He laughed at the idea of the drunk crashing to the floor. It was strange how people seemed to worship the ancient magic of the arts. The most fungoid, sallow, pimply student in a beret, given the sufficient stretch of arrogance, could convince an otherwise sensible girl to undress, to “pose” as it were, in a strange denial of mores and a craving for what might pass as immortality. Glands athwart, I am forever, the subject thinks in the dull heat of vanity. Where is sleep now. Laura in the moonlight yearns to be ambulatory but the god of the Brownian movement has stretched his loins otherwise. Could he go over there and stand on the lawn amid the sad desultory blacks in their hateful pruning and yell like a rabid Jesus “Take up thy bed and walk,” walk over here, tout de suite, and feel this stupid heart leaking on the bedsheets with the setting moon through the window an irrevocable white rose, a visitation by the deaf and dumb Virgin Herself. Laura, let’s go down to the beach and swim out too far: buoyed, no doubt, by dolphins we’ll follow the white sheer of moonglitter across the water. Give me a yes or no. Let there be light, but more so, heat.

Chapter 38