***

Strange dreams. I was a woman � not myself, but another; perhaps the dark-shrouded woman of the desert � walking on the seashore, hand-in-hand with my children. It seemed like a pack of children, grasping hands like pale sea anemones groping for minnows. And I, the woman-not-myself, was Christian's forsaken spouse, left to raise the brood alone. Saltwater pooled in my footsteps under a sky smeared with gray, darkness on the horizon. And so I marched across the tawny sand toward the blue sea, toward a cadre of old, lonely war veterans who would gladly assume the responsibility for a little affection. And Christian reappeared, with acerbic eyes, trying in a half-assed way to assert his paternal rights. He swept one young girl off her feet, and then quickly set her down on the sand. She began to keen, melding with the shrieks of gulls. A tern dived into the rippling blue.

"You've come too late," said the woman-not-I, and turned back toward the sea and the veterans. The children, not knowing their father, followed. A towheaded boy stopped to pick up a white clamshell, the strange parental interaction fading in the light of his smile. The veterans waved, silver-haired, and talked about Darius and the Persian War. And the hero slunk to the carcass of a ship, once proud, his ass digging half-moons under its rotting prow.

And either before or after, I-this-time was in a house, a rustic European-type home with Christian, a blond Irishman and some others. We sucked in silliness, half-inebriated with bad jokes and dark beer. Christian or some other tried to incite the crowd to drunken nakedness and orgies in the bushes, but the Irishman and I poured the beer down the drain of the white kitchen sink when the blue eyes behind the John Lennon frames were averted. And somehow, the Irishman or some other was Steve, and we laughed, telling ribald jokes as we laced our arms over one another's shoulders. And then we strolled down the grassy roadside toward another home, the cottage of a woman. I glanced at the rushing cards � I heard them, not dream-heard, not a phantom sound. And I realized that they were on the wrong side of the road, for we were in Ireland. An American traffic pattern, with the blond man loping at my side, I mused and laughed. So funny to think we were in Ireland, so far away. The banality of foreignness, lost in the clank of the glasses, the yellowed ring around the sink drain. The banality of beauty.

Prying my lids from the dream was tedious; they adhered to the cornea, welded by sleep grime. And as the rush of light cracked through the dark of my eyes, I expected to hear the rush of traffic on a country road, not James staggering in from his night management job, the screen door slamming behind him as Jill slammed down the toilet lid with a loud crack. But an unseen hand pushed my shoulder back to the pillow, weighting it. An unfamiliar ball knotted mid-throat, accompanied by a strange rasping cough � sudden, so sudden. A liquid-gelatin sensation slid through my arteries, while my inner ears throbbed, a sure sign of conquering germs, waving their conquistador muskets.

And as I assumed a vertical position, the light formed patterns in my eyes unconnected with the rods and cones dotting the cinema screen of my retina. Hack, hack, hack. Squashblossom fled the bed's foot, pausing before the door, eyeing me suspiciously. A viscous stream of clear mucus streamed like the Niagara from my left nostril, forcing me to swab my nose with the edge of the sheet. Cough. Damn it, it's quite unnatural to have a raging cold in the middle of summer. The sheet swabbed again. The heat rose from my skin in barely perceptible sheets, like the visual distortion from the asphalt on a hot day.

A rustle sounded outside my window, and so I peeked through the dusty blinds as Squashblossom took his usual soaring leap, sticking his head through the slats. Meow, said the slate gray bird, alighting on the rusted tomato cages. It gave me a stern look. Get back to bed, girl.

And so, with a sigh, my fingers found the rounds of the digits, and I dialed in. The secretary answered with a blunt-edged tone, a polite club. I told her who I was, and the tone immediately became enlivened. She observed that I didn't sound quite myself. Sick, I labeled myself. "I'll rest up, and try to come in tomorrow." "Take care," she offered, cursory. The lace doily of words, ornamenting something useless. I fell back onto the Everest of pillows, and pulled the light blanket over the crown of my head. Ye Gods. It's been years since I've done a working that sucked the chi from my body, Kool-Aid from a plastic curly straw. And even if you root your toes in the Mother's good brown dirt and stretch your fingertips to the sun's gold coin, the energy itself can wear you, wheel ruts in a wet road. For we, as living beings, are not concrete; we are riverbeds laced with greenery, not arching aquaducts that refuse to crumble.

Somehow, I padded into the kitchen, making tea in slow-motion. Jill watched me from the doorframe.

"You don't look good."

Hack, hack, hack. "I feel like ass. I'm staying home."

As I ripped open the bag, I felt her eyes clinically alight on my cheekbones, my lank hair. And I wondered if there was love there, more than an exchange of need, the need for shelter and greenbacks and the blood-tie that supplies these. And I thought of asking about her marriage, her son, her prospects, but the words stalled on my cracked lips. And perhaps it was selfish, but I couldn't bring myself to break through the existential self-misery of phlegm walls and failing love affairs and the flushing drain of work to reach into her grief, her ecstasy, her self. I could never reach into Jill, grab her wrist and dive into the maelstrom of thoughts, the mud slide of her feelings. And she never could with me.

Instead, we gaze peripherally, seeing not the collection of pumping muscle and threading veins, but the child in pleats, the teen kicking the curb and slipping off into Night's wild black arms with a filched bottle of Jack Daniels. And she? What did her rods and cones whip up? An image of the spectacled geek in the ponytail, ratting out the Jack Daniels and the night's black arms and any remnant of fun to the whip-bearing steel-clawed witch-mother? Or the father whose red-faced dying face is painted with such heart-pain, such regret, that we all flinch at the prospect of memory. Of all things left undone, unsaid. Of what we could have done, said, been if she hadn't made him upset. Oh, if she hadn't.

I swallow the blame; it breaks down, phlegm in the gut. And, mostly in the summer's glare, it has been known to evaporate entirely, driven out by warmth and sunlight, only to return again with the next season of illness. When forgotten, it had never existed, a mere dream of a dragon-drawn chariot. Blood clotting, thicker than water, redder than wine.

"Get back in bed," she said finally. "I'll make you some toast."

***

The day edged into an Impressionist sunset, streaked with indigo and turquoise and orange. Huddled on the stoop, I watched the rising moon, still a slice off full, and the colors streaking beneath the unfurled fringed leaves of the oak. The sibyls heard the Gods whisper secrets to them in the leaves; I merely held the smooth plastic receiver in my hand, feeling a forboding crawl along my roughed throat and quaver on my gelatin limbs.

We sent you a dream, the leaves whispered finally, catching the last rays of light in their green. Heed it. We care, sweetness, we do. And so we sent the dream.

The breath whistled from my lips, slow and labored. Yes, I know, I murmured back to the leaves, the oak-nymph in her hard case of bark. But something draws me onward, pushing me. I cannot stop. And so my fingers depressed the digits. He answered. Noise clanged in the background, sounding vaguely like music and male voices.

"Hello, Jasmine," he said cheerily. I'm not sure why, but it always needles me when those who have more than cursory intimacy pronounce more than a monosyllable of my name. Jazz: like the music, good with coffee. He chatted about the new furniture he bought, in anticipation for a new house, but mostly for the aesthetics. Green and white striped. I told him about my hacking cough, and he recommended zinc drops. More than recommended; he bloody insisted on the zinc drops which, upon experience, taste like sheet metal. Rusted, vaguely cranberry-flavored sheet metal.

"Don't you want to get well?" he needled, still with that lilting cheer.

A slight pause. A woman laughed in the background. He said, his voice tinged with something that vaguely hinted of distaste, a mouthful of brussels sprouts, "Maybe we can get together next weekend" or somesuch; I'm not sure if he specified the weekend or not. "I'll think about it," I replied before devolving into another hacking round. He told me to stay in bed, and I replied with a "Have fun" in reference to his party, but I think he had hung up by that point.

That woman's laugh: the brittle reverberation bouncing off bathroom tile, the plastic wimpering soprano, digging the bikini from her derriere. Glaringly obvious, an amber roadside reflecting headlights. Rational self says he should have invited me to a social gathering. Of course, rational self is not jealous of neon bikinis, merely observant and incredibly, profoundly sad, and tired of being a blowup doll.

Yeah. There's always this celluloid tendency, shared by many, to go out with the galaxy-rattling Big Bang, to punch holes in the balloon of someone's self-esteem. "Yeah, you're leaving me or you've already left me in your dust, but you're a royal asshole because . . . ." But what would be the point? The assholes go on to high-paying jobs, clutching briefcases and licking the patent leather shoes of politicians. The good ones sit on the unemployment line, or they have decent workaday lives with as much human contact as David Blaine frozen in a block of ice, and suspended over Times Square. The passers-by occasionally point and pelt the block with beer cans but, having seen so many similar phenomena, they usually bustle onward, white sneakers and black dresses. In short, the American culture is run by and for complete assholes. Who but an asshole would dump perfectly good tea into Boston Harbor?

But this is frippery, the plastic laugh of justification. And I? The soundless wheat sheaf before the keen steel blade of the sickle. Even tears could not water the sere cracked ground of my psyche, as I dove into the bed, scattering the cat. The covers tented me, as my wrinkled eyelids squeezed a few long lines of saltwater down my cheeks. My heart fisted, and the ball in my throat grabbed.

***

He never hangs in the usual way, roughened noose chafing his fair neck. Instead, he dangles, sans the John Lennon frames, the vine tethering his ankle to a T-shaped arbor. Clematis climbs the crossbeam, a lopped cross. His fair hair, sunlight-spun, dangles, but oddly enough, his romantic poet shirt seems to defy gravity. Lo, the haunted shirt! His face betrays nothing: not a head rush, not the pain of being dangled by an ankle. Acrobatic, the man in tights crosses his leg, forming a yogic triangle. His leg trembles with superb effort, and the tapas, the heat of his austerity, halos his head with sweat and light.

Oh, ye acrobatic Christ. He hides his hands behind his back; perhaps they clutch the bark of the wood beam, keeping his superb balance. Suspended and surrendered, the sacrifice, Odin hanging from the tree until wisdom's alphabet is carved bloody on his tongue, and his eye snatched in the well. Wait and suffer, my haloed martyr. Never mind the ankle.

Fuck that.

Reversal: he becomes upright, pulling himself into a fold. His hand holds a knife to cut the rope and the blood rushes back down to its proper places. In a flip, he turns and lands on his feet, gymnast arms in the air, flushed with pride. The ladies-in-waiting lightly clap, admiring and secretly conspiring against one another for the right to make assignations, to take this gymnast to bed. "I'd wager he knows how to please a woman," one whispers behind her Spanish fan to another. She smiles in lipstick, plotting to dump the contents of her poison ring into that lady's vermouth. The halo disappeared with his uprightness, and he leans down to rub the sore ankle. The red tights accentuate his package. This is not lost on the ladies.

But grounded, he loses the haloed glory, the golden aura of David Blaine. Women love a Houdini, struggling out of locked straightjackets, against burning lungs and the glass sides of a water tank. And as he liberates himself, they melt, as others plan to punch him in the gut, for old times' sake. Everyone loves a Houdini; he weasels his ass out of everything. But he only wears that crown of light when he's upside-down, bound and locked in the tank, and unhinging his bones to escape.

I'm not sure if it's the same for women; in pictures, only the men are hanged. Perhaps the ladies have no audiences when they climb the trellis, rope to ankle. Unless they're doing it buck naked on Pay-Per-View.