Lightly, on the lips,
In brotherhood, I kiss you.
The world is a trance
We enter, together.
Our eyes are the entrance
We open, together.
Our breath is the country
We live in, together.
Gazing, we graze
In the field of each other.
My soul knows its brother
Bound in your heart.
Extend your heart's hand.
In my heart feel your brother.
One
1
After he returned from combat, Geoffrey Martin began to worry about what he was doing with his life. Ruth, his wife of three years, looked at him over dinner at a local family restaurant one evening and asked why he had seemed so distracted the last several weeks, since his return.
There was no denying that he was a different person. She felt it. His colleagues at iTL (Integral Technologies) felt it immediately when he returned to work. His mother felt it and had kept Ruth on the phone the previous evening more than an hour pressing her to get him to do something.
Do I seem distracted? he asked indifferently.
Yes, Geoff, you do. It's apparent to everyone else if not to you. You aren't yourself anymore.
Who do you suppose I am, then? he asked with a laugh which hardly concealed his irritation.
I don't know that, but I'd suppose it was a question you'd be better able to answer than anyone else, she said, sensing the irritation and automatically giving it back.
I would have said I'm the same man I've always been.
Really? she said.
Really, he repeated, the edge in his voice no longer suppressed.
And then silence hung between them over the table as they ate until Ruth said she had only three payments left on her college loan and then it would be all paid off.
Then Martin said it did not matter, that what she had said was true, and that the things which had once made sense to him no longer did, and that the things which he had once desired, he no longer did, and that she had sensed this change in him before he had understood it himself, but her sense of it had made him realize it too.
She looked at him now that he had acknowledged what she had said without saying anything at first, but unmistakably angry.
She took her napkin from her lap and put it on the table.
I feel betrayed, finally she said icily.
This was not the understanding response he might have admitted to wishing for if he had gotten it. But it wasn't unexpected.
Maybe you're fortunate you're able to feel anything at all, he said, pinching back the anger in his voice.
I'm sick of you feeling sorry for yourself, she said as the car took the exit ramp and turned on to their street.
And I'm sick of you, he said as he stopped the car in front of the garage.
Or maybe you're just sick, period, she said.
Maybe you're right, he said, almost triumphant, and it seemed to release something in him, and he felt easier.
He slept in the den that night and she expected he'd be conciliatory in the morning and she would forgive him, but only after a gentle sermon about how he was not going to be allowed to vent his frustration at her but would have to seek help; that he oughtn't be proud about seeking help; that he should call up his V.A. adviser and see what could be done.
But the den was empty in the morning. His laptop was gone, and in its place was a handwritten note.
She read it and crumpled it up and threw it into the waste can.
She looked in his closet and saw that he had taken some clothing, too. Outside, his car was gone.
So much the better, she said, if that's the way you want it.
2
It is a peculiar but common phenomenon that often the worse we feel the better we look. Such was the case with Martin. He saw it when he looked in the mirror over the sink in the lavatory in the rest stop on the Delaware Turnpike.
Not only because of how he saw his own reflection but because he saw another man's reflection, too. A strikingly handsome young man, a few years his junior, still almost a boy, was looking at him, and when Martin caught him in the mirror, rather than turn away the young man smiled.
Where you off to?
New York, Martin said, addressing the reflection.
Boston, the young man said. My name's Christopher.
Geoffrey, Martin said, turning around and extending his hand.
Just then the door of one of the stalls opened and a middle-aged man emerged.
Ready, Chris? he said, washing his hands.
Ok, Dad. Gotta go, Christopher said, pointing a thumb towards the man and grinning like a boy.
Till the next time. He made a half salute and disappeared with his companion.
Till the next time?
Now what did he mean by that? Martin wondered.
3
Geoffrey Martin had quit his marital home without a thought and, oddly enough -- he sensed it but did not try to make sense of it -- without a qualm. But he knew he was taking his life in his hands. And he didn't care what happened.
He left South Carolina in the morning light and drove until he reached Pennsylvania at nightfall and stopped for the night at a motel. At the snack bar he got some machine food. Back in his room he stripped off his clothes and without a shower fell into bed and felt the road flying by underneath him and rolling on inside his arteries.
He woke up to twittering birds, had a coffee and a cigarette for breakfast, called Mathew at his office in New York, said he was on the way there and asked if he could crash.
Of course, Mathew responded. Is everything alright?
Too long to discuss. I'll tell you what I can when I see you.
Sure, Mathew said.
Martin hung up and headed for New York City. It was dark again when he drove out of the Holland Tunnel and found himself, found himself, mind you, in lower Manhattan.
He made a few wrong turns but finally wound up on Mercer Street and before long found Mathew's building. He found a parking spot without too much trouble, got his backpack and his laptop out of the trunk, locked the car, walked half a block, then up the few steps of Mathew's building and rang the bell.
Mathew's voice squawked through the intercom and Martin identified himself and immediately a buzzer sounded and the door clicked open. There was a freight elevator. Mathew lived on the top floor.
I'm glad to see you, Mathew said. Glad you made it back to the land of the living, if that's what this is.
He was a tall, fit, bronzed man in a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and flip flops. He looked like he belonged to an expensive health club, and he did. He answered the door with a martini in his hand, but put it on the side table before he took Martin in his arms in a bear hug.
Thanks, Martin said. It's good to see you. He dropped his knapsack on the floor and placed his laptop in its protective case carefully on a side table.
Then he saw Lynn come into the long hallway that led to the first room of their loft.
Hey, stranger.
Hi, Lynn. It's good to see you.
It's very good to see you, Geoffrey. I hope things are alright. Ruth?
They are and they aren't. It's finished with Ruth.
I'm not surprised.
Lynn, Mathew interjected, admonishing her.
Well, I'm not. Geoffrey knows what I mean, don't you Geoff?
I think I do. It's ok, Matt. But still, before this gets any knottier, I think I ought to warn you two, if I seem different to you or strange, or not quite coherent, it's something I'm going through. I'm not sure what. But it got me all the way here. I think I've got a handle on it. But I'm going slowly.
You're scaring me, Mathew said.
I don't mean to be. It'll be ok. I'm ok, even if I'm strange sometimes.
You've always been strange.
Thanks, Martin said. But not like this.
Come on, Geoff, I'll show you your room, Lynn said, taking his arm.
4
You can't just walk out on your life, Mathew gasped after Martin told him some of what had happened.
I've done it twice.
And look at you.
Meaning?
Lynn joined them and lit a cigarette.
You've got nothing to show for it, Mathew continued.
The life I left had nothing in it.
Not Ruth? not the country?
I sacrificed my life, nearly, to^Åthe country^Åand likewise to Ruth. Ergo it wasn't my life that I walked out on. Now if I have nothing, it's as much as I had before. Only this time the nothing I have really belongs to me.
And you're content with nothing? Lynn asked.
From my own nothing I can make something.
What? It wasn't a challenge.
That's what I have to find out. And the first thing I found out is not to rush it. Time is illusory, and it's really dangerous to start thinking it's real. It can drive you crazy. I know. I spent a long time waiting.
Mathew was quiet. As was often the case with him recently, he seemed someplace else. Lynn saw it. It seemed to her it had become one of the burdens of their marriage that there were blank spaces between them which were best left empty, for whenever she tried to approach him, they only became filled with confusion. Now she kept her focus on Martin.
And now? she said, quietly.
Now I'm not waiting.
And he wasn't, for he knew that whatever difficulties he would have, being without money was the controlling difficulty. Lack of it made every other real difficulty more difficult. Having it was having a tool to cope with other difficulties.
Aware of this, even as he fled his old life, Martin took into account the problem of money.
It was at five a.m. on the morning he left Charleston for New York City that he knocked on the glass door which led into Sam Harenbeck's heated indoor pool just as Harenbeck was taking his morning swim before driving downtown to the iTL building.
He'd known Harenbeck since he was a boy and used to work on Harenbeck's cars. Sam was glad to have him at iTL even before Martin graduated from high school, and he told him he'd always pay for college, if he ever wanted to go, but school didn't appeal to Martin, and it wouldn't really do anything for him except bore him. When Martin was called away to combat, Sam was worried. When he came back, naturally there was a place for him, and now, as Martin spoke to him, crouching at the edge of the pool as Harenback stood in the warm water, the older man said he understood.
You have my blessing, Geoff. And anything else, if you need it.
No, thanks, Sam. Congruence demands parity. It's nothing all around. Pure emptiness to begin with. It'll fill up quickly enough. As long as I can give you as a reference when I'm looking for work.
I'll tell you what Geoff, Harenbeck said, hoisting his still trim and attractive body out of the pool and slipping into a terrycloth robe. Come with me.
They walked through a passageway which led from the pool to the his den, and he took a card out of a small filing cabinet on his desk and gave it to Martin.
When you give my name as a reference, do it at this place. I have some chips to cash in, and I'd be pleased if you'd take one.
Thank you, Martin said, like the kid he always felt he was when he was with this man.
They shook hands and held fast to each other a moment longer than a handshake requires. And then, with his arm round his shoulder Harenbeck took Geoff back through the pool to the driveway where he'd left his car.
5
It is difficult to say which is more important, money or health. It is generally taken as the truer wisdom to discount money in favor of health, but the practical advantage to those who have money when faced with similar health challenges over those without money seriously calls this formulation into question.
However the matter may be settled, if it may be settled at all, Martin was glad that he landed a job and that he'd quickly been able to find a place of his own, a small three room apartment in a brownstone on Commerce Street. There was something odd going on between Lynn and Mathew and he'd had enough of the unfathomable with Ruth to find it made him dizzy.
Harenbeck had not misled him. Sam's name alone got him into ICTS, InterCulturalTechnologySystems. He had an office on Fifth Avenue in the ICTS Tower, but he was also free most of the time to work from home via the internet.
One Wednesday morning in March, on a day that suggested the advent of spring, he awoke from a fitful sleep and found that he had lost control of himself emotionally. The sign of the collapse was an onrush of tears and sobs which overwhelmed him without warning as he reached to part the curtains over the window which gave out onto the street where the tenderest green buds were just appearing on the branches of the trees.
He fell down onto his bed and sobbed for he did not know how long, bent double until the first storm subsided, and then he fell into a dream. He was walking dazed through London, confused about a meeting he had to get to at Number 10 Downing Street. He turned through tortuous streets unable to find the Prime Minister's residence and could not fathom how London had become Prague or why Russian soldiers wearing fezzes and Stalin moustaches were shooting at him. With the explosive thud of a bursting grenade he sat up startled in bed. His heart was pounding fiercely and his head was heavy with a dull ache. He was trapped, lost inside a fog of desolation.
The emptiness he was seeking had begun. He was frightened.
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