The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

10

WHAT A PECULIAR mixture of nonsense and the uncanny, I thought as we waited for elderly Dr. Rachel Garret to go on. Mention of Fred Hill, the KGB agent ... mention of Jeff disapproving of my turning on. Scraps derived obviously from newspapers: how Jeff had died and his probable motivations. Lumpen psychoanalysis and scandal-sheet garbage, and yet, stuck in here and there, a fragment like a tiny shard that could not be explained.

Beyond doubt Dr. Garret had easy access to most of the knowledge she had divulged, but there remained a creepy residuum: defined as, "That which remains after certain deductions are made," so this is the right term, and I have had a long time, many years, to mull over it. I have mulled and I can explain no part of it. How could Dr. Garret know about the Bad Luck Restaurant? And even if she knew that Kirsten and Tim had met originally at that place, how could she have known about Fred Hill or what we supposed was the case with Fred Hill?

It had been the joke passed endlessly between Jeff and me, that the owner of the Bad Luck Restaurant in Berkeley had been a KGB agent, but this fact wasn't printed anywhere; no one had ever written it down, except perhaps in the computers of the FBI and of course at KGB GHQ in Moscow, and it was only speculation anyhow. The issue of my turning on could be a shrewd guess, since I lived and worked in Berkeley, and, as everyone in the world knows, all the people in Berkeley do dope regularly-in fact, do it to excess. A medium is traditionally one who relies on a potpourri of hunches, common knowledge, clues unknowingly delivered by the audience itself, delivered unintentionally and then handed back ... and, of course, the standard bullshit, such as "Jeff loves you" and "Jeff isn't in any more pain" and "Jeff felt a lot of doubt," generalizations available to anyone at any time, given the known facts.

Yet an eerie sensation held me, even though I knew that this old Irish lady who gave money-or said she gave money-to the Irish Republican Army was a fraud, that we three collectively were being fleeced out of our money, fleeced, too, in the sense that our credulity was being pandered to and manipulated-by someone in the business of doing this: a professional. The primary medium-it sounded like the medical term for cancer: "the primary cancer"-Dr. Mason had undoubtedly passed on everything he had learned and knew; this is how mediums work it, and we all know this.

The time to have left was before the revelation came, and now it was going to come, dumped on us by an unscrupulous old lady with dollar signs in her eyes and a clever ability to fathom the weak links in human psyches. But we didn't leave, and so it followed as the night the day that we got to hear from Dr. Garret what had so agitated Jeff, causing him to come back to Tim and Kirsten as the occult "phenomena" that they logged each day for Tim's forthcoming book.

It seemed to me as it Rachel Garret had-become very old as she sat in her wicker chair, and I thought about the ancient sibyl-I could not remember which sibyl it had been, the one at Delphi or at Cumae-who had asked for immortality but had neglected to stipulate that she remain young; whereupon she lived forever but got so old that eventually her friends hung her up on the wall in a bag. Rachel Garret resembled that tattered wisp of skin and fragile bones, whispering out of the bag nailed to the wall; what wall in what city of the Empire I do not know-perhaps the sibyl is still there; perhaps this being who faced us as Rachel Garret was, in fact, that same sibyl; in any case, I did not want to hear what she had to say: I wanted to leave.

"Sit down," Kirsten said.

I realized, then, that I had stood without intending to. Flight reaction, I said to myself. Instinctive. Upon experiencing close adversaries. The lizard part of the brain.

Rachel Garret whispered, "Kirsten." But now she pronounced it correctly: Shishen, which I did not do, nor had Jeff, nor did Tim. But that was how she pronounced it herself, and gave up on getting anyone else to, at least in the States.

At this, Kirsten gave a muffled gasp.

The old lady in the wicker chair said:

'Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;

magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

lam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;

iam nova-' "

"My God," Tim said. "It's the Fourth Eclogue. Of Virgil."

"That's enough," Kirsten said faintly.

I thought: The old lady is reading my mind. She knows I thought about the sibyl.

Speaking to me, Rachel Garret said:

" 'Dies irae, dies illa, Solvet saeclum in favilla:

Teste David cum Sibylla.' "

Yes, she is reading my mind, I realized. She even knows that I know it; as I think she reads my thoughts back to me.

"Mors Kirsten nunc carpit, " Rachel Garret whispered. "Hodie. Calamitas ... timeo ..." She drew herself up in her wicker chair.

"What did she say?" Kirsten said to Tim.

"You are going to die very soon," Rachel Garret said to her, in a calm voice. "I thought today, but not today. I saw it here. But not quite yet. Jeff says so. This is why he came back: to warn you."

"Die how?" Tim said.

"He isn't sure," Rachel Garret said.

"Violently?" Tim said.

"He doesn't know," the old lady said. "But they are preparing a place for you, Kirsten." All her agitation had gone, now; she seemed completely composed. "This is awful news," she said. "I'm sorry, Kirsten. No wonder Jeff caused all the many disturbances. Usually there is a reason ... they return for a good reason."

"Can anything be done?" Tim said.

"Jeff thinks that it is inevitable," the old lady said, after a time.

"Then what was the point of him coming back?" Kirsten said savagely; her face was white.

"He wanted to warn his father as well," the old lady said.

"About what?" I said.

Rachel Garret said, "He has a chance to live. No, Jeff says. His father will die soon after Kirsten. Both of you are going to perish. It won't be long. There is some uncertainty about the father but none about the woman. If I could give you more information, I would. Jeff is still with me but he doesn't know any more." She shut her eyes and sighed.

All the vitality, it seemed, had gone out of her as she sat in the old chair, her hands clasped together; then suddenly she leaned forward and picked up her teacup.

"Jeff was so anxious that you know," she said in a bright, chipper voice. "He feels so much better now." She smiled at us.

Still ashen, Kirsten murmured, "Is it all right if I smoke?"

"Oh, I'd prefer you didn't smoke," Dr. Garret said. "But if you feel you must-"

"Thank you." Her hand trembling, Kirsten lit her cigarette. She stared and stared at the old lady, with dislike and fury, or so it seemed to me. I thought: Kill the Spartan messengers, lady; hold them responsible.

"We want to thank you very much," Tim said to Dr. Garret in a level, controlled voice; he began, by degrees, to rouse himself, to take command of the situation. "So then Jeff is beyond any doubt whatsoever alive in the after-world? And it has been he who has come to us with what we call the 'phenomena'?"

"Oh, indeed," Dr. Garret said. "But Leonard told you that. Leonard Mason. You knew that already."

I said, "Could it have been an evil spirit posing as Jeff? And not actually Jeff?"

Her eyes bright, Dr. Garret nodded. "You are exceedingly alert, young lady. Yes, it certainly could have been. But it was not. One learns to tell the difference. I found no malice in him, only concern and love. Angel-your name is Angel, isn't it?-your husband apologizes to you for his feelings about Kirsten. He knows that it is unfair to you. But he thinks that you will understand."

I said nothing.

"Did I get your name right?" Rachel Garret asked me, in a timid and uncertain tone.

"Yes," I said. To Kirsten, I said, "Let me have a puff on your cigarette."

"Here." Kirsten passed it to me. "Keep it. I'm not supposed to smoke." To Tim she said, "Well? Shall we go? I don't see any reason for staying any longer." She reached for her purse and coat.

Tim paid Dr. Garret-I did not see how much, but it took the form of cash, not a check-and then phoned for a cab. Ten minutes later, the three of us rode back down the winding hillside roads to the house where we had accommodated ourselves.

Time passed and then, half to himself, Tim said, "That was the same eclogue of Virgil that I read to you. That day."

"I remember," I said.

"It seems a remarkable coincidence," Tim said. "There is no way she could have known it is a favorite of mine. Of course, it is the most famous of his eclogues ... but that would scarcely account for it. I have never heard anyone else quote it but myself. It was as if I were hearing my own thoughts read back to me aloud, when Dr. Garret lapsed into Latin."

And I-I, too, had experienced that, I realized. Tim had expressed it perfectly. Perfectly and precisely.

"Tim," I said, "did you say anything to Dr. Mason about the Bad Luck Restaurant?"

Eying me, Tim said, "What is the 'Bad Luck Restaurant'?"

"Where we met," Kirsten said.

"No," Tim said. "I don't even remember the name of it. I remember what we had to eat ... I had abalone."

"Did you ever tell anybody," I said to him, "anybody at all, at any time, anywhere, about Fred Hill?"

"I don't know anybody by that name," Tim said. "I'm sorry." He rubbed his eyes wearily.

"They read your mind," Kirsten said. "That's where they get it. She knew my health was bad. She knows I'm worried about the spot on my lung."

"What spot?" I said. This was the first I had heard about it. "Have you been in for more tests?"

When Kirsten did not answer, Tim said, "She showed a spot. Several weeks ago. It was a routine X-ray. They don't think it means anything."

"It means I'm going to die," Kirsten said bitingly, with palpable venom. "You heard her, the old bitch."

"Kill the Spartan runners," I said.

Furiously, Kirsten lashed at me, "Is that one of your Berkeley educated remarks?"

"Please," Tim said in a faint voice. I said, "It's not her fault."

"We pay a hundred dollars to be told we're both going to die," Kirsten said, "and then on top of that, according to you, we should be grateful?" She scrutinized me with what struck me as psychotic malice, exceeding anything I had ever seen in her or in anyone else. "You're okay; she didn't say anything was going to happen to you, you cunt. You little Berkeley cunt- you're doing fine. I'm going to die and you get to have Tim all to yourself, with Jeff dead and now me. I think you set it up; you're involved; goddamn you!" Reaching, she took a swing at me; there in the back of the Yellow Cab she tried to hit me. I drew back, horrified.

Grabbing her with both hands, Tim pinned her against the side of the cab, against the door. "If I ever hear you use that word again," he said, "you are out of my life forever."

"You prick," Kirsten said.

After that, we drove in silence. The only sound was the occasional racket of the cab company's dispatcher, from the driver's two-way radio.

"Let's stop somewhere for a drink," Kirsten said, as we approached the house. "I don't want to have to deal with those awful mousy people; I just can't. I want to shop." To Tim she said, "We'll let you off. Angel and I'll go shopping. I really can't take any more today."

I said, "I don't feel like shopping right now."

"Please," Kirsten said tightly.

Tim said to me in a gentle voice, "Do it as a favor to both of us." He opened the cab door.

"Okay," I said.

After giving Kirsten money-all the money he had with him, apparently-Tim got out of the cab; we shut the door after him, and, presently, arrived at the downtown shopping district of Santa Barbara, with all the many lovely little shops and their various handcrafted artifacts. Soon Kirsten and I sat together in a bar, a nice bar, subdued, with low music playing. Through the open doors we could see people strolling around in the bright midday sunlight.

"Shit," Kirsten said as she sipped her vodka collins. "What a thing to find out. That you're going to die."

"Dr. Garret worked backward from Jeff's return," I said.

"How do you mean?" She stirred her drink.

"Jeff had come back to you. That's the given. So Garret summoned up a reason to explain it, the most dramatic reason she could find. 'He returned for a reason. That's why they return.' It's a commonplace. It's like-" I gestured. "Like the

ghost in Hamlet."

Gazing at me quizzically, Kirsten said, "In Berkeley there is an intellectual reason for everything."

"The ghost warns Hamlet that Claudius is a murderer, that he murdered him, Hamlet's father."

"What's Hamlet's father's name?"

"He's just called 'Hamlet's father, the late king.' "

Kirsten, an owlish expression on her face, said, "No, his father is named Hamlet, too."

"Ten bucks says otherwise."

She extended her hand; we shook. "The play," Kirsten said, "instead of being called Hamlet should properly be called Hamlet, Junior." We both laughed. "I mean," Kirsten said, "this is just sick. We're sick going to that medium. Coming all this way-of course, Tim is meeting with those double-domed eggheads from the think tank. You know where he really wants to work? Don't ever say this to anyone, but he'd like to work for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. This whole business about Jeff coming back-" She sipped her drink. "It's cost Tim a lot."

"He doesn't have to bring out the book. He could drop the project."

As if thinking aloud, Kirsten said, "How do those mediums do it? It's ESP; they can pick up your anxieties. Somehow the old biddy knew I have medical problems. It goes back to that damn peritonitis ... that's public knowledge that I had that. There's a central file they keep, mediums of the world. Media, I guess, is the plural. And my cancer. They know I'm plagued with a second-rate body, sort of a used car. A lemon. God sold me a lemon for a body."

"You should have told me about the spot."

"It's none of your business."

"I care about you."

"Dike," Kirsten said. "Homo. That's why Jeff killed himself, because you and I are in love with each other." Both of us had begun laughing, now; we bumped heads, and I put my arm around her. "I have this joke for you. We're not supposed to call Mexicans 'greasers' any more; right?" She lowered her voice. "We're supposed to call them-"

"Lubricanos," I said.

She glanced at me. "Well, fuck you."

"Let's pick up somebody," I said.

"I want to shop. You pick up somebody." In a more somber tone she said, "This is a beautiful city. We may be living down here, you realize. Would you stay up in Berkeley if Tim and I moved down here?"

"I don't know," I said.

"You and your Berkeley friends. The Greater East Bay Co-Sexual Communal Free Love Exchange-Partners Enterprise, Unlimited. What is it about Berkeley, Angel? Why do you stay there?"

"The house," I said. And I thought: Memories of Jeff. In connection with the house. The Co-op on University Avenue where we used to shop. "I like the coffee houses on the Avenue," I said. "Especially Larry Blake's. One time, Larry Blake came over to Jeff and me; downstairs in the Ratskeller-he was so nice to us. And I like Tilden Park." And the campus, I said to myself. I can never free myself of that. The eucalyptus grove, down by Oxford. The library. "It's my home," I said.

"You'd get accustomed to Santa Barbara."

I said, "You shouldn't call me a cunt in front of Tim. He might get ideas."

"If I die," Kirsten said, "would you sleep with him? I mean, seriously?"

"You're not going to die."

"Dr. Spooky says I am."

"Dr. Spooky," I said, "is full of it."

"Do you think so? God, it was weird." Kirsten shivered. "I felt she could read my mind, that she was tapping it, like you tap a maple tree. Reading my own fears back to me. Would you sleep with Tim? Answer me seriously; I need to know."

"It would be incest."

"Why? Oh; okay. Well-it's already a sin, a sin for him; why not add incest? If Jeff is in heaven and they're preparing a place for me, apparently I'm going to go to heaven. That's a relief. I just don't know how seriously to take what Dr. Garret said."

"Take it with the entire output of salt from the Polish salt mines for one full calendar year."

"But," Kirsten said, "it is Jeff coming back to us. Now we have it confirmed. But if I'm going to believe that, don't I have to believe the other, the prophecy?"

As I listened to her, a line from Dido and Aeneas entered my head, both the music and the words:

"The Trojan Prince, you know, is bound By Fate to seek Italian ground;

The Queen and he are now in chase. "

Why had that come to mind? The sorceress ... Jeff had quoted her or I had; the music had been a part of our lives, and I was thinking about Jeff, now, and the things that had bound us together. Fate, I thought. Predestination; doctrine of the church, based on Augustine and Paul. Tim had once told me that Christianity as a Mystery Religion had come into existence as a means of abolishing the tyranny of fate, only to reintroduce it as predestination-in fact, double predestination: some predestined to hell, some to heaven. Calvin's doctrine.

"We don't have fate any more," I said. "That went out with astrology, with the ancient world. Tim explained it to me."

Kirsten said, "He explained it to me, too, but the dead have precognition; they're outside of time. That's why you raise the spirits of the dead, to get advice from them about the future: they know the future. To them, it's already happened. They're like God. They see everything. Necromancy; we're like Dr. Dee in Elizabethan England. We have access to this marvelous supernatural power-it's better than the Holy Spirit, who also grants the ability to foresee the future, to prophesy. Through that wizened old lady we get Jeff's absolute knowledge that I'm going to kick off in the near-future. How can you doubt it?"

"Readily," I said.

"But she knew about the Bad Luck Restaurant. You see, Angel, we either reject it all or accept it all; we don't get to pick and choose. And if we reject it then Jeff didn't come back to us, and we're nuts. And if we accept it he did come back to us, which is fine as far as that goes, but then we have to face the fact that I'm going to die."

I thought: And Tim, too. You've forgotten about that, in your concern for yourself. As is typical of you.

"What's the matter?" Kirsten said.

"Well, she said Tim would die, too."

"Tim has Christ on his side; he's immortal. Didn't you know that? Bishops live forever. The first bishop-'Peter, I imagine-is still alive somewhere, drawing a salary. Bishops live eternally and they get paid a lot. I die and I get paid almost nothing."

"It beats working in a record store," I said.

"Not really. Everything about your life is out in the open, at least; you don't have to skulk around like a second-story-man. This book of Tim's-it's going to be clear as day to everyone who reads it that Tim and I are sleeping together. We were in England together; we witnessed the phenomena together. Perhaps this is God's revenge against us for our sins, this prophecy by that old lady. Sleep with a bishop and die; it's like 'See Rome and die.' Well, I can't say it's been worth it, I really can't. I'd rather be a record clerk in Berkeley like you ... but then I'd have to be young like you, to get the full benefits."

I said, "My husband is dead. I don't have all the breaks."

"And you don't have the guilt."

"Balls," I said. "I have plenty of guilt."

"Why? Jeff-well, anyhow, it wasn't your fault."

"We share the guilt," I said. "All of us."

"For the death of someone who was programmed to die? You only kill yourself if the DNA death-strip tells you to; it's in the DNA ... didn't you know that? Or it's what they call a 'script,' which is what Eric Berne taught. He's dead, you know; his death-script or-strip or whatever caught up with him, proving him right. His father died and he died, the exact same age. It's like Chardin, who desired to die on Good Friday and got his wish."

"This is morbid," I said.

"Right." Kirsten nodded. "I just heard a while ago that I'm doomed to die; I feel very morbid, and so would you, except that you're exempt, for some reason. Maybe because you don't have a spot on your lung and you never had cancer. Why doesn't that old lady die? Why is it me and Tim? I think Jeff's malicious, saying that; it's one of those self-fulfilling prophecies you hear about. He tells Dr. Spooky I'm going to die and as a result I die, and Jeff enjoys it because he hated me for sleeping with his father. The hell with both of them. It goes along with the pins stuck under my fingernails; its hate, hate toward me. I can tell hate when I see it. I hope Tim points that out in his book-well, he will because I'm writing most of it; he doesn't have the time, and, if you want to know the truth, the talent either. All his sentences run together. He has logorrhea, if you want to know the blunt truth-from the speed he takes."

I said, "I don't want to know."

"Have you and Tim slept together?"

"No!" I said, amazed.

"Bull."

"Christ," I said, "you're crazy."

"Tell me it's due to the reds I take."

I stared at her; she stared back. Unwinkingly, her face taut.

"You're crazy," I said.

Kirsten said, "You have turned Tim against me."

"I what?"

"He thinks that Jeff would be alive if it hadn't been for me, but it was his idea for us to get sexually involved."

"You-" I could not think what to say. "Your mood-swings are getting greater," I said finally.

Kirsten said in a fierce, grating voice, "I see more and more clearly. Come on." She finished her drink and slid from her stool, tottered, grinned at me. "Let's go shop. Let's buy a whole lot of Indian silver jewelry imported from Mexico; they sell it here. You regard me as old and sick and a red freak, don't you? Tim and I have discussed it, your view of me. He considers it damaging to me and defamatory. He's going to talk to you about it sometime. Get prepared; he's going to quote canon law. It's against canon law to bear false witness. He doesn't consider you a very good Christian; in fact, not a Christian at all. He doesn't really like you. Did you know that?"

I said nothing.

"Christians are judgmental," Kirsten said, "and bishops even more so. I have to live with the fact that Tim confesses every week to the sin of sleeping with me; do you know how that feels? It is quite painful. And now he has me going; I take Communion and I confess. It's sick. Christianity is sick. I want him to step down as bishop; I want him to go into the private sector."

"Oh," I said. I understood, then. Tim could then come out in the open and proclaim her, his relationship with her. Strange, I thought, that it never entered my mind.

"When he is working for that think tank," Kirsten said, "the stigma and the hiding will be gone because they don't care. They're just secular people; they're not Christians-they don't condemn others. They're not saved. I'll tell you something, Angel. Because of me, Tim is cut off from God. This is terrible, for him and for me; he has to get up every Sunday and preach knowing that because of me he and God are severed, as in the original Fall. Because of me, Bishop Timothy Archer is recapitulating the primordial Fall in himself, and he fell voluntarily; he chose it. No one made him fall or told him to do it. It's my fault. I should have said 'no' to him when he first asked me to sleep with him. It would have been a lot better, but I didn't know a rat's ass about Christianity; I didn't comprehend what it signified for him and what, eventually, it would signify for me as the damn stuff oozed out all over me, that Pauline doctrine of sin, Original Sin. What a demented doctrine, that man is born evil; how cruel it is. It's not found in Judaism; Paul made it up to explain the Crucifixion. To make sense out of Christ's death, which in fact makes no sense. Death for nothing, unless you believe in Original Sin."

"Do you believe in it now?" I asked.

"I believe I've sinned; I don't know if I was born that way. But it's true now."

"You need therapy."

"The whole church needs therapy. Old Dr. Batshit could take one look at me and Tim and know we're sleeping together; the whole media-news network knows it, and when Tim's book comes out-he has to step down-it has nothing to do with his faith or lack of faith in Christ: it has to do with me. I'm forcing him out of his career, not his lack of faith; I'm doing it. That cracked old lady only read back to me what I already knew, that you can't do what we're doing; you can do it but you have to pay for it. I'd just as soon be dead, I really would. This is no life. Every time we go somewhere, fly somewhere, we have to get two hotel rooms, one for each of us, and then I slip up the hall into his room. .. Dr. Batshit didn't have to be a psychic to ferret it all out; it was written on our faces. Come on; let's shop."

I said, "You're going to have to lend me some money. I didn't bring enough along to shop."

"It's the Episcopal Church's money." She opened her purse. "Be my guest."

"You hate yourself," I said; I intended to add the word unfairly, but Kirsten interrupted me.

"I hate the position I'm in. I hate what Tim has done to me, made me ashamed of myself and my body and being a woman. Is this why we founded FEM? I never dreamed I'd ever be in this situation, like a forty-dollar whore. Sometime you and I should talk, the way we used to talk before I was busy all the time writing his speeches and making his appointments-the bishop's secretary who makes sure he doesn't reveal in public the fool that he is, the child that he is; I'm the one who has all the responsibility, and I'm treated like garbage."

She handed me some money from her purse, grabbed out at random; I accepted it, and felt vast guilt; but I took the money anyhow. As Kirsten said, it belonged to the Episcopal Church.

"One thing I have learned," she said as we left the bar and emerged into the daylight, "is to read the fine print."

"I'll say one thing for that old lady," I said. "She certainly loosened up your tongue."

"No-it's being out of San Francisco. You haven't seen me out of the Bay Area and Grace Cathedral before. I don't like you and I don't like being a cheap whore and I don't particularly like my life in general. I'm not sure I even like Tim. I'm not sure I want to continue with this, any of this. That apartment-I had a much better apartment before I met Tim, although I suppose that doesn't count; it's not supposed to, anyhow. But I had a very rewarding life. But I was programmed by my DNA to get mixed up with Tim and now some old skuzz-bag rails at me that I'm going to die. You know what my feeling is about that, my real feeling? It no longer matters to me. I knew it anyway. She just read my own thoughts back to me and you know it. That is the one thing that sticks in my mind from this seance or whatever we're supposed to call it: I heard someone express my realizations about myself and my life and what's become of me. It gives me courage to face what I have to face and do what I have to do."

"And what is that?"

"You'll see in due time. I've come to an important decision. This today helped clear my mind. I think I understand." She spoke no further. It was Kirsten's custom to cast a veil of mystery over her connivings; that way, she supposed, she added an element of glamour. But in fact she did not. She only murked up the situation, for herself most of all.

I let the subject drop. Together, then, we sauntered off, in search of ways to spend the church's wealth.

We returned to San Francisco at the end of the week, laden with purchases and feeling tired. The bishop had secured, covertly, not for publication, a post with the Santa Barbara think tank. It would be announced presently that he intended to resign from his post as Bishop of the Diocese of California; the announcement would be coming ineluctably, his decision having been made, his new job arranged for: nailed down. Meanwhile, Kirsten checked into Mount Zion Hospital for further tests.

Her apprehension had made her taciturn and morose; I visited her at the hospital but she had little to say. As I sat beside her bed, ill at ease and wishing I were elsewhere, Kirsten fussed with her hair and complained. I left dissatisfied, with myself, basically; I seemed to have lost my ability to communicate with her-my best friend, really-and our relationship was dwindling, along with her spirits.

At this time, the bishop had in his possession the galleys for his book dealing with Jeff's return from the next world; Tim had decided on the title Here, Tyrant Death, which I had suggested to him; it is from Handel's Belshazzar, and reads in full:

"Here, tyrant Death, thy terrors end. "

He quoted it in context in the book itself.

Busy as always, over-extended and preoccupied with a hundred and one major matters, he elected to bring the galleys to Kirsten in the hospital; he left them with her to proofread and at once departed. I found her lying propped up, a cigarette in one hand, a pen in the other, the long galley-pages propped up on her knees. It was evident that she was furious.

"Can you believe this?" she said, by way of greeting.

"I can do them," I said, seating myself on the edge of the bed.

"Not if I throw up on them."

"After you're dead you'll work even harder."

Kirsten said, "No; I won't work at all. That's the point. As I read over this thing I keep asking myself, Who is going to believe this crap? I mean, it is crap. Let's face it. Look." She pointed to a section on the galley-page and I read it over. My reaction tallied with hers; the prose was turgid, vague and disastrously pompous. Obviously, Tim had dictated it at his rush- rush, speeded-up, let's-get-it-over-with velocity. Equally obviously, he had never once looked back. I thought to myself, The title should be Look Backward, Idiot.

"Start with the final page," I said, "and work forward. That way, you won't have to read it."

"I'm going to drop them. Oops." She simulated dropping the galleys onto the floor, catching them just in time. "Does the order matter on these? Let's shuffle them."

"Write in stuff," I said. "Write in, 'This really sucks.' Or, 'Your mother wears Army boots.'"

Kirsten, pretending to write, said, "'Jeff manifested himself to us naked with his pecker in his hand. He was singing "The Stars and Stripes Forever." ' " Both of us were laughing, now; I collapsed against her and we embraced.

"I'll give you one hundred dollars if you write that in," I said, almost unable to talk.

"I'll just turn it over to the IRA."

"No," I said. "To the IRS."

Kirsten said, "I don't report my earnings. Hookers don't have to." Her mood changed, then; her spirit palpably ebbed away. Gently; she patted me on the arm and then she kissed me.

"What's that for?" I said, touched.

"They think the spot means I have a tumor."

"Oh, no," I said.

"Yep. Well, that's the long and the short of it." She pushed me away, then, with stifled-ill- stifled-anger. "Can they do anything? I mean, they can-"

"They can operate; they can remove the lung."

"And you're still smoking."

"It's a little late to give up cigarettes. What the hell. This raises an interesting question ... I'm not the first to ask it. When you're resurrected in the flesh, are you resurrected in a perfect form or do you have all the scars and injuries and defects you had while alive? Jesus showed Thomas his wounds; he had Thomas thrust his hand into his-Jesus'-.side. Did you know that the church was born from that wound? That's what the Roman Catholics believe. Blood and water flowed from the wound, the spear wound, while he was on the cross. It's a vagina, Jesus' vagina." She did not seem to be joking; she seemed, now, solemn and pensive. "A mystical notion of a spiritual second birth. Christ gave birth to us all."

I seated myself on the chair beside the bed, saying nothing.

The news-the medical report-stunned and terrified me; I could not respond. Kirsten, however, looked composed.

They have given her tranks, I realized. As they do when they deliver this sort of news.

"You consider yourself a Christian now?" I said finally, unable to think up anything else, anything more appropriate. "The fox hole phenomenon," Kirsten said. "What do you think of the title? Here, Tyrant Death. "

"I picked it," I said.

She gazed at me, with intensity.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I said. "Tim said he picked it."

"Well, he did. I gave him the quotation. One among a group; I submitted several."

"When was this?"

"I don't know. Some time ago. I forget. Why?"

Kirsten said, "It's a terrible title. I abominated it when I first saw it. I didn't see it until he dumped these galleys in my lap, literally in my lap. He never asked-" She broke off, then stubbed her cigarette out. "It's like somebody's idea of what a book title ought to consist of. A parody of a book title. By someone who never titled a book before. I'm surprised his editor didn't object."

"Is all this directed at me?" I said.

"I don't know. You figure it out." She began, then, to scrutinize the galleys; she ignored me.

"Do you want me to go?" I said awkwardly, after a time.

Kirsten said, "I really don't care what you do." She continued with her work; presently, she halted a moment to light up another cigarette. I saw, then, that the ashtray by her bed overflowed with half-smoked, stubbed-out cigarettes.