the Bondulay High Papacy had Hennington’s future not taken the route it did.

(At that point, though, that was all a good ways off – and still remains a ways off now, though becoming uncomfortably close for more vaguely clairvoyant Henningtonians. If Archie Banyon’s body had been more specific about what awaited, he might not have given up smoking after all.)

Jarvis toddled along unremarkably and had just begun his third year when he met the woman who should have been the love of his life. Her name was Diana. Long brown hair cascading in waves around a breathtaking face without a trace of make-up; a serious, challenging brow that let you know you had better have more to your argument than just opinion; a nose slightly too wide over lips slightly too crooked placed on a face just slightly too large. Diana was stunning, not in the euphemism-for-beauty way, but actually stunning, as in it was difficult to find words for small talk when you first met her and equally difficult not to feel like you were trying to squirm out of the truth when she questioned your ideas. Most of the cocksure, popular, handsome boys at the seminary were terrified of her, and there was more than one malicious and erroneous story floated along the grapevine by those who felt threatened, which was more or less everyone.

Jarvis, on the other hand, too engrossed in his studies and too chaste in his temporary celibacy vow to notice any female, wouldn’t have registered Diana at all if she hadn’t insulted him publicly during a History of the Sacraments seminar. The class had reached the contentious subject of Hildegard Robham’s schism from the Bondulay during the Gentlemen’s War. In the old story of Pacifism pitted against The Regrettable Use of Force, Jarvis had taken the mildly surprising but by no means unprecedented position of agreeing with Robham’s pacifist principles. Diana had turned to face him from her seat in the seminar, nostrils blazing.

—I suppose I can understand your abhorrence to war, but to eliminate all use of force under every circumstance is naïve, suicidally idealistic, and in the most morally repugnant sense shirks adult responsibility. Pacifists allow their consciences to be free while still subsisting on the fruits of war.

Jarvis tried to argue back, but it was too late. He was already in love.

—How can you call the anonymous killing of strangers you’ve never met morally justified under any humane religion?

—In a theoretical argument about an uncomplicated world, you’re completely right. In this world, however, your argument is complete sheep’s balls!

—Miss Avisham!

—Sorry, Professor, but suppose, whatever-your-name-is, we’d taken a pacifist stance against Pistolet? Where would we be then?

—Don’t you believe the moral high ground would have eventually won out?

—Eventually? Eventually? You arrogant, self-satisfied, brainless pile of treacle. How many more people would your ‘eventually’ have allowed Pistolet to kill? How many more millions deserved to be tortured, raped, and murdered because of your grand ‘eventually'?

—Surely you concede that if we’d acted earlier on, with diplomatic means—

—I concede nothing! War is a horrible, atrocious, awful, awful thing, but war was not the monster, Pistolet was. You’re applying an absolute principle to an in-absolute world.

—But we’re talking about dogmatic philosophy, not practicum.

—And you’re hiding behind your hot air, you coward!

Diana held up the main textbook for the course.

—The world doesn’t exist in this. The world exists out there.

Jarvis didn’t have time to duck before the book connected with his nose and broke it. Later, remarkably not expelled and courteously walking home the newly bandaged and cotton-packed Jarvis, she had clarified her points.

—I’m sorry about your nose, but you were completely in the wrong.

—That’s all wight—

—I just get so mad at scholars who cave themselves in book-learning and then in perfect riskless safety advocate an adherence to the Sacraments regardless of the real-world human suffering it causes. It’s immoral. I get sick of the skewing of God’s messages to further some intellectual ideal. That’s why I threw my book at you.

—It’s okay—

—Don’t you think the central message of the Sacraments is to care for your neighbor as if he were your brother? And if that message has to be applied imperfectly in an imperfect world, then so be it. It’s our moral responsibility to God to do the best we can in the situations He provides to us.

—I’m wif you all de way—

—I don’t want to waste my time bothering with all this esoteric nonsense that keeps you completely out of God’s big, messy, wonderful world. That’s the whole reason I’m entering the priesthood.

—Me, too.

Snap judgment guided by passion that it was, the priesthood turned out to be a surprisingly good fit. Jarvis excelled in his studies, turned out to be a better orator than he expected, and was able to take most of his classes with Diana. He was aware of the perversity of only being able to please the woman he adored by entering lifelong celibacy for her, but dumber things have been done in the name of love. When graduation day arrived, he and Diana hugged platonically. Before he set off on his first assignment less than twenty miles away in urban Hennington, he went with her to the docks in the Harbor, from where she was to set sail for her assignment, across the ocean on the entire flip side of the world map. They waved as the ship set to sea, her long hair tangling wildly in the wind, his beard catching flecks of sea foam. As she disappeared over the horizon, Jarvis realized how easy it would be to keep his vow of chastity. The only woman he ever loved was receding thousands of miles away, and Jarvis’ desire receded with her. He had heard that sex was overrated anyway – sweaty, sticky, brief, and ultimately depressing. He tucked away his tired, sad, and sore heart, telling himself he could probably get more joy out of gardening.

In this, he was entirely correct, though the measure of his joy was not reflected in the bounty of his garden. He had long since accepted that his fingers were many shades away from green, but that didn’t stop him from celebrating small victories: a tomato large and red enough to be edible; a double-digit strawberry harvest; blueberries that didn’t make the church children vomit. He had once managed an avocado and parsnip pie for an after-church potluck that the Widow Jesslyn Mitcham had even called ‘tart in the best sense of the word'. This morning, he was on his knees, trying to coax a clutch of basil leaves into taking root. The man at the greenery had told him that basil was the best seasoning to use for the summer squash he anticipated (hoped hoped hoped for) in a month or two. Coincidentally, basil had been on sale that day, so Jarvis had purchased a few cuttings to try to grow in his garden.

—You can do it. Here’s some water to make the ground lovely and moist, and these little blue pellets will make you grow green and tasty. You’re going to love it out here. It’s a beautiful place, if you’d only make that little bit of effort.

—Father Kingham?

Jarvis sat upright and stared down at his basil in surprise.

—Am I interrupting?

Jarvis swung around and looked up.

—Mrs Bellingham! Of course you’re not interrupting. For a minute there, I thought my basil was talking to me.

—Oh! I say!

—Or would that be ‘my basil were talking to me'? No matter. What can I do for you this fine, warm, beautiful day?

—Do you have a few moments, Father?

—Always.

He motioned her inside the church to his office and sat her in a chair opposite him across his desk.

—What’s on your mind?

She gave a slightly embarrassed little frown.

—It’s kind of silly, Father.

—Coming from you, Mrs Bellingham, I highly doubt that.

—That’s very kind, Father, but, well …

—You can feel free to tell me absolutely anything, sister. Not only do you have my strictest confidence and good faith, you’ve also got a legal system that says that I never, ever have to tell anyone.

Mrs Bellingham smiled.

—All right, then. How can I begin? I’m not a superstitious woman, Father.

—I’ve always admired your levelheadedness.

—But lately, I’ve been having these dreams. She paused.

—Dreams, Sister?

—Well, one dream in particular, but over and over again.

—Is it an especially bothersome dream?

—Yes, to be frank. She paused again.

—Why don’t you tell me your dream, Mrs Bellingham? And take your time.

—If you insist. And she told him.