One of the walking wounded. So many.

  You are so deeply moved, agitated, you are having difficulty seeing Gerard’s features. As you’d have difficulty seeing your own reflection in a mirror, looming close. You are aware that he isn’t wearing the slate-colored baseball cap today but this might be to suggest that time has shifted—if it is another time, it is another Gerard. Such seismic shifts are beyond your comprehension. The short-sleeved white shirt might be familiar but you’re sure you’ve never seen the seersucker trousers before—unless there’s a seersucker suit, of a bygone era, at the back of Gerard’s closet in Cambridge, predating your entry into his life.

  “Do we know each other?”—Gerard smiles at you quizzically.

  “I—I don’t know. Do you know me?”

  Gerard’s bemused eyes drop to your feet, rise again to your face, as if assessing. Something like recognition hovers beneath his consciousness like a shadow beneath the surface of water.

  “Will you tell me your name?”

  “‘Michaela.’”

  “‘Michaela!’ A beautiful name.”

  You have never considered “Michaela” a beautiful name. Rather, a variant of “Michael.”

  As if a woman might be a mere variant of a man, with a minimal identity of her own.

  You ask Gerard his name and he tells you but it is a disappointing name, a common name, you register only that it is not Gerard McManus.

  (Later, it will seem significant to you: he hasn’t asked you your last name.)

  But you are speculating: if this person is indeed Gerard, he is a Gerard who exists in the present time, and so he is not the Gerard of several weeks ago. It is likely that a kind of veil or film shields him from you now. He is of the other side, he could not be identical with the man who’d been your husband; certainly, he would not have the identical name since he cannot have had the identical history of the man who has died.

  “You ask if I know you, Michaela. Well, to ‘know’ can be a kind of intuition. To ‘know’ can bypass facts altogether.”

  This man is excited by you, flattered to have attracted the attention of a woman some years younger than he is though (it seems) he is also made uneasy by you, staring at him with such unabashed wonder and yearning.

  In such a place, it’s likely to suspect that a woman behaving so oddly has been drinking, or has taken drugs. Possibly, she is mentally unbalanced, with her bedraggled hair, rumpled clothing, staring eyes, a homeless person.

  Still, Michaela thinks: it can’t be so very uncommon that individuals seem to recognize one another in public places, in crowds, in festive settings like the Plaza de la Catedral de Santa Teresa on a Saturday afternoon in May. Women, men. The sexually deprived, and the sexually rapacious. Random sightings that throw sparks, explode into flame.

  This man with the unshaven jaws has been a man whom women have adored, that much seems evident. His mouth is a sensual mouth, it yearns for intimacy. Though there is no ring on his left hand. How strange it is, how unnatural it seems, and cruel, that this man seems to have become a solitary and bereft being.

  Your wedding band is too large for your finger. It slips off, you retrieve it, a half-dozen times a day. You see that this man has glanced at your ring several times, thoughtfully.

  He knows. He remembers.

  Awkward for you to speak to each other but awkward to remain silent also. If you did not know each other—if there were not the curious gravitational pull between you—by this time you would surely have turned away out of embarrassment. But you continue to gaze at each other, uncertainly, as if each is waiting for the other to speak.

  He asks if you are staying in a hotel in Santa Tierra and you tell him no, in a rented house on Vista Drive. But he seems not to have heard of Vista Drive.

  “The house is near the Institute—the Institute for Advanced Research at Santa Tierra. You’ve heard of the Institute?”

  “‘Institute for . . .’ No. I don’t think so.”

  But yes, he is remembering. Something.

  What you are seeing (you realize) is a side of Gerard McManus that has been hidden from you for the twelve years of your marriage. A man who might strike up a conversation with a strange woman on the street, excited by the prospect of the unknown and not made uneasy by it, and by her curious behavior; a man seemingly at ease with his own sexuality. You recall that in your life together Gerard wasn’t at ease with most women; at least, those who weren’t professional women. He’d lacked a capacity for “small talk”—trivial exchanges seemed to embarrass him.

  Indeed, silence had seemed more natural to Gerard, often.

  But if you’d slipped your hand into his, and clasped his hand tight, he responded warmly, at once. And if you leaned down to kiss him as he was sitting at his desk . . .

  But that is the husband I love. That is the man who loves me.

  And now it seems clear that this man, the man with the shaved head and sensual mouth, is older than the Gerard you recall, who was only forty-eight at the time of his death; this Gerard is a decade older at least. He has been afflicted with illness—but not a fatal illness. On his left arm, just visible beneath the shirtsleeve, is a tattoo of some kind—you are shocked to see this since (of course) your Gerard never had a tattoo on his left arm, or on any part of his body.

  You recall that in a later chapter of The Human Brain and Its Discontents Gerard refers respectfully to the “encryptic” and “codified” language of body ornamentation, i.e., tattoos, in Native Americans; among the non-Native population, where tattooing seemed to him arbitrary and exhibitionistic, Gerard was likely to be disapproving.

  The cathedral bells are chiming the hour: 6:00 P.M. The sun is still high in the western sky. You feel a sick sort of excitement, yearning for dusk, night. For how much easier to take this man back with you to the house on Vista Drive and to take him to bed with you once again, than to comprehend who he is, what he is, what you are to each other.

  Your companion seems to sense this. He looms above you leaning close. In his eyes are minute broken capillaries, that have discolored the whites of his eyes and given him a jaundiced look.

  “I was about to stop for a cappuccino, Michaela. Will you join me?”—the question is oddly formal, as if much depends upon the answer.

  Quickly you say yes. You would like that very much.

  Your Gerard had loved cappuccino. You’d brought him several cups in the hospital, in those last, hopeful days before it became clear that Gerard could neither eat nor drink anything with pleasure but only with a nostalgic memory of pleasure, and finally without even that solace; and finally, he’d never tasted a cappuccino again. (A grim sort of relief you’d felt when at last you’d asked him if you should run to a Starbucks a few blocks away to get him a cappuccino and he’d said with a melancholy shrug—Thanks darling but no. No more. Don’t bother.)

  But this man is vigorous, forceful. Remembering nothing of the terrible weeks of the vigil. Daring to touch your elbow with an air of gallantry as he leads you out of the cathedral square.

  So it must be relived?—the early, awkward stages of your love for Gerard, and Gerard’s love for you? Not in Cambridge, Mass., but in Santa Tierra, New Mexico?

  You feel a wave of panic, that love could not possibly bloom a second time.

  Considering the unfathomable odds against an individual’s birth, no individual could ever be (plausibly) born a second time.

  And so, no love could be (plausibly) born a second time.

  No choice but to walk alongside this Gerard. You cannot imagine the remainder of the night without him, as you could not have imagined, only a few weeks ago, the remainder of your life without him. It is exciting to you, it is unnerving, how this Gerard looms above you, and seems to be brushing his arm against you as if inadvertently; originally, in Cambridge, Gerard had been courtly with you, often lapsing into silence as you chattered nervously.

  Wild laughter threatens to spill from your mouth. You have laughed so infrequently in months, you are fearful of an eruption of hysterical laughter now.

  For it is funny, how this Gerard is more verbal than your Gerard had been when you’d first met, which causes you to be more silent. Curious too how you hear in this Gerard’s praise for the beauty of Santa Tierra and the San Mateo Mountains an echo of your Gerard’s praise months ago.

  Beauty, uncanny.

  Monumental and surreal . . .

  But the air—so thin!

  You hear yourself laugh, though there is nothing particularly funny about these remarks. That they are an echo of the other Gerard’s remarks, that is what’s funny; but there is no way to explain this. (For this man, this stranger, has never heard these remarks before, of course; to him, his observations are wholly original, and your reaction verges upon insulting.)

  Why is everything that is happening between you and him so funny, suddenly?—so terrifying?

  Wild laughter of adolescence. Female adolescence.

  Crazed-flamy laughter of the (female) groin.

  Unbearable desire, channeled into a tiny cusp of tissue and that tissue comprised almost entirely of nerve-endings.

  Yet, carelessly touched, roughly touched, all desire pulsing inside that sliver of tissue dies within an instant, and vanishes as if it has never been.

  Try to recall: making love with Gerard McManus. Tenderness, clumsiness. A maneuvering of bodies no longer young, agile. Embarrassed laughter. Forgiving laughter. For there had to have been a first time and yet, your memory is smudged-blank as a whiteboard carelessly wiped.

  Because you are not yet in love with each other. It is all provisional, still taking shape.

  You are excited, and you are apprehensive. Walking with this stranger who is leading you—where? You have left the brightly lit plaza square behind. You are in a neighborhood of narrow streets. Though you are not saying much to your companion—(your tongue feels thick, an impediment in your mouth)—a conversation between the two of you is taking place; the air close about you is charged with static electricity. More and more tense this electricity is becoming, like pent-up desire, approaching the unbearable, a terror of release.

  You feel a stab of desire, sharp between the legs. You have not felt anything like this in weeks—months . . . Much of your body has died, and has atrophied. Your skin is a sort of white husk, there are fine white grains of powder at your hairline. If eviscerated, you would be exposed as hollow inside, like a mannequin. Your blood has long ago dried up, into a gritty sort of powder. But you only smile, you don’t really miss life.

  Easier to be posthumous, in fact. Oh, far easier!

  But now you realize: you are being confronted with your husband Gerard on an altered plane of being. Here is an older Gerard whom you’d never met who is Gerard’s essential self, his purest self, not (yet) shaped by his relationship with you.

  No wonder you are so uncomfortable with each other, and yet so hopeful, so tremulous with desire: it is all still taking shape.

  You stop for cappuccinos at an outdoor café with a littered terrace. The sun has begun to bleed into the sky like a broken egg yolk. You regard each other shyly, with wonder. You are laughing, your companion must have said something witty. His eyes are discolored by broken capillaries yet they are beautiful eyes. He asks if you are alone in Santa Tierra and you tell him no, you are not alone. He reaches out to touch the oversized man’s watch that slides around your wrist. “Do you have a husband, Michaela?”—the question is a subtle sort of accusation.

  You tell him that you are still married to your husband. But your husband isn’t in your life right now.

  As if you’ve told him a riddle. He is looking bemused, suspicious. Glisten of perspiration on his forehead that is more creased than you’d thought at first, as the lines beside his eyes and mouth are deeper. Lifting the small white cappuccino cup to his lips, his hand betrays a tremor. No man wants to be played like a fool—if there is a foolish miscalculation, a sexual blunder, it had better be on the part of the woman, not the man. For the woman, in this case, has purposefully attracted the man to her; she has sent him unmistakable yet (possibly) fraudulent signals. He isn’t angry, however. He isn’t angry yet. He asks about Gerard—carefully he refers to Gerard as your husband—and you tell him that your husband was an historian of science, on the faculty at Harvard. It occurs to you that this is a piteous boast. Was invalidates the boast. Your companion is listening, frowning. He leans forward on his elbows on the table, which is wobbly, annoying. How difficult to take seriously a sexual drama that unfolds atop a wobbly table! You have been curious about the tattoo. You can make out what appears to be a cobalt-blue wing—(a bird’s wing?)—(an eagle’s wing?)—on the ropey muscle of the man’s left bicep. In a near-swoon you wonder if this man has tattoos elsewhere on his body.

  But he too has almost died. He has almost crossed to the other side, you see in his bleeding eyes.

  Impulsively you reach out to close your hand over the hand of your companion. For a moment he is too startled to react then he closes his fingers around yours, firmly.

  “If we could just sit like this for a while. Please.”

  You sit, clasping hands. Monumental masses of cloud drift westward, obscuring the sun and turning the sky to flame. A sensation of great calm comes over you.

  After a while you say, quietly: “You are Gerard—aren’t you? I think you must be.”

  “Who is ‘Gerard,’ dear? Your husband?”

  “You are my husband, I think. I mean—you might have been.”

  Your companion laughs, a flush rising roughly in his face. His unshaven jaws glint silver. His speech is oddly formal, as if he is translating it from another language. “I’d be delighted if you were my wife, Michaela. But, well—life has dealt me other cards.”

  For a while you sit in silence, still clasping hands.

  Your heart beats quietly, calmly. You tell this man how you’d held him in your arms in this very city, not so long ago. You’d assured him that he would not suffer, he would not be alone. You held him for hours as he struggled for breath, and then ceased breathing. And you’d held him longer, to assure that he was protected. You need to know—was he aware of you? Those final hours? Or did it all come too late?

  Your companion considers these questions. He does not seem surprised or confused by them. Yes, he says slowly. He was aware of you—he’d never doubted you.

  He calls you “Michaela”—as Gerard might have done, in a whisper.

  Recalling those final minutes you begin to cry. The final breath of a man’s life. The final, heaving sigh.

  Recalling the horror that swept over you, which you cannot put behind you. When you’d realized that the man you held in your arms had ceased breathing.

  The tortured breath, the long effort, the heartbreak of that (futile) effort, you will never forget. The heroism of which human beings are capable, which must be endured, and which is unfathomable even by those who bear witness.

  Yet, your remembering this heroism does not bring comfort to the man who has suffered. Breathed his last. In your arms.

  Except now, in this sidewalk café in Santa Tierra, there may be a respite.

  A pleat in time. A clasping of hands. This is Gerard—but he doesn’t know that he has died.

  You understand: you must not acknowledge his death or, like Eurydice, he will “die” a second time. He will vanish from you, you will lose him a second time.

  You have been shivering, convulsively. Your teeth chatter. You hear yourself declare to Gerard that you love him more than ever. You grip his hand tightly, you lift his hand and cover it with kisses.

  The knuckles of that hand, covered in coarse hairs.

  He is astonished by you. He is alert, aroused. He says: “You’d better come with me, darling.”

  He leaves several bills on the table. He pulls you to your feet. You stagger against him, he closes his arms about you for a moment before you push back, regain your composure. You’d felt his heartbeat—you’d felt his desire. Your face is flushed with blood, your eyes leak tears. You are crazed with a desire to take him to the house on Vista Drive. You would lie with him in your arms another time, you would comfort him again, breathe into his lungs again, and this time you would not ever surrender him.

  But he has other plans. He scarcely listens to you. Pulling you across a street, into a shabby market selling food, live chickens and goats, sweet corn in bushels, pottery, weavings and carvings, turquoise jewelry, artwork.

  He is excited and aroused, not so gentlemanly as he’d seemed. He lives here somewhere—does he? Not a tourist, like you.

  Leading you past vendors’ stalls, some of them grated shut for the night. There is a strong smell of alcohol, spilled food. Shrieks of laughter, a blaring car alarm that sets your teeth on edge.

  “Not too much farther. C’mon!”—tugging your arm, fingers circling your wrist.

  Faces here are not illuminated by the bright festive lights of the plaza square. You have begun to hear a harsh sibilant speech, no language you recognize.

  Not English, and not Spanish. (Kiwaan?)

  The sky has darkened with immense clouds shaped like galleons. Beyond the mountains there is a horizontal stream of liquid fire, so beautiful your eyes are flooded with tears.

  You have been walking some distance, you are out of breath. There are few other White tourists here. Dark-skinned men with somber faces are predominant. Dusky-skinned, olive-dark-skinned. Very black hair, inky-black. Very black eyes with no pupil, only iris.

  Your companion continues to pull you along the littered street. You could not dissuade him now if you wished. It is certain that he lives nearby. He rents a room in a hotel nearby. And not one of the gleaming new hotels near the cathedral. You stumble at a curb as something white-blurred flies at you—a soft clumping against your face. The man who resembles Gerard curses and strikes the flailing white dove with his fist, breaking its neck immediately so that it plummets to the ground, twitching.