#127

Centered on the northern wall of the second room, flanked by two of Sarah's lambent watercolors: Telemakhos. Aka. Joseph Lucas. At Mike's party, Christmas, 2001, where he stood host, inchoate, in his house and home. Serving drinks from the kitchen's makeshift bar, as strippers in Santa hats swivelled on the hardwood floors of the salon. For Joe a single shot, from a roll CG had given the artist. The Canadian Atlantic. The feted double-exposure. And the framed print, three years later, for sale.

Stephen glanced at it, down to the wine he was pouring into a paper cup, and up again as he lifted the cup to his mouth. The angled grid of ships. And the schoolhouse, 4th and Bainbridge, later. The inner patio, with Joe's gaint canvas: fatuous abstractions of pink and grey in oil. His own smaller canvas on the ground beside: flat; and for brushes, the leaves, the twigs and the stems of the tasteful garden. A wash of turpentine.

And another image, behind. Adrian and Blake at a barbecue in the apartment over Square's. Joe, Dozent to his work, a large painting in messy plots of color, with a snaking line of blue, and a single corner of dots shining like malformed stars. On the sofa, Stephen overhears: "And then my friend Ebony said, Oh my God, you've just painted your respone to Nine Eleven - and she was right; it was unbelievable. This squiggle is the Hudson river, and these double lines the Twin Towers, and these bursts of light are explosions, and that little mark is an 'M,' which stands for Michael, in Philadelphia, who I'm escaping the city to." Adrian's ironic eyes; Blake's squinting, disdain as depth of attention. "Ever the vaunt-courier, Joe, really-" But Joe, jubilant, continues, a mischievous gleam in his eye. "And that's not all, do you see it? Do you see it?!" He grins as the couple cock and jolt their heads in mock-effort, Blake lifting a hand to his chin. "Just wait," Joe says, and turns to stretch his arms across the canvas, rotating it clockwise, ninety degrees, and then withdrawing. "Ahhh..." Adrian hesistates, blind. "Do you see! An American flag!" The white stars now clumped in the upper-lefthand corner, the squiggles translated into vague horizontal lines. An American flag. Badly rendered, and stamped towards the bottom with an "M." Art in the hands of a jackanape.

"Si jeunesse savait." Square, from across the room, bottled water in his hand. A portrait. $300. Not too dear. But in what edition? "Tik-talk has it, our Adonis's looks have aspired." A sip as Square approaches. One of his fingers tracing the edge of the frame. "S'true. I feel bad for him. Doesn't have the faintest, really." Downcast innocence. How long can one persist in green? "Yes. The syn's supposed to travaille mit Mentor, not redicorate his breadroom." That's right - he is no Telemakhos. Must have been Adrian titled it that. His fingerprint all over the show. But there was Stephen's nature-painting too, hanging on the wall in Arthur's office. And there was food and wine and visitors he had greeted from within the gutted schoolhouse. Was he then, in their eyes too, a failed Peisistratus? He was young then, raw and buoyant in the city's current. "Tell him a kiss: that's the irony of the artist's shadow. Eh, Stevie?"

#126

In the ten AM light, two green towels hung as curtains close the casting of this day. Neither Stephen nor Square in the morning, neither Cory nor Alex at night. Den ganzen Tag I am museless, plodding paths from the chair to the writing desk, from the kitchen to the mirror in the bath. Repied. Retreat. The saidentery library. Yes, booked I am ready. A homegrown adagio. 11, 17, 19, 23. A dinimishing allegro. A staircase less given to asceneding. For I've screened it again and against. The tell-tale adaging process of the art. Adamah, and you see what you get.

Ash-faced a damancy. That's Benjy, christened Adam now. And the way he has of asking after, stepsing toward what's wound. Cogitency and armorie, the plunger. And of Valerie no, and of Ciara, no longer. And alone is he, unless in love. The summer darnkess, dust. From Adam's Walnut Street apartment, or mit compadre at the bar. A deep, unbalanced chortle, like a cup of marbles spilled. The high-pitched stacatto that follows. Or in the classroom, how Adam's gaze would fall! His words shrink and with "umms" become rounded, as his hands, above the table or his lap, turned upwards, cupped and lilting to the slow rhsym of his thought. Bared and insultated: aman.

But what insans we might ave been ish ee did not live in awe!

#125

Sarah's radio to Stephen: "You can go to the East to find your inner hemisphere." And so they do, one and one again. But for Stephen, who remains. The sun rises on the earth as it rises over Zoar. And the winged watches from his vantage in the clouds. There is the Schuylkill reaching past its bank. And through the woods of Saint Augustine runs Sarai.

26 chapters God has written now. And his finger in the ink for the next. As comes this grand July, I measure curtains, colored cinnamon draped calm against the office wall. I trudge through words, abusing: "geniusis" and "sinthesispect." My mother, my librarian. For the first time, for this third of nines, we will charge her with the task. Of trees and blooms and rhizomes. Winds and pests and beasts of prey. The son total of what's been made of the author's work. The carry all of sin and what's to come.