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[Assistant] One of them discovered the pile of clothes and the pair of boots that Bruno had left


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[Assistant] And went to fetch the commandant to examine the area and looked to his left and looked to his right just as Bruno had done.


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[Assistant] It was as if he had just vanished off the face of the earth and left his clothes behind him.


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[Assistant] She stayed at Outwith for several months, waiting for news of Bruno until one day, quite suddenly, she thought he might have made his way home alone.


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[Assistant] And became very disliked by the other soldiers whom he ordered around mercilessly. He went to sleep every night thinking about Bruno. And he woke up every morning thinking about him too.


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[Assistant] One day he formed a theory about what might have occurred, and he went back to the place in the fence where the pile of clothes had been found a year before.


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[Assistant] There was nothing particularly special about this place, or different.


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[Assistant] He did a little exploration of his own and discovered


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[Assistant] Was not properly attached to the ground as it was everywhere else and that when lifted it left a gap large enough for a very small person such as a little boy to crawl underneath.


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[Assistant] He looked into the distance then and followed it through logically step by step by step.


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[Assistant] And when he did, he found that his legs seemed to stop working right.


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[Assistant] A few months after that, some other soldiers came to Outwith, and father was ordered to go with them. And he went without complaint.


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[Assistant] The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is published by Random House Audiobooks, a division of the Random House Group. Copyright, John Boyne, 2006. Copyright and recording Random House Audiobooks. Published in hardback by David Fickling Books.


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[Assistant] John Boyne has asserted his right under the CDPA 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.


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[Assistant] Supercible took every opportunity to bring Laura into the conversation, but she hardly took any notice.


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[Assistant] He went to the farm to make his inquiries about Anne Catherick, but learnt nothing.


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[Assistant] Then on Wednesday, a letter came from Mrs Catharick, a short, business-like letter, thanking me for my note.


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[Assistant] And saying that everything Subhersival had told me was completely correct. Why did I still have doubts?


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[Assistant] This surely was enough proof for anyone.


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[Assistant] But how I wished that Walter Hartright had been there to give his opinion.


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[Assistant] At Sir Percival's request, I now had to give Laura his explanation of Anne Catherick's letter. She listened quietly and showed no emotion.


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[Assistant] But I noticed that on the table near her hand was the little book of Hartright's drawings. I also had to tell her that the reason for Sir Percival's visit was to fix the day of their marriage.


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[Assistant] Please ask him, beg him to allow me more time.


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[Assistant] I promised to give him a final answer before the end of the year, but not yet, please not yet.


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[Assistant] Sir Percival agreed to this request, and when Mr. Gilmore heard about it, he arranged to have a private talk with Laura.


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[Assistant] I have to return to London tomorrow, he said to me, and I need to discuss the financial side of this marriage with Miss Fairleigh before I go.


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[Assistant] As you know, she will inherit a great deal of money and property when she becomes 21 next March. And I must include all this in the marriage agreement in a way that reflects Miss Fairleigh's own wishes, and is also acceptable to Supercival.


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[Assistant] Laura gave a cry of surprise, but I had more than half expected this.


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[Assistant] Every word she had spoken had shown her honesty and her innocence, but these fine qualities had destroyed her own hopes of a release.


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[Assistant] Sir Percival understood very well the priceless value of a pure and true woman. Why would he give her up now?


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[Assistant] I will do everything I can to earn your love, he said, and perhaps in time I will win it.


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[Assistant] Never, she answered, looking more beautiful than ever. I will be your true and loyal wife, but never your loving wife. That is enough for me.


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[Assistant] I accept your loyalty and your truth, he said, then raised her hand to his lips and silently left the room.


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[Assistant] Laura sat without moving. I put my arm around her. At last she said, I must resign myself, Marion.


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[Assistant] If you write to Walter don't tell him how unhappy I am.


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[Assistant] And if I die first, please say to him, say what I could never say myself. Say I loved him.


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[Assistant] Then she threw herself on the sofa, and cried as if her heart was breaking, until at last she fell asleep.


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[Assistant] I was greeted by bright sunlight and a view of blue sea through the window. The future suddenly seemed full of promise.


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[Assistant] I found my way down to the breakfast room, and there, looking out of a window with her back turned to me, was a young woman with a perfect figure.


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[Assistant] But when she turned and walked towards me, I saw to my surprise that her face was ugly. Hair grew on her upper lip, and her mouth was large and firm.


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[Assistant] She welcomed me in a pleasant, educated voice and introduced herself as Marian Halcombe, Miss Fairleigh's half-sister.


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[Assistant] My mother was twice married, she explained in her easy, friendly manner.


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[Assistant] The first time to Mr. Halcombe, my father.


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[Assistant] And the second time to Mr. Fairleigh, my half-sister's father.


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[Assistant] My father was a poor man, and Miss Faley's father was a rich man. I've got nothing, and she has a fortune.


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[Assistant] I'm dark and ugly, and she's fair and pretty. She said all this quite happily.


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[Assistant] My sister and I are very fond of each other, so you must please both of us, Mr. Heartright, or please neither of us.


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[Assistant] The first thing that happened the next morning did nothing to make me feel more cheerful.


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[Assistant] A letter arrived for me from poor Walter Hartright. He had decided to leave England.


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[Assistant] And asked me if I could help him find employment abroad.


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[Assistant] He had neither seen nor heard anything of Anne Catherick.


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[Assistant] But suspected he had been watched and followed by strange men.


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[Assistant] I was worried about his state of mind so I immediately wrote to some friends in London


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[Assistant] Sir Percival did not join us for breakfast, but sent a message saying he would meet us at eleven o'clock, as arranged.


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[Assistant] Laura seemed calm and unusually self-controlled. I had never seen her like this.


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[Assistant] It was almost as if love had created a new force in her character.


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[Assistant] Back at our rooms I announced my intention to Marion of going to Wellingham. She was very uneasy about the plan.


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[Assistant] Are you sure it's wise, Walter? Sir Percival is a violent man. I'm more afraid for you and Laura, I said.


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[Assistant] Left alone in London with the Count as your enemy.


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[Assistant] We arranged to write to each other every day and if no letter came from her I would take the first train back to London.


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[Assistant] Three days later I was standing in Mrs Cathricks sitting room, face to face with a grey haired woman dressed in black silk.


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[Assistant] Her dark eyes looked straight at me with a hard, cold stare.


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[Assistant] You say you have come to speak to me about my daughter, she said. Please say what you have to say.


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[Assistant] Her voice was as hard as the expression in her eyes. She pointed to a chair and looked at me carefully as I sat down.


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[Assistant] You know, I said, that your daughter is lost. I know that perfectly well.


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[Assistant] Don't you worry that she might not be just lost but that she might have met with her death? Yes? Have you come to tell me that she is dead? I have. Why?


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[Assistant] She asked that extraordinary question without the slightest change in her voice, face or manner. I might have been talking about the death of a cat in the street.


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[Assistant] I thought Anne's mother might be interested in knowing if she was alive or dead.


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[Assistant] Just so, she said. But what is your interest in her, or in me? Have you no other reason for coming here? Yes, I do, I said.


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[Assistant] Your daughter's death has caused someone I love to be harmed by a man called Sir Percival Glide. She did not react at all at the mention of his name. I want to make him confess to his crime.


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[Assistant] You know certain things about him from the time when your husband was the church clerk. I want you to tell me about them.


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[Assistant] The Count seemed fascinated by Mrs. Catherick and wanted to know all about her visit.


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[Assistant] I tried to say as little as possible, but Laura asked questions too.


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[Assistant] And in the end the Count knew as much as we did about Mrs. Catherick and her daughter Anne. I was quite sure from his surprise at the story that the Count had known nothing of Anne Catherick.


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[Assistant] And uneasily I wondered why Sir Percival had not told his closest friend. When we went back to the house, Sir Percival came to greet us.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry to say I have to leave you. I have to drive a long way and won't be back until tomorrow. First, though, I would like to finish that little business matter. Will you come into the library? It won't take a minute.


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[Assistant] In the library he got a document out of a cupboard and put it on the table.


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[Assistant] It was folded in such a way that all the writing was hidden, and only the places to sign were visible.


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[Assistant] Handing a pen to Laura, he said, Sign there. You and Fosco ought to sign afterwards, Miss Halcombe.


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[Assistant] What do you want me to sign? Laura asked quietly.


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[Assistant] I have no time to explain. I have to leave. It's just business, he said angrily. Women don't understand business. Just sign it. But surely I ought to know what I'm signing.


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[Assistant] I see. So you're saying you don't trust me. Is that it? What kind of a wife is that?


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[Assistant] How dare you! You're a guest in my house and you take my wife's side against me!


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[Assistant] Control your unfortunate temper, Percival, said the Count, and I heard him whisper to him, You idiot!


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[Assistant] But Laura had put the pen down and moved to my side.


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[Assistant] Lady Glide is right, the Count then said. Let the signature wait until to-morrow. Sir Percival swore at him, but moved away from the table.


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[Assistant] Alright then, he said, until tomorrow. Anyway, I have to go, but you will sign tomorrow, or...


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[Assistant] He gave his wife a cold hard stare, then went out.


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[Assistant] He has no sensitivity, no kindness, no good feeling. Last night he whispered something in Laura's ear. She has refused to tell me what it was, and her face turned white with misery. He took no notice at all, and all my suspicions of him have returned. Is he now showing his true character? He seems more restless and nervous than before, and is often sharp and bad-tempered


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[Assistant] I have this strange idea that something might happen to prevent the marriage, and that he is afraid of that. A foolish thought. I must forget it. As the day of our separation grows nearer, Laura cannot bear to have me out of her sight. I must be brave and cheerful for her sake, but my fear will not go away.


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[Assistant] Will this marriage be the one terrible mistake of her life and the one hopeless sorrow of mine? It is the twenty-second. No more time for tears. Laura is dressed and we leave for the church. By eleven o'clock


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[Assistant] They are married. By three o'clock they are gone.


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[Assistant] I am blind with crying and can write no more.


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[Assistant] Four months passed. Laura grew stronger in body and in mind. She was almost her old self. And when we talked, it was as we used to talk at Limeridge.


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[Assistant] If I touched her by accident I felt my heart beating fast and I saw the answering colour in her face. In April we went for a holiday at the seaside.


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[Assistant] While we were there I told Marion that when we returned to London I was determined to force a confession from Count Fosco.


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[Assistant] To make him tell me the real date of Laura's journey to London.


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[Assistant] But if I am to challenge the Count for Laura's safety, I think I should challenge him as her husband. Do you agree, Marion? With every word, she said.


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[Assistant] I parted you both once. Wait here, my brother, my best and dearest friend, till Laura comes and tells you what I have done now.


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[Assistant] I waited by the window, staring out at the beach, seeing nothing, hardly able to breathe. The door opened and Laura came in alone.


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[Assistant] When we parted at Limeridge she had come into the room slowly, in sorrow and hesitation. Now she ran to me with a light of happiness shining in her face.


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[Assistant] She put her arms around me, and her sweet lips came to meet mine. My darling, she whispered, may we say we love each other now? I'm so happy at last. Ten days later we were even happier. We were married.


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[Assistant] This is Rick Moody reading A City of Churches by Donald Bartholomew from The New Yorker.


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[Assistant] Yes, Mr. Phillips said, ours is the city of churches, alright? Cecilion nodded, following his pointing hand.


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[Assistant] Both sides of the street were solidly lined with churches standing shoulder to shoulder in a variety of architectural styles. The Bethel Baptist stood next to the Holy Messiah Free Baptist, St. Paul's Episcopal next to Grace Evangelical Covenant.


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[Assistant] Then came the first Christian science, the Church of God, all souls, Our Lady of Victory, the Society of Friends, the Assembly of God, and the Church of the Holy Apostle.


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[Assistant] The spires and steeples of the traditional buildings were jammed in next to the broad imaginative flights of the contemporary design.


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[Assistant] Everyone here takes a great interest in church matters, Mr. Phillips said.


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[Assistant] Will I fit in? Cecilia wondered. She had come to Prestor to open a branch office of a car rental concern.


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[Assistant] I'm not especially religious, she said to Mr. Phillips, who is in the real estate business. Not now, he answered. Not yet. But we have many fine young people here. You'll get integrated into the community soon enough. The immediate problem is where are you to live? Most people, he said, live in the church of their choice. All of our churches have many extra rooms. I have a few belfry apartments that I can show you.


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[Assistant] All Saints, Ukrainian Orthodox, Saint Clements, Fountain Baptist, Union Congregational, Saint Ann Argeris, Temple Emmanuel, the First Church of Christ Reformed.


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[Assistant] The mouths of all the churches were gaping open. Inside lights could be seen dimly.


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[Assistant] I can go up to 110, Cecilia said. Do you have any buildings here that are not churches? None, said Mr. Phillips.


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[Assistant] Of course, many of our fine church structures also do double duty as something else. He indicated a handsome Georgian facade.


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[Assistant] That one, he said, houses the United Methodist and the Board of Education. The one next to it, which is the Antioch Pentecostal, has the barber shop.


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[Assistant] It was true. A red and white stripe barber pole was attached inconspicuously to the front of the Antioch Pentecostal.


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[Assistant] Do many people rent cars here? Cecilia asked. Or would they, if there was a handy place to rent them?


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[Assistant] Oh, I don't know, said Mr. Phillips. Renting a car implies that you want to go somewhere.


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[Assistant] Most people are pretty content right here. We have a lot of activities.


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[Assistant] I don't think I'd pick the car rental business if I was just starting out in Prestor, but you'll do fine.


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[Assistant] He showed her a small, extremely modern building with a severe brick, steel, and glass front.


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[Assistant] That's St. Barnabas. Nice bunch of people over there. Wonderful spaghetti suppers.


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[Assistant] Cecilia could see a number of heads looking out of the windows. But when they saw she was staring at them, the heads disappeared.


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[Assistant] He opened a door and they began climbing many flights of dusty stairs.


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[Assistant] At the end of the climb, they entered a good sized room, square with windows on all four sides. There was a bed, a table, and two chairs, lamps, a rug.


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[Assistant] Four very large brass bells hung in the exact center of the room. What a view, Mr. Phillips exclaimed. Come here and look.


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[Assistant] Do they actually ring these bells? Cecilia asked three times a day. Mr. Phillips said smiling. Morning, noon, and night.


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[Assistant] Of course when they're rung, you have to be pretty quick at getting out of the way. You get hit in the head by one of these babies and that's all she wrote.


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[Assistant] God almighty, Cecilia said involuntarily. Then she said,


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[Assistant] Nobody lives in the Belfry apartments. That's why they're empty. You think so, Mr. Phillips said?


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[Assistant] You can only rent them to new people in town, she said, accusingly.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't do that, Mr. Phillips said. It would go against the spirit of Christian fellowship.


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[Assistant] That may be, but it's not for you to say, is it? I mean, you're new here. You should walk cautiously for a while. If you don't want an upper apartment, I have a basement over at Central Presbyterian. You'd have to share it. There are two women in there now.


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[Assistant] I don't wanna share, Cecilia said. I wanna place my own.


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[Assistant] Why, the real estate man asks curiously, for what purpose?


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[Assistant] That's not usual here. Most people live with other people, husbands and wives, sons with their mothers. People have roommates. That's the usual pattern. Still, I prefer a place of my own. It's very unusual.


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[Assistant] Do you have any such places besides bell towers, I mean?


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[Assistant] I guess there are a few, Mr. Phillips said, with clear reluctance. I can show you one or two, I suppose. He paused for a moment.


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[Assistant] It's just that we have different values maybe from some of the surrounding communities, he explained. We've been written up a lot.


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[Assistant] We had four minutes on the CBS Evening News one time, three or four years ago. A city of churches, it was called.


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[Assistant] Yes, a place of mine was essential, Cecilia said, if I am to survive here.


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[Assistant] That's kind of a funny attitude to take, Mr. Phillips said. What denomination are you?


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[Assistant] Cecilia was silent. The truth was, she wasn't anything.


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[Assistant] I said, what denomination are you? Mr. Phillips repeated.


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[Assistant] I can will my dreams, Cecilia said. I can dream whatever I want. If I want to dream that I'm having a good time in Paris or some other city, all I have to do is go to sleep and I will dream that dream. I can dream whatever I want.


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[Assistant] What do you dream then mostly? Mr. Phillips said, looking at her closely.


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[Assistant] Mostly sexual things, she said. She was not afraid of him.


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[Assistant] Crestor is not that kind of a town, Mr. Phillips said, looking away.


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[Assistant] The doors of the churches were opening on both sides of the street. Small groups of people came out and stood there in front of the churches gazing at Cecilia and Mr. Phillips. A young man stepped forward and shouted,


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[Assistant] Everyone in this town already has a car. There is no one in this town who doesn't have a car.


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[Assistant] Yes, he said. It's true. No one would rent a car here. Not in a hundred years.


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[Assistant] You must stay, he said. There's already a car rental office for you. In Mount Moriah Baptist on the lobby floor, there's a counter and a telephone and a rack of car keys and a calendar.


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[Assistant] I won't stay, she said. Not if there's not any sound business reason for staying.


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[Assistant] We want you, said Mr. Phillips. We want you standing behind the counter of the car rental agency during regular business hours. It will make the town complete.


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[Assistant] We are discontented, said Mr. Phillips. Terribly, terribly discontented. Something is wrong.


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[Assistant] Of dream the secret, she said. You'll be sorry.


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[Assistant] We are like other towns, except that we are perfect, he said. Our discontent can only be held in check by perfection. We need a car rental girl. Someone must stand behind that counter.


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[Assistant] I'll dream the life you are most afraid of, Cecilia Thren.


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[Assistant] You are ours, he said, gripping her arm. Our car rental girl. Be nice. There's nothing you can do.


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[Assistant] Obstacles are bold as a pronoun and be thus declined.


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[Assistant] For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.


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[Assistant] Pam Houston reading the best girlfriend you never had from other voices.


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[Assistant] My friend Leo picks me up and we go to a breakfast place called Rick and Ann's where they make red flannel hash out of beets and bacon.


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[Assistant] And then we crossed the Bay Bridge to the gardens of the Palace of the Fine Arts.


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[Assistant] To sit in the wet grass and read poems out loud and talk about love.


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[Assistant] The fountains are thick with black swans imported from Siberia.


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[Assistant] And if it is a fine day and a weekend, there will be wedding parties almost entirely Asian.


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[Assistant] The grooms wear smart gray pinstripe suits and the women are in beaded gowns so beautiful they make your teeth hurt just to look at them. The Roman towers of the palace facade rise above us, more yellow than orange in the strengthening midday light.


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[Assistant] And his relationship to all the most beautiful buildings in this city is astonishing given his age, only five years older than me. I make my living as a photographer. Since art school, I've been doing magazine work and living from grant to grant. The house Leo built for himself is like a fairy tale. All towers and angles and the last wild peacock in Berkeley lives on his street.


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[Assistant] I live in the Oakland Hills in a tiny house on a street so windy you can't drive more than 10 miles per hour. I rented it because the ad said this. Small house in the trees with a garden and a fireplace. Dogs welcome, of course. I'm dogless for the moment, but it's not my natural condition.


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[Assistant] You never know when I might get overwhelmed by a desire to go to the pound. It's a warm blue Saturday in November.


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[Assistant] And there are five Asian weddings underway at the Palace of the Fine Arts. The wedding party's outfits do not match but are complimentary, as if they have been ordered especially, one for each arch of the golden facade.


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[Assistant] Leo reads me a poem about a salt marsh at dawn while I set up my old Leica. I always get the best stuff when nobody's paying me to shoot.


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[Assistant] Like the time I caught a bride waltzing with one of the caterers behind the hedgerow, his chef's cap bent to touch the top of her veil. Then I read Leo a poem about longing in Syracuse.


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[Assistant] This is how we have always spoken to each other, Leo and I.


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[Assistant] And it would be the most romantic thing this century except that Leo is in love with Guinevere.


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[Assistant] Guinevere is a Buddhist weaver who lives in a clapboard house on Belvedere Island. She makes cloth on a loom she brought back from Tibet.


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[Assistant] Although her tapestries and wall hangings have made her a small fortune, she refuses to use the air conditioner in her Audi, even when she's driving across the Sacramento Valley.


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[Assistant] Air conditioning, she says, is just one of the things she does not allow herself.


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[Assistant] That Guinevere seems not to know Leo is alive causes him no particular disappointment and that she forgets each time she meets him that she has met him several times before only adds to what he calls her charming basket of imperfections. The only Buddha I could love, he says, is one who is capable of forgetfulness and sin. Guinevere is in love with a man in New York City


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[Assistant] Who told her in a letter that the only thing better than three thousand miles between him and the object of his desire would be if she had a terminal illness.


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[Assistant] I could really get behind a relationship with a woman who had only six months to live, was what he wrote.


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[Assistant] She showed me the words as if to make sure they existed, though something in her tone made me think she was proud.


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[Assistant] The only person I know of who's in love with Leo, besides me a little, is a gay man named Raphael who falls in love with one straight man after another and then buys each one a whole new collection of CDs.


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[Assistant] They come, Leo says, as if from the Columbia House Record Club. Once a month, like clockwork, in a plain cardboard wrapper, no return address and no name. They are by terrific musicians most people have never heard of, like the Neelds and Boris Grebejnikov. There are Andean folk songs and hip hop and beat.


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[Assistant] The groom is managing to look utterly solemn and completely delirious with joy at the same time. Leo and I watch the kiss.


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[Assistant] I think I prefer it, Leo says, when you reserve that particular lecture for yourself.


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[Assistant] He points back across the lake where the bride has just leapt into her maid of honor's arms and I snap the shutter again. Or for one of your commitment phobic boyfriends, Leo adds. I guess the truth is I can't blame them, I say.


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[Assistant] I mean if I saw me coming down the street with all my stuff hanging out, I'm not so sure I'd pick myself up and go trailing after. Of course you would, Leo says.


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[Assistant] And it's because you would, and because the chance of that happening is so slim, and because you hold out hope anyway that it might, that's what makes you a great photographer. Greatness is nice, I tell him. I want contact. I want someone's warm breath on my face. I say it as if it's a dare, which we both know it isn't.


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[Assistant] The flower girl across the lake is throwing handfuls of rose petals straight up in the air.


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[Assistant] Because I had recently spent a long time under the dark naked water of the Colorado River, and I took it as a sign that the river wanted me away.


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[Assistant] I had taken so many pictures by then of the chaos of heaved up rock and petrified sand and endless sky that I'd lost my balance and fallen into them. I couldn't keep separate anymore what was the land and what was me.


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[Assistant] And a woman called Thea who wanted way too much, and I was sandwiched between them.


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[Assistant] One of those weaker rock layers like limestone that disappears under pressure or turns into something shapeless like oil. I thought there might be an order to the city.


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[Assistant] Straight lines, shiny surfaces and right angles that would give myself back to me. Take my work somewhere different. Maybe to a safer place.


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[Assistant] Solitude was a straight line too, and I believed it was what I wanted. So I packed whatever I could get into my pickup.


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[Assistant] Left behind everything I couldn't carry, including two pairs of skis, a whole dark room full of photo equipment.


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[Assistant] And the mountains I'd sworn again and again I couldn't live without.


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[Assistant] I pointed myself west on the endless two lanes of Highway 50.


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[Assistant] The loneliest road in America say the signs that rise out of the desert on either side of it.


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[Assistant] All the way across Utah and Nevada to this white shining city on the bay.


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[Assistant] I got drunk on the city at first, the way some people do on vodka.


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[Assistant] The way it lays itself out as if in a nest of madronus and eucalyptus.


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[Assistant] The way it sparkles brighter, even than the sparkling water that surrounds it. The way the Golden Gate reaches out of it.


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[Assistant] Like fingers per the wild wide ocean that lies beyond.


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[Assistant] I love the smell of fresh blueberry muffins at the Oakland Grill down on 3rd and Franklin.


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[Assistant] The train whistle sounding right outside the front door and tattooed men of all colors unloading crates of cauliflower, broccoli, and peas. Those first weeks I'd walk the street for hours, shooting more film in a day than I could afford in a week.


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[Assistant] All those lives in such dangerous and unnatural proximity. All those stories my camera could tell. I'd walk even the nastiest part.


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[Assistant] The blood pumping through my veins as hard as when I first saw the Rocky Mountains so many years ago.


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[Assistant] One night in the mission I rounded a corner and met a guy in a wheelchair head on who aimed himself at me and covered me with urine.


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[Assistant] Baptized, I said to my horrified friends the next day, anointed with the nectar of the city gods. I met a man right off the bat named Gordon.


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[Assistant] And we'd drive down to the Oakland docks in the evening and look out at the 20-story hydraulic boat lifts.


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[Assistant] Which I said looked like a battalion of Doberman Pinschers protecting the harbor from anyone who might invade. Gordon's real name was Salvador and he came from poor people, strawberry pickers in the Central Valley, two of his brothers stillborn from malathion poisoning. He was handsome even as a boy.


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[Assistant] With jet black hair, dark skin, and his mother's gene for blue eyes.


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[Assistant] He left the valley and moved to the city when he was too young by law to drive the truck he stole from his father's field boss. He left it double parked in front of the Castro Theater.


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[Assistant] Talked to family in the mission into trading work for floor space. Changed his name to Gordon. Changed his age from 15 to 20.


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[Assistant] And applied for a grant to study South American literature at San Francisco state. He had his PhD before he turned 20, a tenure track teaching job at Berkeley by 21.


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[Assistant] When he won his first teaching award his mother was in the audience. When their blue eyes met she nodded her approval.


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[Assistant] But when he looked for her afterwards, she was nowhere to be found. Can you believe it? He said when he told the story, his voice such a mixture of pride and disappointment that I didn't know which was more unbelievable that she had come or that she had gone.


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[Assistant] If one more woman I used to date turns into a lesbian, Leo says, I'm moving to Minneapolis.


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[Assistant] The wedding receptions are well underway and laughter bubbles toward us across the lagoon.


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[Assistant] It's possible to take that as a compliment, I say, if you want to bend your mind that way. I don't, he says.


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[Assistant] Maybe it's just a choice a woman makes, I say, when she feels she has exhausted all her other options.


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[Assistant] Oh yeah, like you start out being a person, Leo says, and then you decide to become a car. Sometimes I think it's either that or Alaska, I say. The odds there, better than 10 to 1.


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[Assistant] I remember a bumper sticker I saw once in Haynes, Alaska, near the place where the ferries depart for the lower 48. Baby, it said, when you leave here, you'll be ugly again. In Alaska, I say, I've actually had men fall at my feet. I bet a few men have fallen at your feet down here, he says. And I try to look him in the eye to see how he means it, but he keeps them fixed on the poetry book. He says, aren't I the best girlfriend you never had?


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[Assistant] The last woman Leo called the love of his life only let him see her twice a week for three years. She was a cardiologist who lived in the marina.


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[Assistant] Who said she spent all day with broken hearts and she had no intention of filling her time off with her own. At the start of the fourth year, Leo asked her to raise the number of dates to three times a week and she immediately broke things off. Leo went up on the bridge after that. This was before they put the phones in, the ones that go straight to the counselors. It was a sunny day and the tide was going out, making white caps as far as he could see into the Pacific. After a while he came down.


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[Assistant] Not because he felt better, but because of the way the numbers fell out. There had been 250 so far that year.


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[Assistant] Had the number been 4 or 199 or even 274, he says he might have done it.


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[Assistant] But he wasn't willing to go down officially with a number as meaningless as 251.


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[Assistant] A woman sitting on the grass near us starts telling Leo how much he looks like her business partner, but there's an edge to her voice I can't identify.


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[Assistant] An insistence that means she's in love with a guy or she's crazy.


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[Assistant] Or she's just murdered him this morning and she's come to the Palace of the Fine Arts to await her impending arrest.


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[Assistant] The great thing about Californians, Leo says, when the woman has finally gotten up to leave,


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[Assistant] Is that they think it's perfectly okay to exhibit all their neuroses in public as long as they apologize for them first.


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[Assistant] Eating bird's eye frozen vegetables and Swanson's deep dish meat pies on TV trays next to our parents and their third martinis. Watching what's my line and to tell the truth on television and talking about anything on earth except what was wrong. Is there anyone you could fall in love with besides Guinevere? I asked Leo.


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[Assistant] I think it's a good policy to avoid any woman who uses an article in her name.


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[Assistant] There are policemen at the palace grounds today handing out information about how we can protect ourselves from an epidemic of carjackings that has been taking place in the city for the last five months. The crime begins, the flyer tells us, with the criminal bumping the victim's car from behind.


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[Assistant] When the victim gets out of the car to exchange information, the criminal hits her and it's generally a woman over the head with a heavy object.


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[Assistant] leaves her on the sidewalk, steals her car, and drives away.


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[Assistant] The flyer says we are supposed to keep our windows rolled up when the other driver approaches. Keep the doors locked and say through the glass, I'm afraid. I'm not getting out. Please follow me to the nearest convenience store.


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[Assistant] You couldn't do it, could you? Leo says and slaps my arm like a wise guy. What do you think they mean? I say by crime scene number two.


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[Assistant] You're evading the question because you know the answer too well, he says.


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[Assistant] You're the only person I know who'd get your throat slit sooner than admit you're afraid. You know, I say to Leo to change the subject. You don't act much like a person who wants kids more than anything. Yeah. And you don't act like a person who wants to be married with swans. I'd do it. I say right now, step into that wedding dress. No questions asked. Lucy, Leo says seriously.


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[Assistant] Do you have any idea how many steps there are between you and that wedding dress? No, I say, tell me. 55, he says. At least 55.


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[Assistant] Before Gordon, I had always dated the strong, silent types. I think so I could invent anything I wanted to go on in their heads.


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[Assistant] Gordon and I talked about words and the kind of pictures you could make so that you didn't need them. And I thought what I always thought in the first 10 minutes.


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[Assistant] That after years and years of wild pitches I'd for once in my life thrown a strike.


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[Assistant] It took me less than half a baseball season to discover my oversight.


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[Assistant] Gordon had a jealous streak as vicious as a heat-seeking missile and he could make a problem out of a paper bag. We were asked to leave two restaurants in one week alone.


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[Assistant] And it got to the point fast where if the weight person wasn't female, I'd ask if we could go somewhere else or have another table.


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[Assistant] Car mechanics, piano tuners, dry cleaners, toll takers. In Gordon's mind, they were all out to bed me, and I was out to make them want to. A tenderloin, he'd called me once, and he said he and all the other men in the Bay Area were a love-crazed pack of wolves. When I told Guinevere how I'd fallen for Gordon, she said,


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[Assistant] How he yelled at me in a store so hard one time that the manager slipped me a note that said he would pray for me.


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[Assistant] How each night I would stand in the street while he revved up his engine and scream, please Gordon, please Gordon, don't drive away.


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[Assistant] At one time in my life I had breast implants just to please a man, she said. Now I won't even take off my bracelets before bed.


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[Assistant] Guinevere keeps a bowl of cards on her breakfast table between the sugar and the coffee.


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[Assistant] They are called angel cards and she bought them at the new age store. Each card has a word printed on it. Sisterhood or creativity or romance.


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[Assistant] And there's a tiny angel with her body in a position that is supposed to illustrate the word. That morning I picked balance, with a little angel perched in the center of the teeter totter.


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[Assistant] And when Guinevere reached in for her own word, she sighed in disgust. Without looking at the word again, without showing it to me, she put the card in the trash can and reached to pick another. I went to the trash can and found it. The word was surrender, and the angel was looking upwards with her arms outstretched. I hate that, she said, her mouth slightly twisted. Last week I had to throw away submit. Guinevere brought me a cookie and a big box of Kleenex.


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[Assistant] She said that choices can't be good or bad. There is only the event and the lesson learned from it. She corrected my pronunciation gently and constantly. The boo in Buddha, she said, is like the puh in pudding and not like the boo in ghost.


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[Assistant] When I was 25 years old, I brought home to my parents a boy named Jeffrey I thought I wanted to marry. He was everything I believed my father wanted. He had an MBA from Harvard. He had patches on the elbows of his sports coats. He played golf on a course that only allowed men.


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[Assistant] We spent the weekend drinking the wine and eating the pate. Jeffrey's mother had sent him from her fermet in the southwest of France.


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[Assistant] Jeffrey let my father show him decades worth of tennis trophies.


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[Assistant] I haven't ever liked any of your boyfriends and I don't expect I ever will.


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[Assistant] So why don't you save us both the embarrassment and not ask again? After that, I went back to dating mechanics and river guides. My mother kept Jeffrey's picture on the mantle till she died.


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[Assistant] The first time I was mugged in the city, I'd been to the Late Show all alone at the Castro Theater.


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[Assistant] It's one of those magnificent old movie houses with a huge marquee that lights up the sky like a carnival. A ceiling that looks like it belongs in a Spanish cathedral.


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[Assistant] Heavy red velvet curtains laced with threads that sparkle gold.


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[Assistant] And a real live piano player who disappears into the floor when the previews begin. I like to linger there after the movie finished, watch the credits and the artificial stars in the ceiling. That Tuesday I was the last person to step out of the theater into a chilly and deserted night. I had one foot off the curb when the man approached me, a little too close for comfort even then. Do you have any change you can spare? He said. The truth was I didn't.


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[Assistant] I had scraped the bottom of my purse to put together enough quarters, nickels, and dimes to get into the movie. And the guy behind the glass had let me in 30 cents short. I said I was sorry and headed for the parking lot. I knew he was behind me, but I didn't turn around. I should have gotten my keys out before I left the theater, I thought. Shouldn't have stayed to see every credit roll.


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[Assistant] About 10 steps from my car, I felt a firm jab in the middle of my rib cage. I bet you'd feel differently, the man said, if I had a gun in my hand.


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[Assistant] I might feel differently, I said, whirling around with more force than I intended, but I still wouldn't have any money.


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[Assistant] Changed the angle of his body just slightly back and away. And when he did...


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[Assistant] When his eyes dropped from mine to his hand holding whatever it was in his jacket pocket.


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[Assistant] Giving me the opportunity to let her know she didn't need to kill me. We could both go on our way. Look, I said, I've had a really emotional day, okay?


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[Assistant] As I talked, I dug into my purse and grabbed my set of keys, a kind of weapon in their own right. And I think you oughta just let me get in the car and go home.


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[Assistant] While he considered this, I took the last steps to my car and got in. I didn't look in the rearview mirror until I was on the freeway.


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[Assistant] By mid-afternoon, Leo and I have seen one too many happy couples get married. And we drive over the Golden Gate and to Tiburon to a restaurant called Gwymeth.


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[Assistant] Then load them up again for the twice hourly trip to the city. We are jealous of their starched shirts and brown loafers. How their clothes seem a testament to the balance in their lives.


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[Assistant] The fog rolls over and down the lanyard side of Mount Tamalpais and the city moves in and out of it.


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[Assistant] Glistening like Galilee one moment, then gray and dreamy like a ghost of itself the next, and then gone, like a thought bubble, like somebody's good idea. Last night, I say, I was walking down Telegraph Avenue. I was in a mood, you know, Gordon and I had a fight about John Lennon. Was he for or against, Leo says? Against, I say, but it doesn't matter.


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[Assistant] Anyway, I was scowling, maybe crying a little, moving along pretty fast, and I step over this homeless guy with his crutches and his little can, and he says, I don't even want any money from you. I'd just like you to smile. So did you? Leo says.


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[Assistant] I did, I say. I not only smiled, but I laughed too, and then I went back and gave him all the money in my wallet, which was only $18, but still, I told him to be sure and use that line again.


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[Assistant] I am told that when I was four years old and with my parents in Palm Beach, Florida.


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[Assistant] I pulled a 700 pound cement urn off its pedestal and onto my legs, crushing both femurs. All the other urns on Worth Avenue had shrubs in them.


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[Assistant] Trimmed into the shapes of animals and this one from my three foot point of view appeared to be empty.


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[Assistant] When they asked me why I had tried to pull myself up and into the urn,


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[Assistant] I said I thought it had fish inside it and I wanted to see them, though whether I had imagined actual fish or just tiny shrubs carved into the shape of fish, I can't any longer say. The urn was empty, the story goes, and waiting to be repaired, which is why it toppled over onto me.


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[Assistant] My father rolled it off with some of that superhuman strength you always hear about and picked me up. I was screaming bloody murder and held me until the ambulance came. The next six weeks were the best of my childhood. I was hospitalized the entire time, surrounded by doctors who brought me presents, nurses who read me stories, candy stripers who came to my room and played games.


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[Assistant] My parents, when they came to visit, were always happy to see me and usually sober.


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[Assistant] I spent the remaining years of my childhood fantasizing about illnesses and accidents that I hoped would send me to the hospital again.


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[Assistant] One day last month, Gordon asked me to go backpacking at Point Reyes National Seashore to prove to me, he said, that he could take an interest in my life.


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[Assistant] I hadn't slept outside one single night since I came to the city, he said, and I must miss the feel of hard ground underneath me. Must miss the smell of my tent in the rain.


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[Assistant] Gordon borrowed a backpack, got the permit, freed the weekend, studied the maps.


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[Assistant] I was teaching a darkroom workshop in Corte Madera on Saturday. Gordon would pick me up at four when the workshop ended.


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[Assistant] We'd have just enough time to drive up the coast to Point Reyes Station and walk for an hour into the first camp.


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[Assistant] A long second day would take us to the beach, the point with the lighthouse, and back to the car with no time again to spare before dark. I had learned by then how to spot trouble coming.


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[Assistant] And that morning I waited in the car with Gordon while first one man, way too young for me, and then another way too old, entered the warehouse where my workshop was going to be held. I got out of the car without seeing the surfer, tall and blonde and a little breathtaking, portfolio under the arm that usually held the board.


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[Assistant] I kept my eyes away from his, but his handshake found me anyway. When he held the big door open, I went on through.


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[Assistant] I could hear the screech of tires behind me through what felt like a ton of metal.


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[Assistant] That Gordon was there when the workshop ended at 4.02 surprised me a little. Then I got in the Pathfinder and saw only one backpack. He drove up the coast to Point Reyes without speaking. Stinson, Bolinas, Dogtown, and Olima.


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[Assistant] The white herons in Tamales Bay had their heads tucked under their arms. He stopped at the trailhead, got out, threw my pack into the dune grass,


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[Assistant] Get out of that car without making eye contact, swing my pack on my back and head off down the trail. And when I tell you what I did do, which was to crawl all the way to the back of the Pathfinder,


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[Assistant] Holding onto the cargo net like a tornado was coming and letting go with one ear-splitting head-pounding scream after another till Gordon got back in the car.


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[Assistant] Till we got back down the coast, back on the 580, back over the bridge, and back to Gordon's apartment. Till he told me if I was quiet, he'd let me stay.


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[Assistant] You would wonder how a person, even if she had done it, could ever in a million years admit to such a thing.


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[Assistant] Then I could tell you about the 16 totaled cars and my first 15 winners.


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[Assistant] The Christmas Eve, my father and I rolled a Plymouth Fury from Meridian to guardrail and back four full times with nine complete revolutions. How they had to cut us out with chainsaws.


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[Assistant] I could tell you about the neighbor girl who stole me away one time at the sound of my parents shouting.


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[Assistant] How she refused to give me back to them even when the police came with a warrant.


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[Assistant] How her ten-year-old hand must have looked holding my three-year-old one.


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[Assistant] How in the end it became a funny story that both sets of parents love to tell.


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[Assistant] I could duplicate for you the hollow sound an empty bottle makes when it hits Formica and the stove is left on and the pan started smoking and there's a button that says off but no way to reach. I could tell you the lie I told myself with Gordon, that anybody is better than nobody.


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[Assistant] And you will know exactly why I stayed in the back of that Pathfinder, unless you are lucky, and then you will not.


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[Assistant] Did I ever tell you about the time I got mugged? Leo asked me. And we both know he has, but it's his favorite story. I'd like it, I say, if you'd tell it again. Before Leo built his house on the street with the peacocks, he lived in the city between North Beach and the piers.


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[Assistant] He got mugged one night, stepping out of his car, fumbling for his house keys. The man had a gun and snuck up from behind. What Leo had in his wallet was $13, and when he offered the money, he thought the man would kill him on the spot. You got a cash card, the man said, let's find a machine. Hey, I say, when he gets to this part, that means you went to crime scene number two. The part I hate most is how he took Leo's glasses. He said he would drive, but as it turned out, he didn't know stick shifts.


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[Assistant] At the cash machine, Leo looked for help, but couldn't get anyone's eyes to meet his, with Bill and his gun pressed so close to his side. They all think we're a couple, he thought, and laughter bubbled up inside him. He told Bill a lie about a hundred dollar ATM limit, pushed the buttons, handed over the money. They drove back to Leo's that same Siamese way.


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[Assistant] And when they got there, Bill thanked Leo, shook his hand. Asked one more favor before he took off. I'm going to give you a phone number, Bill said. My girlfriend in Sacramento. I want you to call her and tell her I made it all right. Sure, Leo said, folding the paper. I want you to swear to God. Sure, Leo said, I'll call her. Bill put the end of the gun around Leo's belly button. Say it motherfucker, say I swear to God. I swear to God, Leo said.


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[Assistant] Not much we can do about it, the woman at the end of the line told him.


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[Assistant] We could come dust your car for fingerprints, but it would make a hell of a mess.


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[Assistant] Two hours later, Leo looked in a phone book and called a Catholic priest. No, the priest said, you don't have to call her. You swore to God under extreme circumstances brought down upon you by a godless man. I don't think that's the right answer, I had said when I first heard the story, and I say it again on cue today. The first time we had talked about the nature of godlessness,


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[Assistant] And how if a situation requires swearing to God it is, by definition, extreme. But today I'm thinking, not of Bill or even of Leo's Dilemma, but of the girlfriend in Sacramento.


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[Assistant] Her lover shot, bleeding and hijacking architects and still remembering to think of her.


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[Assistant] And I wonder what it was about her that made her stay with a man who ran from the law for a living. And if he had made it home to her that night, if she stood near him in the kitchen dressing his wounds. I wonder how she saw herself as what part of the story and how much she had invested in how it would end.


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[Assistant] I'm so deeply afraid, Gordon had said on the docks our first night together, that I am nothing but weak and worthless.


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[Assistant] So I take the people close to me and try to break them, so they become as weak and worthless as me.


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[Assistant] I want to know the reason I could hear and didn't hear what he was saying. The reason why I thought the story could end differently for me.


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[Assistant] Things ended between Gordon and me in a bar in Jack London square one night when we were watching the 49ers play the Broncos. It was Joe Montana's last year in San Francisco. Rumors of the Kansas city acquisition had already begun. It was a close game late in the season. The Broncos had done what they were famous for in those days, jumped out to a 20 point lead and then lost it incrementally as the quarters went past. The game came right down to the two minute warning.


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[Assistant] Elway and Montana trading scoring drives so elegant, it was like they shook hands on it before the game. A minute 27 left. Ball on the Niners 22.


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[Assistant] Joe Montana had plenty of time and one last chance to shine. Don't tell me you're a Bronco fan. A guy on the other side of me, a late arrival said.


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[Assistant] It's a tough job, I said, not taking my eyes off the TV set.


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[Assistant] A lovely and protective hand around each of her two beautiful blonde little girls.


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[Assistant] Geez, I said when the camera came back to the action several seconds too late.


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[Assistant] You'd think Joe Montana was the only football player in America who had a wife. The guy next to me laughed a short choppy laugh.


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[Assistant] Joe took his team 78 yards in seven plays for the win. On the way to his pathfinder, Gordon said, that's what I hate about you sports fans.


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[Assistant] You create a hero like Joe Montana just so you have somebody to knock down. I don't have anything against Joe Montana. I said, I think he throws the ball like an angel. I simply prefer watching him to watching his wife.


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[Assistant] I saw who you preferred watching, Gordon said, as we arrived at the car and he slammed inside. Gordon, I said, I don't even know what that man looked like.


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[Assistant] The moon was fat and full over the parts of Oakland. No one dares to go late at night.


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[Assistant] And I knew as I looked for a face in it that it didn't matter a bit what I said. Gordon liked to drive the meanest streets when he was feeling meanest


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[Assistant] And he was ranting about me shaking my tail feathers and keeping my pants zipped. And all I could think to do was remind him I was wearing a skirt. He squealed the brakes at the end of my driveway and I got out and moved toward the dark entryway. Aren't you going to invite me in? He asked. And I thought about the months full of nights, just like this one, when I asked his forgiveness, when I begged him to stay.


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[Assistant] I want you to make your own decisions, I said over my shoulder and he threw the car in gear, gunned the engine and screeched away. First came the messages taped to my door. The words cut out from ten different typefaces.


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[Assistant] Held down with so many layers of tape it had the texture of decoupage. Then came the footprints in my garden, the Cairo syrup in my gas tank.


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[Assistant] My scarves tied like nooses in the branches of my trees.


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[Assistant] One day I opened an envelope from a magazine I'd shot for to find my paycheck ripped into a hundred pieces and then put back in the envelope, back in the box.


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[Assistant] Leo and I trade margaritas for late afternoon lattes and still the fog won't lift all the way. What I imagine I say.


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[Assistant] A Magnum 357 in his hand and my last thought being, well you should have figured that this was the next logical thing.


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[Assistant] I don't know why you need to be so tough about it, Leo says. Can't you let the police or somebody know? I say, this is not a good city to be dogless in. Leo puts his arm around me. I can tell by the way he does it, he thinks he has to. Do you wish sometimes, I say, that you could just disappear like that city? I can, Leo says. I do. What I wish more is that when I wanted to, I could stay.


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[Assistant] The ferry docks again in front of us and we sit quietly until the whistles are finished and the boat has once again taken off. Are you ever afraid? I say to Leo.


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[Assistant] That there are so many things you need swirling around inside you that they will just overtake you, smother you, suffocate you till you die. I don't think so, Leo says.


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[Assistant] I don't mean sex, I say, or even love exactly, just all that want that won't let go of you, that even if you changed everything right now, it's too late already to ever be full.


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[Assistant] Leo keeps his eyes fixed on the city, which is back out again.


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[Assistant] The Kuwait Tower reaching and leaning slightly like a stack of pepperoni pizza pies. Until only a few years ago.


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[Assistant] I used to break into a stranger's house every six months like clockwork, he says. Is that something like what you mean? Exactly, I say. A band of fog sweeps down faster than the others and takes away the city. Even the sight of Leo's mugging, even the apartment where Gordon now stays.


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[Assistant] When I was 18 years old, I met my parents in Phoenix, Arizona to watch Penn State play USC in the Fiesta Bowl. I'd driven from Ohio.


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[Assistant] They'd flown from Pennsylvania and the three of us for the first time ever shared my car. My father wanted me to drive them through the wealthy suburbs, places with names like Carefree and Cave Creek.


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[Assistant] He'd been drinking earlier in the day than usual. They both had.


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[Assistant] But I've been tailing you for four or five minutes and I have to tell ya, I really don't know where to start.


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[Assistant] The cop's nameplate said Martin, Mad Dog, Jenkins.


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[Assistant] Then you rolled through not one but two stop signs without coming to a safe and complete stop and you made a right hand turn into the center lane. Jesus Christ, my father said.


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[Assistant] You've got one tail light out, Officer Jenkins said, and either your turn signals are burned out too, or you were electing not to use them. Are you hearing this? My father said to the air. May I see your license and registration? I left my license in Ohio, I said. The car was silent.


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[Assistant] Give me a minute then, Officer Jenkins said, and I'll call it in. What I don't know, my father said.


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[Assistant] It's how a person with so little sense of responsibility gets a driver's license in this country to begin with.


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[Assistant] Why don't you just say it, Robert, my mother said. Say what you mean. Say, daughter, I hate you. Her voice started shaking.


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[Assistant] According to the information I received, Ms. O'Rourke, Officer Jenkins said, you are required to wear corrective lenses. That's right, I said. And you are wearing contacts now? There was something like hope in his voice. No, sir.


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[Assistant] She can't even lie, my father said, about this one little thing. Okay now, on three, my mother said. Daughter, I wish you had never been born. Miss O'Rourke, Officer Jenkins said, I'm just going to give you a warning today. My father bit off the end of a laugh. Thank you very much, I said. I hate to say this, Miss O'Rourke, the cop said, but there's nothing I could do to you that's going to feel like punishment. He held out his hand for me to shake.


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[Assistant] When the Fiesta Bowl was over, my parents and I drove back up to Carefree.


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[Assistant] Who belonged to a wine club called the Royal Order of the Great. My father wasn't happy about it, but he was silent.


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[Assistant] I just wanted to watch the ball come down on TV like I had every year of my childhood with the babysitter.


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[Assistant] But the men at the party were showing home movie after home movie of the club's indoctrination ceremony.


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[Assistant] While every so often two or three party-goers would get taken to the cellar to look at the bottles and taste.


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[Assistant] When my father tried to light a cigarette, he got whisked outside faster than I had ever seen him move.


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[Assistant] I was too young to be taken to the cellar, too old to be doted on.


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[Assistant] So after another half hour of being ignored, I went outside to join my father.


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[Assistant] The lights of Phoenix sparkled every color below us in the dark. Lucille, he said,


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[Assistant] When you get to be my age, don't ever spend New Year's Eve in a house where they won't let you smoke. Okay, I said. Your mother, he said, as he always did. I know, I said, even though I didn't. We just don't get love right, this family, but he paused, and the sky above Phoenix exploded into color, umbrellas of red and green and yellow. I'd never seen fireworks before, from the top. Come in, come in for the New Year's toast.


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[Assistant] I wanted more than anything for my father to finish his sentence.


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[Assistant] But he stabbed out his cigarette, got up and walked inside. I've finished it for him a hundred times since then, but never to my satisfaction.


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[Assistant] We pay the bill and Leo informs me that he has the temporary use of a 27 foot sailboat in Sausalito that belongs to a man he hardly knows.


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[Assistant] The fog is lifted enough for us to see the place where the sun should be and it's brighter yet out by the Golden Gate and we take the little boat out and aim for the brightness the way a real couple might on a Saturday afternoon. It's a squirrely boat designed to make fast moves in a light wind.


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[Assistant] And Leo gives me the tiller 200 yards before we pass under the dark shadow of the bridge.


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[Assistant] I'm just getting the feel of it when Leo looks over his shoulder and says, it appears we are in a race and I look too. And there's a boat bearing down on us twice our size. 10 times Leo tells me our boats value. Maybe you should take it then I say, you're doing fine. He says, just set your mind on what's out there and run for it.


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[Assistant] At first, all I can think about is Leo sitting up on the top of the bridge running numbers in his head.


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[Assistant] And a story Gordon told me where two guys meet up there on the walkway and find out they are both survivors of a previous jump.


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[Assistant] Then I let my mind roll out past the cliffs and the breakers, past the Marin headlands and all of the navigation boys.


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[Assistant] Out to some place where the swells swallow up the coastline and Hawaii is the only thing between me and forever.


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[Assistant] And what are the odds of hitting it if I just head for the horizon and never change my course?


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[Assistant] I can hear the big boat's bow wave breaking right behind us.


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[Assistant] Just as the giant shadow of the bridge crosses our bow, Leo jumps up and gives me an America's Cup hug.


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[Assistant] We sail on out to the edge of the headlands where the swells get big enough to make us both a little sick.


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[Assistant] And it's finally Leo who takes the tiller from my hand and turns the boat around. It's sunny as Bermuda out here.


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[Assistant] Like sometimes when you go to a movie and you get so lost in the story,


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[Assistant] That when you're walking out of the theater you can't remember anything at all about your own life. You might forget for example,


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[Assistant] Or so few they will bleed in your car for a hundred dollars.


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[Assistant] You might forget 11 or maybe 12 of the 16 in a row totaled cars.


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[Assistant] You might forget that you never expected to be alone at 31, or that a crazy man might be waiting for you with a gun when you get home tonight, or that all the people you know, without exception,


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[Assistant] The fog is sitting in the center of the bay like it's over a big pot of soup and we're about to enter it. I can't help you, Leo says, and squints his eyes against the mist in the air.


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[Assistant] When I was two years old, my father took me down to the beach in New Jersey.


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[Assistant] Carried me into the surf until the waves were crashing onto his chest and then threw me in like a dog to see, I suppose, whether I would sink or float.


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[Assistant] My mother, who was from high in the Rocky Mountains where all the water was too cold for swimming, and who had been told since birth never to get her face wet. She took only baths, never showers.


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[Assistant] Got so hysterical by the water's edge that lifeguards from two different stands leapt to my rescue. There was no need, however.


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[Assistant] By the time they arrived at my father's side I had passed the flotation test.


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[Assistant] had swum as hard and fast as my untried limbs would carry me and my father had me up on his shoulders smiling and smug and a little surprised.


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[Assistant] I make Leo drive back by the Palace of the Fine Arts on the way home, though the Richmond Bridge is faster. The fog has moved in there too, and the last of the brides are worrying their hairdos


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[Assistant] While the grooms help them into big dark cars that will whisk them away to the honeymoon suite at the Four Seasons.


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[Assistant] The sidewalk is littered with rose petals and that artificial rice that dissolves in the rain. Even the swans have paired off and are swimming that way, the feathers of their inside wings barely touching, their long necks bent slightly toward each other, the tips of their beaks almost closing the M. I take the swan's picture and a picture of the rose petals bleeding onto the sidewalk.


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[Assistant] I step up under the tallest of the arches and bow to my imaginary husband. He takes my hand and we turn to the minister who bows to us and we bow again. I'm scared, I say again, but this time it comes out stronger, almost like singing, as though it might be the first step in 55 or a thousand towards something like a real life. The very first step towards something that will last.


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[Assistant] Oh, see now, I have heard my father name him. He was a bachelor.


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[Assistant] If you be not mad, be gone. If you have reason, be free.


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[Assistant] Such a one I was this present. It's not well done.


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[Assistant] Tis in grain, sir, twill endure wind and weather. Tis duty truly bend, whose red and white


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[Assistant] And sing them loud even in the dead of night.


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[Assistant] Nor will you not that I go with you. By your patience, no. My stars shine brightly over me.


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[Assistant] Which were on foot in his own conduct, purposely to take his brother here and put him to the sword.


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[Assistant] After some question with him was converted both from his enterprise and from the world. His crown bequeathing to his banished brother


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[Assistant] And all their lands restored to them again that were with him exiled. This to be true, I do engage my life.


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[Assistant] That I'm rudely stamped, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph.


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[Assistant] And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these farewell-spoken days,


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[Assistant] A wizard told him that by G his issue disinherited.


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[Assistant] These are thy learnings, such like toys as these hath moved his highness to commit me now. Why, this it is when men are ruled by women. Tis not the king that sends you to the tower, my Lady Grey, his wife Clarence, tis she that tempted him to this extremity.


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[Assistant] Was it not she and that good man of worship, Anthony Woodyville, her brother there, that made him send Lord Hastings to the tower? From whence this present day he is deliberate? We are not safe, Florence, we are not safe.


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[Assistant] I think it is our way, if we will keep in favour with the king, to be her men and wear her livery.


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[Assistant] The jealous, awe-worn widow and herself, since that our brother dubbed them gentle women, are mighty goddesses.


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[Assistant] Even so, and please your worship, Brackenbury, you may partake of anything we say. We speak no prison, now.


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[Assistant] We are the Queen's abjects and must obey. Brother, farewell.


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[Assistant] As much unto my good Lord Chamberlain, where are you welcome to the open air? How hath your Lordship brook'd in prison month?


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[Assistant] God taking Edward to his mercy and leaves the world for me to battle in. For that.


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[Assistant] One place though, if you will hear me name it.


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[Assistant] Is not the cause of the timeless deaths of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward, as blameful as the executioner.


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[Assistant] And if thy poor devoted servant may but beg one favor at thy gracious hand, thou doth confirm his happiness for ever.


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[Assistant] And presently prepared to cross the house, where after I have solemnly interred at church the monastery this noble king, and wed his grave with my repentant tears, I will with all expedient duty see you.


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[Assistant] But first I'll turn Yom's fellow in his grave.


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[Assistant] And three or four loving lords have put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new duke. Therefore he gives them good leave to wander.


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[Assistant] Oh no, for the duke's daughter her cousin so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together.


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[Assistant] That she would have followed her exile or have died to stay behind her. She is at the court.


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[Assistant] And no less beloved of her uncle than his own daughter. Never two ladies loved as they do.


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[Assistant] They say he's already in the forest of Arden, and are many merry men with him. And there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day.


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[Assistant] And fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world. What? You wrestle tomorrow before the new duke? Merry do I, sir. And I came to acquaint you with a matter.


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[Assistant] Tomorrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit, and he that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well. Your brother is but young and tender.


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[Assistant] And for your love I would be loath to foil him, as I must for me own honour if he come in.


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[Assistant] Therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal.


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[Assistant] Or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into.


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[Assistant] In that it is a thing of his own search, and altogether against my will.


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[Assistant] So it appears by that I have to say. First he commends him to your noble self. What then? Then certifies your lordship that this night he dreamt the boar had raised it off his helm. Besides he says there are two councils kept.


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[Assistant] I had unchained an enemy among them whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they would each and all abhor me and hunt me from the world!


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[Assistant] And strove by various arguments to banish my despair.


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[Assistant] Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder.


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[Assistant] And he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.


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[Assistant] Alas, my father, said I, how little you do know me.


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[Assistant] Human beings, their feelings and passions would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as I felt pride. Justine!


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[Assistant] Poor unhappy Justine was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge. She died for it, and I am the cause of this. I murdered her.


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[Assistant] William, Justine and Henry, they all died by my hands.


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[Assistant] My father had often, during my imprisonment heard me make the same assertion.


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[Assistant] When I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium.


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[Assistant] And that during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination.


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[Assistant] The remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence.


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[Assistant] I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad.


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[Assistant] But besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast.


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[Assistant] I checked therefore my impatient thirst for sympathy, and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret.


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[Assistant] Yet, still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me.


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[Assistant] I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth in part relieved the burden of my mysterious woes.


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[Assistant] Upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder, My dearest Victor, what infatuation is this? My dear son, I entreat you never to make such an assertion again. I'm not mad! I cried energetically.


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[Assistant] I am the assassin of those most innocent victims. They died by my machinations.


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[Assistant] But I could not, my father. Indeed I could not sacrifice the whole human race.


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[Assistant] The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation and endeavored to alter the course of my thoughts.


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[Assistant] Misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes.


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[Assistant] Sufficient for me was the consciousness of them.


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[Assistant] By the utmost self-violence, I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world.


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[Assistant] And my manners were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey to the sea of ice.


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[Assistant] A few days before we left Paris on our way to Switzerland, I received the following letter from Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] It gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle dated at Paris.


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[Assistant] You are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may hope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you must have suffered.


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[Assistant] I expect to see you looking even more ill than when you quitted Geneva.


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[Assistant] This winter has been passed most miserably, tortured as I have been by anxious suspense.


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[Assistant] Yet I hope to see peace in your countenance and to find that your heart is not totally void of comfort and tranquility.


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[Assistant] I would not disturb you at this period when so many misfortunes were upon you, but a conversation that I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some explanation necessary before we meet.


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[Assistant] You may possibly say, what can Elizabeth have to explain?


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[Assistant] If you really say this, my questions are answered and all my doubts satisfied.


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[Assistant] But you are distant from me, and it is possible that you may dread and yet be pleased with this explanation.


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[Assistant] And in a probability of this being the case, I dare not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I have often wished to express to you. But I've never had the courage to begin.


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[Assistant] You well know, Victor, that our union had been the favorite plan of your parents ever since our infancy.


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[Assistant] We were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place.


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[Assistant] We were affectionate playfellows during childhood, and I believe dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older.


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[Assistant] But as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each other, without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our case? Tell me, dearest Victor.


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[Assistant] Answer me. I conjure you by our mutual happiness with simple truth. Do you not love another? You have traveled. You have spent several years of your life at Ingolstadt.


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[Assistant] And I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude from the society of every creature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our connection and believe yourself bound in honor to fulfill the wishes of your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But this is false reasoning.


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[Assistant] I confess to you my friend, that I love you.


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[Assistant] And that in my airy dreams of futurity, you have been my constant friend and companion.


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[Assistant] But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own when I declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to think that


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[Assistant] Born down as you are by the cruelest misfortunes, you may stifle by the word honor.


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[Assistant] I, who have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. Ah, Victor.


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[Assistant] Be assured that your cousin and playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this supposition. Be happy, my friend.


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[Assistant] And if you obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to interrupt my tranquility. Do not let this letter disturb you.


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[Assistant] Do not answer tomorrow, or the next day, or even until you come if it will give you pain.


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[Assistant] My uncle will send me news of your health, and if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.


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[Assistant] Revived in my memory what I had before forgotten. The threat of the fiend. I will be with you on your wedding night. Such was my sentence.


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[Assistant] And on that night would the demon employ every art to destroy me and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings.


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[Assistant] On that night he had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. Well, be it so.


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[Assistant] A deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were victorious, I should be at peace, and his power over me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I should be a free man. Alas, what freedom!


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[Assistant] Such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless, and alone, but free.


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[Assistant] I possessed a treasure, alas, balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death. Sweet and beloved Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] I read and re-read her letter and some softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisiacal dreams of love and joy. But the apple was already eaten.


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[Assistant] And the angel's arm bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make her happy.


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[Assistant] My destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner, but if my torturer should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces,


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[Assistant] He would surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had vowed to be with me on my wedding night.


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[Assistant] I resolved therefore that if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to hers or my father's happiness, my adversary's designs against my life should not retard it a single hour. In this state of mind I wrote to Elizabeth. My letter was calm and affectionate. I fear my beloved girl, I said, little happiness remains for us on earth.


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[Assistant] To you alone do I consecrate my life and my endeavors for contentment. I have one secret, Elizabeth, a dreadful one.


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[Assistant] When revealed to you, it will chill your frame with horror. And then...


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[Assistant] Far from being surprised at my misery, you will only wonder that I survive what I have endured.


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[Assistant] I will confide this tale of misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place. For, my sweet cousin,


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[Assistant] There must be perfect confidence between us.


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[Assistant] But until then I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. This I most earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply.


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[Assistant] In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth's letter, we returned to Geneva.


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[Assistant] The sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection, yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a change in her also.


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[Assistant] But her gentleness and soft looks of compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as I was.


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[Assistant] The tranquility which I now enjoyed did not endure.


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[Assistant] Memory brought madness with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed me.


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[Assistant] I neither spoke nor looked at anyone, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.


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[Assistant] Her gentle voice would soothe me when transported by passion and inspire me with human feelings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me and for me.


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[Assistant] When reason returned, she would remonstrate and endeavor to inspire me with resignation.


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[Assistant] It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.


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[Assistant] The agonies of remorse poison the luxury that is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.


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[Assistant] Soon after my arrival my father spoke of my immediate marriage with Elizabeth. I remained silent. Have you then some other attachment? None on earth. I love Elizabeth and look forward to our union with delight. Let the day therefore be fixed.


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[Assistant] And on it I will consecrate myself in life or death to the happiness of my cousin. My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us.


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[Assistant] Let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small.


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[Assistant] Nor can you wonder that, omnipotent as the fiend had yet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as invincible. And that when he had pronounced the words, I shall be with you on your wedding night, I should regard the threatened fate as unavoidable.


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[Assistant] But death was no evil to me if the loss of Elizabeth were balanced with it.


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[Assistant] With a contented and even cheerful countenance, agreed with my father that if my cousin would consent, the ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put as I imagined.


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[Assistant] So uhm, how brief the life of man runs his erring pilgrimage, that the stretching of a span buckles in his sum of age.


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[Assistant] Therefore heaven nature charged, That one body should be filled, With all graces wide enlarged, Nature presently distilled, Helen's cheek.


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[Assistant] But not her heart. Cleopatra's majesty.


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[Assistant] Atalanta's better part. Sad Lucretia's modesty.