Diary of a Heretic

Time Will Tell

[The post isn't a favorite; the picture is. This tiny picture of feet gets snatched up all the time. I've added a bigger version, but found it enlarging it caused those "spectral" things I never understood before. Then, too, the colors were blotchy; the best option was probably to tone down the saturation. But I have no idea why anybody likes the picture. I'm reposting this episode, not just the two pictures, in the crazy hope someone might read it just because it's here. This big, long story about a "natural mystic" desperately needs rewriting, which I can hardly wait to do because it's my all-time favorite.]

Angelina and Kaya holed up Asheville. Brian and Hailey were, Trevor said, “inna-inna-cumma-cumma-uyi-caddda.” So Trevor voluntarily managed the administrative rigmarole.

He noticed Polly’s inhuman cry and how she tore away but he no longer worried about her. She was Angelina’s problem.

Lauren Clay, the police chief’s daughter, had captured his attention. She planned to begin UNC in twelve days. Her freshman classes included nothing she wanted to study. And Trevor had gotten her excited about learning how to experiment, how to make art, and see her true self by attending the Consortium.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Although Brian had accepted all the Constortium's fall students weeks ago, Trevor saw eighteen-year old Lauren Clay contributing so much insight and spiritual good will that the community would suffer without it. She was crucial.

A few days ago, after her father, Chief Babble-a-Babylon, paid his sixth visit in two weeks, Angelina had engaged Trevor in a “little chat.” Lauren was five, almost six years younger than Trevor. And it wasn’t ordinary arithmetic: the age difference with someone so young amounted to more than five normal years.

“Compare your life experience with Lauren’s,” Angelina had said. Lauren had never lived in Jamaica. She attended the local high school, played the flute, and starred on B-team volley ball.

“She plays the flute?”

“Trevor—don’t. Lauren is simply too young for you. She’s too young to hang around here with all the ganja. She’s an innocent.”

But with Angelina gone, Trevor discovered Lauren wasn’t innocent. She had smoked weed for years. And, she was sexually adept. Very.

By Friday afternoon, Trevor decided Lauren’s transfer to Black Mountain required immediate attention. He wanted the deal done before the bosses returned.

Uneasy, he asked Lloyd to pick the college’s locked doors for him. Luckily, Lauren didn’t see Lloyd box Trevor to the ground. “Playing criminal, boy? Ya idiot.”

“Righted, Lloyd.”

Meeting Lauren in the parking area, he kissed her, cradling the back of her neck and pressing her against her rusty brown car. “Don’t worry, darlin'. I-and-I fix everything.” He asked for Lauren’s car keys. No man rode shot gun with a woman.

By the time they turned onto the highway, Lauren didn’t dare say anything. Without noticing what she was doing, she gripped the dashboard and pumped a phantom brake pedal. Miraculously, they sped into a parking lot with one car parked at the far end.

Trevor prayed someone would be in Kaya’s building. How could he have been so stupid, asking Lloyd to break into the office? After all, Trevor could talk a person into opening a locked door easier than jimmying it. He entered the hallway calling, “Hi, Hail, I-ney.”

Lauren called out, “Anybody home?”

Melissa Dorgan, an assistant professor in history—medieval history popped in Trevor’s mind; Kaya had introduced them once—stood barefoot in her doorway. “I’m here. If you count me.”

Trevor counted her. He counted on her absolutely, and when she showed him why she was barefoot, a big, new blister on her heel, he sat down and lifted her foot gently. His index finger circled the blister without quite touching it several times as Lauren and Melissa giggled. He tapped lightly on the clear bubble a few times, explaining that he needed to use Kaya’s computer but she had forgotten to give him her keys. “Just some forms everyone has to fill out.”

Without tearing the skin or allowing Melissa or Lauren to notice any fluid seeping out, Trevor flattened the blister. He tapped it, a light rat-a-tat-tat, and both women stared: it looked as if the blister was gone.

“It’s not gone,” Trevor said. “And, it’s bound to hurt if you put those shoes back on.”

Melissa Dorgan found a key that opened a lounge where most teachers kept spare keys. She couldn’t find the light switch, but Trevor could. Kaya’s key hung labeled in a cupboard. Trevor worked computers using trial and error. He knew a few strategies, but enrolling Lauren at Black Mountain proved far from simple.

After an hour, briefcase in hand, barefoot Melissa Dorgan knocked, asking if she could help. “Thanks,” Trevor said. “But we’re almost done.” Deciding to clear his head, he walked Melissa to her car, saying she must soak her foot for at least an hour. He also asked if she was a dancer. “Why? Is my foot all calloused?”

“The opposite,” Trevor said. “I wondered if you danced because your foot looks as if it touches the ground lightly, if at all.”

He chatted with her a while, even though she kept saying she was late for something. Together, they wondered about déjà vu and similar ephemeral impressions. Melissa waved when she finally said good-bye. Trevor returned to Kaya’s office. Lauren was waiting in the hall, having finished with the computer and put the key back. Never fear: she had removed herself from all classes in Asheville and added her name to the Black Mountain roster.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Real Situation

Brian’s spending the night, keeping me under observe-reverb-er-ration.

Wearing only jeans, dreads drippin’, I catch Brian in the moonlight crossing the yard. Beside him flows Hailey in a little dress. Sublime Hailey troubles me more all the time.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Tis true, I’m a break-out fool for Hailey. My first sight inside the radiance was Hailey’s astonishing splendor. Then I landed on me rass and closed my eyes, desperately aware of how hard I love her. More than me own soul. Nothing I can do, though. Hailey was born for Brian. Right after she met him, she whispered in me ear, “So that’s Brian the Lion.”

Altogether, I spent six weeks with Hailey. We shared plenty of true love. But that was nothing compared to Brian’s, which grows purer all the time.

Didn’t trouble me at first. I had whole heaps of time, and believed in linking with lots of girls. Saying no words, Hailey and me agreed: she should be with Brian. And to this day, no clue for me. Like I don’t fully exist.

Before our Daddy died, I was oblivious to loneliness. But after the astounding light surrounded me, which led to the mania, et cetera, no situation’s easy. An in the overpowering luminescence, I see how Brian and Hailey’s love brings out the best and bravest in them.

An I-and-I appear nowhere. How can Hailey be born for me same as Brian? When in the light maybe I was never even fully born. Could be I’m a figment.

Hailey’s standing behind Brian, who finds me on the deck. “I need to stay overnight with you, Trevor. So I can rush you to the hospital if you get groggy or sick.”

Thing is, Brian says, he has to get a bunch of students out of jail and then go pick up a group from the hospital. “Mostly guys who drank too much. I’ll be driving around all night.”

So Hailey’s watching over me. She knows what’s normal for me. After Brian leaves, she cuts her eyes all around till they fix on mine. I look away first. But she’s reassuring me. “Don’t get bothered, Trevor. We’ll be fine. Can I heat you some soup?”

I ask if she wants a little soup too. But she and Brian already ate. She’s going to read her book in the main room.

“Take anything you want, Hailey.”

Just saying her name seems desperately intimate; my voice too low and gentle. I didn’t say honey or darling or sweetheart. But saying, “Hailey” out loud affected me as if I kissed her lips. An stroked the inside of her arms. When I’m steadier, I smile. “’Night sister.”

“If you wake up, honey, come and wake me.” She can call me honey, no big deal. “I’ll peep in sometimes to make sure you aren’t sleeping too heavily.”

“A yah.”

Near sun-up Brian returns. They both stand by my bed. Hailey touches my nose and Brian taps me chin. “Here’s your phone, Trevor. I’ll be back after I run. Another few days, and we’ll be running together.”

They leave, whispering. I wait a few beats and bound outside; the dawn’s just breaking. From her deck across from mine, Polly’s glaring red eye at me.

“Morning, Polly.”

“No trickery now!” She scuttles onto my deck and pokes my chest where she punctured it when she was hiding in that tree. The spot still itches. “I’ve stayed awake, Trevor. So I know. You and Hailey had sex all night.”

“You don’t even know what sex is, Polly.”

“I know it’s not that damn lie you told me. ‘Guava jelly or fresh jam,’ you said. Carla and Crescent laughed at me. They laughed and laughed.” She forces me against the glass wall. I could push free but it’s better to make her ease up.

“Guava jelly was a metaphor, that’s all. An no matter wha’ppun in your water color class, Polly, I would never interfere between Brian and Hailey.”

“But you love Hailey like crazy. Like real weird love. And making love’s more serious than sex.”

“Making love is more serious, Polly. Hailey and I don’t make love. All her love-making is with Brian.”

“That’s not what Carla says. She told me the whole story about you and Hailey.”

“You think Carla knows everything?” I’m dizzy and want to sit down. “Did you hear what happened to me at Carla’s? There was a riot and I got a concussion.”

“You were at Carla’s and not me! You went to Carla’s and then came home and had sex with Hailey.”

“Don’t be stupid, Polly.” I push her backwards, but lightly.

“You think I’m stupid. You have sex with all the girls but not me because you think I’m stupid.”

“That’s not why. You’re not stupid. I only said ‘don’t be like that’ because you keep saying I had sex with Hailey and you’re wrong.”

“You’re a liar, Trevor. You’re a liar and a cheater and I hate you!” She turns around, walking away.

But now she’s back, shoving me against the wall. I need to lie down. But she’s yelling, “Caw! Caw!” and waving her hands near my face. When I reach to stop one hand, she plunges my Daddy’s razor-sharp knife into the itchy spot on my chest. The pain grows deeper and deeper. Polly’s twisting a four inch knife into my heart. A four inch knife but it’s real sharp and she hits the right spot.

I try telling her, “Leave it,” meaning the knife. Leave it in me and I’ll lose less blood. But it’s no use. Blood from my heart spreads through my lungs. It’s a puddle and then a pond. I’m thinking—all this within seconds—if she just leaves the knife in, less blood will gush out. But it makes no difference. I can’t breathe. My heart’s blood is drowning me.

Dying happens fast. My head drops and I’m gone. There’s nothing.

Or no, some static revives enough awareness so that I’m vaguely here when the knife clatters on the deck. Polly pulled out the knife. I slump in half.

From an impossible distance, my corpse thuds against glass, and then wood. It falls forward and knocks over a chair. Or maybe not.

Because I’m not here anymore. Far away nerve endings signal a final commotion. Polly has run into the woods. I don’t see her. I can’t see at all. But the idea’s stubborn: The covetous beast runs off.

And so there is nothing. But darkness.

The End

Burnin and Lootin

All Carla’s friends told her that if Trevor was singing at the Eden cafe on a Friday night—Friday night—it was asking for disaster; playing with fire.

Lauren and Crescent could scarcely believe she’d set it up. “What were you smoking,Carla, when you decided Trevor should sing at the Eden any night or even any day?”

“What? Who told you?”

Crescent pushed in closer. “So Polly’s lying?”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Shit! I didn’t tell Polly.” Furious, Carla almost spit. “We watched TV last night but I didn’t say anything.”

Crescent and Lauren shook their heads. “Too late to stop the rumor.”

“Does Angelina know?”

“Don’t think so,” Crescent said. “She was here when Trevor and Brian started their run. Wondering what we doing here so early. Lauren said you were bringing us fresh berries.”

Carla’s voice shook. “Trevor was talking about how happy he was his first weeks here. Looking up at me, so wistful and naked that suddenly I said, ‘Why not sing Friday at the café?’”

Lauren smirked. “So that explains it. He was naked.”

“It’s not for thirty-six hours. Maybe I can call still it off.”

Lauren said, “I can ask Daddy to close the café for inspection.”

“The police shut down my place without warning? No. We’ll announce it as a last minute event. Limited to the first one hundred customers.”

Friday afternoon, Carla put signs in the window. By five pm, the café was so packed that she asked people to wait outside while she and the kitchen staff pushed tables and chairs out of the way. Carla then sent the kitchen staff home, since nobody would be eating.

Before seven, Trevor sneaked through the back door. He kissed Carla deeply—all honor and blessings.

He was wearing an unbuttoned shirt over a t-shirt, both white. And a dark blue tam. Carla stared at him, recalling he had hoped to do this at lunch, some Tuesday. She must have been out of her mind to say, “Friday evening.”

He set up his equipment along the rise before the closed fireplace. “Remember, Carla?” Trevor held up the guitar Brian had bought for his first gig. (Had Brian caught wind of this, Trevor wouldn’t be here.)

Seeing the standing-room only crowd, Trevor pulled Carla into the closed kitchen. “No regular customers, eating and not listening to me? Last time I-and-I sang alone, mania broke out.”

Carla said, “I’m sorry, honey. I made a mistake.” They watched a crush of people pressing against the front glass wall. “Can you look for hints, Trevor? You know, in your lights.”

“Don’t need inner light to see this scene. You ladies must leave. Immediately.” Trevor turned and covered his face. “Leave now.”

“What ’bout you?”

“Can’t see myself in the light. But this feels like my last bashment.”

After the women left, a roiling horde pushed inside. Young men in UNC sports jerseys grabbed liquor bottles from the bar. Others filled beer pitchers.

Trevor stood tall. “Cease and skettle!” He tapped the mic. “Shut up!”

The mayhem dropped a notch. Trevor sang, “Nice time.” People shoved with nowhere to move, when a wave of bodies crashed through the front windows. The shattering sound interrupted Trevor’s refrain. Smashed sheets of glass were falling like in his dream.

A fresh mob broke through, ripping the front doors from their frame. Another horde crashed through the back door. Still, Trevor could always disappear, upon seeing his way.

Trevor yelled and whistled. “Ya rest or I’m gone.” He inched into the shadows. Maybe the mob quieted a bit. Trevor thought it did. Enough to begin “Dewdrops,” only to stop, because he couldn’t hear anything but the crowd’s slurs and din. People tossed drinks in the air and liquids rained down. Those in front, including Trevor, got drenched. Then someone hurled a beer mug, which hit Trevor’s forehead and knocked him out.

And, next Trevor knew, Chief Babylon had hoisted him over his shoulder. The police chief raised a taser at the brawling mob.

Two fire engines, alarms sounding, blocked the top of Main Street. The Chief made little progress until he pulled off Trevor’s tam. “It’s your idol,” Everett yelled at the mob. “Ya want him to die?”

He swung Trevor around, carrying him like a baby. And people made space in increments. Eventually, Everett reached his police car. When he and Trevor were both safely inside, he started the siren. The masses separated before the wailing vehicle. On I-40 Trevor sat up, having regained enough strength to light a joint.

“What the hell?”

Trevor passed it to the Chief. “Jacob’s most soothing mixture.”

“Trevor, please.” And then, “Sure, why not?” Everett filled his lungs and put the snuffed joint in his pocket. “You’ve had a concussion and can’t smoke.”

The emergency room doctor recognized Trevor from previous incidents. “Tell me what happened.” Trevor did, in detail.

“And who’s this who brought you here?” the doctor pointed.

“Mi good fren’ Chief Babble-a-Babylon.”

The doctor frowned. “He calls me that for fun,” Everett explained.

After stitching Trevor’s forehead, the doctor asked him to gauge his headache pain on a scale of one to ten.

“Mi best guesstimate? Between a one-plus an two-minus.”

To Everett, the doctor said, “Someone must stay with him tonight. Someone who can tell if he’s acting normal.”

(Click here for the conclusion)

Hammer

Carla’s here ’bout every day but in the kitchen, ya see? This afternoon I’m smoking me after-school spliff in the yard when Carla comes baby-stepping from Polly’s. Seeing me leaning against the boulder, her face brightens. “Trevor, my love. Long, long time!”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“You look cris, Carla. Curvy and toothsome. Ya staying with Marvin?”

She shakes her head, “That con-man!” and tugs the long, snug skirt on her ample hips. “Polly made this for me.” Carla twirls around. “See the back?”

“It flatters you, darling.” Nice stitchery onna long bright-colored swatches.

“Too nice for cooking,” Carla says. She takes the spliff from me. “I miss you, Trev. You’re always with Brian. Ya-Ya or Polly.”

“The mania chains me to the ground.”

I want the spliff back but she dips sideways. “Wish I’d never left Brian.”

Stepping onto me deck, Carla settles inna chair. “Marvin. Hailey. No doubt Leon, too. A family of takers.”

“Carla, don’t lie ’bout Hailey. She’s didn’t take Brian. You were busy chasing different men.”

“Oh yeah? Polly says you’re in love with Hailey.”

“Ya nuh see? Polly’s half-right these days. But if you talk screwy to her, she’ll get vexed at me or Hailey or someone. And then red-eye becomes a covetous beast.”

Carla stands up. “Here’s my trouble. My heart’s broken, Trevor. Three men, three times.” She finally hands me the spliff.

“Ya want me to comfort you, sweetheart?”

“Can you?”

 “Yah-so,” I tell her, “inside.”

That first time I comforted Carla so, she was already getting fatty—nuh the sweet little biscuit she was when she lived with Brian. By da time that ol’ Marc bun her, she was cute and chubby; but that’s the right shape for her; Carla’s whole nature is gravilious.

Course now she’s fierce and big, bela lady, but if ya see her pure, it’s a massive fresh beauty. That kinda serious voluptuous woman. So I take care to admire her fully. “Carla, darlin’, since when were you so luscious like this?” Closin’ da door, I’m strokin’ her and humming appreciation. “Luscious to touch.”  

Later, resting a while—she was always a work-out—I tell her how much I’d love to sing and play the guitar the way I started, just me, at the Eden café. To my surprise, she’s all for it.

“Fridays,” she says. “Your old equipment’s in the store-room.”

Friday’s risky with Awake playing down the street. I’m safer at the bonfire. But Carla’s set on Friday evening. I can take my spot by the fireplace and sing songs of freedom.

It’s nowhere near dark when she leaves and I peek about, hoping Polly doesn’t see. Then I fall back in bed, my eyelids heavy while I choose songs for Friday.

I was asleep for hours in such deep darkness that no light penetrated my dreams. No moon. No stars. Nothing. And then a terrible cascading explosion. Shattering glass, a sheet of it, crashing down. Smashed to bits, the glass walls fall and keep falling…

But when I flick on a light—no broken glass. Some earth-shaking shattering noise plummeting from the mountaintops woke me. Mountaintops: that must be a dream. But I still feel a hammer smashed all the glass walls.

Outside, everything’s fine though. Nothing’s been blasted to smithereens. I gaze around at the intact cabins and sneak back against the woods, checking on Polly. She and Carla are eating popcorn and watching TV.

(Click here to read the next episode)

 

Rainbow Country

Everyone settled into warmer, longer days. Angelina and Kaya were planning a summer festival, a pure celebration—not a presentation like the winter festival.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

They wanted Trevor to mingle with the regular art students, even if he studied mostly in Asheville. Strange but true: he knew none of the young dancers, painters, or poets. Used to be, Trevor drew everyone close, women especially. But now he had decided his girlfriends from last year were plenty.

With Angelina and Kaya on Sunday, the three of them lounging on the couch, Trevor confessed that he ached to make music like before. “Sing a bit. People jammin’. Someday.” Assured sitting between his Mommies, Trevor kissed each of their cheeks.

The next morning, he and Brian raced along the mountain trails, sharing a new found freedom they couldn’t name. “Maybe we’re just faster,” Brian said.

“Nuh,” Trevor said, “something more. Like we’re right together. Forward an upful.”

Hailey had gently faded away from Trevor’s days. Brian sometimes mentioned her. And Trevor said, “Always depend ’pon her.” Glad for Brian, Trevor was holding onto large gratitude. Thankye Lord. The push for Trevor to eat at their table or just flex with Brian and Hailey had evaporated.

Brian had declared he would accompany Trevor whenever he performed at the Avalon—the crowd had grown too demanding and he needed an escort if not a bodyguard (no matter how many bouncers stood nearby.) On Saturday nights Brian watched from the catwalk; Trevor’s followers moved in a constant, churning spiral.

And when Trevor disappeared? Brian had his car around the corner, engine running, side door open.

On Friday nights, Awake minus Trevor played two sets for the same mob, who were not regular people out for fun. Videos of Trevor whetted their hunger for Trevor in real life. It made them that much greedier, while the Avalon and Awake made more money than ever.

With Earle fronting Awake on Friday nights, Jacob and Trevor led the ritual bonfire at the Consortium. Drums and chanting fit with the poetry classes; the bonfires reflected on the art-college culture. True enough. No guitar; Trevor and Jacob played the congas. Alec Olsen chanted his poetry and then they all chanted traditional blessings.

Preparing for second bonfire without Earle, Trevor remembered the guiros he had bought from Miller’s music shop. At the time, he thought Polly could play them onstage with Awake’s back-up singers. She’d love performing. Except cho! How had he forgotten the round dance, the mash of followers?

Even here, she wouldn’t want to scrape the guiro solo. So Trevor found Crescent and gave the hand instruments to her. “You and Polly keep the beat with us, darling.”

Polly hurried back to her cabin and put on a dress and hat to match Crescent. The next day, when Trevor visited her, Polly said, “Crescent and me were the only bonfire girls. We were the stars.”

A relief. Ever since the water color class, she had talked about nothing but Trevor’s secret love and how radical it was. “I seen it, Trevor,” she kept saying. “Seen it plain. What do I get for not telling?”

“Nothing.”

Polly could say anything she liked. Hailey had stepped back without a word. Trevor was pure hard honor. Nothing and nobody could break that.

After visiting Polly, Trevor stepped into the light and saw Brian and Hailey wracked with sorrow. For days whenever he meditated, Brian and Hailey were holding each other, waiting in grief. Their love steadied their desperate minds, which reeled from some unimaginable trial.

Again and again Trevor would turn away, upset by their misery. Only to look back, anxious to learn what had happened. But the light burned painfully bright; his eyes went blank.

Not till Sunday after seeing Angelina and Kaya did Trevor’s sight cast farther forward. The sorrow remained but there was new joy. Late next year, near Christmas time, Brian and Hailey would have a baby girl.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Hypocrites

The ground was already soft. Royce had designed a school building to go up in three stages, over three summers. If he started now, a crew of six could finish the first wing by September. But Dale Janda, who ran the equipment company, had phoned last night claiming the only available back-hoe had died. Not worth fixing.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Trevor and Polly were drinking coffee and eating raisin bread on her deck. Polly pestered him less about sex when he brought breakfast. The air was warm; the morning sunlight filtered through dense woods.

His cell phone rang and Polly swooped over him. “Who is it? Lauren? Jazmine? I’ll talk.”

It was Royce. Polly noticed the name and shoved the phone back at Trevor, who flipped it open. “Greetings, mon.” He nodded. “I-yah gone already.”

Royce sat in his truck. “I think Janda mixed up his schedule. Can’t hurt to look.” Passing the college security guard and the police car, Royce drove Trevor out of town, onto a dirt road.

“Do your daughters like Asheville, Royce? They like Asheville?”

“They’re barely teenagers, Trevor.”

“Royce, me brudda. I never hurt young girls. Not once. You cut me, thinking so.”

“My little girls are off limits.”

“Since the mania started,” Trevor said. “I-sire to love one lady only, if I could find someone right.”

“That so?”

“Truth or kill me dead. One girl, then another and another leaves me heart and soul unprotected.”

Dale Janda worked in a double-wide trailer covered with panels of fake wood. Royce parked half a mile away because of the mud.

Leaving their boots at the door, Royce and Trevor sat in plastic chairs. Janda said, “Can’t give you what I don’t got.”

Trevor raised his finger, signaling just a minute. He opened the trailer door and stared outside; covered his mouth and stared at acres of mud beneath a white sky. “Call your guys in Raleigh.”

Janda shook his head. “How’d you?”

“Just check.”

Janda tapped his computer. He flipped open his cell, and turning his back, mumbled awhile.

Swiveling to face them, he shrugged. “Turns out our deep-digger is free. Mike will operate it. ”

“Tell him to call me tonight,” Royce said. Remaining seated, Janda extended his hand, which Royce and Trevor shook.

Once inside the college, Royce drove straight onto the field. He wanted to shovel along the boundaries.

Polly was teaching her watercolor class near the site and called to Trevor. “There’s an extra easel here.”

Trevor didn’t do watercolors. But Polly shrieked. “You didn’t stay for breakfast. Try something that’s not so easy for you.” Polly got the paper, paints, and brushes and set the easel opposite Hailey.

Everybody was painting spring flowers. But Polly told Trevor, “Paint Hailey. And Hailey, try painting Trevor.”

Hailey laughed. “Like painting a rainbow that comes and goes.”

Trevor couldn’t look at Hailey. He couldn’t not-look at her. Every muscle in his feet went into spasms. Then fire burned inside him. It raged, brighter than anything on earth. Flames shot from his eyes. Closing them was agony but the light was terrifying.

Polly said, “You don’t need to paint each other painting.”

Trevor said, “Whatever I paint is for Hailey only. Nobody else can see.”

“Fine,” Polly said. “Providing you paint something.”

Trevor painted, “Don’t tell Brian.” Just this much took him time. Finally, he tore the page from the pad and rolled it up. Handing it to Hailey, he said, “My brother is me eyes and ears. My sight and sound.”

Then he hastened up a steep side path, separate from the trail leading to the cabins. It stopped halfway up the mountain.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Want More

Brian and Hailey had lived together for seven months and flowing ripples still stirred the air surrounding her. Brian remained enthralled. Before, he had respected his lovers, behaved kindly, but kept a decent emotional distance. After a punishing childhood exacted by a brutish father, Brian sought relief on level ground. This wasn’t difficult. Until this past year, his limited life had not required him to ascend heights or investigate valleys.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Yet he would do anything for Trevor, then and now. Steadying his brother whenever he slipped was Brian’s primary, if covert, accomplishment. He had studied hard to break away from his miserable home, and when he did, Trevor soon followed. When Trevor’s fun-loving personality beguiled people, Brian felt happier and prouder than he imagined—no matter how often it happened.

And when eighteen-year-old Trevor had run off to Jamaica for five years, Brian had grieved until he could not stand it. The grief never truly let up. So that last year, when Trevor phoned from an Asheville bar, needing a job and a place to stay, Brian had panicked, his mind braced for incalculable pain.

Instead, though, his brother had nimbly created for Brian a life so rewarding he had never thought to wish for it. Trevor the prophet and unintended cult figure, and the fun-loving (but Hailey said lonely) lover amazed his brother.

Without this new found certainty, Brian might not have abandoned all restraint with Hailey. But Trevor had assured him she would never stray or betray him—no need to hold back.

And Trevor? What good was worrying? For all Brian’s anxiety, the here-then-gone alluring trickster escaped harm, while Brian knocked himself out establishing the Arts Consortium.

Thirty-five students were enrolled for the summer; forty for the fall. Brian had signed Barry Barton to start a theatre department and Chester Thompson to take over the dance program.

Hailey still painted with Hollis Clarke but after performing at the winter festival she had discovered dance mattered more. During the day, she was as busy as Brian.

She appeared luminous and boundless. Yet she suffered frequent nightmares, waking clammy and frightened. “I watch powerless as evil clouds engulf Trevor.”

Brian acknowledged that Trevor was fending off hordes of seekers. “But Angelina’s hired ’round-the-clock gatekeepers.”

“You know what I think?” Hailey peered straight into Brian’s eyes, not joking. “Trevor’s fixed it so you cannot worry about him. Some kind of trickery.”

Brian nodded. “Possibly.” Premonitions of Trevor’s injuries used to be his one psychic skill. The absence of anxiety, so liberating at first, had progressed to a prickly numbness. “Except Trevor hasn’t fallen lately. Nothing’s hit him on the head, even though Royce has started the main school building.”

“If he’s not hiding something, why won’t he come to dinner?”

“I don’t know, Hailey. He just says he cannot. Without explanation.”

“Starting this week, we’re both going to the Saturday concerts. Thank goodness he’s not doing Fridays.”

“Maybe Trevor’s studying for his finals,” Brian said. “His teachers have both pulled me aside to say he has perfect test scores.”

“Wonder if he checks his answers inside those astonishing bursts of light.”

“Hailey, you know it doesn’t work like that.”

“He told me one way he can sometimes see ahead is by starting at the beginning. And every night I dream that he’s in danger. Evil beings come for him out of nowhere.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Stand Alone

Rescue a lost kitten and then the furry little thing’s your responsibility. After I coaxed Polly’s wandering soul back to her suffering body, my eyes lit upon Crescent before thinking through what happens when a silly girl befriends a crazy fool.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Practically right away, while Polly got cleaned up and she and Crescent indulged in their spa treatments, an ultraviolet light surrounded me. I had to hang onto the treadmill, for the scenes spiraling through me blood and guts.

Obviously, Polly was always gonna need more love than she was ever gonna get. Anyone could see that, without so much as a speck of supernatural light. Not a rare thing, though, so I didn’t think twice.

But if I had? Chances are, I would have known Polly and Crescent were whispering about what kisses feel like. Their girly chatty-chatty would have rammed straight through me, when Crescent described what she calls “special kisses,” the ones when I bow between her legs!

Dear Lord, please save ya fren’ Trevor from the fire. Jah gave me a marvelous gift, but that night I forgot to use it. Otherwise, I’d have taken sweet, teenage Lauren instead of feisty Crescent. Well before Crescent and Polly appeared, their hair bleached white and teased into spikes, I knew—everything was crashin’.

To keep peace, and because Crescent always gets me to go along, I haven’t turned away from her. We get together, just us, ’bout once a week. But the rule is, we visit Polly separately. I’d prefer it if Crescent left Polly alone, but they’re true friends.

For all that, Angelina has saved me all this while from never-ending woes. Angelina can control Polly, more or less.

All I can do is fend her off for half an hour. Without exercising my bitty patience, how am I gonna get through fresh struggles? Gotta have loving-kindness, self-control, and upful ganja to vanish when necessary. An I’m not talking here ’bout Polly or Trevor-mania, which are nothing. No special sight required to realize certain dread desires are wrong to the fullment. Suddenly, I’ve got crosses staked into the ground wherever I step.

So, to keep the peace and flex me manners, I go to Polly’s at nine. Or else, within five minutes, she’s screaming at me gates. Either way, she pulls me inside her cabin, drops her bathrobe, straddles my lap, and pushes her tongue in my ear. Things Crescent does. So that Polly’s making me wearier of Crescent than I was growing alone. Still, feel no way, ’cause everything’s ready. Crescent’s moving to New Jersey next semester.

And at least Polly listens to me. “Nice up,” I say. “Put your newest dress on for me.”

No need to front appreciation. Polly sews very pretty dresses. Little later, though, before I can finally step away, she’s crying loud tears. “You love all the women, Trevor. All but me.”

“Well, that’s not right, Polly. Not all women. Besides, there’s all kinds of love.”

“Forget love and just gimme sex.”

“It’s not for everyone,” I tell her. “Like, um, guava jelly. Maybe someone will ask you to try it. Maybe not. But so what? You’ve got whole heaps of jams and jellies so.”

She shakes her head so vehemently her beret falls off. Polly and Crescent both wear berets now that their peroxide’s growing out. “Everybody has sex. Why not me?”

“You probably will when the time’s right. It has to come without pressure. Do you and Angelina ever talk about this?”

“Shut up, Trevor. Go away.”

Then at last, Polly shoves me out the door. It’s kinda the same deal every day. I’d like to discuss the whole business with Angelina. But it’s too rude, nuh true?

(Click here to read the next episode)

Reaction

Hailey wanted to apologize. She had yelled at Trevor when Polly slashed Ya-Ya’s tires. “Ya-Ya and Kaya and I were mad at the wrong person,” she told Brian. But she couldn’t get Trevor to make eye contact.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Kaya saw Trevor every day. And she saw Ya-Ya, who locked the boutique at lunchtime and drove to the Asheville campus, eager for Trevor’s love between his classes.

“But with me,” Hailey told Brian, “he sees me coming and turns around.”

“That can’t be true. Or, it’s a coincidence. I’ll ask him to dinner,” Brian said. “You’ll see. He loves you, Hailey. You know that.”

Truth was, Trevor chose Hailey for Brian, a set-up that had plagued Brian until recently. Brian had loved Hailey on sight, beyond reservation. Yet Trevor’s initiative or whatever was behind him saying Hailey was Brian’s one love, made him queasy, practically sick.

Both Trevor and Hailey denied it had happened the way Brian imagined. Trevor had not “taken Hailey for a test run.” Rather, without lying or misleading her, he had lived with her until he discovered that Hailey and Brian—not him—were born for each other. And he was right.

The next morning, when the brothers ran together, Brian said, “Hailey and I never see you,” and invited him to dinner.

Trevor said he was busy. “There’s Polly and fending off the crazies that are ruining the band and me studies.”

“That’s why we miss you, Trev. Sunday dinner—you gotta eat.”

He said thanks anyway, but he couldn’t do it.

“Hailey thinks you haven’t forgiven her for yelling at you. That you see her differently than Kaya and Ya-Ya.”

“Not so, Brian. I-and-I don’t get angry. Nuh true? Name one time.”

Brian paused, searching for an answer. And Trevor changed the subject. “One more month for me Chapel Hill application. When it’s ready, will ya look at it? Make sure everything’s cris.”

No need to ask. Trevor’s desire to get a college degree—in astronomy no less—pleased Brian no end.

His inordinate, lifelong love for Trevor—so that Brian was often happier seeing that Trevor was happy than feeling his own ephemeral emotion—used to weigh on him without relief. Now that love had grown wings. It soared between heaven and earth. Brian agreed with Angelina; Trevor hadn’t just grown up this year. He had worked miracles.

Resurrecting Polly when she was curled inside a hollow tree—nobody but Trevor could have accomplished that. Nobody else would have even suspected where she was. The woman still raged in fits, but Angelina shrugged, so what? That’s the way Polly was, limited, fragile, and occasionally furious.

Brian checked himself. He didn’t say it might be good for Trevor to get away from the Consortium and Asheville, much as everybody loved him. Who was Brian to make suggestions to Trevor, who saw the future more clearly than most people saw the present?

Brian waited for Trevor to bring up the Avalon. Yesterday, the manager had asked Awake to play both Friday and Saturday nights. With Trevor on stage and his growing, ecstatic following, everyone was making huge money. Brian knew about the new schedule, because Hailey’s brothers, Marvin and Leon, were worried Trevor wouldn’t agree to it.

And he didn’t. Trevor wasn’t doing Friday nights. Earle was the one who tried to talk him into it. He’d seen pocomanias come and go. Awake should ride the wave while it lasted. And danced in homage to him.

“I came up with a suggestion everybody liked, though,” Trevor said. “They’re going to do Fridays like my birthday when I was in Florida. “Jazmine will sing, and the band will perform while videos of me play on da screens.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Small Axe

Angelina’s conscience had deserted her. That’s all she could think, after disregarding Polly all these months. For almost two years Polly’s quirky companionship had saved Angelina from loneliness. And at the time her angry phases hadn’t seemed dangerous or strange. They matched her sensitive nature, which Angelina had found poetic and romantic. All of which was in tune with their unconsummated, unformed love.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

But when Kaya wanted Angelina back, they had abandoned everything, and everyone, indulging each other’s lust for almost a week. Still elated, they returned home to their blossoming art community without repercussion. Angelina never offered Polly an explanation, because Polly wasn’t worldly enough to demand one.

Now Angelina realized she had turned her back on Polly, leaving her nowhere to go but her sister’s. So rapt with the Arts Consortium, which mirrored her family’s lost paradise, Angelina just forgot about Polly—even during the weeks after Trevor had rescued her from an animal’s existence.

After the slashed-tire incident, Angelina told the community that those upset by Polly must accept her. And twice a week, she invited Polly to watch DVDs with her and Kaya after dinner. If Polly remembered fighting with Kaya, “the rat,” she didn’t show it. Since Polly often couldn’t follow a movie’s plot, Kaya said, “Just count the times the actors repeat dirty words.”

Polly loved that and kept them informed. But she also muttered threats about Trevor’s lovers, and for some reason, Hailey. Angelina wondered if she mistook Brian for Trevor, but she didn’t. And even though Polly knew Crescent sometimes spent the night with Trevor, she called Crescent her best friend.

“Crescent tells me secrets. Things nobody knows.”

If Trevor didn’t visit Polly every morning, she knocked on his door and screamed, “Whatever bitch is in there deserves to die!” Then Trevor had to appear, walk her back to her cabin, and calm her down. Once she was quiet, Trevor said, “I care about you, Polly. Truth. But I don’t belong to you. Or anyone.”

After a few weeks, Polly began ranting during the DVDs. She hated Trevor’s girlfriends and they were always at his cabin. Always. Kaya would turn up the sound and Polly would rant louder until Angelina said, “Time to go home, Polly. I’ll stay a while and make lemonade.”

Despite all this, Angelina saw improvement. She lugged Polly’s sewing machine to her cabin and took her shopping for fabrics. In practically no time, Polly created colorful, cleverly tailored dresses. Ya-Ya sold them in the boutique without knowing who made them. She was afraid of Polly and even told Angelina to lock up the axe they used for chopping bonfire wood. Brian had already taken care of it, perhaps at Hailey’s suggestion. She and Ya-Ya got together often.

Trevor set firm restrictions for Polly—or else she couldn’t live there. Sundays, he insisted, were his own time. In fact, all the time was his own time, but if Polly wanted to see him at all, she needed to be patient. “Honor and trust,” he said. Angelina and Kaya agreed. “That’s how people get along, Polly. There’s no other way.”

The thing about Sundays—Polly knew and fumed in silence—was that Trevor spent all morning with Angelina and Kaya. He brought special coffee and homemade muffins and they read the newspaper and enjoyed each other, and Polly was not included. It made her mad.

Then Angelina said that if Polly wanted, she could launder the college bedding on Sunday mornings. She used to do the laundry when she lived with Angelina, back when the Consortium was a vacation lodge. Polly didn’t mind the idea. Because if she did the bed sheets, it meant she could walk anywhere she wanted—except to Angelina’s.

(Click here to read the next episode)

So Much Trouble in the World

Jacob and Earle were smoking near the botanical sheds as Trevor stepped up, still in his running clothes. Nice and warm for April, they agreed, as sweat beaded on Trevor’s pale skin. Jacob asked why a myalman like Trevor couldn’t grow decent weed.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

The more Jacob taught him, the littler his crops. “I-yah toss your dege plants into the woods.”

Earle passed the spliff, for which Trevor dearly thanked him. Being crucial to the band, Earle knew Trevor’s situation. “I-and-I praying hard,” Trevor said, hoping to reassure him. “Gotta quash the mania and so the band can play right. While catching studies in Asheville…”

“Not to mention all those women.” Jacob ducked under a canvas flap and pulled out a special ounce for Trevor. “Upful an restful together.”

“Irie. ’Cause the women make so much trouble.” Trevor sucked hard, since Crescent, who was waiting with breakfast, couldn’t smoke a bit without going crazy. “Like Polly. An her ignorant soul.”

They smoked awhile and Trevor said, “More time.”

Jacob said, “Ises,” praying to Jah. But it was Earle’s good-bye that gave Trevor pause: “Be careful, dready.”

Hurrying home, Trevor decided Earle must have gotten the expression from his students. “Be careful” was the same as “take care;” same as “see ya later.” Still, Jacob prayed for him. But then Trevor might have that wrong—long time since he was in Jamaica.

Crescent’s habitual greeting, when Trevor wasn’t obviously with another woman, was to leap onto him, arms around his neck, legs around his waist. He loved that. Usually, it was the prelude to making love, wherever they could hold it down. This morning he staggered under her weight. Maybe he was weak from running. No, that was a lie. Polly had copied the move. At least she didn’t see it as a prelude. But prying her off wasn’t easy.

He dropped with Crescent onto the couch, kissed and then tickled her, saying how sweaty and hungry he was.

“Good,” Crescent tugged his braids. “I’m making French toast.”

Trevor’s mouth was full; he was swallowing a sweet, sticky lump when he saw Brian and Hailey walking hand in hand to Angelina’s meeting. Hailey was wearing denim shorts and the sandals they had all worn last summer. He couldn’t help catching the gleam from her coppery skin. Or those long smooth legs and tiny ears. Her gliding stride. She was delighted by something Brian had just said, laughing and tugging his sleeve. So Jah know—what on earth could he do? The cabin walls were glass. Trevor couldn’t help seeing Hailey laugh and skip beside his brother.

Funny little Crescent said, “Looks like the meeting is starting. We should hang out with Polly.”

“True. Polly’s always easier around you, Cres.”

Trevor already knew Angelina was talking about community. And how if you were blessed with love, contentment, and health, extend those blessings to benefit your brothers and sisters. If artists were suffering jealousy or frustration, the community should show compassion. Polly wouldn’t have slashed Ya-Ya’s tires if they had kept her in mind as one-love. Angelina should have soothed Polly’s jealousy first thing after taking up with Kaya. Of course, Kaya wasn’t the one Polly was jealous of now. If those at the table were afraid of Polly, Angelina accepted that. “Just make sure your fear doesn’t spread. Keep it to yourself.”

Trevor knew, too, that Ya-Ya wasn’t going to stay with him anymore. Even without light or sight, he could hear her little voice cut: “It’s not the tires. It’s you playing ‘savior,’ Trevor.”

He knew Hailey and Kaya both loved him. Their anger flashed and vanished. What worried him was what he couldn’t know. What state Polly was in. So when he knocked on Polly’s door, even with Crescent beside him, Trevor vowed to stay alert.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Iron Lion Zion

Used to be, Brian and Trevor ran the mountain trail at six am Monday through Friday. But after Awake started performing two Saturday night sets, Trevor asked Brian if he’d run with him on Saturdays too. “It helps me flex all the while.” Brian was glad Trevor asked. They didn’t get enough time together.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Almost nobody from the arts college came to the shows anymore. Why would they? They didn’t worship Trevor. They knew him as an accident prone, women and ganja loving, trickster/prophet.

But the feverish crowd spiraling around and around shaped Trevor’s nightmares. About the same time sheets of light first burst from the sky, astonishing him, he had dreamed that death wasn’t the end. The fiery waving motion that was you alive becomes a radiance of destruction and creation, infinite darkness and infinite life. There is no rest. No escape from the eternal waves.

This Trevor-mania was a test. Any fool could see that. Eventually, the crowd would move on. It would disperse.

Till then, running increased his patience. With Brian nearby, running the same pace, Trevor found moments of freedom. Running top speed, he got bits of stillness.

Driving to the trail, Brian said, “Angelina called a meeting. Me, Hailey, Kaya, and Ya-Ya.”

“Ya-Ya’s car isn’t ready.”

“Angelina’s picking her up in Asheville.”

They both stepped from the car and stretched their arms once before charging uphill. “They’re so afraid of Polly that their fear’s contagious. Angelina’s determined they stop it. Just cease.”

“Why you, though? You’re not afraid of Polly.”

Trevor ducked a branch coming at his face.

“Why would I be?” Brian said. “But Hailey sure is. We had our first fight.”

“Who won?”

“No one. We made up. But Hailey thinks you knew this Trevor-mania would happen. She thinks you’re looking in on people, seeing what they’re up to.”

“Kinda like Carla,” Trevor said. “She’s going with Marvin now. So she asked me to take a peek and see if it was gonna work out.”

At the trestle bridge, Brian watched as Trevor hung over the splintering railing. Getting that massive gravity he loved. He hadn’t done this since he’d found Polly. Ordinarily it annoyed Brian—Trevor acting so reckless he’d kill himself. Today he was hanging out past his waist and waving his arms. “Hey, Trev. Stop it.” Must mean he was unburdened. “Come on, enough!”

He swung back onto the ground. The sun hit his left eye—Brian saw the flash in his brother’s pupil like that in photographs. And then his grin.

“Why are you going to Angelina’s meeting if you don’t think Polly’s a witch?”

“Moral support. And, part of my job, making sure nobody panics.”

“I see.”

“When you see stuff, Trev, it’s not like spying on your friends, is it?”

“Not like watching TV neither. The light burns some truth into me that kinda feels like seeing. Sometimes I get details and sometimes not.”

“Was Polly eating leaves when you found her?”

“No. But she was truly out of her mind.”

“Hailey makes up examples when she’s scared. She said that about the leaves, I guess, because to her Polly’s a wild animal.”

“That might be true,” Trevor said. “I can’t see Polly. She and me are outta sync. I ran off trail and into the woods with a vague idea a kitten was trapped.”

They slowed to a walk when they could see the car. Trevor never got out-of-breath. Brian wasn’t used to so much talking while running. He bent at the waist to get his wind. “A kitten, huh. You looked like you were mauled by a mountain lion.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

All Day All Night

Angelina watched the women leave Trevor behind, making him absent from math class. Trevor had earned A-s for the first semester but he had three more courses to go if he wanted to get into Chapel Hill’s astronomy program.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

And, he needed to move away from the mobs trying desperately to connect with the man who ventured into the universal light, bringing back specific, individual messages along with “one love.”

Earle and Jazmine reported that every Saturday the round dance grew more bizarre, more frenzied. Trevor’s fans now brought hand-held percussion instruments—gourds, rattles and gueros. They no longer stopped in silent devotion during certain phrases, but danced around and around the huge dance hall, adding to the beat and singing the refrains. After the band left the stage, a full song after Trevor disappeared, they refused to stop. Last week, after a phone call from Kaya (in lieu of Angelina), Chief Babylon had declared a curfew: the Avalon must be empty after three am, giving the audience a full hour to clear out.

Lauren was working that Friday’s lunch with Carla. Butternut soup, homemade bread, sandwiches, and carrot cake served beneath springtime’s treetops. Minus Marc Swift, Carla no longer looked soft and pudgy. But she was big and sturdy and her imposing body suggested unflagging energy. Teasing her about a new boyfriend, Trevor was balancing two plates, one for Polly who stayed away.

Twirling to catch Angelina’s eye, the full plates stationary in his palms, he said, “Darling Mommy, Jacob says you’re making the ganja circuit later. Can I come too?”

Angelina said she’d love that. How long since he’d entertained her and her friends, rolling joints and making jokes?

“Polly’s settled. She’s watching movies today but soon I think she’ll be ready to join everybody. Taking it slow, in bits.”

Angelina had ached to help Trevor with Polly after the cuss-cuss at dawn, but then recoiled from the burden. Trevor knew that. Angelina wasn’t afraid of Polly, but Trevor alone was coaxing her back to reality. Why had Ya-Ya, Hailey, and even Kaya, acted as if Trevor himself had slit the tires? They all agreed Trevor was an exalted spirit, and what? Suddenly, they expected him to turn cold on an unbalanced woman, especially after bringing her so much closer to the here and now?

While Trevor was in Polly’s cabin, Angelina had checked the deflated Prius, and phoned her friend at Midas.

Now in the main yard, backlit by the sun as he somehow always was, Trevor was grinning, telling Angelina he was guessing that the tire trouble signaled a turn-around. But he was only guessing. He could never see Polly in the light. Not her and not himself.

Beams flowing around him, from head to toe, Trevor said, “Polly wasn’t born all at once. Her body and soul are still adjusting.”

Angelina tried not to stare; Trevor’s radiance blinded her. He was saying, rest easy; he’d pay the costs.

Angelina said, okay, but she’d make sure Polly paid him back.

An hour later, Trevor was waiting by Angelina’s station wagon. He was smoking a spliff and offered her a hit. One or two was pure uplift, getting purer.

“Already packed it in back.” Opening the car door, Trevor kissed Angelina’s cheek and arranged three tiny daisies in her hair. “I love you so.”

That might have been enough, right then, to prompt her into Polly duty. After all, Angelina knew Polly, and knew what to do when she acted bad. Trevor didn’t say out loud that every person deserved freedom and assistance in life. But Angelina felt his feelings.

He asked if the memory of him naked was still getting between her and Kaya. “That’s the way she is, Trev. She needs a fantasy in bed. And if it’s you, how can I mind?”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Survival

A few hits while going over me calculus. Kaya’s driving me to class soon. She still burns beside me but in her car she says how bad she needs her suffering. She loves feeling desirous.

Same to me. Tell a woman that and the worst you’ll get is a frown.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Whenever I’m away at the UNC campus, Crescent visits Polly. Insurance. Polly’s doing better. Teaching a watercolor class and getting easier with people, especially Crescent, who she calls “my twin imp.”

Uh-oh, Ya-Ya’s outside screaming. Before I can run to her rescue, she busts in, screaming. “Polly slashed my tires. Go see.”

Seems like right away Ya-Ya and Hailey are raging in the kitchen. Hailey’s driving Ya-Ya to work and until she gets her Prius from Midas with four new Bridgestones, she’s not talking to me.

“Only right, sweetheart. Only right.”

Kaya arrives and links arms with Hailey and Ya-Ya. What’s wrong with me, they want to know. Caring for Polly is playing with fire. Am I doing it for pride? ’Cause pride’s a deadly sin.

“Yah, but I’m not proud. More like the opposite. I’m sorry ’bout the tires, Ya-Ya.”

Her teeny, bitty voice is big, her finger in my face. “If you’re not doing it for pride, to prove you can, then why is Polly here?”

“She made a terrible mistake. I’ll buy ya new tires and settle Polly so it never happens again. After that, we’ll ease up.”

I’m following them outside when Kaya grabs my arm. Righteous hands-on. “Check the damage, kiddo.”

Sick to the fullment.

“First sign of trouble,” Kaya says, “and you swore you’d call an ambulance.”

“Trust me. Please. Women.”

They slam their car doors and peel outta here.

Polly’s front door’s locked. After lots of knocking, I run back and pick open a deck window. The sliders pop right away.

“Polly, comma, comma.” I sing a little Bob Marley— “I been search’ the whole darn day for a little woman of mine…mine…mine”

And peek under the bed where she’s lying face down in the dust. “Come on, honey.” I ease her out and up. And the UNC cap I wear to disguise me dreads from the mobs falls off. I dip to fetch it but Polly seizes my hands. She presses them onto her chest, asking me to brush off the dust. But she knows I won’t and let’s me step away.

“Why’d you slash Ya-Ya’s tires?”

“To make her go away.”

“She can’t go anywhere without tires, Polly. Were you angry?”

“I hate her.”

“But she’s good, Polly. When you’re angry, slow down and be patient. Are you hungry?” She drags her feet getting a bowl of oranges.

Taking the bowl from her, I say, “Let’s sit on the deck and rest.” The sun’s up and warm. I peel an orange and notice she’s peeling one with a buck knife.

I make my voice gentle but serious. “Self-control, Polly. Patience and balance. You have to think: inner harmony.”

“Inner. Harm. Money.”

“Don’t think that way. Or you can’t stay here. When people saw what you did to the tires, they were screaming, Call an ambulance, Trevor.”

“For tires?”

“No, fool. For you.”

“I’ll run away.”

“We’ll find you.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.” She’s wiping the knife blade on her skirt. I notice the polished bone casing.

“Is that my dead daddy’s knife?”

“You gave it to me. No take-backs.”

I take off the UNC cap and turn it around. When did I give Polly my daddy’s knife? Ah, right. “To cut apples, Polly, nothing else. You have to vow or I automatically get it back.”

“No take-backs.”

“It’s mine unless you use it only for fruit. Not rubber, string—anything ’cept fruit.”

“Your dead daddy’s fruit knife.”

“Let me keep it for you until people forget about the tires.”

“No. Apples and oranges, that’s all.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

 

Guiltiness

Brian couldn’t believe he was arguing with Hailey. Even when she yelled at him, he loved watching her. Angry about Trevor’s attempt to rehabilitate Polly, Hailey stamped her feet in frustration.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

But Brian had no power over Trevor. “He’s twenty-four years old. He made a mistake at the arts festival, which he admits. How could he possibly have known it would explode into Trevor-mania?”

“He knew, Brian.” Her voice was not loud or harsh, but cutting nonetheless. “Trevor knows everything. He goes into his ‘light’ or whatever and spies on people.”

“Hailey, sweetheart. He doesn’t spy on people.”

“He saw your father choking on a pretzel and Polly eating leaves inside a tree. That’s a step up from seeing whether a girl wants to have sex with him.”

“Are you worried about him watching us in the shower together?” Hailey shoved him then, but not hard.

“Very funny.” She stepped back and touched her face. “I’m afraid of Polly. Angelina said that Polly used to go weeks without talking. Now she’s slashing people’s tires.”

“Polly does that?” This was news to Brian.

“That’s how nuts she is,” Hailey said. “Sometime last night she slashed Ya-Ya’s tires. I drove Ya-Ya to work. Meanwhile, Trevor vows it’ll never happen again. He’ll settle Polly. Well, come on now. What happens when the all-seeing Trevor needs to rest?”

“Practically every day I tell him he has better things to do than try to save Polly. I think he’s serious about studying at Chapel Hill. Which means in a few months, Polly will have to leave.”

“Think how much damage she could do in a few months, Brian. If Angelina didn’t adore Trevor, I mean really adore him, she’d never put up with this shit.” Hailey slammed the door behind her.

This was Brian and Hailey’s first fight. Did she believe Brian could tell Trevor what to do and he’d do it? Where on earth did she get that impression? When Trevor first returned from Jamaica, for a few days, Brian would say things like: Don’t smoke in the car. To no avail. She was right about Angelina, though.

Brian recalled seeing Trevor, who hadn’t even met Angelina before, smoking a spliff with her first thing in the morning. Trevor had pushed Angelina’s hair aside to whisper something and draped his arm around her. And that was it. Brian knew then, that Trevor was nestled under Angelina’s wing forever.

To please Trevor, Angelina had started the arts college, rebuilt the cabins, sold land, sold ganja, and sold a restaurant. Angelina did it for Trevor who did it for Brian.

Now, however, Angelina really was protecting Trevor. She had employed someone to stand at the Consortium’s locked gates, allowing only members and people with appointments inside.

And even though Angelina no longer spoke to her beloved friend Chief Babylon, he had assured Kaya that Officer Parker would be patrolling the nearby highway. It had to be Officer Parker because Officer Ingersoll hated Trevor the way most people loved him.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Cornerstone

When Trevor and the two women returned from the spa, the bashment banishing old angers from Polly’s old cabin had the college rocking as one. They all stopped a beat as Trevor hit the light switch. And then, lights on again, they stared at underage Crescent and middle-aged Polly, who were done up like weird sisters.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Trevor caught Angelina’s eye and signaled, talk outside. She was vexed, just as he had anticipated. He had seen it in the lights but also knew it from common sense, which no longer so sweetly eluded him. No. These days, dreadful reality bothered him all the time.

Furious in the moment, Angelina would forgive Trevor soon. Well before dawn, she’d love him more than ever. Grateful but frightened when he offered to care for Polly.

Pressed beside Angelina, Brian asked, “Mind if I join you outdoors? I’ve gotta hear what Trevor has to say.” Despite having seen his brother woo a figment inside a tree—a lost spirit Brian had unconsciously supposed was Polly—her appearance here was unsettling and even ominous.

On the deck, Trevor smoked a spliff, going for massive intake. He offered it to Angelina and Brian, but they had already smoked plenty. “Angelina, I take the blame. But I just couldn’t see another way to keep her out of Babylon. Let me care for her and I promise I’ll call a hospital at the first bitty trouble. The truth.”

Angelina motioned them to the window. Crescent and Polly were sitting opposite each other, balanced on a small chair’s arm rests, their feet planted on the seat. With their platinum fringed foreheads touching, they whispered and giggled.

“Polly lived with me when Kaya was living with Alec Olson,” Angelina said. “And any reference to Kaya made her rage. Even though Polly and I were never physically intimate. She was too unstable.”

“Crescent’s found a new best friend and that’s all,” Trevor said. “Soon as Ya-Ya leaves for work, Crescent will stop by and put me in the mood. And no worries—it’ll be the farthest thing from pay-back for tonight. Crescent turns on her charms and I bow.”

Angelina shook her head. “Not one of your lovers has ever been jealous, Trevor?”

“No way on earth crazy Polly’s gonna be my girlfriend.”

Brian said, “Trevor, you’re the innocent. All those women and not one jealous symptom? Polly, who was nobody’s lover, was always jealous—which is why she had an angry cabin; I was here in those days.”

Angelina nodded. “She’s insanely envious of affection, Trevor. Now if I’m the target, she can’t stay. But if you are, keeping her under control is gonna take a miracle.”

“No miracles with Polly, mon. I absolutely can not see her in the light. Almost like she doesn’t fully exist.”

Angelina hugged her darling Trevor. “Remember, sweetheart. You can no more save every girl than you can sleep with every girl. Saving a lost soul is up to the Lord and not a prophet.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Punky Reggae Party

Redeeming Polly taxed Trevor’s patience, even though he could see it was going to work. The plan required him not only to stretch the truth, but to hurry all the while. Which wasn’t how he worked, especially since the light showed him what lay ahead. If anything, Trevor moved a beat behind real-time.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Before kissing Kaya and Angelina till later, he invited them to a party for when he and Ya-Ya moved into the vacated cabin.

“Come by this afternoon. Ya-Ya and I travel light. And if everybody smokes good herb and dances like one-love, the cabin will turn into vex-free gates.”

Hearing the women’s glad approval, Trevor hurried away, relieved. Because in truth, he and Ya-Ya had moved in last night, after Awake’s Avalon set.

The angry cabin needed cleaning as did theirs once emptied. And little things took rearranging. Further, Ya-Ya believed, thanks to Trevor’s stupid insinuation, that Angelina had not only already approved the move, but practically requested it.

At noon Hailey and Brian, Jacob and his new woman, Royce and his family, Earle, Jazmine, Destiny, Marvin and Leon, Lauren Clay and her reunited parents, and various art students and teachers arrived for the loving-kindness party, catered by Carla.

With Marvin and Leon toastin’ reggae, everybody dancing, eating, and smoking Jacob’s ganja available from heaping platters, Trevor and Crescent slipped away.

Crescent, who owned a new car after working for two semesters at the Eden Café, wandered off to the parking lot first. Trevor kissed all his women, saying, “Soon.”

At the trail marker, Crescent kept the car warm while Trevor ran through the woods. At the hollow tree, he coaxed weak, filthy, fragile Polly to jump onto his back. The Spa Hotel in Hot Springs closed at four on Sundays but its owners were fervent Trevor followers and would wait straight through till Monday afternoon if he asked. Yet Trevor, who couldn’t remember worrying like this before, succumbed to a terrible urgency. Rescuing Polly bothered him beyond reason. He raced carrying her, and twice she clamped her raggedy hands over his eyes.

Trevor could see other peoples’ future; but not through rocks or trees. So he toppled. A ledge cut his jaw. Branches scratched his neck and his ankle kept wobbling until he stomped the ground, forcing it right. Polly slapped his head and whooped, “Gotcha, Mr. Music! Gotcha!”

He set her in the seat behind Crescent and strapped her in. Crescent, the girl who couldn’t smoke ganja or drink alcohol, because she never knew when to stop, recognized Polly as the woman who had nursed her after her hangovers. “Hey, Polly! Where have ya been?”

“Camping.”

“All right. Looks like you been sleeping under the stars for a month.” Crescent punched Trevor’s throbbing shoulder. “Why didn’t you say we were getting Polly?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know why he felt so anxious or why his little injuries hurt so much. He had forgotten that Crescent knew Polly.

Pulling into the spa parking lot, Crescent said, “If you get your hair cut short, I will, too.”

“How short?”

“Short,” Crescent said. “And bleached pure white.”

Inside, Trevor ran on the treadmill and watched basketball on television. He swam a mile and dozed in the sauna.

Hours later, the girls met him in the lobby; their fingernails lacquered with sunbursts; their faces painted dramatically, and their caps of platinum hair trimmed sleek.

From the gift shop, he bought them matching shimmering yoga clothes and little black shoes.

Arriving back at the cabin finally, the party still in full swing, Trevor flicked the lights—Crescent and Polly calling out, “Surprise, surprise!”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Comma, Comma, Come Back Here to Me

Sunday, I come to Angelina and Kaya with warm muffins. The recipe and basket belong to Ya-Ya, my only girl who needs nothin’ special.

Ya-Ya she knows ’bout Polly, even though I told Brian to keep it secret. He can’t hide his thinking from Hailey; I knew that. And Ya-Ya and Hailey are close friends.

Didya think I was lying about needing food and clothes to meditate in the woods? Since my main rule is: “Don’t lie and don’t do stuff you hate?”

I take the blame. No other way.

Polly was like a dangerous animal at first. They would’ve locked her up. And then her inner self, which I’m trying to woo back, would be lost forever.

Besides, anyone who thought about it, could see I was making up a story. Hailey saw it. Right after finding Polly, I saw Hailey in the light, shaking her head.

I’ve set out the mugs, plates, muffins—everything we’ll want on the low table. The sunshine’s pouring through the windows, dazzling everything but the couch, which absorbs it. Watching the coffee, I smoke a bit of ganja.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Enough meditation; enough exploring sheets of light. Lately, I don’t look too far ahead. If I cast my sights wide but close ’pon those near my heart, happiness reigns. Past that, into the summer, say, there’s terrible sorrow.

I’ve said it a thousand times, but it remains true: I can’t see myself in the future. In fact, I can scarcely see myself at all.

But other people I see clearer all the time. So where’s Polly? Maybe she doesn’t appear because she’s so unsettled. Polly’s not right inside.

So night and day I’ve called to her truant inner self, the spark that completes her body and soul. But since Polly doesn’t appear in my visions—not even a glint—I could be all wrong. I only risked calling to her spirit because I wasn’t severe enough to turn her straight over to the Babylon system.

Here come the ladies in nightgowns and moccasins.

“Trevor, how sweet. Thank you,” Angelina says as I pour the coffee.

“I should do this every week since our Sundays have changed. But I thought of it this week, because I need a bly.”

“What’s that?” I light the pipe and offer it to them but they’re drinking coffee and enjoying the muffins. “Can Ya-Ya and I move into Polly’s angry cabin? ’Cause with us there, it won’t be angry.”

Angelina nods, like, of course, but asks, “Where’s Carla? I haven’t seen for more than two seconds all week.”

Carla is someone I can see so easily it’s like she’s right in front of my face. So I know she’s working at her restaurant. “Now that Carla owns the Eden, Angelina, she’s through being a young girl.”

“I know that, but still, Marc Swift crushed her self-esteem.”

“Carla’s fine, trust me. If Ya-Ya and I move into the angry cabin, we’ll make it nice.”

“Well, yes. You will make it nice. So why not?” Angelina looks pleased.

Kaya’s had a hand on my leg all this time so I lift it over my shoulder and twine our fingers.

“You know Polly’s disappeared.” Kaya grimaces, part sympathy, part worry.

“Yah, but she’s coming back soon. I think.”

Angelina winks at me. “You know better than we do, Trev. And if you and Ya-Ya want to live in the angry cabin—what a screwy idea, ‘an angry cabin’—it’s all yours.”

(Click here to read the next post)

Put It On

Hearing Brian on their cabin steps, Hailey stopped putting on her sweater, certain something wonderful had happened. Brian stepped across the threshold, bouncing on his shoes’ famous air cushion.

Immediately beside her, he murmured “Ah. Um,” and arranged the orange V-neck over her head and pulled her arms through the sleeves. He smoothed the soft wool along her hips and Hailey sank back on the freshly made bed.

“Good news?”

“Nothing special. Trevor took off into the woods mid-run again. But of course he’s fine.”

“That’s good, Brian. It’s good you're not worried about him. And you shouldn’t be—don’t get me wrong. It’s just that ever since Trevor started his following, nobody questions him.”

“Well, how often is he wrong?”

Hailey smiled because Brian’s unrelenting anxiety had never helped. And when she learned this newly conquered, carefree realm extended to her, too, she had celebrated with him. “Here’s to happiness! Here’s to liberty!”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

But Trevor meditating in the woods aroused Hailey’s suspicions. The food he trucked up there certainly wasn’t for him. Dried apricots and boxes of Parmalat milk? What were Angelina and the rest of them thinking? Hailey appreciated Trevor’s remarkable personality. But the Black Mountain community loved Trevor so much they couldn’t see straight.

Why didn’t anyone except Hailey care that this great lover of women and friend to men would always live apart? Fun, funny, fantastically attractive, Trevor knew perfectly well how alone he was.

He could calm and even carry anyone—except himself, and often said so. But except for Hailey, it seemed nobody heard him.

She hesitated to mention this to Brian because only recently had he overcome his anxiety about Trevor.

The brothers ran together every morning. And Brian told her that besides all the camping food, Trevor had brought into the woods, smocks, hats, mittens, and leggings.

Which to Hailey sounded very weird. While Brian hadn’t thought twice about it. He had been so busy trying to dismiss Marc Swift. The consortium was buying up Marc’s contract, but the man still raged. “Carla gains like what, a hundred pounds? And I’m getting fired? My lawyer will call you.”

“Fine,” Brian told him.

Angelina invited Carla to stay in the main cabin, which sparked Kaya’s jealousy. No more mooning over Trevor, who was now paying Carla private visits; no more teasing Alec.

So once Carla was settled, Hailey asked Brian to check on Trevor’s off-trail journeys. They agreed he couldn’t follow the all-knowing Trevor without asking him first. “Just tell him I’m nosey.”

“Except you’re not.”

No lag time: the next day, Trevor decided to run through the woods instead of along the trail. “Mind if I join you?” Brian asked.

“Dun know. The ignorant spirit up there? Might bring me crosses maybe.”

Brian nodded, yes, a spirit. “Ya must step screechy. Stay quiet an promise—it’s a secret.”

Several feet from the top, Brian hid behind a boulder. Trevor crouched by a tree. From which came a guttural, “Caw! Caw!” Pulling a harmonica from his shorts, Trevor sang “Mellow Mood.”

“…I’ve got love, darling…I’ll play your favorite song, darling…”

And his plea sounded so private, so sacred, that Brian crept away, his spirit heavy.

(Click here for the next episode)

Bus Dem Shut

The next day Trevor asked Carla for walnuts, dried apricots, hard cheese, bread, and a box of milk that didn’t need refrigeration. She was in Angelina’s kitchen, adding sliced mushrooms to barley soup.

“Don’t tell me you already ate all the apples and two pounds of peanut butter!” Carla’s steam-dampened, curling hair widened her big round face as she jabbed a pudgy finger at Trevor’s punctured chest.

“Carla darling,” Trevor asked, “you vexed?”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Angelina clattered down the bottom few steps. “Trevor, were you the one who advised Carla to move in with Marc Swift again?”

Trevor looked at Carla who was roly-poly. Seeing his appraisal, she shoved Angelina. “Can’t you just shut up about that? It’s all you ever talk about.”

Angelina sat at the counter and sighed. “Honey, you’re a full time restaurant owner. You’ve invented, and eaten, countless extra meals all winter. By yourself.”

“So I’m fat. Nuff said?” She grabbed her jacket and stomped outside.

“Wh’appen to pretty little Carla? Maybe Ya-Ya can fix it with nice clothes.”

“That’s an idea. I’ll ask Ya-Ya to fill the store with pretty smocks and stretchwear.”

Angelina owned the boutique in Biltmore Village where Ya-Ya worked. And ever since Trevor met Angelina, who he had transformed from “Nancy,” she had evolved from a lumbering, asexual person into a robust and curvy woman.

Less than a year ago, Carla had been slender. Angelina narrowed her eyes. “Hollis has enlisted Carla in several dance classes and spring is coming. It’s not your trouble, Trevor. But have you looked at Kaya lately?”

“Kaya’s no fatty. I’ve seen her.”

“You certainly have, darling. And ever since you hopped naked into our bed, she dreams of you, not me.”

“Angelina, Kaya’s your beloved lady. She told me so.”

“Well, she hasn’t started dying her hair to impress me.” Angelina fingered her snow white locks.

“Hush, Angelina. I-and-I didn’t break any laws. You only heard the truth ’bout Chief Babylon because we were stripped to bare bones and you know it.”

“Yeah. You’re right about that, Trevor. I wouldn’t have listened. So what’s all this food you want?”

“I meditate in the woods every evening now. The food’s in case I feel like staying there.”

Angelina pinched her upper arm. “Is Jacob’s latest crop making us eat like maniacs? Always before his ganja lifted us right up, no side effects.”

“Ask him. Jacob’s buds get purer and purer. The reason Carla’s chubby is because Marc colds up on her. Carla gets soft and fat and he feels hard and strong. I never told Carla, ‘Go back to him.’ Just, Jah know, ya can’t live with me.”

Angelina nodded and sighed. She packed all the food Trevor could carry and offered to drive him wherever he wanted. Wanting to keep the place a secret, he thanked her, saying he’d rather leg it.

Hoisting his pack, he said, “But if you and Carla go to the boutique tomorrow, can ya drop me off at Miller’s Music? Teddy’s got some new instruments for us.”

A little later, as darkness fell, Trevor climbed the hilltop. Outside Polly’s tree, he unpacked the food and laid it in a semi-circle while stepping aside and singing Bob Marley’s “Nice Time.”

After the first verse, however, Polly yelled at him. “Go away and don’t come back.”

“I brought you some smoke, Polly.”

“And rolling papers?”

“Yah, sweetie. Matches and a flashlight, too.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Could You Be Loved

The light takes over me: sitting in class; loving me sweethearts; or even just talking. Halfway through a sentence, mine or yours, I see unpredictable things happening to everyone but me. These sights are like the opposite of dreams. Nothing’s dim or vague; nothing’s unconscious.

I’ve never known what’s up for me, though. Besides, all my visions might be wrong. They’re flickering images running like little movies inside a light so bright it can’t get brighter.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here  to read the previous one.]

Since our daddy died, Brian has no more reasons for shyness or anger. But saying that to his face would be mean. So I prayed night and day he would bust through worrying. And then I watched him do it. He stepped out of the car and bashed straight through to freedom.

We ran past the trestle bridge and I heard a voice crying in the woods. Soon as Brian shatters his old, choking atmosphere, there’s desperate Polly, a feral creature inside a hollow tree.

Brian didn’t break his stride when I said, “Gotta check the woods.” He turned around, still running, and called, “Okay, see ya.”

I found the tree and Polly ran out so full of fury she ripped into me, tore off the whole front of my shirt. Low to the ground, tracing and cussing like I’ve never heard, she sprang up and stabbed my bare chest with a sharpened stick.

Later, when I came dragging back, Brian didn’t press. Like he’s fully forgotten how to worry. Instead he calmly cleaned me up. Said I looked fine.

Until I can help Polly settle, I’m not telling on her.

Carla’s in the kitchen and I mention—true enough—that I wanna hang out in the woods. “Can I pack some food?”

She gives me peanut butter, a bag of apples, and a little cutting board. “You dip slices in the peanut butter, Trevor, not the whole fruit.”

“Ah yah.” I pack a sleeping bag, load the food into a backpack, and walk the mile to the trail. Dusk falls early in February but I’m wearing the colors.

Waiting on the bridge, I squint into the afternoon sun, checking on her. She’s sleeping in the tree. Her anger’s rock hard but we’re through romping. Because she’s worn out and weak. I leave the apples and peanut butter and cutting board by the tree.

Stepping away as daylight fades behind the mountain, I realize that Polly needs a knife to slice those apples. So happens that I’m carrying my daddy’s buck knife with the steel blade he kept razor sharp. I gaze at the sky and between the trees, trying to see if Polly will get cut. Too vexed for normal life, Polly’s nonetheless dexterous. So I leave the knife beside the apples.

She’s curled up inside that tree but my guess is she’s woken up. “Nice up, Polly,” I call out. “I’m coming every day, five or six o’clock. And I want you to think about this: it’s no fun being angry. No fun being a sinner, either. Anger’s one of the seven big ones.”

Vivi taught me that, long ago when she was a conduit between virtues and vices. To move forward from anger takes patience. Envy needs massive kindness.

But patience? Nobody should be angry if that’s true. ’Cause what’s easier than patience? We’re in no rush. I’m as patient as the rope is long. And Polly’s gonna see that. In a few weeks, she’ll be filled with more patience than anyone could ever need.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Talkin Blues

On Sundays students and faculty ate breakfast and lunch on their own, giving Angelina a chance to use her kitchen. She baked scones and fixed French-press coffee.

She hadn’t spoken with Everett, and wouldn’t, now. Trevor was right. Why she hadn’t seen it without him baffled her. With Alec Olsen who had been Kaya’s lover until a few months ago, and who was so essential to the poetry classes, just waiting to take her back? Not to mention Kaya actually threatening to leave Angelina over her “affair of the heart.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here  to read the previous one.]

And Everett? Angelina never suspected his wife had left him because of her, his lesbian girlfriend from high school.

Deh-de, Deh-de, Deh-de, tapping both feet down the stairs, Kaya said, “Scones?” and kissed Angelina’s neck.

“Might as well start without him,” Kaya said in the sunny main room. “The Chinese girl, Ya-Ya, has moved in.”

Thank goodness Trevor had roped in his love-life. When Ya-Ya was working in the boutique, he still saw Jazmine, Lauren, and Crescent, but no others. Since half of North Carolina had elected Trevor their messiah, think how easily he might lead masses of people into hysteria.

“Speaking of that,” Angelina stretched her leg, “what’s Everett doing about Polly?”

Two weeks ago Everett had told Kaya that Polly’s sister had reported her missing. And Angelina believed she was hiding nearby.

Trevor knocked on the door, his not quite dready braids damp from the shower. “Blessings, Mommies.” He kissed them and took his seat between them. Turning aside, Kaya bit her lip. She was far from over Trevor—if anything she fixated on him more all the time—but had begged that he treat her just like Angelina.

He stretched one arm over the couch, behind Angelina, and accepted a full coffee mug from Kaya. “Wh’appen with Polly?”

“Who knows if you don’t, Trevor? Isn’t Everett depending on you for a solution?” It amused the women that the police department’s trickiest citizen had saved the chief’s marriage.

“I-and-I no problem. It’s Polly or kill me dead.”

Angelina said, “Margaret’s afraid it will end in catastrophe.”

Margaret, Polly’s older sister, had been Angelina’s roommate at Duke. So it was no secret that Polly wasn’t right. She couldn’t settle into college or keep a job.

Ten years after Margaret became a nurse and married a neurologist, Polly had slashed her parents’ upholstery. This terrified them so much that Margaret took her sister in.

If she and her husband had wanted children, they would not have risked having her in the house. And Polly would have gone to a half-way place. But until assessments were made, Polly stayed with them, apparently recovering right away. Margaret bought her a sewing machine and Polly constructed whimsical women’s dresses, which fetched high prices.

Reclusive Polly lived in that spare room for twelve years without incident. True, she had a habit of cutting herself but not severely.

Two years ago, when Kaya decided she loved Alec Olsen, and the heart-broken Angelina visited Margaret, Polly forgot her shyness. The skinny sister was now a scrawny, middle-aged woman but she giggled, seeing Angelina. And followed her everywhere, reciting Denise Levertov and other women poets from the original Black Mountain College. When Angelina went home, Polly called her and wrote letters.

Soon at Angelina’s Black Mountain lodge, Polly was doing the laundry and shyly registering guests on vacation. Her dresses sold as well here as they had in Raleigh. They weren’t lovers, but Angelina didn’t mind Polly’s company. Putting aside the times when Polly fumed in a solitary cabin. “But hurting nobody.”

“She’s raging now, though,” Trevor said, firing up some ganja. “An unless somebody talks her down, she gonna cut people.”

(Click here to read to the next episode)

Midnight Ravers

Trevor peeled off his muddy sock while Brian drove them back to the Consortium. “The foot’s fine. A few cuts and bumps from rock-stones is all.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“I don’t know what you tangled with,” Brian said. “But it wasn’t just rocks and twigs. Nothing smaller than a bear could have torn your shirt off like that.”

“Brian, will you keep quiet what happened? Everybody knows too much about me already.”

“Trust me.” Brian parked and indicated that Trevor should wait: he’d help him so Trevor didn’t need to hop to his cabin. Inside Trevor’s bathroom, Brian dabbed his brother’s cuts and wounds with antiseptic. Seeing that his foot and ankle weren’t sprained, Trevor was set. In the last few months, he’d had full rounds of rabies shots and tetanus boosters. One doctor had prescribed a series of antibiotics, just in case. The puncture wound just left of his breast bone looked deep.

“Keep an eye on that one,” Brian said, scanning the cabin’s spotless glass walls.

“Wanna smoke?” Brian had to ask. This wasn’t even new anymore.

“Math this afternoon,” Trevor said. “Maybe there’s enough time.”

In the kitchen Trevor lit his pipe and passed it to Brian. Fully dressed, Trevor looked fine—and not like he’d been mauled by an angry mamma grizzly. The cut on his cheek could be anything.

Saturday night then he performed with Awake same as ever. Now the band played two sets and Alison the manager sold tickets to their shows, twenty-five dollars apiece. Two drink minimum but the bartenders said Trevor’s crowd only drank bottled water.

The band’s CD was selling so fast that mailing it out became Destiny’s part-time job. But on stage Leon and Marvin featured Bob Marley songs over their own. Earle’s chants and drums still opened and closed the show.

The audience stood still when Trevor sang:

“Most people think, Great God will come from the skies, Take away everything And make everybody feel high. But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on earth…” 

When they were not still with devotion, the audience danced feverishly in a deliberate effort to rejoice. They didn’t touch or take partners but wound around in a circle that rhythmically curled and unfurled.

Brian watched from the cat-walk as they danced and stopped in reverence, danced and stopped. He had listened to Trevor singing Bob Marley songs for so long, with the band and solo, that sometimes the lyrics dallied in his head. He knew how biblical the words were. Bob Marley’s songs told about slavery and freedom, poverty and revolution, corruption and redemption, and Jah’s love. A friendly, seductive beat to rock the world. So all night, from above, Brian saw the people dance and stay still, dance and stay put.

Then Earle started his last chant and Trevor disappeared. The audience stared at the spot on the stage where he had just stood. They remained silent through the last refrain and didn’t move while the other band members packed up. For an hour after Awake had departed, the Avalon staff kept the quiet mob from the dark stage where they begged to leave a personal item, a token of themselves. Just this once.

“Sorry.” And finally the people filed out.

How could Brian ever worry about his little brother ever again? The man played his music completely unfazed by such weirdness. Their crew made massive money. And Trevor would just smile and rest easy. Saying he “feel no way” about it.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Revelation

The most amazing thing!

Friday morning, first week of the new semester, Brian and Trevor drove the extra mile to their favorite mountain running trail. At six-thirty thick mist saturated the air. Brian parked and opened the car door.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here  to read the previous one.]

When he stepped on the ground, the ball of his foot pushed hard. And that torpedoed him up, like a diver bursting to the surface. No longer underwater, no longer holding his breath, eyes shut, he spun from the waist up as if shaking off a million droplets. His eyes opened to blinding sun and his mouth gulped pure oxygen.

As the sensation faded, Brian laughed, still shaking his head one way and then the other, shedding worry that dissolved in the mist. Anxiety evaporated. No need to hold his breath the way he always had.

Trevor, meanwhile, got out on the passenger side.

Sauntering around the car, he sang: “One of my good friend said, in a reggae riddim, Don’t jump in the water, if you can’t swim.”

Brian swung his arms, bent backwards, and rolled his eyes: so thoroughly amazed. “Wha’ ppun key?” Trevor asked.

Brian laughed trying to explain the unbound joy and freedom he had always known existed but could never see or feel before. He had always tried so hard not to worry. And now, fear and foreboding had vanished. He couldn’t worry if he tried.

“Ya see?” Trevor grinned. “Jah know.”

Starting on the trail, Brian sprinted on an exultant trajectory. Naturally, Trevor ran in sync. “Irie, Brian.”

At the trestle bridge they had no choice but to proceed single file. Brian led this time. Usually, Trevor went first and leaned over the dizzying crevasse until Brian yanked him away from the rotting railing.

This morning Brian ran ahead without looking back, and heard Trevor’s steps bounce a clear beat after his own. Then they ran together until the crest. Where Trevor said, “You go ahead, Bri. I-and-I gotta check something in the woods. See ya at the car.”

It didn’t occur to Brian to ask Trevor what was in the woods. Let alone warn him to be careful.

Finished running, Brian flexed and cooled off. He walked a while and then sat on a tree stump and took in the day: the ground and trees; the chilly air, which had turned transparent; the opaque gray sky; all the surrounding sounds and incrementally changing shapes and colors. At some point he discovered he was no longer worried about Hailey either.

He never should have been. She gave him profound happiness and gentle understanding. Her beauty hypnotized him but their dreams remained distinct, alike but different.

When Trevor finally appeared, he had lost a shoe. Caked with mud, he limped and zigzagged, avoiding rocks and roots. His shirt was ripped, the front stripped from the sleeves. Even at a distance, Brian noticed gouges on his chest. Stepping beside him, Brian saw that Trevor’s chest and face were scratched deeply. Brian laid Trevor’s arm across his shoulders, relieving weight from his brother’s injured, shoeless foot.

“Just a little cuss-cuss,” Trevor said, “with this crazed animal spirit hiding in the woods.”

Brian nodded without question. By now he fully trusted Trevor.

“Gonna tame that one. You’ll see.” Seemingly free of pain now that Brian was helping him, Trevor patted Brian’s shoulder. The brothers slowed down to look at each other. Trevor radiated the happy certainty of a champion who had lost a game while getting to know his opponent better. Rest assured, next time he’d win.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Rastaman Chant

Brian knew how worried Angelina was about the Jamaicans returning after the winter break. All of them contributed such a strong and communal aspect to the Consortium. The fledgling college would not only miss them if they remained in Jamaica; it would suffer.

But Royce returned from the semester break with his wife and two little girls. He drove a white truck and wanted to live in Asheville so his daughters could go to public school.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Those of us who see Trevor for who he is—we’re coming back. He’s going to catch enlightenment.”

Jacob, who had told Angelina he was going to California, changed his mind. Trevor, yah, had factored in his turn around. Like Royce, Jacob wasn’t about to leave the prophet. Not now that Trevor’s growing up. At the same time, he had to correct the prophet’s methods for growing ganja. Dege-dege buds.

And Earle, drummer and poet—naturally flew to Black Mountain. It was his home now. Winter or not. His woman lived here. And he earned big money doing work he loved.

Brian set up a full weekend of events for new students and teachers. The new semester started in ten days. Newcomers, and regulars, would participate in introductory projects. Optional but strongly encouraged. Brian and Angelina and Kaya had already discussed Trevor’s role. No “sit-downs,” no talk of spiritual recognition—and Trevor had agreed to the fullness. Because people were still driving up to Angelina’s on Sundays, seeking him out. The question was how to prepare newcomers so they saw no need to congregate around Trevor. True, they might not find anything amazing about him. But more and more, people spoke about his astounding presence and aura of happiness.

Trevor would attend the workshops as the student he was. No other way to play it. If Trevor came to every class, everyone would adjust to the environment. And weren’t they lucky to create art where so much truth and loving-kindness filled the air?

Trevor, meanwhile, wanted to take advantage of the sciences at UNC. He had an A (his first) in the WesternCiv class. This semester he had enrolled in a math class, the goal being physics. Past that, he wanted to study astronomy.

Kaya told him he’d need to move to the Chapel Hill campus for that. She said this during their new Sunday morning ritual. No more lazing in bed. He met the women downstairs and they drank coffee and read the newspaper together: Trevor’s idea.

After their bout of intimacy last week, Trevor had looked for Kaya. He found her in the main room and asked her to come outside with him. They’d take the steep trail a ways.

Once the trees secluded them, he asked, “So did you talk it over with Angelina? I mean, I felt terrible neglecting you, Kaya. Excited but just lying there on and on.”

She picked up a pebble, unable to look at Trevor, let alone speak.

So Trevor continued. “’Cause ’course, Angelina feels no way ’bout me being in bed with her, clothes on or off.”

Kaya’s voice quavered. “Please don’t tell Angelina about me. She won’t ask you outright.”

“Def.” It wouldn’t work if Kaya was filled with desire and Trevor was supposed to ignore her. It was difficult enough that one time. But if Kaya didn’t want Angelina to know, Trevor could hardly alternate from one to the other. Commune with Kaya in one language and Angelina in another. Kaya picked up another little stone on the trail. Trevor suggested coffee in the main room. “The three of us can spread out and read the newspaper.”

“Thank you, Trevor. Let me tell Angelina about our new routine.”

The next morning, running with Brian, Trevor admitted he had too many girlfriends. The way people chased him, he didn’t want sex with just any girl, unique or not, no matter how pretty. At his Awake gigs, he pulled a vanishing act before the last drum beat; otherwise every girl wanted sex.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Kinky Reggae

Kaya and Angelina listened to Trevor coming upstairs with their coffee. Cuddling with him was a sweet, distracting ritual. On Sunday mornings, Trevor was their man. Their darling man-child. No arguments about Everett Clay. The brief, dreamy indulgence lasted all day.

They loved being Trevor’s Two Mommies. This Sunday, though, a flickering worry interfered with Kaya’s maternal tenderness. She had learned that Polly had run off without a word to her sister or anyone else. Perhaps that’s why she had rashly said: Of course take off your clothes, Trevor. “We want to see you.” Kaya said the words and panicked—afraid of how he’d affect her.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Gotta to tell you something you might not wanna hear,” he was saying. “Lay ourselves bare and we’ll agree with grace. That’s my hope.”

Naked now, Trevor lifted his arms and turned. Kaya pulled the cover up to her eyes, which burned wide in her head. Trevor’s single, lively gesture mesmerized her. His long strong body cast silvery trails in the air. Attenuated but perfectly proportioned, he resembled a sinuous god. His youthful muscles gleamed like marble.

Without hesitating, he slid under the covers the way he always did, his eyes full of hide-and-seek mischief. Kaya inched away from him and steeled herself even as Trevor raised his arms, clasping his hands behind his head. Trevor’s smooth chest under the duvet exerted a pull from which she escaped long enough to float like flower petals in a warm pond. She closed her eyes but that didn’t distract her much from the finger-like muscles clasping his ribs. Angelina probably suffered none of this.

Kaya lasted two seconds before her glance resumed darting all over. Trevor’s eyes rolled up as he explained that Angelina must limit her friendship with Everett Clay. Lifelong friends, he said, could easily wander too far into each other’s hearts and minds. That’s why Everett’s wife had left, but she was willing to come back and try again.

“Without her,” Trevor said, “da big bad Chief’s alone. He takes walks with you and goes home to an empty house.”

Still caught in an attraction as pronounced as gravity—never had Kaya known a man or woman to enthrall her so—she struggled to register what Trevor and Angelina were saying.

Trevor was attempting to resolve his mommies’ main argument. By championing Chief Babylon—that was new.

Any second now Angelina would literally kick the beautiful rude boy out of their bed.

Except—Kaya prayed she was hearing this right: “Trevor, are you saying I’ve been selfish?”

“Nuh selfish, Angelina. Heart and mind boundaries are not easy. Invisible and always changing. Yah see?”

“Darling,” Angelina said, kissing Trevor without looking at Kaya. Or so Kaya suspected in her transported state. Half here and half lost to lust and fascination and newfound wonder. Their angel Trevor had upset everyone by acting like a prophet before Christmas. And now Kaya, looking away, out the window, lay struck by his godliness. Which was idiocy. If only Trevor would get dressed!

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Angelina said. You were brave to risk telling me how to live—it’s almost never right—but in this case, yes. I agree.”

He kissed Angelina’s cheek, and turning to Kaya withheld the kiss, instinctively holding his palm millimeters above her head. “I’m gone.”

He slipped from under their duvet and dressed quickly, this time without ceremony, and closed their door.

Angelina held Kaya’s hand. “I’m so sorry about this, honey. I didn’t realize how selfish I was being. You were right.”

Kaya mumbled: Don’t worry. And hurried into the shower. Or whatever else it might take.

(Click here to read the next episode)

This Train

They’re all shegged and coming for me, ’cause I acted feisty ’bout the Lord and light and suddenly seeing images inside the blinding beams.

That college festival before Christmas I went satta, telling the people: Look here and there inside. And, Jah’s children know the truth. Follow your soul.

So all the hackling here was sure my fault.  I was a big bad fool calling: My people, my people, listen to the message.

Home from Myrtle Beach, Kaya and Angelina bang on my door. Too bad, they say if it’s inconvenient. They barge right in and say “how-do-you-do” to Ya-Ya, who’s here her first time visiting me, and stand there, arms folded, “Come on, get dressed, Trevor. Emergency meeting.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

At Angelina’s, Brian’s already at the table, dazed and dreamy faced. Weed and Hailey. The earrings hit some spot she hadn’t discovered before. Brian mumbles, his face redder than red, while the ladies fuss, taking their seats.

I stand at the end. “Relax, relax.” Palms press flat on the table. “Won’t happen again. No soul-sweeping mania here. I vow it. Any message I feel so deep that I can’t keep quiet, I-and-I will put on stage, Awake toastin’ Bob Marley’s sacred songs.”

“All right.”

And, “Just take care of it, Trevor. No more road blocks.”

I promise and kiss the ladies on the cheek. Brian ducks his head. His feelings fill my mind like balloons leaking ideas. One time on top of Brian’s head, a balloon pops.

“Close your eyes so I can make it extra good.”

Brian’s outta there before me. Gone, so I can’t even see his back.

Before I step inside my cabin, Awake’s masterminds, Leon and Marvin are on the phone. But Ya-Ya nods, it’s fine, she’s making us dinner.

Leon says Alison at the Avalon wants us for Saturday nights, double sets, fat pay raises, no more Chewsdays. Marvin grabs the phone away. CD sales, he says, have spiked from the website. So he’s arranging string-up sessions at a recording studio. Leon grabs back the phone. What do I say to a tour?

“Can not do it.” Turns out Jazmine’s not interested and, of course, their sister Hailey’s out.

“And you know Zanz is staying in Jamaica.” I shouldn’t have said that, since nobody else knows it yet—not even Zanz. Gotta wait for information to develop outside. But Zanz really is gone. Come out with one, why not the rest?  Leon and Marvin are anxious about Earle. He’s crucial. “Don’t worry. Earle’s definitely returning. Here to stay, in fact.” And, Jacob, who’s not moving to California, after all, will be here soon same as Royce who didn’t even go to Jamaica; he’s in the Keys. “They all have hard reasons.”

“Just so we’ve got you and Earle.”

Leon and Marvin don’t say, “Later,” or “Little more.” No good-bye, they just hang up.

Next morning, after I see Ya-Ya off, I bring Kaya and Angelina their coffee in bed as usual. Since my main news for them may cause friction, I ask—shy for some reason—if I can climb into bed with them, even though I do it every week without ever asking.

What happens next is strange, like I was possessed almost. My body’s playing tricks while they snuggle together under the duvet. Waves of illumination inside and outside me kinda collide, making a sound like faraway trumpets. “Mind if I-and-I take off me clothes?”

They look at each other and giggle. “Trevor,” Kaya says, “we thought you’d never ask.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

High Tide or Low Tide

In Brian’s cabin, after two days contending with their father’s death, during which—who knows why?—Trevor chose not once to smoke even a bit of ganja, for which Brian felt desperate the whole time, he was finally sucking it in. Whoa, how he had craved just a taste of Jacob’s all uplift, no downside, indigo bud!

Home at last, he learned that Hailey was visiting her mother. So no one was around. Or so he thought until Carla knocked, anxious for “a word with Trevor.”

On the phone with Hailey, Brian said he planned to get high more often. And—she said loved him, which she almost never said. (Unlike Carla, who not so long ago had seemingly babbled about her love and affection for Brian whenever a gap developed in the conversation.)

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Here came Carla now from the extra bedroom where she and Trevor had finally reached a loud, rambunctious decision, of sorts. Big and giddy Carla no longer looked at all like the young woman Brian had once loved halfheartedly.

“Merry Christmas two days late,” she said, her big red hand slapping Brian’ shoulder. After her obviously wild sexual consultation with Trevor, she announced she had decided to move back in with Marc Swift.

“Happy New Year if I don’t see ya.” She threw herself into a long, forceful kiss good-bye with Trevor and finally left.

“Her not-so-bright light kinda reassures me.” Trevor grinned, sprawled on the couch, a bit winded.

Two seconds later, he was beaming. “So Hailey comes back tonight. First, though, Brian, you gotta check this.”

How did Trevor know Hailey’s plans? Had he somehow eavesdropped, busy as he was with the always daunting and still expanding Carla?

“No eavesdropping, Brian. I just know, that’s all.”

Bending down, Trevor dipped into his duffel bag and handed Brian a little turquoise box, wrapped with red satin ribbon.

“Give Hailey these for Christmas even if you already got her something.”

Which Brian had not. “Trev, what’s this?”

“Peek inside. From Tiffany’s.”

“When and where did you go to Tiffany’s?”

“Just look.” Opening the pretty gift, Brian spilled gold earrings from a plush turquoise bag into his open hand. Delicate but lovely, a star stud held various length tiny gold chains from which dangled several tiny gold stars.

“Shit, Trevor. How much?”

“A whole heap. But trust me. She gonna be goin’ to bed with dem.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Just like her, no? Count it as your present too, Brian.”

“I completely forgot about Christmas presents.”

“Wanna give me something?” Trevor asked. “Kaya and Angelina come home tomorrow so I gotta visit the Chief Beast today. Big gift if you drive me there.”

“That’s no gift, Trevor. I’m happy to drive you there. And I was wrong about you staying here while I finished up with Daddy. I don’t know how on earth I would have gotten through that without you—even if for once I needed weed and you weren’t even interested.”

“I-and-I couldn’t live without you either, Brian. In Jamdown, I had Vivi, but I never stopped needing you. She kept tellin’ me, Go back to your brudda, Trev. Vivi truly needed me then but she said I need you—not her. Used to be, Vivi seen truth and more truth, nuthin’ else.”

They pulled into Everett Clay’s driveway mid-afternoon. Trevor knocked hard and yelled, “Hey, Chief Babylon! Know yer dere, Babble-a-Babylon.”

But then Trevor said, “Wait a minute,” and dashed down the porch steps without a sound, leaving Brian standing there alone.

Brian watched a tall oak tree stirring shadows on the driveway. The cold sunlight glinted at odd angles so that the rays seemed to bounce skyward—making Trevor invisible. In a flash or two, however, he was back, smiling at Everett Clay who stood disheveled in his doorway.

“Lauren’s not home. She’s with her mother.”

“Big blessings, Chief.” And Trevor brought a tiny orange kitten out from behind his back.

“What’s this? Where’d you get him?”

“Her,” Trevor said. “Can we come in?”

The television was tuned to a football game. The three men half-watched it as Everett settled the kitten on his lap. “What’s her name?”

“You name her,” Trevor said. “She belongs to you.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she does. Listen to her purring. What do you think of Tango. You think Tango’s a good name for her?”

“Full and right,” Trevor said, shifting his weight so that Brian expected him to produce a mini-spliff. Instead, Trevor said, “So I hear you and your wife split.”

Brian elbowed his brother hard. “Don’t be rude,” he whispered.

“It’s okay. Everybody’s talking about it. She left three months ago. Because of Angelina.”

“But Angelina’s a one-way only lesbian. Not like Kaya.”

“My wife thinks there’s a heart and mind thing between us.”

“But you just want your wife back, I can see that. Have you begged?”

“Trevor,” Brian said, painfully embarrassed. “You’re way out of line.”

“Haven’t begged. It’s not my style. But I surely do miss her.”

“So forget yer style and tell her you’re sorry. You love only her, Chief—her mind, heart, et cetera. Your whole life your lady needs to hear you say that.”

“Worth a try.” Everett was lightly petting Tango.

“Call Lucinda,” Trevor said. “Tell her you were wrong and will never do anything like heart and mind treachery again.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Exodus

Brian and Trevor’s neighbors from childhood had moved. The street where they had learned to ride bicycles appeared blank under the searing sun. It felt unreal, as if no children now—or ever—ran around shouting there.

Why go in? The body was at the town funeral home, awaiting cremation.

But Trevor insisted. “You and I began life right here. Spoke our first words. If we fully face it now, we can only go forward.”

“Why aren’t you smoking ganja, Trevor?”

“Nothing to celebrate; too late for blessings.”

“Trev, you have some with you, though.” Seeing he didn’t, Brian asked, “No stash even at the Days Inn?”

“Daddy worked on his vices—that’s how evil he was.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

The filthy, run-down, cluttered mess of a house smelled so bad they choked. Mildew, defeat, and stale alcohol hardly added to the main stink: human rot. More than once, Trevor and Brian drew back, struggling against nausea.

Ready to run outside, Brian looked at Trevor, who was determined to confront the remnants of their past.

They circled through the kitchen: swollen and pocked linoleum; a trail of white powder, probably rat poison, lay clumped along the baseboards. A week’s worth of dirty dishes overflowed the sink and covered the counters. Trevor opened the refrigerator and slammed it shut.

Upstairs, Trevor’s narrow bedroom faded toward invisibility. His toys, CDs, and horror movie posters remained undisturbed but so old, so dead. That kid Trevor who had slept in the bed was now a ghost.

Brian’s room had become a storage place for fishing rods, tool kits, newspapers, planks of wood, old sheets, and boxes of YMCA trophies.

Their dead father’s bed was unmade. Clothes he probably wore were strewn everywhere. Trevor checked his mother’s closet: still filled with her old dresses, jeans, and shoes, lingerie hanging on three little hooks.

At the hotel Brian tugged on Trevor’s braids. “Come on, no pot? Really?”

“Ya, mon. No celebratin’. Smokin’ for pure joy now would be a sin.”

The next morning they sat in the funeral director’s office. Brian didn’t want an urn. In fact, he didn’t want the ashes. The funeral home was not allowed to dispose of them. Trevor said, “Ah…I’ll take them. Just wrap them up somehow.”

The director left the office; it would take half an hour.

Trevor came close to cracking a smile at Brian. “I’ll dump them in Hot Springs where I drove the car off road. Remember? A white truck saved me life.”

The next morning, when they were almost home, the highway turned to gridlock. Trevor stood up and called out of the car window to Officer Ingersoll, who was on duty and walking through the bottleneck. “Yahso! Mi fren’, blessings up!”

Red-faced from the cold, the vexed policeman thrust his chest toward Trevor’s face. “Since Christmas morning your fans have been showing up even when we explained you weren’t here. So they had to go without Prophet Trevor’s Christmas message. Now they’re back, trying a third time.”

“Crosses dis.” Trevor got out and waved the cars away. “You can not follow me. People: you want answers? They’re inside yourself. Nowhere else.”

Finally the cars dispersed and Brian reached Angelina’s gates, which she ordinarily kept staked open. Brian had a key she’d given him the first day he had moved here. Once inside,  they discovered the grounds were almost empty.

Jacob, Royce, Earle and Zanz had planned trips home for the holidays, bringing their Asheville girlfriends. The students and faculty had all gone home after the festival. And Kaya and Angelina, after an hour of people showing up for Trevor’s words, drove to Kaya’s friends on the coast.

Carla materialized, though, just when Trevor was finally sharing a smoke with Brian. She needed Trevor’s opinion.

(Click here to read the nest episode)

 

Crazy Baldhead

Brian began tending to minimal arrangements for their father. No need for Trevor to get into it, though. Their crazy old man had run the Brandon YMCA for thirty years without ever engendering a moment’s sympathy. Their childhood house of horrors and whatever was in it Brian would leave to officials.

Trevor stared at his feet and disagreed. “He was my daddy, too, Brian. I need to be at his funeral.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“No funeral. I’m having him cremated.”

“I meant figuratively.”

 Brian paused on the brink of teasing him. Figuratively, Trev? But the word that sounded funny for a second really signaled distress. Brian had never seen Trevor so somber and—rational. 

Maybe they should smoke a bit of ganja in commemoration: an idea Brian dismissed without mentioning it, because he felt like a hypocrite. After all, how often had he insisted that Trevor not smoke in the car? Not smoke when the side-stream affected Brian, who had less tolerance? Not smoke in front of certain people?

Trevor slumped, dispirited on the couch. Brian watched from the glass walls as winter sunlight wove through naked branches. Hailey was on the phone with her mother, explaining why Brian wouldn’t be joining them for Christmas as planned. Moving the phone away, she stood on tiptoes, whispering, “Momma says if you want me there for moral support, she’ll move the dinner; we’ll celebrate the Epiphany instead.”

Brian had forgotten what the Christian Epiphany was, if he ever knew. But he’d rather Hailey not witness the grim details awaiting him. In response then he whispered, “Tell her Trevor’s coming with me. We’ll be back in a few days.”

“I-Rey!” Trevor bounded off the couch, throwing an arm around Brian. “Full-up right. I-and-I, Bri.”

Hailey smiled and zipped her coat, leaving to work as Kaya’s secretary. “Don’t leave without saying good-bye.”

After the door closed behind her, Trevor’s seraphic grin beamed all through the room. “Let’s go to my place, share a bowl, and make these plans.”

At Trevor’s, the girl in the knit cap had left him a note. And Crescent hoped to see him after lunch. “She wants me to steady her feelings. No idea how to do that, but Crescent believes I have magic that calms her down. An’ sumptimes just believing makes it so. Not true for our daddy, though. He was a crazy bastard no matter what you believe. Nuh, true?”

“He was cruel, bald, and bitter as long as I can remember,” Brian said. They were leaning over the deck and trading hits from Trevor’s pipe. “The old man was too smart for his life but nowhere near smart enough to change it.”

“Like everyone, no?”

“Well, yeah—like lots of people. He never cared a damn about us, Trev, but he loved Mom. And she hated him. Who knows why she stayed with him?”

“You don’t know? For you, Brian. When you went to college, she was happy. You getting out—your scholarship—gave her courage to escape. And she trusted you to take care of me. Big job, no? Takin’ care of me, making da money, an goin’  to college.”

“She’s not gonna be there, Trevor. Even if she knows he died, she won’t show up.”

“You know why I used to say she got sick and died? She told me to. Made me swear. Because she was the same as dead. No worries, though. You’d raise me.”

“Great. So she was just as crazy as our crazy-angry father.”

“Not that crazy, Brian. Mommy talked and talked so I wasn’t too scared. Just excited. I stuck to her story till the day you called me a liar.”

Trevor lit the pipe for Brian and drawing back, Brian coughed, watching Trevor’s lucent face. “Lying’s against my religion.”

“That so?”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Bad Card

Brian asked Trevor to sit down and say how he knew their father had died. Was he sure?

“Yes.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Trevor rubbed his face and looked up. He said, “Well…” and halted. He said, “Brian…” but could not think what to say next.

Brian watched, practically stunned. Trevor’s expression shifted from a slight retreat into a feeling that to Trevor was unheard of and wholly unknown: embarrassment. Despite their father almost certainly being dead, Brian marveled that Trevor’s imperturbable personality had never before experienced common embarrassment. Trevor frowned; the sensation made no sense to him.

The unreasonableness of embarrassment just heightened Brian’s discomfort. He lived in a state of low level stage-fright. Even a particle of far-off shame was enough to induce queasiness. Unreasonable and futile. Like now—here Brian was filtering Trevor’s confusion through his own mean little self. When for all he knew, Trevor felt grief. Was that possible?

He put his hand on Trevor’s shoulder, resting it there for half a minute at least. “I’ll telephone the local newspapers. The hospitals in Brandon and Tampa. And then,” Brian touched his face, amazed by the prospect, “I’ll call him. I’ll call the bastard in case he can answer.”

“He choked on a pretzel,” Trevor said, rising a little in relief. Now he was ready to say what the details were. “Sick liver and kidneys, but you remember the bully—afraid of the truth. No trust in him. So he was watching football and a pretzel killed him late last night.”

Hailey brought them coffee. “Trevor, it’s sad.” She kissed Brian’s head, stepped away, and returned to finger his hair. “I’ve read that it can be harder for people when a father dies that they didn’t get along with. The extra anger is so deep rooted.”

“Nobody’s gonna miss our dad, sweetheart.”

Trevor nodded. “Pure dogheart.”

Brian kept telephoning various authorities, who offered no answers. No suggestions even. “Maybe he moved away years ago, Trev.”

“Nuh, he’s dead in front of the television.”

By now Brian accepted Trevor’s visions without question. It upset him that people were acting like he was some kind of prophet. But when Trevor said he saw “the beginning and the end,” Brian believed him. Brian had begun believing the unbelievable because of Trevor. And that part hardly bothered him. Everybody else believing him, though—that worried Brian. He wanted Trevor to be happy; not locked in ancient, desperate paradigms. Not branded as a miracle man. Who would eventually become a martyr, one way or another.

Trevor, back to being imperturbable, grinned at Brian’s unspoken feelings. “Don’t worry about me so. Try calling the police.”

“They’ll ask why I’m calling from North Carolina.”

“No, they won’t.”

So Brian phoned the Brandon police station. Right away Trevor cocked an index finger, indicating he could hear the officer talking.

“The drunk? Uh, sorry…no disrespect if he’s your father…Yeah, we’ll check. The neighbors are always complaining.”

Fifteen minutes later, a policeman in Brandon, Florida phoned Brian’s cell. “You’re the son who called? Sir, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Screwface

Brian had overreacted. Just because so many people apparently felt “one love” in Trevor’s presence; just because Trevor bandied about the Rastafarian expression I-and-I, suggesting that regular, selfish people were capable of finding universal unity with God—did not necessarily make Trevor a fake guru.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Trevor, Brian knew, had never considered such a role. Trevor couldn’t imagine he acted like a pot-addled prophet. To him, it all came down to popularity; lots of people liked him.

So Brian should ease up.

Yet Trevor’s “sit-down” had bothered him so much that minutes afterwards he lay curled in bed, holding Hailey but unable to look at her.

No doubt she was missing the Awake concert playing inside the dome. Possibly she was even scheduled to sing back-up. For despite her telling the band, “no more,” even Brian realized the group sounded much better with Hailey adding to Destiny’s harmony.

He quieted his erratic breath, but having closed his eyes, he was afraid to open them. Hailey was tracing his spine and cupping his head, helping to distract his continuing panic at having seen people file reverently past Trevor’s suddenly empty seat.

Soon Brian could hear Trevor leading the band. He managed to open his eyes—only to stare witless at Hailey’s eyes, which shone impossibly bright and clear and black.

Her smile broke into a giggle and she whispered, “You’re so shy. Brian the shy lion. Trevor’s not an exhibitionist, you know. Just a performer. And better grounded than most. In his way, he’s as modest as you are.”

“Trevor? Modest?”

“I mean,” Hailey said, touching Brian’s face, “the audience doesn’t go to his head.”

“He makes such a spectacle of himself. He didn’t see that fawning, birthday video. But he must have known the manager had the camera on him when he stripped off his shirt and danced around.”

Hailey rolled away from him a little. “That’s what performers do. Dance around and show off. Did I embarrass you in my dance recital?”

“Of course not. I was proud and—moved. But what you did was elegant. Bad enough when Trevor was playing the little white Rasta boy, now he’s posing as a religious mystic.”

“You think he’s posing?”

Brian shook his head. “I can’t see how Trevor will escape turning into someone stupid or bad or both.”

“Except Trevor’s incapable of evil,” Hailey said. “And you know he’s not stupid. He can act stupid, I’ll give you that. But, truth is, he’s not.”

Brian swung his legs around; his feet landed on the floor. “You’re right. He embarrasses me, but that’s my problem.”

Hailey pulled Brian back. Lying beneath her, not daring to touch her, he asked, “Should we check out the party?” They band was playing louder now.

“No, let’s stay here.” She arched up and peeled off her clothes. And then his.

Near dawn someone kicked their door, rang the doorbell, and yelled. It was Trevor and he was upset.

Brian unlocked the door and seeing Trevor’s face, said, “God, what?”

“Our daddy’s dead. He’s dead at last. Now he can never make up the wrong he did us.”

“Trevor, did someone phone you?”

“Who would do that, Brian? How could anybody even find us? But Daddy’s dead. I knew about an hour ago. Do you think people like him go to hell? Or was just being who he was enough hell?”

(Click here to read the next episode)

One Drop

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

The arts festival was a massive success. After Friday’s dinner, Trevor introduced the bonfire. “Purely voluntary,” he said, announcing the use of ganja, rather let it go unmentioned, which is what Brian expected. “Part of the ceremony includes the littlest bit of herb. To lift us up. So if it you want, take a hit and pass it to the person next to you.” He held up a spliff. “One hit is enough. But only if you feel like it.”

From what Brian saw, everybody felt like it. Chief Clay and Chancellor Harris included. Everyone swayed to the drum beat and chanted as called upon. Angelina sat with Chief Clay who—it was news to Brian—had separated from his wife during the summer. Lauren swayed beside them. Trevor was entertaining a bright-eyed girl Brian hadn’t seen before, her hair covered by a hat knitted to a point and decorated with a pompom. Farther back, he saw Kaya take a hit and pass a pipe to Alec Olsen, her erstwhile lover. She caught Brian’s eye and he walked over. “I know,” she said. “Sorry I was such a bitch.”

The next morning, after Kaya and Angelina’s joint lecture about the original Black Mountain College, the tension between the couple lifted like pre-dawn fog. The women wrapped their arms around each other, giggling and meandering toward the geodesic dome for Trevor’s message. Except now he was calling it a “sit down.”

The space was packed with people: All Trevor’s fans from the Avalon, from all of Asheville, thronged the giant dome. Everyone sat on the insulated, polished floor or else on mats or pillows. Brian slipped quietly around the periphery until he stood, he hoped unnoticed, behind a partition that was pulled back.

“Since I was little,” Trevor said, “I’ve seen direction inside people.” His braids in a crocheted tam, he sat cross-legged and strummed his guitar. “But during the summer, when the art college first started, I’ve started seeing light instead. I can see the light in each of you. Everyone possesses divine radiance and life and you must bring it out to make it real. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know how. Just that it’s true.

“All of us people must find the illumination inside us and bring it out. Into the present moment. You see? Go your own way. Don’t follow.

“The Lord said, seek and you will find. So, I am seeking, which is strange and hard. I see such bright light that I have to move yahso. Move and look into the light again. Move and rest, and rest but stay awake so that the brightest light does not hide what’s real. Nuh true? Stay still in the blinding light until you can see again.

“When the light first astonished me, it knocked me out. I prayed and read because if I made a mistake, I got hurt. My friends saw it. Rocks fell on me. Animals jumped on me. So hear what the Lord said: Don’t lie. Don’t do things you hate. Whoever has ears, let him hear. Do not worry about what clothes you wear. The Lord said that.”

Then Trevor played his guitar and sang “One Drop,” by Bob Marley.

Feel it in the one drop and we still have time to rap…

Before anyone clapped or whistled, almost before anyone realized it, Trevor said, “Blessings, people,” and disappeared. Brian watched the crowd stand in silence and file past the place Trevor had been. One after another left some personal item beside Trevor’s guitar: keys, small notebooks, bracelets, business cards, pebbles, buttons, rings, coins, mittens, scarves…just anything that they had with them.

Frightened at what he’d felt coming for a while, he found Hailey and pushed through one of several exits. Outside she asked, “What did you—” But Brian whispered, “No words, okay? Let’s go home where I can hold you.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

 

Top Ranking

In the UNC meeting room, Brian placed festival schedule cards on the table. This Wednesday afternoon, like last Wednesday, he and Kaya hoped to drum up enthusiasm: The arts festival was for the directors and their friends and family. Thursday and Friday, they were invited to attend classes. The schedule touted Friday night’s excellent dinner thanks to Carla followed by a chant down bonfire. (Through Everett Clay, Angelina had secured a permit for this.)

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

On Saturday Kaya and Angelina planned a presentation on the old Black Mountain College. After which, Trevor would give a “life-affirming” lecture. The festival would conclude inside Royce’s geodesic dome. The band Awake would play as long as people listened.

Brian set up individual bottles of water. Kaya was drinking coffee and he came close to suggesting it was the last thing she needed. Which was true, though no reason to say so. During the meeting Kaya would maintain, and not snap as she did at everyone in Black Mountain. Even Trevor. And especially Angelina, who ignored Kaya’s bad temper.

Brian worried that Kaya’s furious tongue indicated how precarious the art college was. If the festival fell apart, the whole Consortium might go down in flames. Money had gotten so tight suddenly. What if people decided experimental education was ridiculous?

Appearing ridiculous was Hailey worst fear’s right now. “I’m the first and only one on stage for three minutes—a coiled body coming to life.”

Brian had watched the rehearsals, but what could he tell her? Watching Hailey brush her teeth was so beautiful, he lost all other awareness. “The three minutes you’re alone on stage are gorgeous, Hailey.”

To Kaya he said, “She can’t go by me. Have you seen the dance?”

Please. Kaya was not worried about interpretive dance. Mostly, she said, it was Trevor. “Keep him under control.”

Brian didn’t nod or agree or disagree. Kaya knew Trevor. Brian wasn’t sure he’d control him if it were possible.

Kaya nagged Trevor all the time: no ganja.

And Trevor always answered, “The cutchie pipe is crucial to the bonfire chants, to reaching the heights.”

“So keep it level, Trevor. No heights this Friday.

“Heights toward the Lord, Kaya. Trust me.”

Kaya certainly did not trust Trevor. Brian didn’t say so, but Kaya needed to be realistic. Trevor gave his word he’d smoke only during the bonfire.

The UNC directors straggled in and Brian reported that for next semester five new students had enrolled. “We’re still projecting fifty by September of next year.”

The group smiled and nodded so pleasantly that Brian suspected Kaya was wrought up about more than mollifying the directors.

As the meeting dispersed, Brian left, thinking that the festival’s attendees seemed ready to appreciate the arts—and even, possibly, open to a little ganja during the Friday evening chant down.

And if not, Brian bet Trevor—being Trevor—could change that. The second he thought this, Brian jumped. He was walking along a path away from the library and suddenly Trevor was walking in sync beside him. “How long were you there?”

“Since you left the building. Didn’t you feel me, stepping when you stepped?”

Driving back, Brian heard himself ask Trevor the same old question, “What’s the message you need a lecture room for?”

“I can’t say until I see who’s there.”

“I put it down as a life-affirming lecture.”

“No lecture, Brian.”

“Well then what? What are you gonna do when everyone’s looking at you, waiting for whatever you have to say?”

“Till I see the people, it’s ’tween I-and-I.”

“It’s stuff like this, Trevor, that really makes me worry about you.”

“And I worry ’bout you so.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Kaya

Brian tapped on Angelina’s front door. He needed her help getting his car fixed. Officer Ingersoll’s irritation after the rear-end accident had stuck with him.

Angelina opened the door, her face turned away as Kaya’s voice bounded from upstairs, “You don’t care if you lose everything, do you? You don’t care if you lose me.”

“I can come back later, Angelina, if you’re in the middle of something.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

But she grabbed her keys, eager to leave. On their way back from the auto body shop, Brian told her the accident would never have happened if he hadn’t pulled over to throw up.

“Hailey told me how drunk you got. And we agreed it’s good you’re letting loose like everyone else.”

A muscle near Brian’s jaw twitched. “The communal life gets on my nerves. Everyone so certain that just because they know each other’s business they truly know each other inside and out.”

“Welcome to higher education, Brian. You get involved. Otherwise, you end up alone outside. Can you make sure Jacob and Royce come to our meeting tomorrow morning? And Trevor, too, whether I get a word with him this evening or not.”

Brian doubted he could guarantee anything Trevor might do. They still ran the mountain trails every morning. And Trevor routinely dashed ahead, appearing and disappearing so thoroughly that Brian didn’t dare call out to him.

That evening when Carla and Trevor arrived to cook the dinner, Brian noticed Crescent and Lauren shooing him away. Because Trevor broke things.

Brian occasionally, carefully, asked Hailey if she wouldn’t rather eat at their place, just the two of them. But Hailey enjoyed the group and the bonfires so much that Brian pretended he did too. Sometimes he didn’t need to pretend, the beat and heat took over him. Pretending wasn’t lying, Brian decided; it was going along.

The next morning Kaya and Brian sat at the meeting table simultaneously, the first to arrive. Five minutes later, Kaya announced, “No reason to wait for Trevor. The boy craves an entrance.”

The rest sat with notepads and pencils. Royce had finished the geodesic dome and installed high-end space heaters. Acoustical panels hung from the soaring space above. He had built partitions for a dance space and music practice. He wanted to build a theatre, too, before the winter festival.

“The UNC administration is disturbed by the cost,” Kaya said. “After all, the Arts Consortium is set up as a full-fledged college—six teachers for an exclusive fifteen students.”

“Who’s upset?” Angelina asked for what sounded to everyone like the hundredth time. “We’re not in debt to the university; Brian and I adhere to their budget. The rest comes from me. Whoever’s complaining has no right.”

Kaya’s voice was sharp but weary. The women had discussed this many times. “You’ve got to stop selling marijuana, Angelina. But instead you’re pushing more all the time.”

Jacob opened his hands. “I wasn’t sure when to say this, but my woman wants to move to California. Her people have a legal business there.”

Kaya sighed. “Better be careful what I wish for.”

“Trevor can grow the same crop I do,” Jacob said. “We’ll talk day to day.”

“Speak of the devil,” Brian said as Trevor skidded into the room, fresh from a shower.

“Who got lucky last night?” Kaya taunted him. “Lauren or Crescent or who?”

Confused, Trevor looked from Kaya to Angelina. “You vexed?”

“The Police Chief thinks you’re out to break his daughter’s heart.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

“No,” Kaya said. “Angelina wants to do that.”

“So we hold hands,” Angelina said. “Old times sake; it shouldn’t bother you, Kaya.”

“That’s not it and you know it. The Chancellor has asked me twice why I changed my name to Kaya. Someone told him it means marijuana.”

“Ol’ Chancellor ’erb?” Trevor asked. “Old ’erb Harris whose name means the same?”

“It’s pronounced Herb.” For once Kaya smiled. “Spelled the same.” She’d work things out with the officials. Angelina could reassure Everett Clay—Kaya didn’t mind. Brian shut his eyes as if to disappear.

Between the invisible and the inevitable Brian’s trepidation accumulated. Overhead something hideous was looming. That was always so. He tried not to let it get to him.

(Click here to read the next episode)

I'm Hurting Inside

Brian showered and shaved, eager to pick up Trevor from the airport. After driving for ten minutes, however, he no longer felt buoyant and happy. Slowly but surely a killer hangover kicked in.

He pulled onto the road’s muddy shoulder and vomited coffee, bourbon, and bile. So when the jeep slammed into his Honda, he was crouched over, outside the car.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

The woman who wailed, “Oh, my God,” and leaped from the Jeep was Angelina’s odd and often angry ex-lover Polly. Skinny and birdlike, she pleaded with Brian, “Please be okay. Please, don’t be injured.”

Wiping his mouth with his shirttail, he said, “I’m fine. Polly.”

“Really? If you’re really okay, I’ve wanna ask another favor: don’t tell Angelina.”

“All right. But, are you okay?” Distraught Polly giggled. “I’m good.”

Within minutes Officer Ingersoll pulled up, siren going. Apparently, Brian had not yet traveled past city limits. Brian got back behind the wheel and all four tires touched the ground. They rolled normally. So Ingersoll waved, shouting that Polly must pay all damages, but Brian needed to get the car fixed right away. The bumper was gone and the rear lights were shattered.

Brian slowed down. “’Course, Officer. Right after I pick up Trevor at the airport.”

Ingersoll scoffed. “Trevor? That figures.”

Not giving the policeman’s absurdity another thought, Brian sped ahead. At a red light, he peeled off his stained shirt, leaving only a t-shirt. He wiped his hands and face with bottled sanitizer from the glove compartment.

Soon he was driving five mph in the airport’s arrival lane. Trevor leaned against a spindly tree, sharing a blunt with a security guard.

Noticing the battered Honda, he hurried over. Inside the car, he asked about the damaged car and Brian’s greenish hue.

“What you need, Bri, is Jacob’s herbal remedy.”

Trevor waved to the security guard and lit another blunt, which in a restroom stall he had pulled from his checked luggage. For once, Brian smoked whole-heartedly.

“Lifts yah right up. Jacob blesses the plants with his touch and voice.” Trevor’s crops, grown the same way from the same seeds, would never compare.

“You have other gifts,” Brian said. “Have you considered the best way to use them? Because you attract all kinds of people. And the few you don’t, really resent you.”

“I see the people who don’t respect me.” Trevor said, sucking hard on the smoke. “No trouble, though. I’m cris.”

For Brian Jacob’s remedy worked like magic.

“To the fullness, no?” Trevor said and Brian nodded, yeah, but indicated enough.

“Right,” Trevor said. “No more car crashes.”

“So how was Miami? How was Vivi?”

“One love, Vivi and me. But…” Trevor checked Brian’s face in profile.

Catching this, Brian glanced at his brother. “But what?”

“She can’t show me anything anymore. She’s quit seeing the truth. And at first she even acted strange with me—her boy Trevor. Like she didn’t trust I-and-I the littlest bit.”

“Why?”

“Vivi doesn’t know who she is anymore. True, she and I could never see our own directions. But this was something much worse. It hurt me, Bri. Hurt her, too.”

Nearing the college, Brian asked, “You think it’s some duppy?”

Trevor sighed and shook his head. “No evil I could see. More like, this once sacred woman just gave up on her inner life. A blessed conduit turned into an ordinary, unhappy lady.”

Trevor covered his face. “I gotta find my own truth. And that happens with or without sorrow.”

“You’re still Angelina and Kaya’s boy. They missed you.”

“I’d rather see Carla. You’re not jealous so?” Trevor knew full well Brian wasn’t jealous of Carla.

“She’s not easy, Brian. And her inner light is dim but she’s full of intuition, and more honor than she knows.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Wake Up and Live

Tuesday night The Avalon threw a birthday party for Trevor. The band tried telling the manager that Trevor was in Miami—so hold the party till next week. But next week was too late.

Alison Rivera, the young, blonde manager, had already advertised the event as: Didn’t You Know? Trevor’s a Scorpio! “Next week,” she said, “we’ll be in Sagittarius.”

The idea (Trevor being Scorpio, exclamation mark) so embarrassed Brian he wanted to disappear. He didn’t enjoy going to Awake’s every performance. But they needed him; he drove the van and carried equipment. And he couldn’t quit just because he felt abashed. Hailey was singing back-up despite having told her brothers: no more.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

The birthday banner embarrassed Brian until the video caused him much more searing embarrassment. While the band played, Alison Rivera showed a video of Trevor on three huge screens: Trevor performing; Trevor backstage; Trevor changing his shirt.

At the bar farthest from the stage, Brian drank bourbon to quiet his mind, which was haranguing him to “Big up!”

His embarrassment wasn’t just stupid; it was shameful. Nonetheless, the birthday party for Trevor so unsettled Brian that his skin stung, as if he’d been smacked. Stiff-necked fool, his mind spewed in indignation. What kind of idiot are you? Go ahead and blush. Brian’s mind accepted that. But all this internal cringing? Where was Brian’s pride?

Pride being the problem. Brian’s false pride; his decency confused with controlling…what no one controlled. Brian drank shots of whiskey barely aware of drinking, and paying. He didn’t realize he alternated between looking at the floor and the video.

The larger-than-life close-ups of Trevor’s sly, seductive grin, his braids flying as he danced on stage, his hands opening and closing as strobe lights jittered in and out of them blocked Brian’s senses. Time and action didn’t affect him. The embarrassment never let up.

Not until Hailey blurred in and out of his focus. “Looks like I’m driving,” she said.

And another massive heap of shame slammed on top of Brian’s heart. He was almost too drunk to haul the amps outside. He sank into a back seat and deeper into misery.

Hailey led him to their cabin. Brian wasn’t certain whether he said out loud that he was fine; she didn’t need to steady him.

Even in his sleep or what passed for that night’s sleep, his mind berated him. Vaguely, he heard Hailey saying (unless he dreamed it), “If this is the worst thing you ever do, we should make you the saint. Not Trevor.”

In the morning Brian’s phone rang the second he stood up. Hailey handed him a cup of coffee and he turned to the window so she wouldn’t see his face.

“Sure, if you want to wait at the airport awhile. No, I’ll come right away. It’s just, aren’t there taxis, Trevor? All right. I wanna talk to you, too.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Soul Shakedown Party

Thursday evening, Vivi phones from Miami. She’s doing a workshop at the Essential Retreat. Don Rufus is locked up at home. Her sister’s staying with their kids.

When I tell her I'm half-way there—I have plenty of money now—she says, “Wait, Trevor. I wasn’t inviting you exactly. 'Cause, honey, you won’t even recognize me now; I’m so old.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Vivi, we’re eight months older since we were together. I turn twenty-four on Tuesday.”

She laughs. “Twenty-four, darling? I’m your mother’s age.”

“But you’re not my mother. We’ve said so before.”

“I look older than eight more months in time. You’ll see an old woman, Trevor.”

“I’ll see you at every age, Vivi. And something new: your full-up pure illumination. I see that streaming from people all the time now.”

“Not so much from me,” Vivi says. “You’ll see a sorry old lady.”

“I’ll make you happy, Vivi. You won’t be sorry with me.”

“Trevor, trust me. I’m long past physical love.”

Turns out, Vivi's wrong; she shakes inside and out with physical love. Her spirit needed waking up, that’s all.

The Essential Hotel has an enormous turquoise pool that nobody goes swimming in. People play in the icy waterfall and then lie in the hot sun. Vivi and I share one of the rooms that spiral around the pool. Instead of walls, unbleached canvas separates the rooms, each of which has a bathtub outside so you can watch the sunset. The hotel’s mind-body treatments, the chanting workshops and a steaming, multi-tiered hamam promote intense intimacy.

Vivi needs lots of reassurance, which is the opposite of her true self. Everyone respects her; Vivi’s a conduit. A few years ago I told her about rising above my boyhood unhappiness. And she immediately described a typical evening when Brian and I were kids: a little boy sitting with his mother, while the screwface father whaled on Brian. Then she taught me meditation and how to recognize blessedness and direction.

So what she says now is so wrong, such a lie, that I don’t notice at first. How can Vivi ask why I love her? And worse—do I have a fixation about old women!

“I love lots of women, you saw that in me first thing, remember?” I expect to explain this if someone has first met me. But Vivi knows everything about me. Since she’s acting so strange, I go on. “Older, younger, same age—I love to the fullment. Mostly I love women. There’s only a few grown-up girls I can only admire—no desire.”

“Only admire me then.” She rolls herself in the bed-sheet.

“I love and admire you, Vivi. X-amount of both. You know that.”

She stares out into the air and scans the horizon. “We won’t get like this again. It’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not.”

She covers her face, saying, “I’m gonna get hurt, Trevor.”

“Not now. Not while we’re here together.”

Vivi doesn’t answer. She shifts around until she’s lying face down. Her shoulders twitch up and down, and a sickening possibility slithers inside my mind. I get rid of it. Because, what a filthy lie. ’Cept it slithers back, a vicious, reptilian coil.

My Vivi would never ask, “Do I look old and ugly?”

But ever since I got here she’s asked me that every ten minutes.

So I have to ask her: “Vivi, do I embarrass you? I mean, does being seen with a skinny young white guy for your lover make you ashamed?”

“No.” She groans and I pull the pillow away from her face. “You see how bad I am, Trevor?”

“Time to wake up, Vivi! Come on.”

Tonight there’s a party. She kisses me and says, “Hush darling.”

We put on our best clothes. At the hotel restaurant, I ask for a front table so everyone will see us together.

After dinner, two sweet-faced, ready girls play deejays. I can love girls like them anytime. Tonight Vivi’s gonna dance with me till first light.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Running Away

To reach the suite at the Spa hotel, you climbed onto the hotel’s roof and followed another short stairway. Within the eight glass walls were a large bedroom, a sitting room with a huge television, a vast, mirrored bathroom, and a dressing area. From one position, you gazed up at the Blue Ridge Mountains. From another, pools of hot springs shimmered in the distance. And from the bathroom window, the vista sank to low ground from the spring running underground.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

While checking in, Brian also checked his expectations. For him, a vacation with Hailey meant sex and more sex with breaks for conversation, eating and sleeping as necessary. Whereas, she would expect to do a few other activities: Spa treatments, hiking, possibly rafting, although November was too cold for that. So maybe shopping.

Brian was still so awestruck that when he wasn’t touching her as prelude, he fought the urge to gape open-mouthed at her beauty. This obviously didn’t bother her, however. She laughed at him. Had he wanted Carla the same way?

“Not ordinarily.” Brian cleared his throat. “I mean, no. Not ever.”

Stretched on top the huge bed, Hailey giggled. “Sometimes, though. Be honest.”

“Never. Not even remotely close.” Brian whispered endearments while undressing her in an agony of tiny increments.

After sex with Hailey, Brian often fought a creeping chill, the feeling being, why was he so lucky? And, until when?

This bit of fear stoked his passion—he couldn’t deny it. So afterwards, he paid close attention to how Hailey was feeling. That afternoon he asked, “What do you want? Just for yourself, no one else.”

She wanted her college degree, maybe graduate degrees. She wanted to paint the people studying at Black Mountain. And soon, she’d like it if Brian met her mother, who was religious and didn’t approve of her living with him.

“I’m eager to meet her. So long as you tell her I’m not charming like Trevor.”

Hailey giggled. “She’s never met Trevor. Probably never heard of him.”

Brian doubted that, but didn’t say so. Hailey’s mother worked for the mayor, so she must have heard of Trevor. If only for the Police Chief’s allowing him and Angelina to sell marijuana all over the county.

Friday afternoon, evening, and into the night surpassed Brian’s every ardent hope. So that by noon on Saturday, he suggested without calculation that they go hiking or anything else Hailey liked.

They agreed on a trek through the low, green fields. Hailey wore a pink knit cap and matching scarf and mittens.

They slipped through the fields, which smelled vaguely of sulfur, and shared last night’s dreams. Hailey dreamed about leaping onto Velcro walls, wiggling free, running and leaping suspended in air. Brian hesitated but then admitted he had dreamed that Trevor sent him a postcard from Spain. Like the ones their mother used to send.

Refracted sunlight shone in sheets off the damp, green fields. Brian and Hailey looked left at a bubbling green expanse. Millions of minuscule frogs moved in the water-covered grass. Hailey scooped one up. Brian backed away.

“You wouldn’t think they’d be here in November,” Hailey said, bringing her face close to the tiny, unblinking creature.

“I don’t know,” Brian said. “The spring water’s very warm.”

He was suddenly, desperately anxious for Trevor. But that was normal. Bouts of terrible, indistinct worry seized him even when Trevor stood beside him.

They crept along the edge of the frog world. Hailey found them mysterious, inscrutable, and cute. Brian claimed his boots weren’t waterproof after all. With the sun starting to sink behind the highest mountain peak, he suggested they return to the hotel. Hailey threw an arm around him. “Of course.”

Without her saying anything, she clearly understood Brian’s need to check on Trevor. Hailey said she’d wait in their honeymoon suite while Brian phoned Angelina.

“How’d you know?” Angelina asked. Because, yes, Trevor had gone off on his own vacation to Florida.

“But why?” Brian couldn’t think. “Is Jacob or Zanz around, Angelina? Could I talk to either of them?”

“I’m telling you what they told me. Trevor’s in Miami until Wednesday. They don’t know if he’s meeting Vivi or not. But if he is, they fully agree, he’ll be fine. Vivi wouldn’t even talk to Trevor unless his adversaries were gone for a while.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

The Heathen

Angelina told Hailey that Carla was returning to run the meal service. Hailey would act polite, since Carla had apologized several times for smashing her around in the kitchen. But polite or not, she would stay alert. Not like the first time, which was a surprise attack.

Angelina said, “Relax, honey. The food isn’t your job anymore, unless you want it to be.”

Hailey needed the money, though. “Kaya and I have talked about that. You’ve paid your tuition. In fact, you worked so hard, we thought you might like a share in the restaurant, but Brian says he doesn’t think you do.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“I don’t. But I will have expenses.”

“So,” Angelina said, “we’ll find something else for you to do.”

That evening Brian asked if said she wanted to work in Kaya’s office.

“For sure to that.” Hailey jumped around the cabin and decided no more singing back-up in the band, either. She had only agreed to help her friend Jazmine, whose main ambition was singing.

But Trevor championed Jazmine now. The next morning in the dance room, empty except for mirrors along one wall, the teacher chose Hailey for the winter festival ensemble. She smiled and quietly said, “Thank you.”

For an hour she practiced the zigzag steps that would bring her into a circle with three other dancers. But all the while, Hailey hummed inside. After the class, she hurried to Brian’s, where she lay on the blue square rug, laughing, and her hands outstretched.

Brian returned from his budgets and rosters and phone conferences and she said, “Tomorrow let’s take off. I mean, let’s go somewhere else this weekend.”

“Good idea,” Brian said. “We’ve never even visited Hot Springs.” He phoned the Spa Hotel, which was booked except for the honeymoon suite.

“Definitely, yes,” Hailey said. “We’re celebrating.”

The next morning Royce, Kaya and Angelina, and Trevor waited by the car, seeing them off. Brian started the engine, which coughed a few times, and Trevor motioned for him to roll down the window. He handed Brian two spliffs from one hand. “My first crop. Which you still haven’t tried.” And three from his other hand. “Jacob’s best seller.”

Brian was considering the best way to tell his brother no thank you when Hailey reached across and grabbed the cones.

When Brian turned onto the highway, he hit a bump, pressed the accelerator and kept going.

“Do you think it’s hard being Trevor?” Hailey asked.

“I never thought of that. Because being me was always so hard. But now? Maybe it is hard being Trevor.”

“People always want his blessings. More and more the whole college sees him as enlightened. Haven’t you noticed the mass exhilaration surrounding Trevor? Last night before dinner, people were asking him to make them holy. He nodded and said one of his sayings. But it’s getting outta control. Next thing you know people will expect miracles. I guess he thinks having all the women is a plus. He loves all of them. But he goes all out, you know, giving all he’s got all the time.”

Brian looked at Hailey’s face. “Not me,” she said. “But you know what I mean.”

Eyes back on the road, Brian cupped the back of Hailey’s head. “You’re right. It must be hard. Yesterday when we were running, he streaked around a bend. When I caught up with him, he was covered with tiny green frogs. Shiny and strange, the size of your thumbnail.”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘Look at dese bad boys.’ I brushed one off his face and they jumped away, one after another, off Trevor and into the underbrush.”

“How long,” Hailey asked, “has he attracted weird stuff like that?”

“More every year. And it seems like it keeps getting weirder.”

“And what, he’s twenty-three?”

“Next week’s his birthday, twenty-four.” Saying it out loud, Brian saw why Trevor wouldn’t grow up like most people. He’d always seem young. Otherwise he’d end up either being a spiritual leader or a fraud. But if Trevor stuck with jokes and loving fun before facts, then seeing the eternal life in everything was just part of his personality. He could talk about the beginning and the end occurring together. And suppose that all existence flows from the here and now. No prophecy—just Trevor.

“No wonder you worry about him so much,” Hailey said.

No wonder.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Ride Natty Ride

Stay or go? Keep on working here and get a college degree while I’m watching over Brian who’s watching over me? Or shake out till I find what’s next? A pressure pushes me, but I’m not ready: Too many things unsettled.

For months Brian and Hailey shone like one love in my mind. Now that they’re together, I see things aren’t so easy. Twin spirits live inside of them, but they don’t know it yet. So they aren’t bringing out each other’s full light. At least I don’t see it. Confusion or maybe fear interferes. It’ll let up once Brian and Hailey finally settle down. But I’m not going to hurry away when there’s so much work. Especially my work, which only I-and-I recognize.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Every day I visit each hectic person in the Black Mountain group. So I know what’s happening with the whole heap. The family here worries ’bout my accidents. Even Royce, who ranks highest, because he’s past bitty sorrows. Royce knows I’m a mystic, even if I can’t see my own light.

Still, Royce recognizes and respects what’s happening to me, but cannot counsel me. No one can, he says. That’s the age-old test. Jacob agrees; I’m beyond twig teas or herbal concoctions, and must find my own way. Nobody can teach me to master good and evil. Unlike Brian, Royce and Jacob no longer trace me night and day ’bout Vivi.

Yesterday Royce asked if I wanted to try again helping him with the geodesic dome. “Got to get it up and stoked,” he said. “Feel how the weather’s changed?”

Today I persuaded Angelina that Royce, Earle, Zanz, Jacob, and me as bad as anyone, were suffering so that we could hardly work from the cold. We needed long underwear from Patagonia, thick sweaters, down vests, wool socks, hats, scarves, workers’ gloves, and big-bout coats. Angelina drove us to the store, which gave us a group discount, because the Arts Consortium brings them x-amount of customers. Even in desperate times, we’re holding the line. The money’s increasing.

Brian, Kaya, and Angelina say the changes in me amaze them. Amazes me, too. My long habit of meditation and ganja giving me glimmers of people’s inner direction are one thing. But this illumination everywhere? It’s fierce and astonishing.

A few weeks ago, I started waking up next to Lauren or Jazmine, Crescent or Destiny, overwhelmed by a terrifying dream about everlasting, universal powers. By comparison, my mother’s insistence that after life comes absolute death seems comforting. Asleep or not, I fall prey to premonitions that no real ending occurs. I’m certain that the fire that moves in us continues, radiating in waves of cosmic destruction and creation, infinite darkness and infinite light.

Unceasing activity terrifies me. But that’s saying little or nothing.

I-and-I don’t dare go into what I’ve seen in my dream visions because if I did, stones would hurtle from space. The ultimate truth never releases the tiniest particle.

A dream, Kaya says, although she’s read about the Lord being within all that exists, past, present, and future. Under their duvet, Kaya and Angelina cuddle with me. They stroke my hair and neck and kiss my face. I am their child; their angel.

But angels, too, represent terrifying, universal restlessness. Their supernatural faces rip the air to shreds.

“Not necessarily,” the women whisper in my ears. “Some angels, Trev, inspire people to seek their hidden, sacred natures. Some angels bring joy.”

And when fighting erupts within a community? Kaya and Angelina tell me that these angels can calm petty tempers. They cradle my head and shoulders and lull me into a late morning nap, where I see Jah blessing all things through all time. I haven’t asked and yet I know: nobody knows where Polly is or how she is. Which worries me and might worry them if I mentioned it.

(Click here to read the next episode)

What Goes Around Comes Around

When Brian turned the corner to pick up Trevor, the afternoon sun hurt his eyes. He hunched over the steering wheel, lowering his gaze. But an arc of searing white shone from the ground to the sky. Too frightened to wonder what was happening, Brian steered toward the curb and slowly pressed the brake. He turned off the ignition and the astonishing light disappeared.

In its place was Trevor, one hand cupping a sputtering flame. Joint lit, he slid inside the car. “Brian de lion.” Trevor tried to pass the sweet-smelling torch.

“Not now. I’m seeing things as it is.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Trevor tossed his head. “Not so. Trust my first crop, since Jacob’s been teaching me. Bound to keep you awake.”

“Please put it out.” Brian started the car again. “Even second-hand it’s enough to kill me. The sun blinded me back there.”

“Sun’s behind us now.” Trevor kept smoking. Not up to arguing, Brian tried to relax. One of his everyday paradoxes: if Brian was trying, he was not relaxing.

“Hear me out.” Trevor radiated intense energy. An hour ago he had Brian sympathizing with Trevor’s feelings of loss and vulnerability. Now Trevor projected unstoppable certainty.

He had talked Carla back into supervising the art college’s meal system. She’d resume attending food deliveries, providing menus, and assigning students to work-shifts.

“Hailey doesn’t want the responsibility,” Trevor said. “She isn’t interested in the café or a Black Mountain college cafeteria.”

“How do you know? Hailey hasn’t mentioned it one way or the other to me.”

“Me either,” Trevor paused for a long puff. “But I know it’s true.”

Brian’s blood rushed deep inside his ears. Trevor’s relationship with Hailey, which went back farther than Brian’s newly declared love for her, bothered him. Terrible to think that Trevor had chosen Hailey for Brian after giving her a trial run. But Brian couldn’t see his way past that. And it only made him feel worse that he had admitted his feelings to his brother once, under duress.

Trevor easily denied it at the time. Claimed Brian was suffering a big deal over nothing. Word of honor, Trevor would never go for control like that, even if it were possible.

Now he said, “Stop thinking what you’re thinking, Bri. I never talk to Hailey ’bout a ting. I can just tell what people like and such. Anyone can, using eyes.”

“If Carla comes back to do the meals, she has to promise to stay away from Hailey. And from me.”

“I promise, Brian. Carla’s embarrassed ’bout the cuss-cuss. But Kaya and Angelina will pay her massive amounts, which she can use to buy Da Big Chief’s shares of the café.”

“Let me talk to Hailey first.”

“Say what you’ve gotta say. ’Cause Carla’s arranging a delivery tomorrow. By the bly, I see sumpthin’ for you, too. A big Consortium bashment at the end of the semester. Right before Christmas. The UNC dons come to look at paintings and dances. Alec Olsen does a lecture. Kaya and Angelina run a discussion, big ribbon cutting for Royce’s geodesic dome.”

Brian laughed. “That’s pretty much my project, Trevor. I’m gonna talk to Angelina and Kaya later this week.”

He parked the car and they got out. Walking through the yard, Brian asked, “So you could see me working on it?”

“Not really.” Set in a semi-circle, the glass-walled cabins nevertheless seemed to float along the horizon. Accumulating dusk carried flecks of pink and gold. “It just came to me while I was waiting for you. The car turned onto Main Street and I knew it was going to happen. The whole audience will be easy with words and receptive to light. So I can get my message out.”

“Your message? What message, Trev?”

“You don’t know? Maybe I’ll say: ‘Begin at the end and end at the beginning.’ Or else, ‘Look inside and outside yourself. The Lord’s in plain sight.’”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Dewdrops

Wednesday afternoons Brian attended a UNC department meeting in Asheville. Week after week, even he could see how his steadiness, the result of so much struggle, helped dissipate grudges.

“It’s thanks to Trevor,” he told Hailey. “The kid who worried me past worrying shows up and wants to stay. Fine, okay. And the next thing I know? He’s performing miracles.”

Soaking in a bubble bath, Hailey said, “Give yourself credit, Brian. Trevor’s a force of nature without common sense.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“That’s true.” Brian pushed up his sleeve and reached into Hailey’s bathwater. He lifted her foot and kissed her ankle, water beading in his hair. “See you soon.”

Trevor was waiting beside the car. During Brian’s UNC meetings, Trevor went to the same WesternCiv class Brian had taught for five years.

Getting into the car, Brian said, “I can’t believe you like that class.”

“I go along with it.” Trevor grinned, an expression so fluid and fast that Brian glanced twice as if checking whether Trevor had instantly vanished and instantly returned.

“And you don’t smoke beforehand?”

“’Course not.” Trevor scanned his cell phone. He liked going to Asheville because the reception in Black Mountain was erratic.

That afternoon Brian’s meeting that afternoon ended early. Melissa Dorgan, the history professor, needed to take her little boy to the doctor.

In the campus courtyard, Brian saw Trevor, phone to his ear, mouth open. For almost a minute, Trevor stood speechless and isolated. The last time Brian had seen him so lost, they were both children. “Trev.” Brian said his name softly but Trevor startled and hid the phone inside his pocket.

“Who was on the line?”

“Cho! I thought I got through, but nobody was there.”

“Who wasn’t there, Trevor?”

“I was playing. A fake phone call.”

After their mother took off, or as Trevor would say, “died on Halloween night,” he sometimes pretended to call her. Brian overheard Trevor once, whispering, “Mommy,” into the phone.

But he hadn’t mentioned their mother in months. Not since he had admitted that in truth she had not died, but left. When Trevor was thirteen and Brian had just started college.

Turning the ignition, Brian asked, “Was your fake call to Jamaica?”

“Yah, but the number’s changed.” Brian shook his head.

“Everyone says—don’t even think about Vivi. Why can’t you listen?”

“I listen. Everybody’s right.”

After a few miles on I-40, Trevor wondered if they could stop by the Eden Café. “And see Carla.”

“Me see Carla?” Hailey’s face still had a mark from Carla slamming her into the kitchen cabinet. “Why would I want to do that?”

Trevor stared out the side window. Brian remembered when Trevor was three and walked in his sleep. In the dead of night, he used to open doors and fall down stairs, dreaming he was looking for a lost pet. They had never had any pets but Trevor would insist “my pet was crying for me.”

“I’ll drop you off at the café and drive back to campus for a while.”

Trevor patted Brian’s shoulder. “An hour, mon. Tanks.” He phoned to make sure Carla was there. “It’s been a long, long time.”

On Main Street Brian asked, “Hasn’t it been since last night? Wasn’t Carla at the Avalon?”

“We like to say it. You know.”

Brian stopped the car in front of the restaurant. Maybe Carla called a friend for real in Jamaica. “Does Carla talk to Andrew now that he’s home?”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Catch A Fire

The fall semester began well organized, thanks to Brian, and wholly concerned with spiritual awareness, thanks to Trevor.

The new students and teachers noticed Trevor immediately. As they no doubt would have, whether or not Angelina and Kaya called him an angel—and whether or not Jacob and Earl, Royce and Zanz, the Jamaicans who had agreed to brave the winter, said he was blessed.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Most mornings, Brian and Trevor ran mountain trails together. More and more now, Brian saw laser-like rays shining from behind Trevor’s shoulder blades whenever he ran ahead of him. Around each bend, through forest trees, Brian anticipated catching a glimpse of Trevor’s sacred light.

People grew excited when Trevor recognized their unique nature. Casually but without fail, he met with everyone briefly every day. He relieved anxiety. And whereas before, “everyone liked Trevor,” now everyone loved him. That is, everyone visible.

For apparently, an invisible power hated him. Flames jumped from the evening bonfire toward Trevor’s feet, and one time progressed up his leg before being extinguished. Brian suggested Trevor skip the ritual, but he couldn’t stay away from the light and heat, to say nothing of the drumming and chanting. The original Black Mountain family and Trevor’s girlfriend for the week or month formed a wall between him and the fire. Yet the highest flames shot up into the night and dropped as if targeting Trevor’s braids, which were finally long and thick enough to resemble honey-colored, herb-scented dreads.

Like everyone else attending the arts school, Trevor wanted a certified education. But he didn’t like painting or theatre, or Angelina’s bookkeeping class. What he really liked was Royce’s architecture class, where mathematics was rendered into sun-filled rooms, graceful halls, and the geodesic dome. First day of school, Trevor arrived fully up on Buckminster Fuller’s invention. But within a week, a beam had mysteriously slammed onto his neck. He stumbled over cords and dropped hammers. After a stack of solar panels toppled on his head, knocking him unconscious, just like the fallen brick and the tree branch, making it Trevor’s third concussion in three months, Royce called a meeting.

Kaya, Angelina, Brian, Zanz, and Earle listened as Royce cautioned Trevor to stay steady and keep safe. Jacob suggested that Trevor study with him for the while: herbs, botany, and Jamaican folk remedies for warding off evil.

“Can we consult Vivi?” Trevor asked. “I’ve wanted to call her, ’pon seeing people’s inner illumination.”

“Vivi!” Earle shook his head and Zanz slammed the table.How long have you had her in mind?” Earle asked. “That’s why this is happening. Don Rufus must be vexed.”

Couldn’t Trevor see he had no right to think of Vivi? Zanz said, “You’ve gone crazy, mon.”

“Ya ,” Trevor said, “true.”

So, no more architecture; no more thought of Vivi. Jacob taught Trevor how to cultivate the various strains of ganja; what growing methods worked best with which seeds. Jacob had developed three varieties: one stimulating the imagination. Another was intended to heighten the beauty of sights and sounds. The third encouraged a dreamlike languor.

Meanwhile, the sense that Trevor was sacred, that he saw each person’s true spirit, bound the Arts Consortium into a giddy, sometimes euphoric, community. Everyone loved the jesting visionary who fronted the ragga band, Awake! But even as he uplifted each of them, they realized hell-fire nipped at Trevor’s heels.

Kaya and Angelina grew more intimate with their angel, the son neither had ever had. Saturday mornings, Trevor knocked on their bedroom door and slipped inside, holding a cup of coffee in each hand. Handing over the mugs, he pulled off his shoes and from the foot of the bed wiggled into the middle, squeezing between them. Whereupon Kaya and Angelina shifted, pulling him fully clothed under the covers where they lay naked.

(Click here to read the next episode)

Positive Vibration

The second session of the Black Mountain Arts Consortium began with excitement and new confidence. Five students had enrolled for the year and the others had requested a spot for next summer’s session. Brian had geared the program toward a two year MFA. The students new to college, currently Lauren Clay, Crescent Rheingold, Hailey—and Trevor—could earn a four year degree by taking two years of “core courses” at UNC.

Royce has agreed to stay through next summer, possibly longer. Angelina had offered him two contracts, one for building the geodesic dome that would house classes during the winter. And another to oversee construction of a vast classroom building.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Now that Professor Kaya was living with Angelina, they and Brian started the day reviewing the dynamics between a permanent curriculum and artistic license. The women liked it when Trevor joined these meetings, even if he proved a distraction.

Kaya and Angelina no longer implied that Trevor was some kind of angel. They said so out right. He had always made them feel happy and free, but lately a different intensity radiated from him, as if sparks flew from his fingertips.

At one meeting without Trevor, Kaya admitted she felt half-hypnotized in his presence. Angelina denied that Trevor troubled her exactly. But the increasing frequency of freak accidents bedeviling him worried her: electrical circuits snapped when he passed; heavy branches tore loose from trees; birds attacked him; his nose bled copious amounts for no reason.

Brian said that although these incidents were weird, Jacob had seen much stranger patterns working on folks.

Angelina was still selling Jacob’s incredible ganja at more than double the price she started. Police Chief Everett Clay stopped by supposedly to warn her but wasted no time in walking along the trails with her. The two of them holding hands. It was on one such walk he told Angelina he loved and hated Trevor. “You know, baby? I can’t stand the fool. And I sure as heck don’t trust him with Lauren. But the tricky kid always puts me in such a good mood, I fall off track and before long, I hear myself agreeing with him. Not a negative vibe inside him. So baby, would you please just promise me you’ll watch out for my little girl?”

Angelina didn’t make promises in general. Her high-school sweetheart should know that.

But he shouldn’t worry about Lauren. She was smart and if anything Trevor would encourage her to grow smarter. The one person whose spirits Trevor did not uplift was Brian. His love for his brother was too heavy. If Trevor suffered, Brian suffered more. Brian’s feelings and fate weren’t as important. It had always been that way.

He took some satisfaction in his own success—he had just earned a PhD—but much more pleasure followed from Trevor’s achievements. Such as: Trevor’s certainty on stage, playing guitar and singing, which Leon adjusted through a computer; though the effect didn’t change Trevor’s possession. By nature, Trevor outshone the spotlight. He rose up before the dance crowd, larger than life.

But Brian worried the day was bound to come when Trevor’s charm wore thin. And nothing Brian said or did would help.

Brian loved both Trevor and Hailey to terrible excess, if not in the same way. He hated being separated from Hailey. Any time he wasn’t touching her skin, listening to her voice, gazing into her astonishing eyes; any time he wasn’t lost inside her beauty, plumbing her endless contentment, he ached. He desired her and marveled at her and would do anything to please her. Anything to stay beside her. When he walked through the front door and saw her empty sandals imprinted with her toes and heels, a scandalous tenderness welled in his eyes. Making love to her, he gasped in awe as all existence became apparent.

Eventually, of course, both Trevor and Hailey would leave him. He knew that. One way or another, their time would end.

 
(Click here to read the next episode)    

Soul Rebel

Everyone’s still troubled about the big cuss-cuss this weekend: Carla and Hailey’s cat fight over Brian in the kitchen; Kaya and Angelina linking up again, shutting out crazy Polly. And the Police Chief learning his daughter was enrolled at the arts college, instead of the regular university, where he pictured her doing freshman orientation. Putting away that she’s staying with me—in me cabin.

Angelina didn’t see me with Lauren, since she was holed up with Kaya from last Chewsday when they left the Avalon together. I must have talked about Lauren, though, because Angelina had told me to keep away from her. Saying Lauren’s too young.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

But that’s not true. If it were, I’d have seen it first thing. Don’t remember the first time I saw Lauren, but if Angelina was laying down the law, I knew the girl enough to be interested. Anyway, while Angelina and Kaya were whooping it up at Kaya’s place, our band Awake was backstage, between sets. I set down my guitar and turned around. And Lauren was standing right in front of me. And you know what I saw? A woman full up with radiance. That was the beginning.

Before I only saw direction, or the paths people were seeking. Now I see the light inside most people. Now I see the beginning whenever I close my eyes. I see one fire burning night and day.

Police Chief Clay got caught off guard. He didn’t know his daughter wasn’t in a UNC dormitory. But Lauren didn’t hide anything. Friday she drove home and told him she had enrolled in the Arts Consortium. And he told her, no, she hadn’t. ’Pon his thinking, to the fullness, she wasn’t studying art.

So yesterday he drove to Angelina’s in a fury, because Lauren wasn’t where he thought she was. For which—the Chief blamed me.

My fault? I felt cut. Since he wasn’t kidding, I said, “You can’t lead her, Chief. She has to capture her own truth.”

He laughed, and while he enjoyed what he thought was a joke, I invited him to dinner tonight at the Eden Café. Carla says the meal’s on the house because I’ve been helping her adjust. She’s sorry she left my brother Brian and can’t believe he’s in love with Hailey. Even though he loves Hailey so much everyone sees it. They are like twins, Hailey and Brian. They share the same spirit. Carla’s light has a lower frequency. Which might be why I can see it so easily—it’s never so bright I need to look away.

Today I helped Carla move into an apartment not far from the café. And I consoled her. I’m waiting for my dinner with da Chief and Carla’s here rapping her knuckles on the table. To mean—Da Big Bout Ya just walked in.

After he sits down, I say, “Hail, big Chief.”

“Trevor, enough of that stuff.” Carla comes up. She’s going to wait on us, special. The Chief orders beer and a burger. I tell Carla, jasmine risotto in honor of our friend Jazmine. For something to say, before we get down to it, I tell the Chief that Carla now owns a quarter share of the restaurant.

He doesn’t believe it. Turns out he and Angelina and his wife and her brother have always owned it.

“Angelina made a deal with Carla, though. She owns Angelina’s share.”

The Chief gets up to ask Carla. She has plenty of staff working tonight and sits down to confirm it. Crescent Rheingold, who’s signed up for a full first year at the arts college, brings us the food and drink. Carla sips iced tea.

She and the Chief shake hands now that they’re partners. Carla says she’ll leave us alone so we can talk.

The Chief says, “Why don’t you stay? No reason for secrets. Okay, Trevor?”

“ ’Course.” The Chief has decided he doesn’t mind Lauren going to art college. “Because if Angelina’s behind it, it must be for real.”

What troubles him is Lauren following me. “Quite frankly.”

“She’s not following me, Chief. She follows the light inside her. And Lauren is filled with light.”

“Now that’s why I invited Carla to hear us talk. No riddles or sing-song, Trevor. Tell me straight.”

“He who has ears hears it…”

Carla slaps my shoulder. “Trevor, stop playing.”

“I’m not gonna hurt your daughter, Chief. I have a rule: Don’t lie and don’t do things you hate. Ask Lauren. Ask Angelina.”

“I talked to Angelina and she agreed with me.”

“Talk to her again. Right, Carla?”

“You can trust him,” Carla said. “Trevor’s a capturer. But he’s right about nobody following him. And,” she looked at me, “it’s true you don’t hurt people. More like the opposite. You show them how free they are.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Coming in from the Cold

After a few comments about the women ripping into each other, the students, teachers, and carpenters ate breakfast as if nothing were unusual. They talked about their upcoming tests and plans for when the session ended next week.

Afterwards, they passed their empty dishes to the tables’ end. And without hesitation—even as Polly keened and clawed her pale, thin arms (they’d all seen glimmers of her behaving like that)—Crescent, who with Trevor’s guidance was now a conscientious student, and Peter, who excelled at everything theoretical, carted plates into the kitchen.

Brian lingered, anxious as always about Trevor overstepping his supposedly supernatural bounds. And even more anxious about Hailey, simply because she was shielded from his sight.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

He had never suffered such love before. Brian had loved Carla as well as he could, which meant he had accepted her wishes, hid his impatience, and recognized without jealousy her attempts, great and small, to attract other men. Having grown up with no adult affection, but besieged by his younger brother’s constant, mischievous love, Brian had managed mild satisfaction with women. They enjoyed his steadiness and common decency. And they knocked themselves out, displaying affection.

And if any of them demanded more, Brian would ask: more what? We get along without tears or insults or long, grudging silences. They were lucky, Brian had thought.

Now, however, Brian couldn’t think. Hailey had beset him with insatiable desire. She had filled his heart with desperation and exaltation. So that now—it was the strangest thing—he felt bereft without her beside him. Even a few hours hurt.

Go with it; revel in it, because extremes exist briefly. Even the wildest passions pass. Wasn’t that the conventional wisdom?

Brian wished he could block out Trevor’s role—the whole thing being so irrational. Except no way around it, Trevor had planned this. He had chosen and tested Hailey to be Brian’s “one love.”

The idea might infuriate him—such brazen presumption—except here Brian was, waiting by the picnic table for Hailey to finish cleaning the kitchen. After breakfast, Hailey attended a painting class before going to work at the café. Meanwhile Brian should be designing final exams.

And then—wait: something bad. Hailey was running from the backdoor, holding an ice mitt to her cheek. She was silent, her eyes lit not with glee but pain. In his arms she shuddered and cried. He pulled the envelope of packed ice from her cheek.

Not far from her ear, a cabinet handle had gouged a deep cut. That part of her face was swelling and bruising.

Brian could scarcely believe it. Carla did that? Carla doesn’t care that much. Not about Brian; he knew that.

“Either you’re wrong about that,” Hailey said, “or there’s some other problem that she’s decided to call Hailey-stole-Brian-from-me.”

“I’ll talk to her. Physical violence? It’s insane.”

Hailey leaned into Brian as they approached his cabin. “Don’t talk to her, Brian. Everything’s settled. Angelina and Trevor mediated.”

They sat on the back porch and as Brian dabbed arnica oil on her wound, she explained the new agreement: Hailey, Carla, Trevor and Angelina had convened in the main office. Trevor sat beside Carla. Without saying anything explicit, though Hailey suspected he mumbled chants, Trevor convinced Carla to work in the café from now on. Angelina had pointed out that Carla owned a share of the café now. Didn’t she want to look after it personally?

“All right,” Carla had said. “Where am I supposed to live? Asheville?”  In response, Trevor had stroked her arm. He laid his head on Carla’s shoulder.

Angelina said, “You can live here, Carla, providing you keep your distance from Brian and Hailey.”

She scoffed at that. “Don’t worry.”

“And,” Hailey said, “I’m in charge of all Consortium meals from now on.” Brian started to object, but Hailey preferred it. The money was easier.

Carla had continued sulking until Trevor picked up her hand and stroked each finger. Hailey had seen an almost invisible white light run like a current between their hands.

“Fine,” Carla said, “I’ll find a place in town.”

Trevor reminded Carla that “Awake” was playing tonight and tomorrow. He wanted her there, both shows. “Made her promise.”

“But that’s only one step,” Hailey told Brian. “There’s still the trouble with Polly. And Chief Clay’s daughter. About that, Angelina’s really mad at Trevor; she told him not to get involved. The Chief and Lauren got away fast, but not before Trevor talked ‘da big boss one’ into letting Trevor take him to dinner at the café tonight. Before the new Monday night Avalon gig.”

(Click here to read the next episode)

Run for Cover

By Monday morning Kaya had moved into Angelina’s cabin. She’d arranged her wardrobe in the master bedroom’s closet and filled a spacious, mirrored medicine cabinet with personal items.

Alec Olsen, the literature professor Kaya was leaving, had already rearranged the Asheville condo, half of which he would slowly buy from Kaya without interest. The two women and Alec remained friendly, adjusting to the rearrangement without rancor. No one accused the other. In fact, Alec arrived at the Consortium same as always before breakfast to discuss poetry and rhythm and symbolism with Earle.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Not so between Carla and Hailey, who cooked most Consortium meals together. Arguing over Brian, they turned vicious. Carla had not realized how much she loved Brian until Hailey had “stolen” him from her. Her fling with Marc Swift was just that. If she had balked at Swift’s public exploits with Irene, it meant nothing. Carla had loved Brian for years. Everybody saw that. So why was Hailey stealing Carla’s man?

“After one weekend with Brian, you think you belong to him, Hailey?” Well, Carla had belonged to Brian for two full years. Don’t talk to her about a fucking weekend—a weekend meant nothing.

Hailey raged right back in Carla’s face. Hadn’t Carla run off with Marc without so much as saying good-bye to Brian? And when Marc had dragged in Irene? “Carla, the way I heard it you ran straight to Trevor, begging him to heal your hurt pride. Brian never entered your mind.”

That did it. Hailey was blaming Carla for all this trashy stuff and spooning pancake batter into two spitting hot pans. It was just too much—Carla shoved Hailey, her best waitress and the Consortium’s second cook, into the stove. Hailey turned around and slapped Carla. And Carla slammed Hailey’s head into the cabinet. Angelina, hearing them, ran into the kitchen and yanked them apart. Then Trevor appeared, Lauren Clay beside him. “Just a minute,” he told Lauren, and led Carla upstairs, saying, “Don’t worry.”

Angelina checked Hailey’s face. “You might bruise,” she said. “Do you want to ice it?” She handed Hailey an ice pack and told her to find Brian and relax. “Kaya and I will fix breakfast today.” The carpenters, students, and teachers were lined up on the porch, gossiping, speculating, but picking up their plates nonetheless. Kaya was setting out bowls of cut fruit.

An engine revved as if in overdrive. Polly had procured a jeep, her sister’s it turned out, and unused to a shift stick bucked across the lawn so that the four-wheel drive vehicle smashed into Angelina’s cabin. The jeep stopped dead against the wooden fortress. Unharmed, Polly leaped out, her hands poised like talons as she screamed, “Rat, rat, rat!” She grabbed Kaya’s arm and pulled her hair. Kaya pushed Polly away and they stumbled, falling to the floor. With hungry people waiting, Angelina said, “Take it outside.”

But Polly’s fury had already flipped into shaking and sobbing. So that Kaya, Polly’s dread rival, carried the pale, fragile, and stark crazy Polly outside. Deposited on a bench, Polly threatened to kill herself. Kaya called a doctor.

After Angelina set six bottles of syrup on the picnic tables, she tried to hold Polly and explain. But Polly scratched Angelina’s face with both hands.

Inside, putting Neosporin on the deep scratches, Angelina wondered if Trevor had ever soothed Polly. Of course, it had been some time since Polly was this angry. But it stood to reason that even Trevor could cast only the flimsiest peace Polly’s way. For one thing, Trevor’s sexual persona, which was potent enough to engage Angelina’s die-hard lesbian identity, would not move the naïve, asexual Polly. Then, too, when Polly sank this low, nothing could capture her attention. She screamed inside an impenetrable box.

Waiting near the parking lot, Kaya told Angelina, “All along, I’ve thought Dr. Babson might be best for her.”

A car approached as Polly broadcast that she ripped her arms open. Angelina looked and they were bleeding but not profusely. Thank the Lord, help was at hand.

Except it wasn’t—yet. Polly banged her head on the ground and rolled in the dirt, making that “Caw” sound. And the help was Chief Everett Clay, who stormed from his car, without noticing Polly. Instead he was shouting: “What have you done with Lauren?”

Angelina almost laughed, but caught the scent of indignation just in time. “We haven’t ‘done’ anything with her, Everett. She’s inside, helping with breakfast. I’ll go get her.”

Wait. First he wanted a word with Angelina. And Kaya. And then words—make that more than words—with that demon Trevor.

“That’s fine,” Angelina said. She held his hand and led him away from the breakfast scene, away from Polly’s raving toward the open field. “Lauren rearranged her schedule, Ev, that’s all. She did it without consulting Kaya or me but then we weren’t available at the time.” Was he? Had he discussed it with her?

Everett yanked his hand free from Angelina’s. “None of your wiles, baby.”

Lauren had told Everett she was switching to the Arts Consortium. And he had told her, no, she wasn’t. For the first time in her life, his daughter had defied him, thanks, Everett was convinced, to Trevor’s influence.

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Do It Twice

Late Thursday afternoon, Brian returned to his cabin. Hailey had said she would “come soon,” not—soon come—like the Jamaicans, which might mean minutes, hours or even days. Hailey wasn’t Jamaican, although she spoke the patois well.

Her parents had moved from Haiti to Florida before she was born, when her brothers were babies. Leon had started UNC with a basketball scholarship, and Marvin and Hailey joined him in Asheville.

Ever since the day Trevor had brought Hailey home, Brian had desired her, even ached for her, whether secretly or not. Her mouth and eyes and perfect, tiny ears played all through his system. He took in—or drank as if quenching a lifelong thirst—how her short cropped hair accentuated her stem-like neck. And, how the same dark short curls crowned her regal forehead, cheekbones, and forehead.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

For all his usual caution, in his mind, Brian  had never attempted to resist Hailey, because it couldn’t be done. For example, when Trevor introduced them: Hailey’s two fingers had passed across Brian’s palm, a sensation that haunted him even when he wasn’t actively remembering it.

More disorienting yet was the memory of Trevor throwing his arm around Brian while they simultaneously watched Hailey walk to the small cabin, leaving them to discuss Trevor’s nonexistent driver’s license. Hailey’s tread had matched Brian’s heartbeat.

By now he had shaved and showered. “I’ll come soon,” she had said. Should he change the sheets? Well, certainly. He should have done that first. And why not vacuum, except that she still wasn’t here and Brian worried: what if she didn’t come? What if she had said, “let’s meet at your place,” as an excuse to get away. Instead of vacuuming, Brian switched on a stream of ambient music, and smoked Jacob’s newest offering in one of Trevor’s little pipes.

Hailey wouldn’t lie. Brian smoked a little more, convinced she would arrive soon. She would not say she was coming otherwise.

He was making lemonade, fresh, when his cell rang.

“Were you starting to worry?” Hailey asked. “I’m bringing dinner for us.”

Two minutes or two years later—and there Hailey was, glorious in the doorway, carrying two big shopping bags of prepared food. He held still and kept quiet as she put the shopping bags in the kitchen. He felt stretched and unstable, the entire organ of his skin enlarged at the sight of her. Without looking, he experienced an awareness of her bending over to set the bags on the floor. And then, finally, all luster and promise, she approached with that second kiss she had promised, the one he had expected hours ago in the sun-flooded field.

The kiss was enough for them to undress each other. Brian marveled over Hailey as if he’d never seen a woman naked before. Hailey radiated an almost metallic brilliance that was warm and sweet and wonderfully pliable. She was firm and soft, long and round, yielding and unyielding. He sank to his knees and drank her in until she begged to lie down.

They moved together under the clean, white sheet. And just as he had imagined only hours ago that touching her bare shoulder offered him all he would ever want until he blinked and felt certain he would die if he could not right then and there hold her bare breasts—he relished every moment as if forever. And every hesitation as immanent glory. She caressed and cupped and kissed him, filling him with more pleasure than a hundred lives might hold.

When they finally lay exhausted in bed, he laughed out loud. She studied every bit of his body, his eyes and mouth and everywhere else before rolling into his chest. He stroked her neck and upper back and soon lifted her on top of him again for more.

When they rested, they shared a distinct dream where they talked on phones in the dark. Hailey in the dream said, “What if…” And Brian answered, “Well, then…” Hailey wondered, “What next?” and Brian said, “Whatever you want—just tell me.”

When they rinsed off in the shower, Brian discovered he could carry her. He could hold her up with her legs wrapped around him and still keep his balance if he wedged into the shower’s corner.

After midnight, Hailey heated the soup and corn bread. They drank milk, noticing that the ambient music still streamed from the speakers. Neither could say if the song had changed. Neither saw a reason to turn it off.

For dessert Hailey had brought two little chocolates, one caramel, one mocha. They fed each other tiny bites and finished their milk. They smoked two little bowls of Jacob’s weed and made love past dawn. Past the sound of people in the main yard eating breakfast, past everyone busy with Friday’s work.

Hailey phoned the café. Luckily Lauren answered, not Carla, who rarely showed up until closing. Lauren agreed to take Hailey’s shift, glad for the chance at managing. Lauren, Hailey told Brian, was Trevor’s newest girlfriend. The police chief’s daughter. Wasn’t that the Trevor “to the fullness?”

Brian phoned Kaya; ordinarily he would have met with her already and be working on his dissertation’s final details. But Kaya’s phone sent him straight to voice mail, where he left this message: if she didn’t mind, he was taking the day off.

Not until Sunday night’s bonfire did Brian and Hailey emerge from the cabin. During dinner, apparently, Kaya and Angelina had declared their renewed love for each other. Polly had run off screaming, flapping her arms and cawing like a mad bird. But poor Alec, upon learning he had lost his lover to Angelina, had only shaken his head.

Hours later, Alec improvised an angry new poem while Earle supplied a chorus and played his drums.

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Satisfy My Soul

Brian stood up and Hailey followed him, dusting dry grass off her short skirt and thighs and knees. She and Brian and Marc Swift walked into the shade of a towering pine tree. Marc owed Brian an explanation. “I’m sorry. I totally forgot about Carla that day. It was a terrible misunderstanding.”

Marc had videotaped Irene rolling a spliff, wondering if some chemical in Jacob’s ganja, like whatever gave the resin that indigo hue, also produced that mild euphoria at such a steady, long-lasting level. Irene smoked and Marc smoked and he had his recorders running on two tripods. He held a third video camera and came in close when Irene grinned. “No dry mouth or irritated eyes. Just a calm rallying of yourself inside.”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“That’s what she said,” Marc said, shaking his head. “She did a perfect testimonial.”

Hailey had slipped under Brian’s arm or maybe he had unconsciously drawn her in for support. He had dreaded this conversation, because his job required him to take Carla’s side. And his loyalty to Carla along with his remaining affection riled his indignation. He was afraid of losing his cool with Marc. After all, by now, midway through the summer, practically everyone was hopping from bed to bed.

Just not in front of each other. That’s what Brian expected Marc to realize. That he should have talked to Carla first, and not set her up like that.

But Brian wasn’t saying anything, because he was so absorbed with Hailey standing beside him. So aware of her smooth body, its form and heat and flowery, buttery scent. He could spend all day holding her like this, his fingers reading her bare and wonderful shoulder like Braille, learning more than he would have thought possible to know.

Marc’s sandal kicked the grass. “So Irene and I got really high. I shut off the cameras and we, you know, got interested. I had forgotten about Carla. Irene didn’t know anything about it. Not really. And of course, nothing like this will happen again. I promise. But should I talk to Carla? When she moved out of your place and into mine so fast, I got the idea everything was casual.”

Brian wished Hailey hadn’t heard about Carla moving in and out. No one was innocent.

“Try talking to her,” Brian said, eager to touch more than Hailey’s shoulder; his interest in what her shoulder had to teach him was spreading fast throughout his body. He wanted to know her entire self, inside and out and right now. His mind raced, anticipating her mind and her lovely, lively body so smooth and sweet and close to him. Facing Mark, however, he managed with effort to find a suitable phrase. “Talk to Carla and hear what she has to say.”

“You think she’ll come back and stay with me? Irene was one time only.”

“There’s two weeks left,” Brian said.

“Will you take a look at the work the students and I have done? Because I was hoping to stay on another semester, at least.”

Brian said, “Angelina and Kaya will review your situation, too. That’s not today’s business.”

Marc turned and disappeared onto the narrow path.

Brian scooped Hailey up and brushed his lips over hers. Like a test: the second kiss would be for real. She took his hand and let that second kiss go for now. Soon, though, she squeezed his hand, so he knew that second, serious kiss could come —soon. And so he wasn’t fully disappointed when she led him back to where they had been lying in the grass.

She sat with her legs crossed and tugged his sleeve so he would sit beside her. “Isn’t it strange the way different lovers are, and how they affect you? Your brother’s secret is that he gives you all you want. If it happens a second, third, or more times that’s a happy development; he’s a fine man. But you don’t ache for him. You don’t pine. But then there are others, the crucial lovers, the ones you can never get enough of.”

Brian said nothing. He figured that was Trevor’s secret. He satisfied his girlfriends, maybe not once and for all, but thoroughly enough so that not one had ever begged him for more. Nobody ever clung to him.

Whereas, with Hailey, Brian knew, satisfied, satiated over the top, he would always want more. Already he felt he could never get enough of her.

She dropped her head in his lap and looked up at him. “And then there’s one particular lover you’re gonna want forever.” She looked embarrassed, backed up, and leaped away. Brian did as she did and held his breath, expecting that second kiss. She even leaned toward him but pulled back.

“With you,” she said. “I know already I would want you forever, whether it worked out that way or not.”

“We’ll never know unless we try. Come with me.”

“Soon,” Hailey smiled. “Go to your cabin and I’ll meet you there.”

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