A long, narrow garden stretches away
from the back of the house, its walls
making it a shoe box open to the sky.
The stones of the wall are piled up
half again as high as a person, form-
ing an artificial horizon from which
clouds rise in the day, and into which
the stars sink at night. In the mid-
dle of the garden is a fountain, white
and smooth, with water tumbling down
three basins to a large pool. The
bottom of the pool is darker, its rus-
ticated surface shadowed with algae.
Even on the brightest days, a soft murk
dwells there, though alive not fetid.
A few pennies there shine dully, invitingly.
Along the wall, hosta, ferns and, in
the spring, lily of the valley bloom
thickly beneath lilacs and ornamental
shrubs. The edge of this greenery
follows the wall in gentle undulations,
and the oval-shaped plantings of per-
ennials scattered through the middle
of the yard seem like a continental
drift from those curves, similar in
shape, but differentiated in purpose
by time. Near the back wall, behind
the fountain, a formal herb garden of
granite paths and carefully drawn
plots pares down the roundness found
elsewhere into an octagon. At its
center, appropriately, is a sun dial,
set on the summer solstice, and marking
the time perfectly by the quarter hour
(though one must remember to calculate
forward one hour during Daylight Savings
Time). Halfway between the herbs and
the fountain, and over to one side, is
the table and chairs, in a circle of
hexagonal granite stones. These change
color with the weather, like the sea or
the sky, darker now, brighter later,
but sometimes unexpectedly so; seeing
this, one must sort out the anomaly to
realize reality. At the very end of
the garden, behind the herbs, is a
bench, three pieces of stone making
posts and a lintel. It has no back
so that you can sit on it both ways,
either looking over the basil to the
fountain, or to the nearby wall,
which is cloaked in vines, providing
the only clear path outside.
I often dreamt of this garden, and
imagined myself sitting at the table,
smoking a long white cigarette, and
listening to the water in the fountain,
the breeze in the bushes, and the stir
of insects on a hot summer day -- the
sort of day when the humidity makes
it unpleasant to smoke, and a passing
cloud is a tease, not hope. In my
dream, the humidity was blown away by
a stiff wind that sent the ashes flying
from the tray (swirling as one, then
spinning off, each particle on its own).
The wind tousled my hair, and sent drop-
lets from the fountain onto the path
around it. Then the droplets evaporated,
as on sped-up film, and the drench was
gone from the air, and the thyme growing
in the herb garden smelled strong and
dusty, a meal in itself. After that,
it felt good to smoke, but I put out
my cigarette, and saw that the ashes
now rested.
A good night for a garden party,
if any one ever was, I think to myself.
Blue, red, green, and yellow lights
shine through the bottom of the foun-
tain's pool when I meet her. The
yard is filled with people, friends
from here and there, circles that over-
lap already, and ones that I hope will
after this evening. In those days I
threw lots of parties in the garden.
The Chinese lanterns hanging along
the undulating shrub bed light faces
and drinks with a glow that one usually
associates with inside, and that, of
course, is the point.
She is not unattractive, but only so in
the magazine sense: the hair, the clothes,
the makeup -- they are all completely
adequate, but she seems for all of it
very much a paperdoll, and one wants to
know if there is an actual shape underneath.
She is the friend of a friend of a friend,
and doesn't even know until I tell her
that this is my place. Then she is em-
barrassed, and I am amused. I change the
subject to our mutual acquaintances and
she finds a more even keel. Attempting
to bring the rudder to center, I offer
to get her a refreshment. There is a
bar set up outside, along one half of
the back of the house in front of the
annuals bed (I wish that bartender would
be more careful of the zinnias!) but we
bypass it for the yellow glow of the
kitchen, up two shallow steps from the
garden. I mix her a seven and seven
and begin preparing the treat.
"Pot just gives me a headache," she says.
"But Rachel loves it."
"Yup. I saw her lighting up out there,"
I confirm, and roll a soft tortilla out
on the counter.
"Yeah, that's Ed she's with. She can't
stand him, but he always has marijuana."
"Oh yeah?" I squeeze honey from a plastic
bear onto the tortilla.
"Yeah, he's really a nerd, actually. Some
kind of science geek. Physics or something."
"Really. Isn’t physics its own trip?"
I get the treat out of the refrigerator.
"I mean, he's okay I guess -- nice and
everything -- just kinda boring. But
does he have a crush on Rachel!"
"You know, the Ziplock corporation will
never lobby for the legalization of drugs,"
I say, sprinkling the contents of the bag
into the honey on the tortilla.
"Huh? Oh yeah. Right." She goes to the
window. "I can't believe she's still
talking to him."
I roll up the tortilla and hold it out to
her. "Carol, eat what is offered to you;
eat this scroll, and go, speak."
"What is it?"
I take a bite myself, and hold it out again.
"Carol, eat this scroll that I give you and
fill your stomach with it."
She looks into my eyes. I empty them of
everything, then fill them with a silky
reassurance, soft and shining dully.
Awkwardly, she takes the tortilla, peeks
inside, and looks at me. I nod. She takes
a bite, holding my gaze the entire time.
"It's sweet," she says.
We trade bites until it is gone. She turns
slowly to the window. "I wonder," she says,
"where Rachel is." Each word is an act in
itself.
"Let's go out into the garden," I say. She
hesitates, as if taken root to the tile. I
take her hand and pull gently, and the tug
is a globe of energy passing down from my
shoulders, through my upper arm, then elbow,
forearm and wrist, and finally passing
through my fingers to her palm, where it
travels upward to her shoulders and pulls
the whole line taut. She looks at me again,
there is a barely discernible flicker in he
eyes, and then her feet begin moving toward
the door.
There is no path from the house to the garden,
only stones set in the ground, and the soft
springiness of the turf is like a mattress
after the hardness of the kitchen floor.
We pass through the garden, toward the fountain,
and everyone is smiling in the glow of the Chi-
nese lanterns, which now look like Christmas
lights strung around a room: they chase away the
shadows, but put nothing under great inspection.
The sound of the fountain is a roar as we walk
by it, and our feet slap the stones around the
table. Beyond, the moonlight casts a faint
shadow on the sun dial, telling a time that I
want to stop and study. But we move on to the
bench and sit there, our backs to the party.
The vines creeping up the wall are a dark water-
fall, and the ferns spray at the bottom.
"The stars are very bright," she says.
I point to the most prominent of them. "There,
see that?" I say. She nods. "That is Venus.
Or what we call Venus. I know that it is
Earendil the Mariner, in his ship the Foam
Flower, with the Silmaril upon his brow, sail-
ing on and ever on."
"I can see him," she says. "The mist is in
his eyes."
"He is searching for his beloved, Elwing,
but she is the gull above the surf. He is
on different seas and will never catch up
to her."
"You sound like a school teacher," she says.
A cool breeze stirs through the garden, a
pleasant surprise after the heat of the day.
She scoots closer to me on the bench, and I
put my around her to still her shiver. She
puts her hand on my chest, but I hardly feel
it; I am staring at the silhouettes of the
leaves at the top of the wall, where the vines
crawl over its peak. They stick up at dif-
ferent heights along the flat line, like a
city built on a narrow plain. Glints from
the Chinese lanterns shimmer on their dark
surfaces like lights in windows. I imagine
that people live in them, and that the peak
of the wall is their Main Street, a canyon
lined with green walls. Each stem is a tree
trunk supporting a mottled surface of light
and block, framing the space below. In this
walled enclosure people do their business,
walking to and fro, each stop an interaction
with another, flowing by in quarter hour in-
crements, more specificity being unnecessary.
Their faces become clearer to me, familiar in
the way a stranger's is on a street that you
know.
As I begin to pick up the common thread in
all of the conversations I could have there,
I realize that Carol is attempting to open
my fly. One hand has crept beneath the waist
band of my boxers, and the other, having un-
done the snap, is now jerking at the zipper.
I stop her, and she looks into my eyes.
"That's not what I had in mind," I say.
"What do you mean?" she asks, and here the
words tumble into one multi-syllabic wave
with its own cadence and lyric.
"Let's look at the stars," I say. She turns
away.
"I don't feel very well," she says.
"Sometimes people get a stomach ache," I say.
"But it goes away. Have a sip of your drink.
The carbonation will help."
She takes a small sip from her glass, then
looks back at the party. "I wonder where
Rachel is."
I turn. The party is still going strong and
I am pleased to see one of my co-workers talk-
ing to one of my childhood friends. They had-
n't met before tonight.
Carol stands up to go too quickly, and nearly
trips. I rise and catch her by the elbow.
She jerks away from me. I stay where I am.
I watch her wind her way around the herb garden
and then the fountain, back toward the house
and the crowd.
A few minutes later, someone tells me that she
left looking sick, and that Ed followed her,
after insulting me. I shrug when I hear this,
and give someone else a light.
I am standing near the bar, smoking a cigarette,
and the garden has emptied of all but those who
will be staying the night. They are in a few
small knots, clattering their ice in their
glasses and picking over the remains of hors
d'oevres trays. A quiet, satisfied calm per-
meates the shadows of the garden, from which
faces dully shine.
The fountain tinkles brightly in the darkness
and the smell of thyme creeps coolly in on the
stirring air. I look out over the garden to
the vines on the far wall, and the bench is
a tiny white building.
