Afternoon, in a broad U-shaped corridor being used as a theater. Peter, Luke, Vixie and I are seated in the left arm of the U watching a Johnny Depp play. As the action builds toward intermission, Depp’s character (a minor one–he’s still only in his mid-teens) disappears from the stage. Suddenly the stage lights go off. An emergency situation has been created, and the red “Exit” signs in the corridor start to flash. In this place, the words “Follow the guide” are cut into the silver metal below the word “Exit”, but they glow in white. “What’s going on?” someone asks as the audience gets to its feet and shuffles toward the right side of the U (where the doors are hidden from our view). “I get it!” I exclaim. “Johnny Depp’s character is leading the audience out the doors. He’s the guide, he’s supposed to be saving us!” I simply know this; I can’t see him from where we are. The audience is part of the play.
I’m driving the family home now…or in another country (there was a travel agent back there somewhere, typing on his computer to get us a good airfare). The landscape is of gently rolling golden hills. The road runs through a hollow, its two lanes divided by a wide swath of the same golden grass that covers the hills. Just ahead of us both lanes are submerged in hubcap-deep water. This is apparently normal; the other drivers calmly splash through. The turnoff to my house is also underwater where it cuts across the oncoming traffic, so I turn the wheel and steer past my neighbor Paul N.’s gate.
He and his wife Barbara are standing near the fence, peering at something further back on their property. I stop and get out of the car to see what they’re looking at. I am registering at the same time that Barbara has come back after leaving Paul for a time; after forty years of marriage, he had temporarily fallen for another woman (true).
Across a partially cleared space (nothing can grow beneath the tall, scattered pine trees) is a shack or playhouse of weathered wood. Next to it is a rickety wooden stand with a white enamel bowl perched on its top. It is this bowl they’re looking at. “I left some things in that bowl, and now I can’t get them,” Paul tells me in his British accent. He sounds slightly inebriated.
In his right hand he holds one rope of a swing that is anchored to a high branch in a tree between the fence and the shack. Someone needs to use the swing to get to the bowl, and it’s clear that both Paul and Barbara feel a little too frail to do it. I climb aboard.
Paul gives me a push and I arc wide to the left; the swing has been ingeniously located so that even if it swings in a circle, it misses all the trees. When I reach the shack I jump down–still holding one of the ropes–and look inside the enamel bowl. It contains a white enamel coffee cup (which I know is for holding Paul’s beer), a small tea strainer that has lost its chain, and one other small object (a porcelain saucer?). I guess Paul wants these things so he can have a drink. I gather them up, thinking that Vixie would like to ride on this swing
and so
here she is.
*****
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