…did you ever meet him?—the murderer?

  Oh, him! she said contemptuously, what about him?—I may have been at some house parties he was invited to— I really don’t know—I don’t want to talk about it— He isn’t important.

  Where were these parties? What kind of parties?

  Parties.

  What did you mean—God came to you? Is that what you said?

  No. I don’t know what I said.

  What did you just say?

  Jules, for Christ’s sake—

  Yes, for Christ’s sake! I’m asking you what you just said!

  I said I’m here with you, I said don’t ask me about my life.

  * * *

  And again that night they loved each other, near enough to the sea to feel the shudder of the waves, trying to beat back the throb of the sea to get everything quiet, subdued. Jules tried to still her, to bring that wildness of hers to a pitch and then ease it down again, feeling his soul cry out with her, expand violently to every part of her threshing body, and then go quiet, still, into peace. But they did not really meet except inside her: and then the wildness, the drowning, the clawing released him, estranged him, so that he knew Jules could have been any name and any man and any plunging into her, arms, legs, thighs, mouths, bellies, hands, groping clutching failing fingers.…Her mouth twisted so that she was not even pretty, but he shut his eyes, loving her, yesJulesJulesysslyss, and hours later rose from her en-flamed, dry-mouthed, a blood-misty film across his eyes and clammy webs between his fingers, an animal padding barefoot across a carpeted room, flinching from the surprise of normal sounds outside: car doors slamming, children’s voices.

  Then he returned and lay beside her, beside a girl sleeping with her lips parted, her breath raspy, child-like, and though he tried to keep awake he must have fallen asleep at once, no more questions, no more Jules.

  In the morning, shyness, the raw bleak air and the sound of gulls, Jules husbandly, the girl taking very long— fifteen, twenty minutes—in the bathroom while he waited half dressed, staring at his toes, the grime between his toes, trying to think: What should he do with her? It seemed to him that he had the right to demand something from her, the promise of her, he had the right even to threaten her.…She must confess, must tell him everything, or he would not go any farther: he would refuse to drive her any farther. But he was shy, strangely shy, and their eyes had darted together in a shy fierce glance, both of them asking Do you still…? and afraid even of kissing, afraid of being rejected, the sky shone into the room through a window above the door and showed neutral, rather white-glaring day, not flattering them, blunt, matter-of-fact, vivid. Jules felt married to her, seeing her shrink back from him: not so certain of herself, really, and not that beautiful a girl, not at all times.

  …let me drive you away, somewhere else.

  Then it was husbandly of Jules to help unsnag some of her hair, caught in a zipper, and wifely of Dewalene to say he must have breakfast, there was a restaurant in the motel that would be fine for breakfast, she’d stopped there once years ago…he had to eat, he looked hungry. Jules laughed and joked that he always looked hungry; he’d looked like this, ravaged and hollow-stomached, all his life. And said nothing to her about that day’s destination, which he gathered was somewhere to the north and the east, up into the mountains.

  He had two eggs and toast and a side-order of pancakes, and coffee, and at first Dewalene shuddered, having no appetite, then she accepted some of his breakfast—picking at the scrambled eggs daintily, sitting close beside him in a booth facing the road—then let him call the waitress back and order a breakfast for her, because by now she was trembling with hunger and murmuring, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I guess I’m not well yet…trying to laugh, saying Someone seems to be inside me, at times, a stranger pushing his way up inside me and through me.…

  Is that God?

  …but Jules didn’t ask her that. Instead he smiled at her eating part of his breakfast and said, Let me be him, then, but it was playful, light-toned. He was thinking that he did want her, he wanted her, yes, he wanted what she was and more: what he could transform her into. She was not nearly as beautiful as she was meant to be. He knew that. Let me, let me!…Her small sweet breathless cries, her lips rubbed bare of lipstick, the tense cords in her throat, the strong curve of her stomach, the way she was sitting close beside him in a booth in a noisy restaurant, with paper place-mats that were cartoon maps of the United States, coffee-stained from earlier customers—he was dizzy with the certainty of it, Jules at the center of the universe, he knew he was right, he was right.

  Were you ever married?

  Were you?

  No.

  No.

  Were you almost married?

  O yes!

  Yes!

  But Jules went one step farther and asked, Who was he…?

  Dewalene stiffened.

  Who?

  Whoever it was.

  He paid the check, an expensive breakfast—$4.21!— and when he went outside she was already in the car, a girl with blue-tinted glasses in a car that struck Jules as incredibly ugly. But you must get in, you must drive it. You must.

  You must ask questions not to be asked.

  tell me who he was and I

  will never ask about him

  will forgive—

  never think about him or

  envy him or

  want to kill him or

  strangle you with your hair

  Bare ground, bare strident ridges of rock, foothills with brightly-colored rocks: a silvery rose, so lovely Jules found himself staring at it, into it, the sheer shimmering beauty of color, hypnotized. Dewalene was silent beside him. In the canyon hills were cascades of poplars and eucalyptus trees with their long, narrow leaves, the green/silver of their leaves, and large yellow daisies, and orange poppies, and weeds of purple and blue, dust-sprinkled, sun-baked, all silent. What is this?—Jules wanted to ask. What is this, this world?

  It baffled him.

  The girl beside him stared out at the wilderness, staring, her profile turned from him, the gravity of her body somehow apart from him, leaning toward the door as if she wanted it to open and release her. Jules saw a flight of birds and asked her what they were and she said, only glancing at them, Oh just quail or doves, and he felt the estrangement in her; the opposition. His own anger rose, prepared. He was always prepared. But he appeared not to notice her lethargy and talked to her about how he had come to love this part of the world, how he’d bought a car one spring just to drive out into the Mojave Desert and up into the San Bernardino Mountains and how it had transformed him—Jules, a boy from the city, city-bred, city-staggered, how he had been born in the country but had come to live in the city too young, and had been nearly destroyed by it. Dewalene nodded, listening or not quite listening. She was turned away from him, staring at the empty land. They were passing between the walls of a canyon, on a narrow rocky road, scrub pines on either side, and a blast of sunlight showed an intense almost painfully vivid wall of brown-pink, mauve-brown-pink, so beautiful that Jules stopped the car.

  They sat there for a while, without speaking.

  …then Dewalene said, not turning to him but reaching out to him, touching his arm, her fingers closing about his arm, Jules, you’re going to have to let me go.…

  Again he kept his anger down. He asked her what she meant…?

  Because I have commitments to someone.

  Permanent commitments?

  No.

  He glanced out, around at the slanted, fading light, the eerie rock walls that were so brutal, and almost as he stared the landscape shifted, became cruel, its beauty was no beauty he now valued, he wanted only Dewalene and he wanted her, he said ironically, Then I get another chance at you, sometime?

  Dewalene took off her sunglasses and rubbed her nose and eyes, wearily. Jules had the sudden desire to snatch the glasses from her and break them in two, You bitch, what are your secrets?—where are you going?—who is waiting for you? But he said nothing. Evidently she wasn’t going to answer him so he started the car again, it stalled, he started it again angrily, thinking it would be good, wonderful, if this car stalled up in the hills and he and Dewalene were stranded, This damn car of yours, he muttered, but finally he got it going again and his face glowed angrily with the shame of it, the struggle.

  Dewalene checked the map. She told him it was only a short distance now—another fifty miles—and Jules made a sound that indicated All right, fine.

  …Why are you angry, why do you hate me? Why do you want me to hate you? But she did not speak, she said none of this, and Jules drove faster than he should have driven, expecting to hear the car scrape against a rock, something shrieking as it was torn and mangled from beneath.

  The afternoon was fading, light haloed Dewalene’s hair, her head, Jules found himself thinking of the delirious halo of love, the perspiration-haze of love, and smiling grinning he wanted it, wanted it bitterly, but knew he was not going to get it. A god had eased into his body and filled it out, powerfully, demonically, but now the god had slipped away again and Jules could only remember, with lust, the bright-glistening struggle of love, his own choked cries of pleasure, muscle transformed into light, airy light, how he yearned for that Jules again!—the god-in-Jules again!— but he would not speak to her, he was not going to hear his own ironic defeated voice again, Then I get another chance at you…? Because he was thinking, he was forcing himself to think these ugly things, that maybe what he lusted for, was only the god-in-Jules and not this girl at all, maybe she was accidental to it, to him, and let her return to her friends, her protectors, let her sleep with whoever had the power to keep her.…Tears of anger stung his eyes. Tears. Dry-aching eyeballs blurred with tears, and not soothed by them, because they were a sign of his defeat and nothing else.…

  Please don’t drive so fast!—Dewalene said, frightened.

  He slowed down.

  Never would he mock her: never would he say But aren’t you in a hurry to get to him?

  He knew better than to say such flat defeated things. He had been her lover, after all. He was proud of himself and would not speak viciously to her, though he had flashes of strange visions—the Jaguar end-over-end down the rocky slope here, to crash five hundred feet below, Jules and Dewalene doll-like and helpless as they fell—no— ahead was a bridge, a swift-flowing river, why not drive the car into that?—but no, no, he was too sane, he did not want to die and did not really want her to die, after all she was so much in love with him. He hated himself saying gently, alarmed at the gentleness of his own voice:

  …but I don’t want to let you go.…

  But you don’t love me!—she cried.

  Jules was hurt. He said, Why do you say that?—you know that I—

  —you won’t let me alone, you would never let me forget, if we slept together the rest of our lives, in each other’s arms, you would want to slip into my dreams and control them—you would want to own me and all the past I lived through and just want to forget—

  Then forget it, forget it!—Jules wanted to say. But he knew she was right: his silence seemed part of a formal, familiar argument, as if the two of them had already been married for a long time, and now he must be silent, hurt and angry and silent, to force her to hear again her own words, to punish her with her words.

  Say something to me, she pleaded.

  Jules shrugged his shoulders. What can I say?

  —if you want to ask me about—

  No, said Jules sadly, not at all.

  —I was just a witness to—

  No.

  Below was the Black Fox River, Jules saw a sign stuck crooked at the edge of the road; below the road a rocky incline, dropping to the river and out of the levelling rays of the sun, which was setting early, it seemed to Jules, everything was stark and too clear in the sunlight and then abruptly, horribly shadowed where the sunlight no longer reached.…The Black Fox River, he said, and Dewalene said, dully and mechanically, yes, according to the map that was right, that was right.

  He drove along the river for a few miles, high above it, slowing because of the sharp, hair-pin turns, without protective barriers and no warning except rusted, battered old signs: DANGER.

  His heart had heaved itself against her. Lifting, heaving. He had not cared then in what patches, in what unreadable hieroglyphics the sweat of other men had dried on her body, he hadn’t cared who had kissed her face into that shape, and who she imagined inside her—whom she clutched at, loving, calling him Jules— All the names were one, all men were one, and Jules had become them all. He had known it. That was why he wanted her, he wanted what she was and could become, and he wanted what he himself could become—lifted so high by her, and then lying free of the poison of his own feverish brain, everything impure pumped out of him, drained away, so that he was pure and nameless, lying in her arms. He knew all this, but he said nothing. Let her leave him, let her go!— he knew she would regret it. And he would regret it too.

  …thinking about?

  About getting out of here before it’s dark.

  You can leave me off at the turn-off, she said. You don’t have to stay with me until they pick me up.

  I didn’t think you would want me to stay, Jules said politely.

  No, it’s only an hour, no, forty-five minutes, I can wait, Dewalene said.

  They passed a caretaker’s cabin, which looked deserted. The road was lifting, rising into the foothills. Dewalene said, There, up ahead, and at first Jules saw nothing but pine trees and then he saw a clearing, another cabin, an old campfire site and debris scattered thinly around it…at the edge of the road a deer paused, frightened, and then bounded in front of the car and out of sight into the woods. Stop here, Dewalene said.

  Here?

  A road goes off to the left, back there, back that way, Dewalene said. She knelt on the seat and reached into the back, and Jules sat there numbly, staring at the cabin— made of real logs—and the trail that led back from the road and the curiously blue, hard blue sky, which had become slightly filmy now, with long thin smoky clouds of a bluish-orange hue.

  You’ve been here before…?

  Just once before.

  What about the car?

  Keep it.

  …keep it?

  She laughed and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Now she was excited, eager. She stared at Jules. She said, You’re right to let me go, we’ll arrange to meet again…keep the car, or give it back to me when we meet…In a few weeks.…

  After the trial is over, Jules said, not returning her smile.

  Yes.

  Were you subpoenaed?

  She looked past him. He saw her face go stubborn, hard.

  Which side…? said Jules.

  Dewalene shook her head. She was just a witness, she said softly, only a witness, only one of many witnesses, what did it matter…? And things that had happened in her presence had not happened in Jules’ presence. And people who had met through her and in her, people who had come together in her, all those people, Jules could not know them and could not remember them, just as she could not remember them, not clearly, why didn’t he love her, why was he letting her go?…something had happened to her that had terrified her, she’d run away from it, she’d made a mistake to run away from it, and now Jules hears her faint perplexed voice

  * * *

  He drove back, toward the river.

  But a mile or two of the car’s slow dream-like dipping and he was stricken in the chest, the throat, he felt the tears sting at the corners of his eyes, he thought No, it’s a mistake, your mind is making you do the wrong thing. As, one time when he’d first come out here, and was in a lavatory somewhere, a little drunk, fearful of vomiting, a man had hesitantly approached him and waited until Jules noticed him and had stared, stared intently into Jules’ narrowed eyes, and Jules had felt a rising maniacal rage in him, If you touch me I’ll kill you, and his mind had cunningly directed even the expression of his face so that, yes, the man would be led to touch him—and how anguished, how desperate he had been!—just the touch of his shaking fingers releasing in Jules a delight of viciousness, a rage that fanned over his brain, like flames, really flame-like, rippling into every part of his body—

  After the first blow and the first leap of blood, after Jules’ silent attack, the man falling away and clutching at the sink, his fingers failing, his head striking the dirty tiled wall, Jules knew it was a mistake, his mind was making him do evil, he didn’t really want to be pounding with his fists, grunting, at some stranger’s body, but— Why so barbarous, why shouting No, no! Always no! He had to run out of that stinking place and into the dizzying chilly air of the mountains, out of the meek-eyed stranger’s bleeding face to his own face mashed, nose broken and gushing blood, and back there in the clearing Dewalene lying, dead— But no, no, he saw that it was only a tarpaulin of some kind, which he hadn’t noticed before. He got out of the car. Dewalene? It was very quiet. He walked around, he looked in the cabin—nothing to see—and observed the scattered tin cans and beer cans and the old rotted canvas—