She tried an old trick. Refine it all down to a single sentence: the sentence that the suffering protagonist screams (even if only inside) at the moment that the point enters the belly. Then throw out everything that doesn’t lead inexorably to that scream. Okay, what was Donny Handsome’s scream?
My beloved, how can you want to go where I cannot follow?
In the instant of that crystallization, Rhea knew what the story was really about… and knew that she could not write it. No matter how she disguised it dramatically. Not yet. And maybe never.
She told the story idea to get lost. Until she knew what its ending was.
She went to the window—missing the sudden chill that used to come from December windows when she was a little girl—and pulled aside the ancient curtain to look out at the night. And was rewarded. In the distance, above the shadowy housetops of P-Town, the silhouette of the Pilgrim Monument showed clearly against the night sky, an eighty-five-meter tower of grey granite—and poised beside it, midway up its length, seeming to be only meters from its crenulated stone windows, was a brilliant crescent moon. The juxtaposition was weirdly beautiful, quintessential Provincetown magic. Rhea became conscious of her breath. It swept her mind clear—of the captive story idea and her ongoing concerns and the day’s cares and her self. She watched without thought for a timeless time, long enough for the moon to climb perceptibly higher up the Monument.
She became aware of herself then, and let the curtain fall closed. She felt a sudden close connection with the child she had once been in this room, in this house, in this town. More than that, deeper than that—a connection with the family that had raised her here, and with their forebears, fishermen and fishermen’s wives, back seven or eight generations to old Frank Henrique Paixao, who had gone over the side of a Portuguese whaler in a two-man dory off Newfoundland one cold day in 1904. He and his partner Louis Tomaz had successfully gotten themselves lost in the fog, miraculously survived to reach Glace Bay in Cape Breton, landed there without formalities or paperwork, and somehow made their way overland across the border and down the coast to Massachusetts, eventually fetching up in P-Town. The cod fishing there was as good as they had heard. After five years or so, both men had sent for their families back in Portugal, and settled down to founding dynasties in the New World—just as the Pilgrim Monument was being raised.
Rhea felt that Frank’s wife Marion must have seen the Monument and moon looking just like this more than once, and could not help listening for the echo of her ancestor’s thoughts. She heard only the sighing of night winds outside.
She sighed in accompaniment, went to the mirror and ran a brush through her hair. She was ready to join Rand in bed. A month he’d been home already, and she was just getting used to having him around again. Every home should have a husband. She shut off the light with a wall switch and left the bathroom, walked down the short hallway to the bedroom. In her mind’s eye she was still seeing the slow dance of Monument and moon in the crisp cold starlight as she opened the bedroom door and stepped into the New Mexico desert at high noon.
Rhea was so startled she closed the door by backing into it. The sudden sense of distance, of vast expanse, was as staggering as the sudden brightness. The horizon was unimaginably far away; she saw a distant dark smudge, bleeding purple from beneath onto the ground below, and realized it was a thunderstorm large enough to drench a county. Between her and the horizon were endless miles of painted desert, broken occasionally by foothills and jagged rock outcroppings; close at hand were scrub hills and cacti and a dry wash. Right before her was an oasis, a natural watering hole. Beside it was an old-fashioned wooden bedframe with a curved solid oak headboard and a thick mattress. On the bed reclined one of Rhea’s favorite holostars, dressed only in black silk briefs. He was nearly two meters tall, as dark as her, and glistening with perspiration or oil. He was holding out a canteen toward her, smiling invitingly.
She discovered she was thirsty. Hot in this desert. She stepped forward and accepted the canteen. The hand that offered it was warm. He was real, then. Icy cold water, sweet and pure. He looked even better up close. She handed back the canteen. He moved over to make room. She let the robe fall from her shoulders and drop to the sand. His eyes went up and down her slowly, as she took off the nightgown and dropped that too. She stepped out of her slippers; the sand felt strangely furry. She spun around once, taking in the vast silent desert that receded into infinity in all directions, and leaped into the bed. That started it bouncing, and it did not stop for some time.
She nearly drifted into sleep afterward, the desert sun warm on her back and buttocks and legs. But an inner voice caused her to rouse herself and nudge her celebrity companion. Might as well get it over with. “That was really wonderful, darling,” she said sleepily. “All of it. But really—purple rain?”
His famous features melted and ran, becoming the familiar face of her husband. His hair lightened to red and his complexion to fair. “No, honest—I’ve seen it, outside of Santa Fe. Near the pueblos. Just that color. I’ve wanted to show it to you.” Rand reached out a lazy arm, did something complicated to nothing at all in mid-air, and the desert sun diminished sharply in brightness without leaving the center of the sky. The effect was of a partial eclipse: twilight with the shadows in the wrong places. Power of suggestion made the temperature seem to drop, or perhaps he had dialed that, too; they slid under the covers together.
“I’m glad you did,” she said, snuggling. “It’s lovely.” She looked around at the dusky desert, noting small excellences of detail. An eagle to the east, gliding majestically. Intricate cactus flowers, no two quite alike. Ripples on the surface of the water in the oasis, seeming to be wind-driven. Microfilaments of lightning, convincingly random, flickering in that distant purple rain. “This is the best one yet. Is the music this far along too?”
He shook his head. “Just some ideas, so far. But having the basic visual will help.”
“I’m sure it will. It was a beautiful gift, really. The set and the sex. Thank you.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you liked it.”
“Very much. So… what’s the catch?”
“Catch?” he asked innocently.
The reason she knew there was a catch was because it was not possible for her husband to conceal something important from her, not while making love. But she could not let him know that, so she made up a logic-chain. “It’s not our anniversary. It’s not my birthday. I don’t keep score, but I don’t think I’ve been unusually nice to you lately. You’re not having an affair; you haven’t had time. It was a wonderful present and I thank you for it, and”—she grinned and poked him in the ribs—“what is it going to cost me?”
He opened his mouth as if to say something, changed his mind, and reached out into the empty air beside the bed again, typing new commands onto his invisible keyboard. The desert went away. So did everything, except the bed and themselves. All at once they were in space, surrounded by blackness and blazing stars, tumbling slowly end over end. High Orbit: the Earth swam into their field of view, huge and blue and frosted with clouds. The illusion was so powerful that Rhea felt herself clutching at the bed to keep from drifting away from it, even though she knew better. All at once the rotating universe burst into song. Rand’s fourth symphony, of course, as familiar to her as her name. He muted the sound with a gesture after a few bars, left the visual running.