Clearly Simon hadn’t expected you to accept his impulsive invitation any more than you would have expected to accept it.

  Smiling at you, smiling hard, flush-faced as an abashed child. The man’s teeth are somewhat small for an adult male, not altogether even, or particularly white; you envision an individual who flosses his teeth compulsively, with a grim sort of joy.

  Without thinking to invite you to be seated Simon stammers can he get you tea? coffee? apple juice, cranberry juice? ginger ale? wine?

  Wine seems anomalous here. You cannot imagine drinking wine with Simon Khraw alone in this place.

  Or, maybe: iced tea?

  Yes. Iced tea. You are both relieved, this is a very sensible suggestion considering the heat.

  Simon continues to shake his head in wonder, smiling as a child might smile at a riddle. It’s very hard for him, he says, to comprehend the fact that you are actually here in his house.

  Though he’d dreamt something like this, he tells you. A few nights ago. And at the beginning of the memoir course in January.

  Like what?—you ask hesitantly.

  That you are actually here. In his house, in this place. As you are now.

  Not that he’d seen your face clearly in the dream. He had not. But he’d known it was you . . .

  Gerard would have mused on the subject: how the dreaming brain seems to “know” the identification of a person who in the dream does not bear any resemblance to the actual person.

  Hear yourself laugh. Skeptical laughter. Nervous laughter. Still your teeth are chattering with cold.

  Wanting to think that in even your distracted state you exert some small sexual power over him, the man. He who has been your student for fifteen weeks whose work you rigorously “critiqued” as if you were superior to him.

  Wanting to think—This is not a mistake. Not to be regretted.

  But Simon does not seem resentful now, or in any way hostile. Perhaps you have misjudged him all along. His eyes are glistening as if he is deeply moved, on the verge of tears.

  He adores you. That is why to your shame you are here.

  Simon has more to say but he is breathless suddenly. Excuses himself to go into the kitchen, to prepare the iced tea. Peppermint tea, he promises.

  Forgetting (again) to invite you to sit down. So, you are left by yourself, relieved. Drifting about the small living room with its faded but warm colors, sagging sofa, worn cushions, Navajo carpets and wall hangings, bookcases crammed with books including textbooks, photographs of familiar scenes you might guess have been taken by Simon himself—sculpted sand dunes, desert vegetation, mountain trails, mountain peaks, vivid-blue sky. On a tile ledge beneath a fireplace, a guitar that looks as if it is used, not-new. On a nearby table amid a stack of books is one of yours—the first memoir, with the pale green cover that suggests either a filigree of fern-leaves or lacework . . .

  Feeling for a moment confined, trapped. If Simon has read the memoir he has inhabited the interior of your truest self, no display of the widow’s altruistic half-life will deceive him.

  Thinking—But I can leave at any time. I would not even need to explain.

  Escape! Leaving a scribbled note behind propped up on the fireplace mantel.

  Probably just as well we never see each other again.

  Just as well, cut knotty complications at the start.

  But you make no move to leave. You anticipate peppermint-flavored iced tea, your throat is dry with thirst.

  That perpetual wind, wind-gusts, bearing tiny bits of sand and dust breathed into your lungs. Thirst is an honest emotion.

  Peering at your wraithlike reflection in a small smoky mirror on a wall. Curious what it is, Simon Khraw sees in you, or of you.

  Shocked to discover that a part of your face has (again) begun to fade away like a watercolor bleached in bright sunshine.

  Simon returns in a glow of anticipation carrying a tangerine-colored plastic tray with glasses, iced tea in a pitcher. You guess that the peppermint-flavored iced tea has come from a bottle in the refrigerator and this is a relief—he has not been fussing in the kitchen. He has merely dropped ice cubes into glasses, poured in peppermint tea from a bottle, affixed a sprig of mint to each glass. Gingersnaps spread on a platter, shaken out of a box. Simon chattering, nervous. Touching to see that he has taken time to wet his hair and comb it, just a little—tight-wavy sand-colored hair that gives him the look of a store mannequin, near-handsome in a white dress shirt.

  You sit. Facing each other on a cushioned rattan chair, a cushioned rattan sofa. Pleasurably self-conscious, hopeful. Raising your voices to be heard over the thrum of the air conditioner, a conversation to be recalled haphazardly afterward as a juggling act in a circus might be recalled in wonder that it was performed at all, not whether it was performed with skill.

  Politely, discreetly your host does not inquire after your (private) life. He does not point out your book on a nearby table, he will not ask you to inscribe and sign it. He is thoughtful, circumspect. You are made to acknowledge that he is an intelligent person, and there is a certain craftiness in his intelligence. Perhaps he knows very well—(perhaps all your students know)—that your beloved husband has died just a few weeks ago, possibly he’d read of the death in a local newspaper. But Simon intends not to make you feel uneasy. Simon entertains you with an account of the vicissitudes of his work—Khraw Software Consulting, Inc.

  Yes, he’d almost gone bankrupt, initially. But he is doing better now—much better.

  As Simon speaks—less halting now, on the cusp of boasting, and how relieved you are that Simon has something of which he can boast, as a woman might be grateful for a man’s virility not for her sake but for his, that he will not be sexually humiliated in her presence—you listen politely, yes you are impressed as you are meant to be impressed. You see with a pang of sympathy how chronic illness has ravaged the man’s youth even as it has kept him young, unused.

  If you wish you might seize his heart in your hand.

  Squeeze and squeeze his (virginal) heart in your hand. If you wish.

  You are often laughing, the two of you. Like conspirators. Simon’s sense of humor is fey, unexpected. You have not laughed in so long, your throat is scraped with the effort.

  The peppermint-flavored iced tea is delicious. The gingersnaps are slightly stale but delicious too, your mouth floods with saliva. But you are soon satisfied, you have soon had enough.

  Neither of you speaks of the memoir workshop. Simon does not wheedle praise from you, and you don’t offer praise. It should be evident from your remarks through the term that you consider Simon a very good writer, that’s to say a promising writer, and there is something irrevocably condescending about the word promising. So you avoid it.

  Nor do you speak of anyone in the memoir workshop. Indeed, you and Simon might have met just that afternoon. Within the hour. Simon Khraw might not have been “your student” at all, only an interesting individual you’d encountered at the bus stop.

  He does speak of his health, however. Impossible for Simon to avoid speaking of this subject. Eager for you to know that his chronic condition is “in remission.” It has been “in remission” for several years. Of course there have been “episodes”—occasionally. Not serious enough to necessitate a trip to the ER—at least, not usually.

  Revolutionary research into lung-ailments like bronchiolitis, emphysema, lung cancer is being done at the Salk Institute, Johns Hopkins, UC-Berkeley. He is hopeful, Simon says, of an 89 percent recovery of his lungs’ capacity to breathe, one day.

  A normal life, then. One day soon.

  You listen in fascination. You are enthralled by these words. You feel a sensation of great tenderness. An urge to take hold of the man’s nervously gesticulating hands, to calm them. An urge to squeeze his hands between yours urging him—Breathe! Breathe! You will promise to protect him, you will hold him in your arms when he needs you, you will not abandon him in his hour of desperation.

  By remarks Simon has made, you gather that he is probably in his late twenties. If twenty-nine, he might pass for thirty-nine, or older. But only if seen from a certain angle. Certainly he isn’t Gerard’s age as you’d (almost) thought at first. Here is a young relative of yours, unidentified until now, needy, very needy, demanding of attention, yet sweet-tempered, adoring and loyal; terrified of aloneness, the struggling to breathe when alone, suffocating in his bed, strangled in the night, alone. You, you must save him. That is why you are here.

  You feel a sensation like a powerful sedative washing over you, melting away your defenses, your resistance. Hearing hope quivering in another’s voice. You believe everything and anything that Simon tells you, as you’d believed the extravagant plans of the dapper bow-tied oncologist Dr. N___, a Napoleon eager to zap tumors into oblivion, snatch back a dying man from oblivion, vividly you recall the dapper Napoleon seeming to promise you that your husband might be saved while (privately) knowing that before he’d stepped into the ER he was beyond saving. You believe everything and anything that Simon Khraw is telling you for essentially you believe nothing, you have lost faith not only in cutting-edge research but in faith itself. Yet, you register hope in your smiling face. You reflect hope, as in a reflective surface. You might joke—(one day: if you become an intimate companion of Simon Khraw)—of donating bone marrow to prolong his life, if bone marrow might prolong his life. A cleansing of the afflicted one’s very being, away with the old DNA, hose in the new, begin again with a new immune system, a virgin birth, you are a widow and your life is a half-life anyway, why not seed yourself into the body of another. Simon will remain in remission for the remainder of his life or he will not remain in remission for the remainder of his life. He will recover, to a degree—he will learn to pass for “normal.” Or, he will gradually deteriorate and die prematurely, unless he deteriorates fairly quickly and dies prematurely.

  All this you believe, equally. All possibilities.

  Find yourself staring at a Navajo rug on the floor at your feet. The rug is somewhat faded but you admire the rich subtle browns, the hue of wheat, the hue of a young deer’s coat, russet-brown and russet-red, earthen brown and oatmeal-white and the deepest black, a rug that is a work of art, a rug that is a puzzle, in which jagged sawtooth patterns intersect with one another in geometric precision. For all of life is such intersecting, such possibilities. Until, as it passes through possibility, life becomes something other than life, and is called Death.

  In a lowered voice as if someone might overhear Simon is telling you of an encounter with a priest when he was twelve years old.

  Warning the boy not to become bitter, angry, not to turn against God because of his illness so for a long time he’d tried damned hard not to be bitter, angry, not to turn against God until one day when he was fifteen and collapsed in gym class unable to breathe and had to be rushed by ambulance to the ER it had come to him unmistakable as snakebite: why the hell shouldn’t he be bitter, angry, and turn against God—“Seems like I’ve earned it.”

  When you leave Simon’s house you see how Simon stands very still waiting for you to touch him in farewell as (perhaps) you’d touched his hand in the workshop but you ease from him smiling, bright-smiling in eagerness to depart, to escape his yearning eyes, don’t dare touch him, certainly not embrace him as the women students in your workshop embraced you.

  No, not even a handshake of farewell. Too risky.

  “Well. I hope you will let me be your friend, Michaela . . .”

  Awkward as he follows you outside into the cooling air of early evening. As he follows you to your car at the curb. Out of a pocket Simon extracts a letter, a letter sealed in an envelope, exceedingly awkward now, dry-lipped, dry-mouthed, he’d meant to give you this at the end of the workshop but had been too shy. But now, he’s beyond shyness.

  “I’m thinking hell, I wrote it. So why not.”

  56

  The Adulteress

  Driving home on I-25. In the night.

  Lesser traffic now but nighttime construction has narrowed the interstate to two lanes as in a highway winding through Hell.

  Grinding yellow bulldozers, rapid percussive beeping, headlights of gigantic rigs blinding your eyes. Cautiously you creep along at twenty miles an hour in dread of an accident.

  In dread of retribution. The adulterous wife.

  WHEN YOU ENTER THE HOSPITAL ROOM—what will you see? Will your husband be conscious, will he be unconscious, will he recognize you and will a smile break over his face or will he turn blank frightened eyes to you . . .

  Your heart stops, considering. A chill oily sweat breaks out over your guilty body.

  Returning to Santa Tierra in the night. Nearly 11:00 P.M.!

  Never have you been absent from the house on Vista Drive for so many hours. Exiting I-25 shivering with guilt, anxiety. Passing signs for Los Alamos, Santa Fe somewhere in the distance.

  . . . will he lift his arms to embrace you one final time with all the strength remaining in his weakened body or will he stare at you with cold furious pit-eyes, will he demand to know where the hell you’ve been? Will he try to speak and fail, too exhausted to speak, too exhausted for the fluttering eyelids to remain open . . .

  On Vista Drive slowly ascend the curving road. Utter darkness in the prestige neighborhood above the Institute. Below, scattered lights of Santa Tierra glitter frivolous and inconsequential as Christmas tree lights.

  Approaching the house all but indistinguishable in the dark. That house. The house.

  A house you’d shared with another person. Unaccountably now, an empty house.

  You are feeling uneasy. Approaching a darkened house in which plate-glass windows shimmer in the reflected light of your headlights.

  The house should not be totally dark. You’d left lights on while you were away—as Gerard always did. And a radio turned on, to mimic human voices.

  But now, the house appears to be totally dark. You wonder if the radio has been switched off, too.

  Mouth dry as ashes. You, the adulterous woman about to be found out.

  In the driveway in the car, engine running. Curiously lethargic, leaden-limbed. For perhaps it will be a mistake to enter the (darkened) house having been away an unconscionable number of hours.

  (The idling vehicle is outdoors and not in a confined space. Exhaust lifts skyward, harmless. Not a chance of carbon monoxide poisoning to put you out of your misery.)

  Tingling sensation in your left ear as a white-hot forbidden thought burrows ever closer to your brain.

  Let me be your friend. Love me!

  Swallow hard, sick with guilt. Shame.

  Wanting to protest—There was no adultery. There was not a touching of hands. There was—nothing.

  Wanting to protest—I am a widow, a widow has no husband. A widow cannot be an adulteress.

  Already on the jolting drive back to Santa Tierra your memory of Albuquerque has begun to fade. Heat-haze like a dream, fading.

  The excitement and elation of your final class—the faces of your students. Their precious names, you’d memorized—fading . . .

  Eerie-blue-tinted bungalow on Armand Street nearly hidden behind ragged cacti. Blinds to the windowsills, like sightless eyes.

  Those (illicit) hours you’d spent in the company of a stranger. In need of caretaking, in need of (your) care. Michaela, let me be your friend.

  All fading. Harmless as white-tinged exhaust in the open air.

  THE RIDDLE: IF YOU ENTER the Santa Tierra Cancer Center you will not be allowed past the reception desk.

  For somehow it has happened: if you enter the Santa Tierra Cancer Center and ascend in an elevator to the seventh floor (Oncology), if you make your way along the corridor to that room, that singular room of all rooms in the world, it will not be Gerard who awaits you in the bed in that room.

  The bed, the room, the corridor, the elevator, the receptionist at the reception desk, the facade of the Cancer Center—all (continue to) exist. Yet, Gerard does not exist.

  Very difficult to understand that if you search for Gerard in all the rooms of the world for the remainder of your life you will never find him.

  A mental effort like trying to comprehend imaginary numbers. A riddle that hurts the brain.

  Inside the house, a faint odor of something earthen, rotted makes your nostrils pinch in warning. You switch on lights quickly including the very lights you remember switching on before you’d left for Albuquerque in the early afternoon.

  The house is deathly silent. No radio is on though (you are certain) you’d switched on the radio also—an affable chatter of voices following you out the door.

  Thinking of how in the spinal cord viral death bides its time until awakened by the weakening of the immune system.

  How we carry our deaths inside us. Snug, stealthy in the spinal cord.

  And here is another strange thing: the lights are not adequate to illuminate the rooms. As if a scrim were between you and the objects in the rooms rendering them blurry and imprecise as objects seen in water.

  The demon-gods have sucked away the wattage in the lightbulbs—literally! An assault upon your reason more devious, because so subtle, than a violent assault.

  You’d begged Iris Esdras to take the ugly carvings out of the house but Iris merely laughed at you.

  Months before, Gerard had laughed at you, too.

  Into the house you’ve brought the vase of flowers your students gave you. Fallen petals leaving a trail in your wake.

  So long you’ve been away from the house! Adulteress.

  Into the house the book bag crammed with student portfolios and slipped into the bag among these the sealed envelope from Simon Khraw thrust into your startled and unwilling hand.

  This envelope you will never open.

  This envelope you intend to never open.

  This envelope you vow you will never open but will nonetheless place on the bureau in your bedroom sealed and unread.