The Second Coming

of a bitch like me and you’ll have a long happy life.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œAnd I’m also up here to play golf. I hear you’re a real sandbagger.”
    â€œWell—”
    â€œLet me tell you something, Will.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œI’m eighty-five years old and I play eighteen holes of golf every day. I line up nine mini-bottles of square Black Jack Daniel’s on the tray of the golf cart when I start out and knock back one on every other tee and I break ninety. Council on Aging my ass. How you going to counsel me?”
    â€œWell, I wasn’t.”
    â€œCome on down to my room and I’ll counsel you. I got some Wild Turkey.”
    He looked at his watch. It was three-thirty. She might still be at the greenhouse. Suppose she went back to the greenhouse and forgot about time and got becalmed by her four o’clock feeling. Suppose they came to get her. What would he do if they took her away?
    â€œI just thought of something. I have to go out for a while.”
    Mr. Ramsay pulled him close. “Just remember one thing.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œHang on to your money.”
    â€œOkay.”
    He was backing away. He had to find her. His need of her was as simple and urgent as drawing the next breath.
    11
    Bars of yellow sunlight broke through the clouds and leveled between the spokes of the pines. She was singing and planting avocado pits. They had sprouted, tiny spiky Mesozoic ferns.
    He had heard her from a distance, standing still in the cold dripping woods, and did not recognize her. The voice was unlike her speaking voice, bell-like, lower-pitched, and plangent. It was as if she were playing an instrument. Now as he stood close to her in the potting shed, the voice had a throaty foreign sound.
    The dog watched him but she did not know he was there until he stood behind her and touched her. Unsurprised, she blushed and fell back against him, crossing her arms to touch his.
    â€œLook!” she cried. “It’s my first crop! They’re already sprouting!”
    â€œI didn’t know you could do that,” he said.
    â€œTransplant?”
    â€œNo. Sing.”
    â€œI was a singer.”
    â€œWhat was that song?”
    â€œIt is called Liebesbotschaft. Love’s Message.”
    â€œWhat does it say?”
    â€œThe lover is asking a brook to carry his message of love to a maiden.”
    â€œI never heard you sing before.”
    â€œI didn’t feel like it. I stopped.”
    â€œWhy did you stop?”
    â€œBecause I thought I had to sing.”
    â€œDo you think you’ll sing in the future?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I don’t have to. There is no reason not to. I think I can sing for people if you think it will give them pleasure. Do you?”
    â€œYes.”
    She turned to face him. “Why did you come?”
    â€œWhat? Oh. I was talking to a man at St. Mark’s and all of a sudden I realized it was almost four o’clock and I wanted to see you.”
    â€œYou wanted to see me because you know how I feel at four o’clock in the afternoon?”
    â€œThat and more.”
    â€œWhat is the more?”
    â€œI wanted badly to uh see you.”
    â€œIs that all?”
    â€œNot quite.”
    She clapped her hands. “What luck.”
    â€œLuck?”
    â€œThat we both want the same, that is, the obverse of the same. The one wanting the other and vice versa. What luck. Imagine.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œTo rule out a possible misunderstanding, what is it you want?”
    â€œTo lie down here by the Grand Crown where it is warm and put my arms around you.”
    â€œWhat luck. Here we are. Hold me.”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œOh, I think you have something for me.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLove. I love you,” he said. “I love you now and until the day I die.”
    â€œOh, hold me. And tell me.”
    â€œTell you what?”
    â€œIs what you’re saying part and parcel of what you’re doing?”
    â€œPart and parcel.”
    They were lying on the dog’s croker sacks next to the glowing amber lights of the firebox.
    â€œTell me the single truth, not two or more separate truths, unless separate truths are subtruths of the single truth. Is there one truth or several separate truths?”
    â€œBoth.”
    â€œHow both?”
    â€œThe single truth is I love