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shuddered. She knew she shouldn't drink, these days she could feel it seeping
into her, like that horrible barium they injected into you to do tests. But
she
couldn't stop. And what was the point, anyway?
"But you think it might help her, if she stayed here?" Diana broke in,
oblivious
of Mrs. Grose's imperious gaze. "And Martin, do you think it could help him
too?"
"I don't thik anything," said Mrs. Grose, and she reached over to envelope the
wheezing pug with one large fat white hand. "It is absolutely not up to me at
all. I am simply telling you the facts."
"Of course," Ariel said, but she could tell from Diana's expression that her
words had come out slurred. "Of course," she repeated with dignity, sitting up
and smoothing the folds of her patchwork skirt.
"As long as you understand," Mrs. Grose said in a gentler tone. "We are guests
here, and guests do not ask favors of their hosts."
The other two women nodded. Ariel carefully put her glass on the coffee table
and stood, wiping her sweating hands on her skirt. "I better go now," she
said.
Her head pounded and she felt nauseated, for all that she'd barely nibbled at
the ham sandwiches and macaroni salad Mrs. Grose had set out for lunch. "Home.
I
think I'd better go home."
"I'll go with you," said Diana. She stood and east a quick look at their
hostess. "I wanted to borrow that book. . ."
Mrs. Grose saw them to the door, holding open the screen and swatting
threateningly at mosquitoes as they walked outside. "Remember what I told
you,"
she called as they started down the narrow road, Diana with one arm around
Ariel's shoulder. "Meditation and nettle tea. And patience."
"Patience," Ariel murmured; but nobody heard.
The weeks passed. The weather was unusually clear and warm, Mars Hill bereft
of
the cloak of mist and fog that usually covered it in August. Martin Dionysos
took the Wendameen out nearly every afternoon, savoring the time alone, the
hours spent fighting wind and waves-- antagonists he felt he could win
against.
"It's the most perfect summer we've ever had," Gary Bonetti said often to his
friend. Too often, Martin thought bitterly. Recently, Martin was having what
Jason called Millennial Thoughts, seeing ominous portents in everything from
the
tarot cards he dealt out to stricken tourists on Wednesday nights to the
pattern
of kelp and maidenhair left on the gravel beach after one of the summer's few
storms. He had taken to avoiding Ariel, a move that filled him with
self-loathing, for all that he told himself that he still needed time to
grieve
for John before giving himself over to another death. But it wasn't that, of
course. Or at least it wasn't only that. It was fear, The Fear. It was
listening
to his own heart pounding as he lay alone in bed at night, counting the beats,
wondering at what point it all began to break down, at what point It would
come
to take him.
So he kept to himself. He begged off going on the colony's weekly outing to
the
little Mexican restaurant up the road. He even stopped attending the weekly
readings in the chapel. Instead, he spent his evenings alone, writing to
friends
back in the Bay Area. After drinking coffee with Jason every morning he'd turn
away.
"I'm going to work now," he'd announce, and Jason would nod and leave to find
Moony, grateful, his father thought, for the opportunity to escape.
Millennial Thoughts.
Martin Dionysos had given over a comer of his cottage's living room to a
studio.
There was a tiny drafting table, his portable computer, an easel, stacks of
books; the week's forwarded offerings of Out and The Advocate and Q and The
Bay
Weekly, and, heaped on an ancient stained Windsor chair, the usual pungent
mess
of oils and herbal decoctions that he used in his work. Golden morning light
streamed through the wide mullioned windows, smelling of salt and the diesel
fumes from Diana's ancient Volvo. On the easel a large unprimed canvas rested,
somewhat unevenly due to the cant of a floor slanted enough that you could
drop
a marble in the kitchen and watch it roll slowly but inexorably to settle in
the
left-hand comer of the living room. Gary Bonetti claimed that it wasn't that
all
of the cottages on Mars Hill were built by incompetent architects. It was the
magnetic pull of the ocean just meters away; it was the imperious reins of the
East, of the Moon, of the magic charters of the Other world, that made it
impossible to find any two comers that were plumb. Martin and the others
laughed
at Gary's pronouncement, but John had believed it.
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