A Day Like Any Other by Lisel Mueller

Such insignificance: a glance
at your record on the doctor's desk
or a letter not meant for you.
How could you have known? It's not true
that your life passes before you
in rapid motion, but your watch
suddenly ticks like an amplified heart,
the hands freezing against a white
that is a judgment. Otherwise nothing.
The face in the mirror is still yours.
Two men pass on the sidewalk
and do not stare at your window.
Your room is silent, the plants
locked inside their mysterious lives
as always. The queen-of-the-night
refuses to bloom, does not accept
your definition. It makes no sense,
your scanning the street for a traffic snarl,
a new crack in the pavement,
a flag at half-mast -- signs
of some disturbance in the world
because your friend, the morning sun,
has turned its dark side toward you.

September by Ted Hughes

We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:
No clock counts this.
When kisses are repeated and the arms hold
There is no telling where time is.

It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere.

We stand; leaves have not timed the summer.
No clock now needs
Tell we have only what we remember:
Minutes uproaring with our heads

Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's
When the senseless mob rules;
And quietly the trees casting their crowns
Into the pools.

To Paint a Water Lily by Ted Hughes

A green level of lily leaves
Roofs the pond's chamber and paves

The flies' furious arena: study
These, the two minds of this lady.

First observe the air's dragonfly
That eats meat, that bullets by

Or stands in space to take aim;
Others as dangerous comb the hum

Under the trees. There are battle-shouts
And death-cries everywhere hereabouts

But inaudible, so the eyes praise
To see the colours of these flies

Rainbow their arcs, spark, or settle
Cooling like beads of molten metal

Through the spectrum. Think what worse
is the pond-bed's matter of course;

Prehistoric bedragoned times
Crawl that darkness with Latin names,

Have evolved no improvements there,
Jaws for heads, the set stare,

Ignorant of age as of hour—
Now paint the long-necked lily-flower

Which, deep in both worlds, can be still
As a painting, trembling hardly at all

Though the dragonfly alight,
Whatever horror nudge her root.

School Lunches by Anne Lamott

from Bird by Bird

I know I set out to tell you every single thing I know about writing, but I am also going to tell you every single thing I know about school lunches, partly because the longings and dynamics and anxieties are so similar. I think this will also show how taking short assignments and then producing really shitty first drafts of these assignments can yield a bounty of detailed memory, raw material, and strange characters lurking in the shadows. So: sometimes when a student calls and is mewling and puking about the hopelessness of trying to put words down on paper, I ask him or her to tell me about school lunches–at parochial schools, private schools, twenty years earlier than mine, or ten years earlier, in Southern California or New York. And they always turn out to be similar to my middle-class Northern California public school lunches. But in important ways they are different, too, and this is even more interesting, for the obvious reason that when we study the differences, we see in bolder relief what we have in common. And for some strange reason, when my students start to jam with me about school lunches, they get off the phone feeling more enthusiastic and in better shape.

One time, in one of my classes, I asked my students to write about lunches for half an hour, and I sat down with them and wrote:

Here is the main thing I know about public school lunches: it only looked like a bunch of kids eating lunch. It was really about opening our insides in front of everyone. Just like writing is. It was a precursor of the showers in seventh- and eighth-grade gym, where everyone could see your everything or your lack of everything, and smell the inside smells of your body, and the whole time you just knew you were going to catch something. The contents of your lunch said whether or not you and your family were Okay. Some bag lunches, like people, were Okay, and some weren't. There was a code, a right and acceptable way. It was that simple.

But in half an hour there was already too much material for me and some of the people in the class, and it threatened to immobilize us. So we decided not to even bother with our parents' handwriting on the outside of the brown paper lunch bag–how much it resembled a Turkish assassin's and what that said about us. We decided to set aside the bag itself for a moment. For the time being we'd stick with the contents, and, to begin with, the sandwich. That was the one-inch picture frame we were going to look through.

Your sandwich was the centerpiece, and there were strict guidelines. It almost goes without saying that store-bought white bread was the only acceptable bread. There were no exceptions. If your mother made the white bread for your sandwich, you could only hope that no one would notice. You certainly did not brag about it, any more than you would brag that she also made headcheese. And there were only a few things that your parents could put in between the two pieces of bread. Bologna was fine, salami and unaggressive cheese were fine, peanut butter and jelly were fine if your parents understood the jelly/jam issue.

Grape jelly was best, by far, a nice slippery comforting sugary petroleum-product grape. Strawberry jam was second; everything else was iffy. Take raspberry for instance–

Now, see, I couldn't remember, as I wrote in class, just exactly what it was about raspberry jam that was so disconcerting. So when I got home that night, I called a friend who is also a writer, very successful and maybe the most neurotic person I know. I said, Remember how in elementary school, grape jelly was best in your lunch, strawberry jam was Okay, but raspberry was real borderline? Can you talk to me about your experiences with these things? And my friend went into an impassioned, disoriented riff about how there was too much happening in raspberry jam, too many seeds per spoonful. It felt like there were all these tiny little pod people. It was Body-Snatcher jam.

My friend then mentioned apricot jam, which was even worse than raspberry. I had not thought about this in thirty years, but now it all came back with horrible clarity. Apricot jam looked too much like glue, or mucilage. But you could count on having apricot jam when your father made the lunch. Fathers loved apricot jam; I don't know why, but I'm sure Anna Freud could have a field day with it.

I sat down that night and kept writing:

In general, come to think of it, when fathers made lunches, things always turned out badly. Fathers were so oblivious back then. They were like foreigners. For instance, a code bologna sandwich meant white bread, one or two slices of bologna, mustard, one wilted piece of iceberg lettuce. (The Catholics were heavily into mayonnaise, which we might get into later.) Fathers, to begin with, always used non-regulation bread and then buttered it, which made the sandwich about as tradable as a plate of haggis. Also, everything was always falling out of the sandwiches fathers made. I'm not sure why. They'd use anything green and frilly for lettuce, when of course only the one piece of wilted iceberg was permissible. Your friends saw a big leaf of romaine falling out along with the slice of bologna, and you might soon find yourself alongside the kid against the fence.

There was always that one kid against the fence. How could the rest of us feel Okay if there wasn't? If it was a guy, there was probably a trumpet case at his feet and he wore strangely scuffed shoes, because he avoided the foot traffic on sidewalks and walked instead through weedy lots with dogs yipping at him. He didn't end up at that station only because his lunches were nightmarish in their eccentricity, but his lunches didn't help.

He almost certainly ended up being a writer.

Now, who knows if any of this is usable material? There's no way to tell until you've gotten it all down, and then there might just be one sentence or one character or one theme that you end up using. But you get it all down. You just write.

I heard Natalie Goldberg, the author of Writing Down the Bones, speak on writing once. Someone asked for the best possible writing advice she had to offer, and she held up a yellow legal pad, pretended her fingers held a pen, and scribbled away. I think this was some sort of Zen reference–the Buddhist disciple remembering Buddha's flower sermon, in which all Buddha did was hold up a flower and twirl it, in silence, sitting on the mountain. Me, I'm a nice Christian girl, and while I wish I could quote something kicky and inspirational that Jesus had to say about writing, the truth is that when students ask me for the best practical advice I know, I always pick up a piece of paper and pantomime scribbling away. My students usually think this is a very wise and Zenlike thing for me to convey. Mostly I forgot to give Natalie Goldberg credit.

But write about what? they ask next.

Write about carrot sticks, I tell them:

Code carrots had to look machine extruded, absolutely uniform, none longer than the length of the sandwich. Your parents would sometimes send you to school with waxed-paper packets of uneven cuckoo-bunny carrots, and your carrot esteem would be so low you couldn't even risk looking at the guy against the fence. Bad juju. If you so much as glanced at him, a visible empathetic arc would stretch between you, and link you two in the minds of your peers forever.

And then there was the matter of the wrapping paper; waxed paper and later Saran wrap. If code lunches were about that intense desire for one thing in life to be Okay, or even just appear to be Okay, when all around you and at home and inside you things were so chaotic and painful, then it mattered that it not look like Jughead wrapped your sandwich. A code lunch suggested that someone in your family was paying attention, even if in your heart you knew that your parents were screwing up left and right. So it was a little like making your bed at lunch. Everything should be squared. Sandwiches should be wrapped with hospital corners. Right?

Okay. That's all. But now I have this material to chose from, to work with, to shape, edit, highlight, or toss. (And that's very nice of you to suggest the later.) That is my version of school lunches. Yours might be different and I would be interested in hearing about it. (Now don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting you mail it to me. But I bet it reveals some interesting stuff about you and your family and the times in which you grew up.) And even though what I've quoted here is shitty-first-draft stuff, the boy against the fence appeared out of nowhere–I had no idea when I started writing that he was in my memory. To me, he is the most important thing that came out of this exercise. Tomorrow when I sit down to work on my novel, he will be someone who matters to me, whom I want to work with, get to know, who has something important to say or somewhere only he can take me.

Polaroids by Anne Lamott

from Bird by Bird

Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can't–and, in fact, you're not supposed to–know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing. First you just point at what has your attention and take the picture. In the last chapter, for instance, what had my attention were the contents of my lunch bag. But as the picture developed, I found I had a really clear image of the boy against the fence. Or maybe your Polaroid was supposed to be a picture of that boy against the fence, and you didn't notice until the last minute that a family was standing a few feet away from him. Now, maybe it's his family, or the family of one of the kids in the class, but at any rate these people are going to be in the photograph, too. Then the film emerges from the camera with a grayish green murkiness that gradually becomes clearer and clearer, and finally you see the husband and wife holding their baby with two children standing beside them. And at first it all seems very sweet, but then the shadows begin to appear, and then you start to see the animal tragedy, the baboons baring their teeth. And then you see a flash of bright red flowers in the bottom left quadrant that you didn't even know were in the picture when you took it, and these flowers evoke a time or a memory that moves you mysteriously. And finally, as the portrait comes into focus, you begin to notice all the props surrounding these people, and you begin to understand how props define us and comfort us, and show us what we value and what we need, and who we think we are.

You couldn't have had any way of knowing what this piece of work would look like when you first started. You just knew that there was something about these people that compelled you, and you stayed with that something long enough for it to show you what it was about.

Watch this Polaroid develop:

Six or seven years ago I was asked to write an article on the Special Olympics. I had been going to the local event for years, partly because a couple of friends of mine. Also, I love sports, and I love to watch athletes, special or otherwise. So I showed up this time with a great deal of interest but no real sense of what the finished article might look like.

Things tend to go very, very slowly at the Special Olympics. It's not like trying to cover the Preakness. Still, it has its own exhilaration, and I cheered and took notes all morning.

The last track-and-field event before lunch was a twenty-five yard race by some unusually handicapped runners and walkers, many of whom seemed completely confused. They lumped and careened along, one man making a snail-slow break for the stands, one heading out toward the steps where the winners receive their medals; both of them were shepherded back. The race took just about forever. And here it was nearly noon and we were all so hungry. Finally, though, everyone crossed the line, and those of us in the stands got up to go–when we noticed that way down the track, four or five yards from the starting line, was another runner.

She was a girl of about sixteen with a normal-looking face above a wracked and emaciated body. She was on metal crutches, and she was just plugging along, one tiny step after another, moving one crutch forward two or three inches, then moving a leg, then moving the other crutch two or three inches, then moving the other leg. It was just excruciating. Plus, I was starving to death. Inside I was going, Come on, come on, come on, swabbing at my forehead with anxiety, while she kept taking these two- or three-inch steps forward. What felt like four hours later, she crossed the finish line, and you could see that she was absolutely stoked, in a shy girlish way.

A tall African American man with no front teeth fell into step with me as I left the bleachers to go look for some lunch. He tugged on the sleeve of my sweater, and I looked up at him, and he handed me a Polaroid someone had taken of him and his friends that day. "Look at us," he said. His speech was difficult to understand, thick and slow as a warped record. His two friends in the picture had Down's syndrome. All three of them looked extremely pleased with themselves. I admired the picture and then handed it back to him. He stopped, so I stopped, too. He pointed to his own image. "That," he said, is one cool man."

And this was the image from which the article began forming, although I could not have told you exactly what the piece would end up being about. I just knew that something had started to emerge.

After lunch I wandered over to the auditorium, where it turned out a men's basketball game was in progress. The African American man with no front teeth was the star of the game. You could tell that he was because even though no one had made a basket yet, his teammates almost always passed him the ball. Even the people on the other team passed him the ball a lot. In lieu of any scoring, the men stampeded in slow motion up and down the court, dribbling the ball thunderously. I had never heard such a loud game. It was all sort of crazily beautiful. I imagined describing the game for my article and then for my students: the loudness, the joy. I kept replaying the scene of the girl on crutches making her way up the track to the finish line–all of a sudden my article began to appear out of the grayish green murk. And I could see that it was about tragedy transformed over the years into joy. It was about the beauty of sheer effort. I could see it almost as clearly as I could the photograph of that one cool man and his two friends.

The auditorium bleachers were packed. Then a few minutes later, still no score on the board, the tall black man dribbled slowly from one end of the court to the other, and heaved the ball up into the air, and dropped it into the basket. The crowd roared, and all the men from both teams looked up wide-eyed at the hoop, as if it had just burst into flames.

You would have loved it, I tell my students. You would have felt like you could write all day.

Prometheus by George Gordon/Lord Byron

Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Suicide Note #1… by Pam Houston

1. Georgetown, Great Exuma.

Two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in the Chat and Chill Bar on Stocking Island. KB, the Bahamian who owns the place, is looking for an argument and can’t find one. Mandela versus Boutelayzee, University of Chicago versus Harvard, chanterelles versus portabellas. Even Mushroom John, who brought his wife, Sandy, down here from their tuber farm in Pennsylvania for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, says the rule is to each his own. Down the beach Junior is making the best conch salad on the island, conch so fresh it is still wiggling when he puts it down in front of us. I drink two Goombay smashes to Cory’s five Kalik beers, and after some critical mass of mosquito bites we tumble outside to hit the blue, blue water. I told Cory there was no blue like Exuma blue before we came, and now he says, “It’s so pretty, it’s corny.”

They call this archipelago the friendly islands, 365 Exumas, one, they like to say, for every day of the year, and it’s true, even the teenage boys with their skullcaps and their hooded eyes feel compelled to say hello when they pass us on the street. At the Peace and Plenty Hotel, Kaliks cost three dollars, but there is a reggae band at Eddie’s Edgewater club on Fridays, and if you go to the kitchen door and smile politely, old Mrs. Beatrice Goodnight will give you fried chicken and peas and rice wrapped in the Sunday paper with salt.

Every Sunday at the Chat and Chill, KB roasts a pig, we can smell it where we’re floating, you can smell it all over the island when the wind is onshore. A stingray floats across the white sand below our floating bodies, and a little school of sergeant majors mistake the yellow in my bathing suit for one of their own. The floating is so effortless, the sun so soft and warm, I’m almost asleep when Junior hollers that the conch fritters are ready, and we swim to shore and eat them, roll them around in the red sauce that has just the right amount of kick to it, get in one more swim before it’s time to eat the pig.

2. Davis, California.

Early morning on the greenbelt. Walking with Lucy, while Audrey leaps between furrowed, fallow fields. Everyone we know calls Lucy Audrey and Audrey Lucy, which is strange since Lucy is a thirty-five-year-old woman, and Audrey is a German shorthaired pointer, but when you see the way they look at each other, you begin to understand. Lucy has her sister’s name ‘Emily’ tattooed across her bicep. Last month, Emily tried to kill herself, succeeded, temporarily, was gone, in almost every way that counts, for more than two whole days. Then she came back from the dead.

Last night I heard a nightingale imitating a car alarm in a jacaranda tree. This morning, a white heron teases Audrey with a touch-and-go pattern along the creek. I remember the day last fall when Murray and Melinda and I walked on Limantour Beach after the storm and watched the pelicans. The storm had brought out all the animals, tule elk, fallow deer, and three coyotes who ran and leapt and did the kinds of things coyotes do in Native American sand paintings, while we watched, open-mouthed, from the side of the road. We saw so much wildlife that day Murray finally asked if I’d sent a guy ahead of us to push animals out of boxes. We were each locked inside our individual sorrows, didn’t know each other well enough to share, but we agreed, out loud, that like moose, pelicans were surely put on earth to act as suicide preventers, agreed we’d never kill ourselves within the sight of one.

3. Ozona, Texas.

Nine o’clock on a Thursday night, the bar full of Halliburton guys in their red all-in-one suits, roughnecks in from the oil fields for preseason football, hunting stories, and beer. It is just dumb luck that I’ve worn my camo miniskirt, and I take the best seat in the house for watching the Patriots beat up on the Redskins, until the bartender comes over and tells us we’ve entered a private club. Cory rises to leave. He recognizes enemy territory, knows that poets and Halliburton guys shouldn’t drink together, especially not in Texas. “In that case,” I say, “I’ll take two memberships and two double shots of Patr”n Silver and a Coca-Cola back.”

We can mark this down as my last fearless moment because even though I’ve already seen the Albanian’s pictures in the glove box, I haven’t really let her sink in. She’s married to a high-ranking political official. Every time Cory goes over there to visit her, someone comes up to him in a trench coat and says, “You know the price of a man in Albania is one hundred dollars U.S.”

I tell him with a straight face that the Albanian’s essential unavailability denies me all my magical qualities; then I ask him for money for the jukebox. He gives me three dollars, and I play every antiwar song I can find wedged in between Clint Black and the If You Don’t Believe in Freedom We’ll Kick Your Fuckin’ Ass Quintet: “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” and “Imagine,” and “War, Good God, ya’ll, what is it good for, absolutely nothing, say it again.” By the third round of Silver we’ve won the bartender over, we can tell because the tequila starts coming in tumblers.

Cory says, “You might be the first woman to ever drink in this bar,” and I say, “You might be the first poet.” Later, in the parking lot of the Best Western, I pick up both our heavy suitcases and make a beeline for the stairs. Cory says, “No! Pam, no!” which makes me lift the bags higher and run for it, and when I get to the top I laugh so hard I pee.

4. Juneau, Alaska.

They said we wouldn’t see any orcas. They said the humpbacks were in and when the humpbacks were in you didn’t see the orcas, because the orcas are predators and the humpbacks are prey. It’s been a long day. We’ve been all the way up Tracy Arm to the glaciers, and everyone but the captain and I are sleeping when a report comes over the radio: orcas in Shearwater Cove.

By the time we get there, there’s nothing stirring. A couple of humpbacks out in the main channel a sure sign that the orcas are gone. The captain is worried about the hour, worried about the fuel he’s got left, worried about his daughter, who’s got magenta hair and a T-shirt that says THIS is what a feminist looks like, who is back from somewhere like Reed College working on his boat this summer, selling sodas to the tourists through a permanent scowl. There is a flash of fin on the other side of the channel, distant, but unmistakable. Orca. Male.

The captain says, “that’s four miles across this channel, minimum.” I show him the silver charm around my neck, remind him that it’s my last day in Alaska, promise to swim for shore if we run out of gas.

”Don’t lose that fin,” he says, turning the bow into the sunset, but I couldn’t lose it if I tried, the water of Stephen’s Passage backlit, a million diamonds rushing toward me in the sun, and one black fin, impossibly tall, absurdly geometric, the accompanying blast of whale breath above it, superimposed onto the patterns of light.

Spotting whales at sea is not so different than spotting deer in the woods. For hours you see nothing, and then you see one, and suddenly you realize you are surrounded. This pod has twenty-five, by my best counting, the one male, who keeps his distance, and twenty-four females, all of them running steadily west. We get out in front, and the captain shuts down the engines. Every time the big male’s fin turns itself up and over and back down under the surface of the water, I can’t help myself, I gasp.

We are directly in the path of one of the females. Every time she surfaces we can hear her breathing, every time she surfaces I can see the spot of white at her heart, the patch on an orca that takes a black whale and turns it into something else. Twenty years ago, on my first trip to Alaska, I bought a string of white heart trade beads, and for this trip I tore the house apart to find them.

In three more dives she’ll be under the boat. I touch the beads at my neck and try to guess which side of the boat will get me the closest. The others are stirring, crowding the port side, watching her approach. I choose starboard, she dives one last time, and I start counting, at five she rises right under my hand. The breath from her blowhole is cold on my face. If I dared I could reach down and touch her on her white spot. Someone behind me screams, maybe the captain’s daughter, but the whale is already diving, already resurfacing a few yards farther on. I listen to the sweep of her fin, the puff of her breathing, until she disappears into the disappearing diamonds. When the male’s big fin is the only thing visible, a speck on the horizon, we turn the boat north and head for home.

5. Good Hope, Jamaica.

The sun is high above the cockpit country, and Marc and I are getting stoned at the pool. I am way too old to smoke pot, but Marc isn’t, and he convinces me, you wouldn’t go to Italy and not drink the coffee, you don’t go to Jamaica without smoking the weed. And he’s right. This pot is so potent that every time the sun reemerges from behind the cotton-ball clouds, I think a cartoon character I’ve invented called Big Mister Sunshine is caressing my arms with baby-powdered hands.

Marc’s brother died in a car accident when Marc was eighteen. Four months later he was the one to walk in on the body of his mother. Four months later his father went to jail. For the five years after that Marc played Division I hockey, turned his entire focus toward protecting the 4' x 6' space behind him, dodging the pucks that were continually flying at his head. Then his goalie knees gave out, and the next logical thing was to try to become a writer.

Good Hope is a papaya plantation that for a few weeks a year turns itself over to the making of art. Last night the ceramicists pulled an all-nighter to fire up the big wooden kiln, and the writers decided to stay up with them. It was quite a party, writers throwing pots, potters writing pantoums, the big clay figures glowing crimson inside the house-sized kiln like bodies, the oncologist from Santa Fe unable to resist a recitation of ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’.

Marc’s been on a tear around the world this year, Iceland, Finland, Amsterdam, Jamaica. After this he is supposed to go see his brother’s grave for the first time since his family blew up–his expression–and even to talk about it makes him shake in his chair. “You don’t have to do that if you aren’t ready,” I tell him. “Your brother is with you every second; it doesn’t make any difference to him whether or not you stand at his grave.” The sun moves out of the clouds again, turning the flowers a purple I thought existed only in coral reefs and crayons.

”You’re right,” he says. “Thank you,” though we don’t fool each other for a second, and that’s how we know we are friends.

6. Creede, Colorado.

The first snow fell on the peaks today. An edgy wind brought clouds that looked like thunderheads, but when they cleared, just before sunset, everything above eleven thousand feet was blanketed, not in white, but in chrome. Cory is in Tampa this balmy midnight, sitting on his front porch surrounded by chirping lizards, writing a poem by the glow of a string of Christmas lights, the paper curling at the edges, his hand damp where he holds the pen. I have only recently come back to this place of ice-colored stars strewn across ink dark sky, where frost on the wooden walkway is likely every night of the year–and heavy tonight–where I scare up a barn owl traveling the short hundred yards between my door and my car, and his wing beat is the loudest sound for ten square miles. The owl stops me in my tracks, makes me take a breath of the cold night air, and when I do, I think, I am breathing in the stars.

Yesterday I walked with six of the best women I know up above Spring Creek Pass to the twelve-thousand-foot flat top called Jarosa Mesa. Our ages span twenty years, 34–54, and what we have in common is a love of the world so fierce it makes us edgy. The aspens near the pass are holding their breath this week, hints of yellow and crimson, the meadow grasses high after August’s monsoon. We talk about Myanmar, Cuba, and New Orleans. We talk about stepchildren, wind pants, Italian food, sex. We snack on the season’s first good clementines and raspberry Fig Newman’s. To the west of the mesa the 14ers lay themselves out before us, a multi-colored kingdom of stone: Handies Peak, Sunshine Peak, Redstone Peak, The Wetterhorn, and Uncompaghre.

If I died tonight it would be with every single thing unfinished (like, I suppose, any other night), and yet, what a gift to die on the verge of tears. I have spent my life trying to understand the way this rock and this ache go together, why a granite peak is more dramatic half dressed in clouds (like a woman), why sunlight under fog is better than the sum of its parts, why my best days and my worst days are always the same days, why (often) leaving seems like the only solution to the predicament of loving (each other) the world.

It’s hard to know whether the bigger problem is space or time. The forty-three years I didn’t get to miss him, the unlimited rent-a-car miles between Tampa and anywhere he could really see the stars. All the way across the I-10 last month, the sky kept making him offers: thunderclouds over Flagstaff, a double rainbow near Tucumcari, and Mars, the closest to the earth in fifty thousand years, burning candy-apple red and following the moon from Albuquerque to Gallup, and we went the other way ’the wrong way, any given star would tell you’ hurtling west to east.

7. Vancouver, British Columbia.

The bipolar halibut fisherman from Kodiak with ocean eyes and biceps like something right out of Michelangelo. He’s spent ten years in Jo-burg, ten years in Bangkok, ten years back and forth between Kodiak and B.C. As a result, his mouth does crazy things to the letter o, the letter h, and anything with a lot of r’s in it.

He tells me he doesn’t like to throw around words like CIA and Special Forces. He tells me we’ve been put on earth to crack each other open, and then to stick around long enough to watch the thing that, having been cracked open, suddenly shines. He says he knows there is only a thin wall between himself and all that shining, but sometimes he forgets how thin the wall is, because somebody came along when he wasn’t looking, and painted the damn thing black. He tells me he has tried three different times, but he just can’t stick with the lithium. Even when he talks about not wanting to use his powers for world domination, even when he uses the phrase dark arts, he looks like a little boy who wants more than anything to catch a fish.

When I tell my friend Fenton about him, Fenton hears Kodiak, hears fisherman, hears bi and polar and asks if maybe we can share him. When I remind Fenton about Cory, he reminds me about the Albanian in the glove box. “Love gets bigger after forty,” Fenton tells me. “After forty, love says, ‘Come one, come all.’”

8. Laramie, Wyoming.

In the summer, the trains come through town more than once an hour, and Cory and I, locked all night in the bookstore like a fantasy left over from clumsy childhood, pulling books off whatever shelves we want to and reading to each other–poems first, and then settling into stories–on the old purple couch. We’d come down that day from Walden, Moose Capital of Colorado. I was sure we would find some marker on the fence where Matthew Shepard had been tied.

Later, when we had turned out all the lights in the bookstore and thrown the mattress on the floor in the back room, the cowboy band across the street tried to play “Free Bird” as an encore, and I watched his face above me change color with the flashing light. He took my hand and made me feel the place we came together.

“Holy,” he said, not believing in God.

9. Tucson, Arizona.

Drinking espresso on the patio of Raging Sage, waiting for the phone to ring. Tami had her needle biopsy last Thursday, is expecting results today. She is the same age now that her mother was when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer.

After the news, good or bad, we are going to the spa for Watsu, where a large and beautiful woman named Shannon will float us around a pool one at a time, twist us and turn us, all the time supporting us, pull us tight against her shoulder, her arms snug under our butts, and rock us into something like sleep.

In the car on the way home, after the first Watsu, Tami said, “so did that kind of freak you out when she held you like a baby?” and we laughed so hard she had to pull to the side of the road. Now we can’t get enough of Shannon and the way she holds us like a baby. Both of our mothers have been dead a long time.

The only good thing about finding the Albanian in the glove box was looking forward to telling Tami that in the ensuing fight I had referenced my own magical qualities. I told her what Cory told me, that after sex in the missionary position–the Albanian won’t let Cory do anything her husband doesn’t do–the Albanian runs around the hotel room screaming, I’m a motel whore, I’m a motel whore. That’s when Tami started calling him the stupid fucking poet who won’t get out of his own stupid fucking way. “sFP,” Tami said, “like sunscreen, after forty-five it’s all the same.”

Bluetail lizards chase each other back and forth across the patio.

I say, “What was the best piece of advice your mother ever gave you?”

Tami thinks a minute, and reddens. “It was when Dixon and I had our first big fight,” she says. “Valentine’s Day, 1994. I didn’t think we were going to make it. I called Mom out of desperation. ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘can I just ask you one question? You know when you are having your period? Are you giving Dixon enough blow jobs during those times?’”

Tami’s cell phone rings, and we both stare at it a minute before she answers. She picks it up, and I start counting inside my head, and when I get to seven, relief breaks across Tami’s face like sunshine. I realize with some surprise that I am paralyzed with gratitude. If this building were on fire, I could not use my legs to move away.

10. Gulfport, Mississippi.

Cory and I walk out on the pier to watch the pelicans dive. On the way back we pass a young man in a wheelchair. He is smoking a cigarette, taking long pulls off a bottle inside of a paper bag. He is sunken in on himself in the particular way of the dying, but has a look of such despair on his face I know that in that way, at least, he is still very much alive.

Cory doesn’t notice his ball cap, brown corduroy, the word Worthy embroidered in cursive, in gold. It takes us ten minutes to gather the courage to go back up the pier and talk to him. From a hundred yards away, he watches us in our deliberations. Cory and I can never decide anything, where to go to dinner, whether or not to stay together, what to do about the Albanian in the glove box. By the time we get the courage to go to him, to ask him in quiet nervous voices if there is anything we can do for him, he feels equally sorry for us.

11. Madison, Wisconsin.

Saturday morning, middle of October. Good strong coffee from Michelangelo’s. Last night Cory sang “You Can Close Your Eyes” to my voicemail, and I did, and for the first time this week, slept for six hours straight. This morning on State Street a little blond girl–maybe three–threw the kind of temper tantrum we’d all like to throw, long and loud, and almost entirely artificial. “Jessica,” her mother said, in a perfectly reasonable tone, “Jessica, I’m going to have to ask you for your complete cooperation . . .”

Fenton called to say he has come up with the perfect book for us to write together, Pam and Fenton’s Tales of Failed Love and Romance. Chapter one, mine, called I Can’t Believe I Slept with a Poet, followed by chapter two, his, I Can’t Believe I Slept with a Priest.

Everything I know about Wisconsin can fit in one paragraph. It is the home of the Butter Burger. It is the state where, on the day that his father died, Brett Farve had the game of his life.

On Thursday I gave my class this assignment: write your own suicide note. There was half a beat where they all looked at me, and then each other. “No problem,” Murray finally said. “I’ll just go to computer and call one up.”

12. Tampa, Florida.

Eight o’clock on a Friday night, and downtown is rolled up tight. Half a block from the old Tampa Theater, lights, voices, and the slow roll of reggae spilling out into the street. Cory and I have been having a hard time finding fun in Tampa, and the Jamaicans at the Jerk Hut seem to be having some. It has the feel of a private party, and no one else there is white, but the bouncer says five bucks a person cover, twelve for a bucket of Red Stripes, you can get yourself some food in the back.

We fill a plate with jerk chicken and fried bananas, open two beers, and settle in on the perimeter. The band is talented, everyone in the place knows the words and sings along, and even though Cory keeps trying to bend the lyrics political, all the lines I catch are about love and sex and girls. Cory is not a dancer, but the beat is irresistible, so I compromise, as others do, by swaying in my chair. When we are not ignored entirely, we are looked at with pleasant curiosity.

Earlier that day, I was trying to buy some grouper somewhere other than a supermarket, and the woman at the Born Again Produce stand sent me to the Fresh Fish Market in the projects. “It’s crazy,” she said. “Water, water everywhere, but that’s the only one there is.”

The Fresh Fish Market is in a strip mall. Next door at the Joyful Noise Holiness Tabernacle of Jesus Christ, teenage girls in white and purple robes holding hymnals were lining up to go inside. There was only one grouper fillet left in the case, and the woman behind me in line said she wanted to arm-wrestle me for it, before she broke into a smile so wide it showered the dingy market walls with light. ‘sister got lost on the way to the Publix,” she said.

Back at the Jerk Hut, the band is on break, and Cory says, “We might be the only white people to ever drink in this bar.” And I say, “And you might be the only poet.”

I’m finally beginning to understand, that when we want to kill ourselves, it is not because we are lonely, but because we are trying to break up with the world before the world breaks up with us.

When the band comes back, a waitress named Shaila with beaded dreadlocks and bright green pumps takes both my hands and pulls me to the dance floor. She says, “We are going to get everybody dancing tonight.” Two songs later she says, “I’m going back to get the Mister,” and I know Cory won’t be able to resist her invitation. She brings him to me on the dance floor, and two songs later, Shaila gets her wish. Every single person–even the bouncer, even the kitchen ladies–are dancing, joyful, to the beat.

I Saw the Light by Terry Bisson

I saw the light. So did you. Everybody did.

Remember where you were the first time you saw it? Of course you do. I was living in Arizona, Tucson, more or less retired. I was throwing sticks. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but who would want to? There aren't any new tricks, just the old tried and true. "Good boy, Sam," I would say, and he would say "woof," and there we would go again. I used to amuse myself thinking it was Sam who was teaching me to throw, but I don't think that any more. It was night, and desert nights are bright, even with a quarter moon. Sam stopped, halfway back to me, dropped his stick and began to howl. He was looking up, over my head. I turned and looked up toward the moon, and you know the rest. There it was, blinking in threes: dot dot dot, twice a minute. On the Moon, where no one had been in thirty years. Twenty nine, eight months, and four days, exactly; I knew, because I had been the last to leave, the one who locked the door behind me.

❧

Sam's a big yellow mutt; his first name is Play it Again, so I always call him by his last. He was a parting gift from my third ex, who was himself a parting gift from my second. Lunar subcrust engineers shouldn't marry: our peculiar talents take us to too many faraway places. Or to one, anyway.

"Come on boy," I said, and we headed back into the minimally furnished condo I call home, leaving the stick behind—even though sticks are not all that easy to find in Arizona, or for that matter on the Moon.

❧

The light on the Moon was front page news the next morning—dot dot dot—and by the third day it was estimated that all but a tiny fraction of Earth's six point four billion had seen it. UNASA confirmed that the light was not from Marco Polo Station (I could have told them that) but from a spot almost a hundred kilometers away, on the broad, dark plain of the Sinus Medii: the exact center of the Moon as seen from Earth.

I figured there would have to be an investigation, so I made a few calls. I was not really hopeful, but you never knew. I still had a few friends in the Agency. I was hoping that, if nothing else, this light would get us back to the Moon. It wasn't only or even primarily for myself that I was hoping; it was for humanity, all of us, past and future. It seemed a shame to learn to soar off the planet and then quit.

Okay, so it's not soaring: it's more like a push-up, grunting and heaving, but you know what I mean.

❧

First Contact: strange lights on the Moon: may we have your attention, please. The tabs speculated, the pundits punded, and UNASA prepared the first international expedition since the abandonment of Marco Polo in 20—. I had made, as I mentioned, a few calls, but I hadn't really expected anything. A sixty-one-year-old woman does not exactly fit the profile for space flight and lunar exploration. So Imagine, as they say, My Surprise, when the phone rang. It was Berenson, my Russian-English boss from the old days. I knew him immediately by his accent even though it had been twenty-nine years eight months and seven days.

"Bee!?" (Which is what we called him.)

"I requested you as number two for the tech team. Logistically this is a cake walk and age is not a problem, if you're still in shape. There will be five altogether, three SETI and two tech."

"How soon?" I asked, trying to hide my excitement.

"Start packing."

I hung up and screamed, or howled, or whatever. Sam came running. "I'm going back to the Moon!" I said.

"Woof!" he said, jowls flopping; as always, happier for me than for himself.

❧

Our trip was put together with a minimum of publicity and fanfare. We were due at Novy Mir in less than a week. I wasn't to tell anyone where I was going. Of course, I had already told Sam.

"I'm leaving you here with Willoughby," I said. "I'll be back soon. Three, four weeks max. Meanwhile, you be good, hear?"

"Where are you going, exactly?" My next door neighbor, Willoughby, is a retired FBI agent, a type that both hates and loves secrets, depending on who is keeping them, and why.

"An old lover," I said, with a wink. It was one of my better moments.

❧

Zero G felt perfectly normal; you don't forget how to fly, just as you don't forget how to walk. I felt ten years younger immediately. It was great to be back in the Big Empty, even if it meant a night or two on Novy Mir, the sprawling, smelly space station in Clarke orbit.

Bee was the first one I saw when I entered the day room we had been assigned. He was with Yoshi, his old number two.

"I thought I was number two!" I complained.

"You are," Bee replied with a laugh. "Yoshi is number one." Turned out he was leading SETI. His partners were a scowling Chinese biologist named Chang, and a smiling Indian linguist named Erin Vishnu whose mother had gotten pregnant during Julia Roberts' Academy Awards acceptance speech. I didn't learn this until later, of course; at first the "sadies" (as Yoshi and I called them) were very reserved.

❧

It was a two-day trip from high Earth orbit to the Moon. Bee and I caught up on old times (he had saved my life twice, which cements a friendship) while Yoshi flew the ship and studied the manuals, which she already knew by heart. So did I. I had helped her and Bee run the pumps, extracting environmentals from buried comet ice, for almost six years at Polo.

The SETI team, the sadies, were the scientific payload. The heart of the matter, as it were. They had been established to deal directly, discretely, and creatively, with any First Contact situation, answerable to no government—not even UNASA.

"No one really thought it would ever happen," Bee told me. "So we have complete autonomy; for two weeks anyway."

❧

We were just preparing for lunar capture when I got the call from Willoughby—my next door neighbor, remember? It was Sam. He was desolate, disconsolate, wouldn't eat; he just howled—at the moon, of course, as if he knew where I was headed.

"How the Hell did you get through to me here?" I asked. I needn't have. Those FBI guys never let go of their connections. I could hear Sam in the background, whining.

Willoughby held the phone, and I said, "Hang in there, boy, I'll be home soon."

"Woof," was his answer; he was nothing if not unconvinced.

❧

The light source was about a hundred kliks from Marco Polo, and we crossed over the old station on our recon orbit. I got all teary-eyed, seeing our domes and tunnels, still intact here where the weather runs in billion year cycles; every scratch and scuff in the lunar dust just as we had left it, twenty-nine years eight months and eighteen days before.

Then we saw the light itself as we passed over Sinus Medii. It was coming from a perfect jet black pyramid, ten meters on a side, too small to show up in amateur photos but plenty large enough to have been studied from Novy Mir.

"There haven't been any pictures of this!" I said. "Not even on the internet." Bee just smiled and I realized then that his SETI team had powers that belied their modest size and relative obscurity.

The pyramid was pure black, the only pure thing on the Moon, which is all shades of gray.

It was still throwing light, dot dot dot, a new sequence every twenty-seven seconds.

❧

We set down next to the pyramid in a cloud of slow-settling dust. If we had hoped to be greeted by the aliens when the dust cleared (and we had; hopes are less restricted than expectations), we were duly disappointed.

The pyramid was silent and still, as black as a rip in the Universe. It was still (we confirmed from Novy Mir) transmitting its dot dot dot twice a minute, but the light was, for some reason, invisible from our position beside it.

Still teary-eyed, I felt like a dancer; light on my feet, without the creaking that comes with age and miles. I realized that it was not the moon I had missed all these years, but the one-sixth gravity, and of course my youth.

SETI had arranged for a two week stay, so I immediately sunk a probe and hit pay dirt (or ice). The sadies went to work, photographing the pyramid from all sides, while Yoshi and I unfolded the dome and adjusted the environmentals to break down the oxygen and hydrogen (for fuel) extracted from the cometary trash imbedded under the lunar crust.

By Day Two (sticklers for tradition, we ran on Houston time) we had the ship for a dorm, and the attached geodesic as a day room and observation dome, complete with fast-plants and a hot tub which also heated the dome and ship. By Day Three I knew I should have been bored. Shouldn't something have happened by now?

"What would you have us do?" Bee asked, "knock?"

"Why not?" I said, returning his smile. I was in no hurry; I was just glad to have a reason to be here, back home, on the Moon. It felt—right. Even Yoshi, an olympic complainer, was not complaining, though her narrow face was not exactly wreathed in smiles. "What about ground control?" she asked. "Aren't they pushing you?"

"There isn't any ground control," Bee said. "Or haven't you noticed?" The SETI mandate was a blank slate, designed to remove First Contact, if it ever came to pass, from the constraints of diplomacy and politics. The pace of events was their call.

By Day Four Yoshi and I had nothing to do except watch the sadies in their clumsy white suits measure and photograph and analyze the pyramid. I kept my doubts to myself, reluctant to interfere, but Yoshi was never one to recognized such restraints. "Aren't you guys disappointed?" she asked at the end of the day.

"Not yet. It feels right to go slow," Bee replied. He was sitting with us in the hot tub, soaking off the chill that comes with EVAs, even in a suit. "Can't you feel it?"

Feel what? We both looked at him, puzzled.

"The familiarity. I feel it; we all feel it. A feeling that we are in the right place, doing the right thing."

"I thought it was just me," I said. "Being back here."

"We all feel it," said Chang, who was sitting on the floor in his long johns, tapping on a laptop. "We are here to record and evaluate everything. Feelings included. Right, Vish?"

"Right."

"You've got another week," said Yoshi.

"Knock and you shall enter," I said.

"Hmmmm," said Bee.

❧

And knock he did. The next day, at the end of their routine explorations, he reached up with a heavy gloved mitt and rapped three times on the side of the pyramid.

Yoshi and I were watching from the dome.

"I knocked," Bee said to me, as he was unsuiting just inside the airlock (we entered and exited through the ship). Instead of answering, I pulled all three of the sadies into the dome, and pointed across the little plain of dust toward the pyramid.

"Damn," said Chang. He all but smiled. Vishnu looked amazed. Bee, delighted. There it was:

A handprint, in bright yellow, against the darker-than-midnight black, halfway up the pyramid.

❧

The next "morning" the print was still there, and the sadies were suited up early. Yoshi and I watched them jumping clumsily around, stirring up the dust, fitting their stiff gloves against the handprint, waiting for something to happen. Hoping for something to happen.

Nothing did.

Later in the hot tub we were all silent. Outside the dome, we could see the print, bright yellow in the Moon's cruel gray. We felt gloomy and hopeful at the same time. Familiarity had been replaced by a kind of desperate eagerness.

"It wants something," said Bee.

"Maybe it wants a touch," I said.

"A touch?" Chang was scornful.

I ignored him and addressed myself to Bee. "You know, not a glove."

"It's high vac out there," Vishnu reminded me. "We can't exactly take off out gloves."

"But of course we can!" Bee said, slapping the water like a boy. I grinned and gave him five. There were the peels.

❧

Peels are emergency spray-on suits to be used in case of sudden decompression. Coupled with a "paper" helmet, a peel will give you anywhere from two to twenty minutes to find an airlock or an emergency vehicle—or say your prayers.

I was in fact the only one present who had actually used a peel, after a sudden rockslide collapsed Polo's ag dome. Thanks to the peel I had survived the twelve minutes it took Bee to get to me with a Rover. I could still feel the cold of those long twelve minutes in my bones.

The next "day" (Six) they tried it. Yoshi and I watched from the dome as Bee in his peel and the sadies in their white suits approached the pyramid, Bee in the lead. He was hurrying, of course; there's no other way to moonwalk in a peel. I could feel how cold he was.

They all stopped and stood in a line, right in front of the print. With his left hand Bee grabbed Chang's mitt, and Chang grabbed Vishnu's. Then Bee placed his right hand high on the side of the pyramid, directly over the print.

And it happened.

Something—a lens, a door?—opened in the side of the pyramid, and they stepped through: one, two, three: Bee, Chang, Vishnu. It closed behind them and they were gone.

"Holy shit," said Yoshi.

"Knock and you shall enter," I said. It was another of my better moments.

❧

Yoshi and I watched the pyramid, wordlessly. Was there air in there? How could Bee survive? After twenty minutes Yoshi began to suit up for a rescue EVA. I was the only one watching two minutes later (twenry-one point four minutes from entry, timed on the sadies' fixed video camera) when the lens opened and the three emerged, stumbling, Bee in the lead. Yoshi opened the airlock for them and they staggered in, Bee falling into my arms. While Yoshi helped the other sadies un-suit, I ripped off his paper helmet and pulled him into the hot tub, which would dissolve his peel. He was shivering and grinning.

Yoshi joined us, feet only. "Why's he grinning?"

"Ask him," I said. I was rubbing one of his feet while he rubbed the other.

Bee was opening his mouth and closing it without making a sound, like a fish.

"It was big in there," he said, finally; still with the goofy grin. "Bigger on the inside than on the outside."

"What happened?" I asked.

"We went in and the door closed behind us. It was dark but we could see, don't ask me why. We took our helmets off …"

"Took your helmets off!?" Yoshi was offended.

"Don't ask me why. We just did, all of us. Then we stepped forward, all together I think, and saw the light."

"Wait a minute," I said.

"It was like a glow."

"But bright," said Chang, who had joined us. "The brightest thing I have ever seen."

"The next thing I knew I was on my knees," said Bee. "I could feel this hand on the top of my head."

"A hand?" Yoshi was offended again.

"It felt like a yellow hand," Vishnu said, peeling off her long johns; it was the first time I had seen her undressed.

"It was definitely a hand," Bee said. "I could tell it was a hand though I couldn't see anything. I don't think I even looked."

"It was all light," said Chang. "And this feeling. It was a hand on the top of my head."

"It felt so good," said Vishnu, lowering herself into the water. She had the body of a girl.

"Sounds like an acid trip," I said. "Or a three-armed alien."

"What was the communication?" Yoshi asked. "What was said?"

"The feeling was the communication," Bee said. "That was all. Nothing was said. We were just there, all three of us, on our knees, looking into the light."

"With a feeling of … of …" Chang gave up.

"I don't like this," said Vishnu, looking down at herself, as if just realizing she was nude. "Shouldn't we be talking about this among ourselves first?"

"It's okay," said Bee. We can proceed any way we decide is best, and this feels okay, doesn't it? These are our closest comrades here, after a million years of evolution."

Huh? He looked stoned to me.

"So whatever it is, it came all this way to pat you on the head?" Yoshi grumbled.

Bee and Chang just grinned. Vishnu looked troubled. I wondered if she were wishing she had kept her long johns on.

"Maybe it's God," I said.

"It's a they," Bee said, shaking his head.

"More than one," said Vishnu. "Many."

"And they know us," Chang said.

"Yes! That's the communication," Bee said. "They know us, and we know them. That was the feeling, more than a feeling, really. That's what they wanted to tell us."

"They?" Yoshi rolled her eyes. "They called you up here for a feeling? There's no communication?"

"Feelings are real," said Bee. "Maybe that's all it will be. Who knows. The idea behind SETI is that First Contact will probably be something unexpected."

"This is unexpected," said Vishnu. "But not unfamiliar. Very familiar. We have been here before."

"Here?" I asked.

"In their company," said Chang. "Being with them felt good. Better than good. Great."

"Great," said Yoshi, looking disgusted.

"And now?" I asked. "Next?"

"I don't know," said Bee, looking out toward the black pyramid, with its yellow print halfway up the side. "There's something, something else. I guess we go back."

❧

And so they did. The next "morning" they all went out again, Chang and Vishnu suited and Bee leading, in his peel. They emerged after only twenty minutes this time, with the same lunatic grins.

"It's not like we aren't conscious in there," said Chang, as his helmet came off. "It's more like we're conscious for the first time."

"Right," said Vishnu.

I would have made another acid trip joke, but I didn't want to discourage them. This was, after all, I told myself, the long awaited First Contact, for which humanity had waited a million years or more.

Wasn't it?

"Who are they? What are they? What do they want from us?" asked Yoshi.

"They want to be with us," said Vishnu, dreamily peeling off her long johns. "Just like we want to be with them."

"It's all feelings," said Bee, slipping into the pool beside me. He looked like the Michelin tire man in his foam suit, before it started to dissolve into harmless polymer chains. "But the feelings contain information."

"They sort of precipitate into information," said Chang.

"The feelings are information," said Vishnu, nude again. "We are in contact with an entity that we have been in contact with before. And have always wanted to be in contact with again."

"That's the feeling!" said Chang eagerly. "Desire, and the fulfillment of desire."

"Sounds sort of sexy," I said.

"It's a wonderful feeling," said Bee, taking me more seriously than I took myself. "But it's changing, too. There's something else."

"Something dark," said Vishnu.

"Dark how? Dark what?" Yoshi was putting the helmets and suits away, looking annoyed.

"It's too soon to say," said Bee. "First we all need to get some sleep. That's an order."

❧

"Wake up."

It was Yoshi.

"It's Berenson, he's gone. He's in there."

"What?" I sat up, almost spilling out of my hammock. I had been dreaming I was home on Earth with Sam, trying to explain something to him, about sticks.

"I thought I saw him, in a peel, going in, about five minutes ago."

"Are you sure?"

"I thought I might be dreaming, so I checked. The other sadies are in their hammocks, but Berenson is gone."

"So what do you think we should do?"

Twenty minutes later I was in boots and long johns, spraying on a peel. I shook open a paper helmet, checking to make sure it had two full air cans (twenty minutes). I had thought I remembered the cold and was prepared for the it, but I wasn't. It was insulting, crushing, humbling.

I hurried toward the pyramid. The dust cracked under my feet with that weird squeak of molecules that have never—not by wind, not by water, not by weather—been rubbed together. The squeak came up through my bones as sound. I had forgotten it.

I saw Yoshi and the sadies, awake now, watching from the dome. I waved as I ran. I could feel the vacuum slicing my fingertips, like steel knives.

I put my hand against the side of the pyramid, covering the print, and something happened. I wasn't sure what. It opened, I went in; it was dark, I was alone.

❧

I was inside. I didn't know, still don't know, how I got there. Before I knew what I was doing, I was taking off my helmet.

The air smelled like lemons. It was cold, but not Moon cold. The pyramid was larger inside, just as Bee had said, tapering up to a cone of darkness in the center.

And there was a light. Also in the center. It had a kind of substance light doesn't always, doesn't often, doesn't ever, have. It was beckoning; I approached. It all seemed natural, as if everything I was doing was what I had always wanted to do. It felt good; very good. It felt great. The light grew brighter and I fell to my knees, but it was more like rising, really. I couldn't stand but I didn't want to stand. I felt a hand on my head: I knew it was a hand, and I knew what hand it was! I had a million questions, I knew, but I couldn't think, even when I tried. I was so very glad to be here, back here, where I belonged. Where I was glad to be.

I felt a hand in mine. Bee. He was pulling me backward, away from the light, into the cold and the darkness. We were putting on our helmets, Bee and I. We were stepping together across the squeaky surface of the moon, toward the lighted dome, which looked like a zoo, full of puzzled friendly faces, pressed against the glass.

❧

"Are you okay?" Yoshi asked.

I saw my breasts floating in front of me and realized I was in the hot tub. I laughed. Bee laughed with me. I knew that the grin on his face was a reflection of my own. We were in the water and someone was handing me a cup of coffee.

Joe, they used to call it. A cup of joe. "I'm okay," I said. "I went in to get you, Bee."

"I know, but you shouldn't have. You should have awakened the others."

I understood. It was a break in the protocol. "We know them and they know us," I said. It was like remembering something; it was easy, and yet impossible if you couldn't do it. "They are glad to see us."

"Not exactly," said Bee. "There's a melancholy, too."

"Something very sad," said Vishnu. She was wearing her nightgown and her tiny feet were in the water next to my shoulder.

She was right. There had been a reproach, a disappointment. "I can feel it, too," said Chang.

"Feel what?" asked Yoshi, tapping me on the head with a long finger, like a teacher admonishing a bad student. "Tell me what happened. Now."

"There are just these feelings," I said. "Then afterward, they sort of turn into, not ideas exactly, sort of like memories. Is that what you want to know?"

"I want to know what's fucking happening. And I want you to tell me."

"Don't be hard on her," said Bee. "We're all just figuring it out."

"Figuring what out?!"

"What they want," said Chang. "They love us, they wanted to find us. They found us."

"And we love them!" I said. "That's why we can't see them."

"That's right!" said Bee, looking at me as if I were a genius. "We love them so much that all we can see is the light of our love."

"I hope this is all going in your fucking report," said Yoshi, sounding disgusted.

"They found us again," said Chang. "That's why we are so happy."

"But something is wrong," said Bee. "We have to go back in. Once more."

"And do I get to go?" I could still feel the hand on my head. I wanted to feel it there again, more than anything.

"We'll all go this time," Bee said.

❧

But we didn't all go. Yoshi had no desire to go; plus, she explained, she felt that somebody had to stay behind and stay on top of systems.

"Designated driver," said Bee, laughing as we sprayed each other. He and I were the only ones in peels. Chang and Vishnu wore suits. I felt I was one of the sadies now, and they treated me as such. Even Chang. We crossed the squeaky dust and held hands by the pyramid. Looking back I saw Yoshi in the dome, looking a little bit abandoned.

Bee hit the print and there we were, inside. I unstuck my helmet and looked for the light. I fell to my knees. "Oh boy," I said when I felt the hand on my head.

Something was wrong. Everything was okay but something was wrong. After a few moments of confusion, we were pushed out the door, holding hands, into the cold. I couldn't remember putting my helmet on, but I was breathing as we hurried toward the lights of the dome.

We were shaking. I was shaking all over. I sat in the hot tub and watched my suit dissolve, like dry ice, leaving no trace.

"Hey, don't cry," said Bee. "I know we're all upset."

"It's okay to cry," said Vishnu.

I was crying.

"What happened?" asked Yoshi. "God damn it, tell me."

"They're leaving," said Bee.

"They don't want us," I said. "They don't want us any more."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"We should all just be still for a while," said Bee. "Come and get in the water, Chang. Vishnu. Claire."

Claire. My parents gave me that name. I hadn't thought about them in a long time. I started to cry again, really hard this time.

❧

By noon we were warmed and fed—and dejected. "It's over," Bee said finally.

"They're leaving," Chang said. I knew it too. We all knew the same things. The feelings turned into ideas, gradually, like the graphics in a slow web connection. Sooner or later we all had the same pictures in our minds.

"They're disappointed in us," I said.

"I want them to stay," said Vishnu.

"Of course, we want to be with them," said Bee. "But we can't make them want to be with us."

"What in the hell are you all talking about?" asked Yoshi.

"They're leaving," I said. I pointed outside. The yellow print was gone, and the pyramid looked black and forbidding. Closed.

"Explain, damn it."

"The thing is, we knew them long ago," said Bee. As I listened, my emotions were spinning, like dust in sunlight, settling as he spoke onto the table of my mind, in which his voice, like a fingertip, traced his words: "This is not first contact, it is second contact."

And what he was saying, we all knew.

"They were our gods," said Chang.

"Not exactly," said Vishnu. "We were their companion species, their helper. We lived only to please them. We looked up to them."

"Their favorite," I said. "Their pet."

"And they loved us," said Chang. "And they love us still."

"But they wanted more," said Bee. "They set us free so we could develop without them. They put us down on Earth, where we could escape the worship of them that makes our knees go weak and our minds go blank. They wanted a true companion. They thought if they left us alone we would develop into a sentient race on our own."

"And we did," I said, surprised at how much I knew; at the depth of the ideas and images that had been implanted in me. "The light was a test, to see if we had developed enough to leave the Earth and come to them."

"They knew better than to appear among us," said Chang. "Can you imagine the chaos?"

"It might have been great," said Vishnu.

"It was a test," said Bee. "And we did it, we passed. They were so pleased."

"But then disappointed," I said. "Because nothing had really changed."

"It might have been great," said Vishnu, again.

"We still can't see them; our minds still go blank in their presence. We fall to our knees and worship them, and that's all we can do, even now."

"We can't love them less," said Chang bitterly. "How can they expect us to love them less?"

"There's a message for you," said Yoshi.

"For me?" My mind wrenched itself back to the real world. I stood up, dripping. Water drips in long sheets on the Moon. I looked outside and saw that the pyramid was gone.

❧

"How did you find me here?"

"Haven't we been through that before?" It was Willoughby, my next door neighbor, the retired FBI agent. "The light's gone out, what did you guys do?"

"Put Sam on," I said.

"He won't eat. How long before you get back?"

"A week, probably," I said. "We will have to write a report." I heard a noise behind me; it was Chang in tears.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, we're fine," I said. It was over and I was glad. "Put Sam on."

"Hold on."

Yoshi had joined them in the pool, standing there in her orange coveralls, wet to the knees. They were hugging and crying. I heard a sort of gruff whine.

"Sam, is that you?"

"Woof!"

"Sam, listen carefully. Can you hear me?"

I could imagine Sam looking around, sniffing, trying to locate the face and hand and smell that went with the voice.

"I'll be back soon," I said. "Did you miss me?"

"Woof."

"I'm coming home, and I won't leave you alone again, I promise."

They're Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

Greetings by Terry Bisson

Most things may never happen: this one will

–Philip Larkin, "Aubade"

❧

One


It started out with a tangle, which should have been a sign. Tom's first concern, after his initial raw animal terror, was how to break the news to Ara; so he called Cliff and asked for help, telling him not to tell anyone, at least until he got there. But Cliff was already on the phone with Pam, who was meeting Arabella at the farmers market, and so by the time Tom got to Cliff's (walking across the golf course, even though it was prohibited) "the girls" had already dropped their bikes in the yard and were waiting in the kitchen.

They were all best friends, old friends ("At our age," Tom liked to joke, "all your friends are old."), and so Tom wasn't surprised or, after he thought about it, even annoyed to see them. It made it like an event, a ceremony of sorts, which seemed proper. And the terror had receded to a dull dread: a fear no less animal, but more domesticated, which he was to learn to live with over the next ten days, like a big, ugly, dun-colored dog.

"What's this, Cliff, an intervention?" he asked.

"Don't make this into a joke," Arabella warned. She was known for bursting into tears but only for the little things: a fender bender, a dropped dish, a goldfish floating on the top of the water. Her hand was damp as it found Tom's under Cliff and Pam's old-wood kitchen table.

"Start at the beginning," said Cliff, who was a lawyer, though he didn't practice anymore. "Guess he finally got it down," Tom liked to joke; though he didn't feel like joking this morning. It was 11:25, almost lunchtime. It was mid-October, and most of the leaves that were due to go that year were gone.

"It's pretty simple," Tom said, though pretty wasn't exactly the word. "I got it an hour ago, when I checked my mail. Certified. Here, I printed it out."

He laid it on the table, flattening it with the heel of his hand. Under the official US logo, it read:

GREETINGS Thomas Aaron Clurman (401-25-5423)

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY LOTTERY FOR INDUCTION INTO THE OREGON SUNSET BRIGADE. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SACRIFICE. YOU ARE TO REPORT TO CASCADE CENTER 1656, 18767 WEST HELLEN ST, AT 10 AM, OCTOBER 22, 20--. IF YOU WISH TO DISCUSS OTHER ARRANGEMENTS, AS PROVIDED BY LAW, PLEASE CALL 154 176 098 8245.

"That's only ten days from now," Pam said. "The bastards."

"They don't want to give you time to think about it," said Cliff, who was serving coffee to everyone.

Arabella burst into tears.

"Come on, honey. What am I, a goldfish?"

"I don't get it," said Cliff, sitting down. The coffee was imported directly from the growers in Costa Rica. "I thought they weren't drafting anyone under seventy-five."

"Guess now they are." Tom folded the notice and put it into the pocket of his LL Bean chamois shirt. "The law says three score and ten, doesn't it?"

"The bastards," said Pam.

"That's the Bible, not the law," said Cliff. "Maybe it's the death rate in Africa. I read where some new vaccine has lowered the infant mortality rate by thirty-four percent."

"Whatever," said Tom, suddenly irritated by Cliff's interest in world events. "At any rate, last summer we talked about what we would do, remember? No way I'm marching off with the Sunset Brigade, so I'll need your help; Ara and I will need your help." He squeezed Arabella's hand.

Arabella was slow in squeezing back.

"Well, of course," said Pam. "But isn't there something we need to do first, some …?"

"There's no appeal process," Cliff said. "There are options, of course. And we're with you a hundred percent, Tom. We all feel the same way you do."

Do you really? thought Tom. "Right. Anyway, maybe Arabella and I should talk first, and see you guys later."

"Yes, later," said Pam. "Tonight's card night anyway. Come early for dinner."

"Should we bring anything?" asked Arabella.

"Just yourselves," said Pam. "The bastards."


❧


Walking home, around the golf course, Tom and Arabella were silent. He walked her bike, which was, he thought, sort of like holding hands. Now, when there was everything to talk about, there was nothing to say. How come the world looks so bright? Tom wondered. So various, so beautiful, so new …

"You and Cliff were stoned that night at Holystone Bay," said Arabella. "It isn't all that easy to, you know, do it yourself."

"Stoned but sincere," said Tom. "What do you want me to do, join the Brigade?"

"I don't want any of it. There must be something we can do. We should call the kids."

"Not yet," said Tom. "It's not their problem. Besides, Gwyneth was just here last week. Thomas is another matter altogether."

"Thomas always was."


❧


That night Pam cooked pasta. Cliff brought out a bottle of wine from his own vineyard.

"It must have been Africa," he said. He showed them the article in The Economist. A new vaccine had reduced the infant mortality rate and therefore, it was speculated, adjustments would have to be made in the death rates in the "developed" countries.

Tom had never had a problem with this before. Neither had Cliff. America had reaped the benefits of selective underdevelopment for hundreds of years. Now they were making up for it.

But tonight, drinking Cliff's Willamette Valley pinot noir and looking out over the golf course, Tom found it alarming that someone else's good fortune was his bad luck. Did this mean that life was a zero-sum game after all; and that the humanistic, liberal philosophy that had guided him and Cliff for most of their fifty-odd years as friends, was false; based on a false premise—that the greatest good for all and the greatest good for one were in some sort of deep, unwritten, unspoken but unbreakable harmony? Now the world, lopsided or not, was about to spin on without him.

It was, quite literally, unimaginable.

"I think they're after the opposition," Pam was saying. "The bastards."

"We're hardly the opposition," Cliff pointed out. "In fact, you might recall we're among those who supported the hemlock laws as a progressive move; a willingness to think and act in global terms."

"But not the Brigades," said Tom. "Not those smiling, marching fuckers with their little flags."

"What about the Resistance?" Pam asked.

"That's an urban legend," said Cliff.

"Wishful thinking," said Tom. "A token opposition at best. Look, there's no point in talking about how to beat this. We're not kids. I'll be seventy-one in August. I've had my three score and ten."

"So has Cliff," said Pam, who was sixty-six herself. "I still say there's something fishy about it. How many friends do we have who've gotten Greetings?"

"Guy Frakes, from the firm," said Cliff.

"Not exactly a friend. And he was almost eighty," said Pam.

"Seventy-seven," said Cliff.

"That's what he told you."

"You're not going to get that many anyway," said Cliff. "The Brigades are just a symbol, showing our willingness to adjust the death rate rationally. Most of the quota is made up by DNRs and end-term care reductions."

"And it's all guys," said Tom. "That was a great victory of the women's movement."

"Huh?" said Pam, showing her teeth.

"Look, it's a law of nature. All this does is put us into some sort of compliance," Tom said. He was amazed, listening to himself, at how self-assured he sounded. "Besides, we already decided what to do about this. Remember? We talked about it."

"You mean last summer, at the beach house," said Pam. "You guys were stoned."

"What does being stoned have to do with it?" Cliff protested. "It was after we watched that PBS special on the Brigades, before they had their weekly show."

"It was disgusting," said Tom. "Enlightening, really. All those geezers in their orange uniforms marching off into the sunset."

"Some were even volunteers," said Cliff.

"Cancer patients," said Tom. "They joined for the last cigarette."

"I don't see why you have to make a joke of it," said Arabella.

"It's no joke," said Tom. "It's my life, and I want to go out like I lived, with my friends, with dignity. With some dignity, anyway. At home. Listening to Coltrane, or Bob Dylan."

"And stoned," said Cliff. "Why not. I'll take care of that part."

"We'll all do our part," said Pam. She reached out for Arabella's hand. "You can count on us."

"Me, too," said Tom. "I'll check out. End of story. That'll be it."

It. They were all silent. Tom reached for the wine bottle, and saw that it was empty.

"It's just that we never really thought it would happen," said Arabella.

"No, but how many people live to be this old anyway? Better than dying of cancer." Although Tom wasn't as sure as he sounded. At least cancer didn't give you a date.

"It's even legal," said Cliff, "not that that matters. Oregon has a law making it legal to do it at home. Every state except Kentucky and Arkansas has them—it was a rider that defused some of the opposition to the Brigades."

"So what do we—do?" Arabella asked, pouring herself the last few drops of wine.

"We open another bottle," suggested Tom.

"I checked out the law at lunch," said Cliff. "All you have to do is show the Greetings, and you get the hemlock kit. It can all be done at the drugstore."

"How convenient," said Pam. "The bastards."


❧


Two


The next morning, Tom, Pam and Arabella went to Walgreens for the kit. They were sent to the pharmacy counter at the back of the store.

The pharmacist was a young man of about forty-five. He had a Sunset Brigade Certificate on the wall: a picture of his father, the former owner of the store, saluting a sunset. Living Forever In Our Hearts, it said.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

Tom seemed to have lost his voice.

"We need one of those kits," Pam said, because Arabella wasn't speaking up either. It seemed that she had lost her voice, too.

"One of those what?"

Pam took the induction notice from Tom's hand; she unfolded it and spread it out on the counter. "They sent us back here to get it."

"Oh, the home kit." The pharmacist looked at Tom. "It's $79.95."

"Jesus," said Pam. "Eighty bucks? What do you get?"

"You get an IV rack," the pharmacist said. "You get the three chems, the sharps, and the sterile solution; cotton swabs; death certificate, plastic bags …"

Arabella looked sick. "I'm going to wait in the car," she said.

Tom started to follow her, but something held him back. This is my show. The pharmacist reached under the counter and set a beige box on the counter. "There's a DVD, too," he said. "Do you have a DVD player?"

"Everybody has a DVD player." Tom's voice was back.

"Well, there's a DVD that comes in the kit. And this 800 number here on the side is for the monitor. But you don't have to worry about that; he'll be calling you. As soon as I make this sale, your number goes into the database."

"Monitor?" Pam sounded suspicious.

"There has to be someone there from the government," the pharmacist said. "You're using lethal drugs."

"But they're supposed to be lethal," said Tom.

"Doesn't matter," the pharmacist said. "It's the law. It's not an extra cost. Although I hear some people tip him."

"Ring it up," said Tom.

Arabella was waiting by the car, in the parking lot. "Cliff just called," she said.

"And?"

"Better let him tell you." And she burst into tears, for the second time.


❧


Cliff had gotten his notice at the office. He went in two days a week. He wasn't practicing, but mentoring a younger attorney.

"This makes things simpler," he said, spreading it out on his kitchen table. It looked exactly like Tom's, except that the date was three days later.


❧

GREETINGS William Clifford Brixton III (401-25-5423)

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY LOTTERY FOR INDUCTION INTO THE OREGON SUNSET BRIGADE. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SACRIFICE. YOU ARE TO REPORT TO CASCADE CENTER 1656, 18767 WEST HELLEN ST, AT 10 AM OCTOBER 25, 20--. IF YOU WISH TO DISCUSS OTHER ARRANGEMENTS, AS PROVIDED BY LAW, PLEASE CALL 154 176 098 8245

❧


"Simpler!?" said Pam.

"I mean, now it's unanimous, or something."

"Like, we don't count?" said Arabella.

"That's not what I said," said Cliff. "Not what I meant."

"Do you really want to count?" Tom asked. "I mean, this is one battle the women's liberation movement didn't want to win."

"Leave the women's liberation movement out of this," said Pam. "So what do we do now?"

"The same thing we were already doing," said Cliff. "Same time, same station. Another kit."

"Jesus! Isn't one enough?" Tom asked. "We've always shared everything before."

"And we're sharing this," said Cliff. "But it's the law. You have to have one for each—inductee."


❧

Three


The next day, a Wednesday, Tom went with Cliff and Pam to pick up the second kit at the drugstore. This time they got another pharmacist; a more sympathetic, older man—African-American.

Was it just a convention of the movies, or were African-Americans always more sympathetic? Tom wondered. It was always either that or angrier, never both at once, as in real life.

Real life. It has a beginning. It has an end. It's almost over.

"There are several alternate exit program DVDs," the pharmacist was saying. "Made to coordinate with the official kit. You can get them at Tower Records or order them from Amazon. Or your church may provide one. It's more personal."


❧


"Two by two," said Cliff, laying the two kits side by side on the kitchen table. "Like Noah's ark."

"Not exactly," said Tom.

The women were away, at the Aerobics for Seniors class that they shared. Life had to go on, after all.

It will go on, Tom thought. Without me. It was, quite literally, inconceivable.

"Let's smoke a joint," said Cliff. He pulled out the silver cigarette case he had received after twenty years at his law firm. In it were six neatly rolled joints, the finest sinsemilla, a week's supply.

That afternoon, as luck would have it, the Brigades had their weekly show. It was afternoon TV; not quite ready for prime time. The celebrity guest was introduced to do the invocation. It was almost always a woman.

This week it was Hillary Clinton.

The Sunset Brigade, in rose-colored coveralls, were lined up on a hill overlooking the sea. Their eyes were shining; their jaws were firm. The veterans got to wear their military braid. The theme was a frenchhorn/piano concerto especially written for the Brigades by Randy Newman.

Tom turned off the sound.

"You get an extra four days," he said, looking at Cliff's induction notice.

"Three," said Cliff. "I'm not going to take them, though. We'll go together. It'll be easier on the girls that way."

"You think so?"

"I know so." Cliff passed Tom the joint. Hillary got thin, scattered applause. The Brigade saluted the flag and started up the hill. Judging from the vegetation, this induction was taking place somewhere in the East. Massachusetts? New Jersey? The East, like the West, looked all alike.

There was nothing to distinguish the draftees from the volunteers, except for the few who were in wheelchairs with IVs on little masts. They marched (or rolled) off shoulder to shoulder in their rose uniforms and easy-off slippers, following the color guard off to the departure site, which was always over a hill and never seen. They carried little individualized flags their wives and grandchildren had made. The flags would be returned to the loved ones.

When the last of the men disappeared over the hill, Cliff turned the sound back on. The closing theme was by Elton John: another version of "Candle in the Wind."

Tom turned it off.

"Better to do it our own way," said Cliff.

"Anything is better than that clown show," said Tom.

"What are you guys watching?" Pam asked, bursting through the door like Kramer, as she always did.

Always, thought Tom. Always was almost over. For him, anyway. And for Cliff, too.

"Nothing," said Cliff, turning off the TV. "Some dumb reality show."


❧


Tom and Arabella had never had trouble making love, even though the frequency had dropped. Once they had gone for a whole year. But when he turned sixty-five, Tom had decided that they were going to set aside a day every two weeks for sex play, like it or not. It turned out that they liked it; liked being freed of the need to think about it and initiate it. At least he did.

But today something was wrong.

"Not a problem," said Arabella.

"Easy for you to say," said Tom.

Ara saw no point in arguing. She got out of bed and undressed, pulling on her regular panties, the ones he hated, that made her look like an old lady. "How about I make us some coffee?"

"Later," said Tom. "First I got to go see Ray."


❧


Ray was Tom's lawyer. His office was in a trendy new shopping center overlooking the Rose Garden. His desktop was of recycled barn wood. Odd, thought Tom, how many things in the new world get more valuable as they get older.

Everything but us.

"What can I do you for?" asked Ray.

They were old movement comrades, if not exactly friends. They had once been adversaries, since Ray was of the electoral persuasion, and Tom and Cliff were Direct Action.

But that was long ago.

Tom unfolded his induction notice and flattened it along Ray's desk, looking out for splinters.

"Jesus fucking Christ," said Ray. "Are you sure this isn't a mistake. I thought they weren't calling anyone under seventy."

"I'm seventy," said Tom, refolding the paper. For the first time he noticed its color and shape, like a tiny tombstone. "So are you."

"Well, you get certain advantages," said Ray. "There's the bonus. And there is no probate, which means you won't have to worry about Arabella. I mean, in terms of the house and stuff."

"We don't get the bonus," said Tom. "We're not doing it."

"Not doing it?" Ray looked uncomfortable.

"Not doing the Brigade thing. There's a provision in the law that allows you to do it yourself, at home. We're going to do it at our summer place, down at Holystone Bay."

Ray nodded. He had done the paperwork on the partnership twelve years before, when Tom and Ara had bought the house with Cliff and Pam. Ray had provided for every possible disagreement. There had been none. If anything, the two families were closer now than they had been then, when they had been cautiously, consciously, determinedly recovering from Cliff and Arabella's foolish, brief, unhappy affair.

"I want you to make sure Arabella is covered. And one other thing: I want you to have my Steve Earle records."

"Jesus, man. That's huge. But what about Cliff?"

"Cliff, too. Cliff's going with me."

"Jesus fucking Christ. Cliff, too! I've always hated these Brigades, even though I agree with the idea, I guess. But this stinks."

"I don't know why you say that," said Tom. "We've always felt that it wasn't right for the developed countries to use all the resources. Well, here it is: population control. It's not abortion or infanticide. It's voluntary. Or sort of, anyway."

"Nobody fucking volunteers," said Ray. "Not for—this."

"Well. Let's not abandon all our principles just because our number came up."

Ray was silent. Tom realized he had been lecturing him. It was an old habit he had never managed to lose. "Sorry," he said. "I was on a high horse."

"It's okay," Ray said. "I've always rather liked your high horse. And now—"

He blushed and shuffled through a stack of papers.

"You need to sign a power of attorney for Arabella," he said. "I have one on boilerplate. It will avoid probate. Especially since you and Arabella aren't actually married."

"What about the domestic partner's law?"

"They still contest that occasionally," said Ray. "What if they wanted to get even?"

"For what?"

"For doing things your own way. Here. You sign it, and I'll get Arabella's signature after. I mean, later."

Tom signed the papers and got up to leave. Ray came around his desk and stopped him at the door.

"I don't know what to say, man."

"I'm sorry I lectured you. It's just, a shock, you know."

"It is to me, too. I don't know what to say, man."

"That's okay. Just so long, I guess."

"It's been great knowing you."

"Likewise," Tom said. And he meant it. It was his first good-bye. "So long."


❧


When Tom got home, Cliff and Pam were at the house. Cliff laid a ticket on the glass-topped table. It had a red-white-and-blue border.

"What's that?" asked Tom.

"Your airline pass," said Cliff. "I figured you might want to see your kids."

"What about your kids?"

"We just saw them last month," Pam said.

The pass was good for one round trip in the continental USA.

"I thought we didn't get them if we did it ourselves."

"I fooled them," said Cliff. "I turned my kit back in, told them I'd changed my mind."

"You didn't—"

"No, no. I'll go back and get it again. Change my mind again. I have ten days to decide, remember?"

"I could have done that," said Tom.

Cliff shook his head. "You're not a good liar," he said. "I'm a lawyer, remember? Or didn't you notice that big car parked outside?"

After Cliff left, Arabella asked: "Who are you going to see?"

"Thomas," he said.

"I thought so," she said.


❧

Four


Tom and Arabella had two kids. Thomas, from Tom's first marriage, was a loan officer in Las Vegas. Thomas and his wife, Elaine, had two kids. If it had been possible, they would have had 1.646, thought Tom—the national average. The only child actually born of Tom and Arabella was Gwyneth, thirty, a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco.

She was Tom's favorite, but he had seen her just the week before. She knew he loved her.

Thomas was more of a problem.

On Monday, with four days left to go, Tom caught a flight for Las Vegas. It felt strange to be leaving Arabella, this close to the end of everything. Tom, who used to be terrified of landings, noticed as the plane descended that he wasn't nervous anymore. Everything in the world looked so temporary—what was a plane filled with people, more or less?

He was a little disappointed when the landing, like the twenty-three that had preceded it that day, or the two hundred twenty-three that had preceded it that week, went off without a hitch.

Thomas met him at the gate, looking worried. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"Why should something be wrong?"

"You don't usually come and visit us here except on holidays," said Thomas. "In case you didn't notice. And Arabella usually comes with you."

"I just felt like seeing the grandchildren," said Tom. "And you and Elaine, of course."

Traffic in Las Vegas was even slower than Tom had remembered. The leather seats and quiet ride of the big Mercedes made it worse, not better.

Thomas and Elaine put him in the guest room, which had its own bath.

"Makes it feel like a motel," he said to Arabella, on his cell phone.

"It's their world," said Arabella. "People want to have their own bathroom. Sharing a bathroom seems old fashioned, and probably a little unsanitary, I guess."

"Makes it feel like a motel," Tom said again.

"Just be nice," she said, "and hurry home."


❧


The next afternoon, Tom took his grandchildren to the zoo.

Tara wanted to see the gorilla that had died the month before. She naively thought its body would still be on display. Eric wanted to talk about his day at school. Tom was impressed—how many kids want to talk about school? Until he heard what it was.

"We got a visit from the Sunset Brigade," Eric said. "Two men came by the school in their uniforms and told us to take good care of the planet because they were leaving it to us, to take good care of it. We got a signed certificate. It was cool."

"I'll bet," said Tom.

"Will you join the Brigade when you get old, Grandpa?"

"I'm already old," said Tom. "And I think the Brigades are horseshit."


❧


"Grandpa said the S word today," said Tara at the dinner table, right after Thomas had said grace. "Pass the mashed potatoes."

"Say please," said her mother, Elaine.

"I was overexcited," said Tom. "It must have been the gorilla."

"There wasn't any gorilla," said Eric.

That evening Tom gave the grandchildren a good-night kiss, and Thomas took him to the airport to catch the red-eye back to Portland. There is always a red-eye to everywhere from Vegas.

"Dad," said Thomas. "The kids aren't old enough to share your values. I mean about the Brigades and the government."

"They may never get that old," Tom said. "You didn't."

"You may recall, I was never given the chance," said Thomas.

Tom had abandoned his first family when he had gone underground with the Red Storm.

"That was my mistake," said Tom. "It doesn't mean I don't love you today."

"I know, Dad. And I know how you feel about the Brigades."

"You do?"

"Sure. It's how you feel about everything. Resistance. Rejection. Rebellion. Is there something you wanted to tell me?"

"Just that—I am proud of you, you know. You're a much better father than I ever was."

"Not such a stretch," said Thomas; then he laughed and clapped his father on the shoulder, a glancing blow. "I noticed you didn't say, 'better man.'"

"I meant that, too."

"I know, I know. Well, Dad, this is as far as I can go without a ticket."

They hugged and parted. Tom had taken great pains not to show his son his red-white-and-blue ticket. He waved good-bye and disappeared down the tunnel, through the gauntlet of bored security guards.