No matter how fast Margery trotted on her short legs to catch up, Jesus strode a yard ahead with the preoccupied frown of someone late, face tossed back as though from the speed. He denied Margery the companionship he was providing. Later he let her drink rain off his skin. When the sun appeared for an hour of immensity, canaries trilled vehemently in their little cages on the windowsills.

•

L. and I face a large lawn. He protests, “I show affection in different ways—” I consider the possibilities: his hand on my shoulder guided me around a corner, his knee fell against mine—were they more than I thought? Our union makes more sense to L. outside New York and San Francisco, an isolation in which he feels tenderness and separation at the same time.

The lawn has a head of grass that has attained Flamboyant Gothic consciousness, bunched up against the foundation of an arbor. The gardener, unaware, smooths out the alarmed head and flattens it beneath the arbor. The grass thinks, This is fine, calming itself, but realizes that no sun can reach it: I will slowly die.

While I daydream, L. talks about his art, a friend’s memorial—nothing I can focus on. His actual life moves too slowly.

We eat yellow pepper soup, mushroom salad, and chocolate pine-nut cake. People in the restaurant look at him. Later he strips and blindfolds me. He runs a fingertip across my cock creating and denying expectation till I float in a cosmos of emptiness and touch. When I leave our bed I crouch a little, hoping the dimples on my ass will disappear. The extremes are captivating: exalting pleasure and the harshest judgment in that my own contempt works in his name. My legs are shaky. I step into the big room. The air is oddly empty. By contrast, I’m aware of my flesh and the thick stew it’s been for an hour or more.

35

Margery landed in Bristol on July 9. The weather was good, and travel itself was an authentic place to speak from—where events unfold, the crest of duration. She stopped in Leicester on her way home and found a room at an inn.

As Margery entered the church, Jesus pushed past her through the door; he knocked her off balance and gloated over his shoulder as though he’d won a contest. She had not seen him since Compostela. They sat down. Her desire to be young conflated with his cruel immaturity, as though rough manners were a promise of youth. Margery was forty-three. But Jesus didn’t lead a youth gang; he was thirty-one, so he was lying too. She held the corner of her cloak elegantly to alert Jesus to each finger’s tapering. He could have told her the gesture was out-of-date.