Tess straightened her skirt and back. The table glittered with decorations, plates of imported crackers and cheeses, pates. A silver tureen of red wine with floating slices of orange. Sirens screamed on Main Street. Another fire? Her mind wandered. A face appeared. Real? It came into focus, familiar. Name? Connection? Some familiar panic rose from her hips, or thereabouts. Maybe it was her feet. She felt herself leaving again.

“Tess?” Gary questioned, tentatively.

She smiled. “What’s up?” The connection clicked. “Have you a piece in the show?”

He frowned, irritated, impatient. “I’m one of the exhibitors.”

“Mmmmmm,” Tess inhaled. I knew I wasn’t here, she thought hopelessly.

“Are you ever here?” Gary demanded gruffly, and turned to see who else more interesting had walked through the door recently.

Her eyes widened and cleared. “I’m here, just distracted. Which pieces are yours?”

He waved toward the tureen. “That wall. You’ve seen most of them. What’s the distraction?” Gary peered suddenly intense.

“A friend’s ill.”

He didn’t care much about illness. “Anyone I know?” His voice was indifferent, flat.

“No.” It was really. The energy in Tess flagged lower.

He pushed her back toward the wall gently. “Look at this new piece I’ve done.”

Tess examined it with full, open attention, let everything else inside her slip away. All of her was the art. Let it take over her soul, all her consciousness, let there be nothing but this in the universe for awhile. It was breathtaking, detailed, intricate, complex and simple, a message of the universe or a person or all of life and a new way of seeing, a trip to a place she’d want to know and stay, at least until -- reality hitting -- hunger or money intervened. Ugh, feed the beast she thought suddenly. It’s probably low on something.

“Jeez. I’ve got to get something to eat. It’s wonderful though.” Her delight was contagious.

“There’s dark chocolate homemade bonbons over on the side table.

She laughed at the temptation. “No, I think I need vegetables or fruit or meat or...” Chocolate. “Yes, bonbons and then ...”

Gary held a bonbon eye-high. Tess tilted and stretched her head back, giggling at the obvious.

“Okay,” she uttered from someplace at the back of her spine. “I’m getting serious here,” and turned for the buffet.

Heda laughed behind her. “Is that what you call a well-balanced meal today?”

Tess studied the plate. Two pieces of layered strawberry cake with a hard chocolate coating, lemon-coconut jello, an assortment of cheeses.

“I’m doing an experiment in body chemistry. Yesterday I just ate meat. The day before that just vegetables. The day before that just fruit juices and nothing solid at all.”

“Seriously?”

“No.” Tess laughed.

“Not exactly?”

“It isn’t a well-controlled experiment.”

“I like the outfit.” Heda designed her own clothes, sold them at fairs and crafts shows and on consignment in small shops here and there in the region and sometimes other places as clients moved or visited, passed by on their way to areas considered generally more chique. Her creations mixed fabrics in one-of-a-kind crazy quilts that draped a head or shoulder or hip in ways it had never thought to be accoutered, whimsically and with a bit of humor at the idea of clothing at all. Tess loved them.

“It’s another comment on why clothes at least in warm weather.”

Heda kissed her suddenly on the mouth. “You’re it, girl.”

“Yeah, I’m it,” Tess murmured a little tiredly. “Or,” she brightened up, “you are.”

Energy flowed. “Right,” Heda said cheerily, dancing a little step to show off her outfit and ending with a right leg out. “I’m goddess today.”

“Oh, good.” Tess felt truly relieved and relaxed for the first time that day. “I’m going to play.” Tension returned. There were too many people, too gay for moods underlaying this silk overthrow and multi-colored pants of leather and velvet. I can’t live up to my clothes today, Tess reflected mournfully. Karen’s disease overwhelmed her again. It can’t be, she thought recklessly. Screaming at heaven No! again. Not Karen, she yelled at God. Or whoever, she thought, angrily. What fate is that? No! But it had become a dreary, dragging acceptance. Yes, Karen, me, anyone. What’s next? a disgusted soul said to a body walking toward the back door through acquaintances in an accepting, roiling, quieting ocean, a sea of dreams and lost hopes and conquests ebbing and rising. There doesn’t seem to be a plan here, she grumbled to a divinity that might run through it or have left or never been there at all. Is there a point? her shadow self shook a fist at this force and flow that did, she admitted confusedly, exist. Just life, she reminded herself. Let it go, let it be. And, damnit George H. died. Her favorite, if she had one. Meditative, spiritual, on his own track, more in the flow than against it, overriding it. A sudden image of the last five years. Why? she wondered again. What does it mean? It never made sense, didn’t add up logically as other years had seemed to. Or maybe they didn’t, she thought. Maybe it was the structure I imposed to define them -- ones I inherited or read or learned. She’d seen them fall, crack and separate without clear boundaries or shapes exactly. Imposed new ones arbitrarily. Does any one work? Is any one right? It’s like physics theory, she considered suddenly. Discerning and ordering a universe, or a person, or a group to cope with it but it doesn’t really exist like that at its source. Undefineable and unspeakable like the God of Israel, ancient tribes. She saw them dancing to primitive energies.

“How’s Atlantis today?” that cackling warm voice asked suddenly.

“You saw me there?”

“I followed you.”

“Ah, company.” Tess shook her head, smiling, from that interior center of the world and history she knew, that lived in her cells and their memory. Racial memory, the hers and hims she might have been and remembered if at all dimly. Or her imagination made it up, Rose had said sternly. This is the real world with tables and chairs and balanced meals. Grow up and act like a normal adult, her sister demanded argumentatively. It’s exasperating to deal with you, she nearly yelled.

Tess focused. “I’m going to talk with the bums again. They’re interesting,” she enticed.

“What bums?”

“You’ll see. Let’s go.”

The fenced and gated park behind the gallery had no lighting of its own. A disordered glow from shops and street lamps lit a tree or a man.

“What do you think of the war today, kid?” Jack brushed by her, brisk as ever.

“Just great. Love it.”

“Sure you do.”

“And you?”

“Time of my life.”

“Thought that was Ben Yua.”

“Topped it.”

“The streams of refugees?”

“And the prostitutes.”

“Veils are erotic.”

“You’re both sick.” Wanja intervened.

“War makes us sick,” Tess explained, suddenly soft, apologetic. “Sorry.”

Jack grumbled something obscene from his chest and groin.

Tess opened the gate.

“Is this safe?”

“Sure. We’re right in town and they’re okay,” Tess reassured her. “They’re mostly old vets. Burnt out.” Like me, she thought from that tired place in her soul off and on. Auto-pilot or a new captain please. She laughed suddenly out loud.

“What?”

“The thing is you just sit down and light a cigarette and they’ll talk to you. I’ll watch.”

“Okay, let’s go over there,” Wanja nodded toward an empty iron bench.

“Naw. We have to separate. I’ll just sit on the ground.”

Tess sunk to grass that was only slightly damp and leaned her back against a marble stone. Cold, her body said through the silk blouse. Where is your coat?

“Hey,” she got up, “I’m going to get my coat out of the car.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Tess said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”

Wanja looked a bit panicked, eyes wide and body went stiff suddenly. Tess felt it rather than saw it.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

Wanja relaxed and sat on the marble Tess had vacated. Cold, sensitive thighs said. I’ll get used to it, she thought. I’m not moving now. Wanja lit a cigarette and surveyed the men calmly, unobtrusively, along with the landscaped garden with its artificial stream. A longing for real country came over her again. Some day, she thought determinedly, I am buying that piece of land at the top of the highest mountain here and building, getting built she corrected herself a bit morosely, a hut where I’ll write music all day about everything I saw and knew and didn’t understand as I was going through because I was too busy and pressured and worried and sick and worn out to say why washing dishes every day for five kids wasn’t fulfilling and not for the reasons that Ben understood because it wasn’t that structured. It just wiped her out, she thought. Annihilated the her that never existed really, never bloomed, or grew, never met the world unaccoutered by Ben, George, Janice, Orrin, Patty and Madeline, the one body they were sometimes defined by the no of Ben and his directions in everything and shifting definitions of her that were not the core of her separate, unique existence. Or did she have one anymore? Did it still exist in there somewhere. She looked inside for it, for the child that became an adult circumscribed by her sex and procreation, her dependence on Ben, his rules, his economies, his everything. Everything was his, according to his soul. At the profoundest level and except for escapes he didn’t know, it was his world, a magnetic force she resisted and gave into because her strength failed. She didn’t exist then. A body with nothing of her own. Not even her body really. Children and dogs climbing over it, Ben nudging it unwelcome in the night when she was too exhausted to participate as the girl he knew twenty-some years ago. Where was that girl? Did she grow up in a consciousness that lay parallel, untapped? That’s what Wanja believed, waited for the full days and months and years, she’d meet that person. She had questions to ask of that shadow that never had had a chance to talk and think and remember at leisure, freely and unencumbered. It might be frightening, she thought. Behind the seeming robot and the structure of her seen and known, dependable and compliant, self-effacing and ruled, was there a person and was it one she’d like? No, like isn’t the right word. Accept might be.

“Do you have a cigarette?” The reverie broke. Shadows and leaves and a mottled scarf appeared. Wanja looked up, regaining the world.

“Sure.” She reached in her pocket and pulled a loose one out. “Here you go.” She wasn’t sure of the next direction.

“Mind if I sit here a minute.”

“Of course not.” Wanja slid over on the marble and noticed her thighs weren ’t protesting anymore. Accommodation, she thought. It’s a good body, basically. Like a car I take to the show, however it’s been laid out on any particular day. It felt strange, like it wasn’t totally hers. Ben’s body belonged to himself and the company he worked for, including weekends frequently, she thought suddenly. Not to her. It wasn’t at her command or her children’s. It was off limits in some way. She felt exasperated by it, its aloofness and separateness. Why wasn’t it hers despite the children and the years?

“Come here often?”

“No,” Wanja laughed. “I’ve never been here before.”

“It’s a great place. The city’s good to keep it. Clean and safe.”

“You sleep here?”

“Not always.”

“Where else?” Wanja felt a wave of depression passing and struggled that it not show.

“Under the highway bridges sometimes. They’re safe too because of the lights and cops passing by.”

“They don’t bother you?”

“No. They’re okay. Sometimes they bring blankets. One’s a friend. His wife sends hot meals, biscuits some nights.”

“Really?” She brightened up. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah. Some of them are vets too. Brothers.”

“Are there women?” Wanja volunteered at a local pantry occasionally and most of their clients were mothers and much older women. She wondered where the men went and concluded they were too proud to come through regularly, fended for themselves.

“A few. They’re pretty confused.”

“Do you bother them?”

He laughed. “Not unless they want me to.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes someone does. We get rid of them.”

“It’s a clan, kind of?” Wanja wanted to understand that world, at least a little, since she’d found her nerve and was there. She noticed she didn’t feel threatened, just curious and a little sad. The poor ye have always with ye? Why? Who said so? Oh, you can’t question sources like that. Just accept it, do the best you can.

“What’s your name?”

“Ruth. What’s yours?”

“Clement.”

“Were you in Vietnam?”

“No.”

She felt confused. He seemed that age.

“I couldn’t go.” Clement pulled a disfigured hand from the right pocket of his army coat.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s congenital. I’m used to it.”

“How did you happen to be on the street?”

“My buddies are here.”

Perplexion.

“Guys from school.”

“High school?”

“Groader.”

“Where is that?”

“Hightower Ridge.”

Half way up the mountain to Jolden where the native crafts festival was held every year.

“Are you Cherokee?”

“No. Mountain bred, mountain dead.”

“What?”

“Kin all up and down that mountain, in the graves and in the schools.”

“What do you do all day?”

“Travel around. Write poetry.”

“Really? Cool.” Wanja cheered again. “Do you have any with you? I love poetry.”

Clement grinned slantwise. It wasn’t a leer exactly but from a male force that knew something she didn’t, couldn’t except as it would be revealed on its own.

“You want to hear one?” She heard the “little girl” implied in his tone. Her consciousness focused on her high-heeled boots and rings as her back stiffened again.

“Yes.”

“Ah! You don’t.”

“Say it.”

“Another time.” Clement threw the butt under his foot and stood up, crushing it. “Take care of yourself, gal. I gotta go.”

“Okay. Nice talking to you.”

Clement waved slightly and turned on the bricks toward a sculptured stand of trees and bushes.

“What did he say?”

“That was good timing.”

“Forgot my keys. Had to go back in the gallery for my pocketbook.” Tess grimaced in the fur coat that cushioned her sitting on marble now.

“He said I wouldn’t understand.”

Tess laughed. “You might.”

“It’s like a masonic order or something. Secret handshakes and codes.”

“Yeah.”

“They’d let me in if I came back often enough. Got to know some of them.”

“Most likely. I don’t know.” How do you touch a soul? she wondered. And how to do you say what or if the path is? Or if I have one, you do too. No, it isn’t that way. Just some souls touch and others don’t and nobody knows why or where they’ll go. Is there a plan or is it all random? No. Is this a time to impose Tess? When does she melt and let go?

“Do you know any of them?”

“I know Clement.” She’d seen him go.

“Do you like him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He’s creative and sticks with his friends.”

“Have you heard his poetry?”

“Some.”

“What’s it like?”

“A lot of it is funny.”

“Funny?” That wasn’t what Wanja expected.

“It’s meant to amuse, lighten the load, say. And it’s insightful in kind of a cheery way.”

“Cheery?” Wanja saw the scuffed, misfit shoes.

“Everybody has problems.”

“What?”

“He has a masters degree in biochemistry.”

“He has a masters degree in biochemistry. Why is he on the street?”

“Looking for something more profoundly true, I guess.”

“He worked.”

“He was professor, associate, somewhere.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. He may have gotten pushed out or he may have just gone.”

“You don’t know.”

“It isn’t very clear from what he says or writes except that it might be both.”

“Does he have to live on the street?”

“I don’t think so. I think he has a cabin somewhere.”

“Another not clear signal from anywhere?”

“I can’t tell if it belongs to him or someone else.”

“Why is it all so,” Wanja scanned for a word, “nebulous?”

“I don’t know. It’s like he’s more of a physic.”

“Can’t you pin him down a bit to a real specific?”

“No. He doesn’t want to exist like that.”

“He did and got tired of it.”

“I guess. He didn’t say except maybe in a poem or two. Makes sense anyway.”

“He’s defined by being a bum.”

“Only to someone who doesn’t talk with him, get to know him.”

“I like it.”

“Me, too.”

“What’s next?”

“I’m going home.”

“Where is it now?”

“The new house is on Grainger.”

“Do you like it?”

“I took it as it is, completely furnished, and it’s small enough to keep easily and heat.” And cool, the marble said through her coat. “And cool.”

“I’m going back to the gallery for a little bit. Anyway, I need to talk with Hen about Patty’s lessons.”

“How’s she doing?”

“I think she’s got real talent.”

“Yeah! More young women in the arts.”

“She’s got something.”

“I’ll look forward to watching it reveal itself.”

“It’s an interesting process.”

“Never done.”

“Some days it looks like it’s at a dead end.”

“Why?”

“She gets discouraged, doesn’t like anything she does despite what anyone else says, particularly me of course.”

“Why? Oh, you’re her mother and of course you’d say that.”

“It isn’t true really. I criticize some places she goes.”

“What happens?”

“She takes it as a sign that’s the right direction, I think. A lot of the time I don’t say anything except ‘uh-huh interesting’.”

Tess stood and leaned over to hug her, pressed her head against the befuddled mother in Wanja at that minute.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“See ya in the movies.”

Wanja leaned back again and lit another cigarette as Tess opened the gate.

This is a strange spot to be, a place in her whispered. The artificial stream chuckled under its oriental-style bridge. Wanja crossed the leather-bound feet over each other. I’ll just see what comes next, she decided. It’s my night out and I have plenty of time left. Nobody’s watching me and no one has to know unless I just feel like telling them. A little thrill of freedom, followed by anxiety and anticipation came over her. It’s all mine for this moment. And God’s, she added, respectful and wary. Let go and we’ ll fly to something new. You’ll live or die. It’s the ride. Wanja began to snap her fingers to an inner beat and tune. Here she is, Wanja thought. She’s coming out again.