Scriptor Press - The ElectroLounge

“Are you?”
“More & more.”
“Good.”
I wrap the purple blanket around us again. My hands rest on Rebecca’s soft flat
stomach. I imagine the unimaginable . . .
“Rich.”
“I’m here. You’re OK.”
“I was dreaming of all this. I saw you coming.”
“I know. It wasn’t like last time.”
“But you still came for me. You’re here.”
“Rebecca was here too.”
“Oh.”
Franny sits up in her bed of rubble. Rich moves closer to cuddle her. She smiles.
“I don’t know where it’s going now. I don’t think Soulard knows anymore either.”
“Good.”
“You trust him that much?”
“He trusts us that much, Rich. He’s one of us now. As much as he can be.”
“They’ll be home soon,” Mr. Bob announces as he turns from the TV to regard the
half-filled bar of unhappy-looking drinkers.
“Can we watch them bomb Belgrade now?” asks one hopeful face.
“No.” Loud groan. “But drinks are on the house til they all get back.” Mild cheer.
Mr. Bob is happy. His tribe is coming back to him. He doesn’t care how strange the
events he’s watched. Acid or no acid, they’re coming home soon .
“I want us to get married when we get home.”
“Married? Home?”
“It’s our time, Franny. There’s a lot to do.”
“Are you sure? I’m alive, Rich. I’m going to come with you. But you don’t have to
marry me right now.”
“No. I do. I love you. That’s all this was for. Maybe it wasn’t necessary. I don’t
know.”
“But you do know you want to marry me.”
“Franny, it’s time. We’ve passed doubt & we’ve passed courtship. We marry or we
break.”
Purple eyes, she, brittle, ready, scared, because happy, because ecstatic, because this
moment is passage to infinite others, because yes feels good, because yes is right.
“Yes.”
Richard James Americus arriving home. In this fractured underworld, in the embrace
of a 23-year-old Georgia girl, home. A girl born seven years after his brother died.
Rich carries Franny from the bed of rubble where she had dreamed she was dead &
her truelove was looking for her, awoke when he found her, now returning to where she has
been before, to marry the man she has already married, marry him again, but now the whole
story told, now to return to the already-lived future & stay there. And so.
Right now skinless in the vastless night. A redfaced drunk with a gapeholed yawn, a
mumbling face, challenging & fearing, the doubled-up slouch of someone no longer expecting
kindness. Eyes cast down on a train, white scarf snug to protect a waiter’s neck, readers of
19
The Cenacle / 54 / April 2005