Wild Goose (Novel Excerpt)

Michelle


	I knew John would be angry that I had come to 
the Milun Motel alone, but Nicole had agreed to drop 
me off.  I didn't drive myself because I wanted to 
make it seem like I was at home.  The Milun was 
starting to feel weird, like a lost connection or a 
misplaced letter.  In the Lais, Milun, two 
lovers hide their messages to one another beneath a 
swan's feathers.  I wondered about the origins of the 
quill.  Outside the static moonlight was hitting  
vacancies, and I was finding it difficult to believe 
in happy endings.  It hadn't been so long since John 
and I had crunched across this same motel lot to his 
taxi.  It had been just John and I looking around.  
But when we got into the car, I thought I saw Tim in 
the rear view mirror.  I wanted to adjust it as though 
it were a lens.  It seemed like Tim was just standing 
there, but I couldn't be sure.  My mind felt like it 
was being put on hold and less than whole.  When I 
looked again, it seemed like he had beat a hasty 
retreat.  He died in that vacuum, fleeing his own 
reflections, spaces overlapping so briefly and 
seemingly without wisdom.  Maybe he thought it would 
kill him, even in soft focus.
	The mind takes certain turns, and at that 
moment, waiting for John in the Milun alone, I was 
certain it had been Tim in the mirror.  Tim who 
approaches love like a realtor.  Tim who sees his 
project as coercion and not simply a smooth 
camaraderie.  I had acquired the habit of repeating 
everything he said-- before it became adulterated-- 
in the manner of doing research.  He liked to say I 
was his double, but that was just playing for fun.  
What would have happened were I truly his clone?  
He could have been my true love if part of me were 
all of me, if I were at heart a fanatic, if I were 
someone else.  But I'm not a purist.
	People say I am redundant, but I never think 
the same thing twice.  There are slight reversals and 
rhythmic variations, almost like the Lais, almost 
like a course in structural anthropology.  The 
calculus is cruel in its regression.  One hundred 
times a day, my mind dies.  Lines fall out of order 
and rearrange themselves.  I try using principles to 
replace thinking.  In an attempt to establish the 
proper relationship between the two, I follow twisted 
courses, facing the ground, skipping letters.  Are
these principles inherent or are they descriptive?  
Are they out there to be good?  They seem to work, but 
no one has yet been able to explain how they help.  
These derivations fall under the same constraints as 
language, riding that beast, yielding circuitous 
answers.  But I get results and that may be my 
scientific bent.  Crystal surfaces create an 
architecture of surfaces, and so I seem complex.  Only 
at the edge, inundated with redundancy, can I glimpse 
something else: a barracks of ghosts scratching.  A 
bed is in the next room. 
	Realizing I was still at the Milun, I thought 
I should take a nap.  Instead I spent hours repeating 
John's name, and every time it had a different sound.  
It circled aroundme still, dropping feathers.  When I 
woke to see him standing in the window, it felt like 
an incantation.  After all that had happened, it was 
strange to be back in that place and to see him 
standing there.  If I were normal, I would have been 
startled.  As it was, I felt like I had made it 
happen.  Discarding vanity, I thought: the ideal
choice for lighting is irrelevant.  I opened the door.  
An arrangement had been unraveled: I had almost thought 
I would be standing there alone.  When his wary voice
said, "Hello," I felt a certain pressure.  I thought 
Tim was a coward. He wouldn't show up himself.  He 
wanted concealed decisions.  He wanted something 
unconcealed.  He wanted something else.  Maybe I had 
thought I would die in that room.  Maybe John had
thought so too.  I had a copy of my first manuscript 
with me.  It was a notably honest attempt, a clever 
piece of detective work, though oddly at variance 
with the facts.  I said, "I was almost expecting 
someone else."
	John said, "Who?  Our friend Mick?"
	"The name sounds so familiar."  I watched my 
breath catch the hint of newly falling snow.
	"It has its various triumphs, its typical 
arguments and sounds," he laughed, perhaps thinking 
of certain escapades with Sharon.
	"Making the arts available everywhere," I had 
to maintain my ground, "but there is too much missing 
information, and besides," I added, "he is a 
philistine, a clown."

	I felt like I was an observer rather than a 
participant in this conversation.  I was hearing
weird voices and unfinished sounds.  John took the 
key and told me he was going to check out.  Feeling a  
bit off balance, I followed him, tracing his 
footprints exactly.  He laughed and grabbed my hand.  
I said, "Keep it to yourself."
	It hit me, I still hadn't seen the taxi.  Maybe 
that was part of the night's surreal quality. But it 
was hidden from the street, behind the manager's 
office.  It seemed to be itself and yet I was thinking 
of it abstractly even while interrupted by strange
speeches from another part of my head.  Once I climbed 
inside, it felt grounded, persistent and familiar, 
though filled with too much that hadn't been said.  
Outside a street lamp was blinking, making its way 
towards dead.