A Darkness in My Soul

Members of the New Maoism said today that they had assurances from…"
        I turned it off.
        No news is good news. Or, as the general populace of that glorious year was wont to say: All news is bad news.
        It seemed like that. The threat of war was so heavy on the world that Atlas must certainly have had a terrible backache. The 1980s and 1990s, with their general climate of peace and good will made these last fourteen years of tense brinksmanship all the more agonizing by comparison. That was why the young peace criers were so militant. They had never really known the years of peace, and they lived with the conviction that those in power had always been men of guns and destruction. Perhaps, if they had been old enough to have experienced peace before the cold war, their fiery idealism might have been metamorphosed into despair, as with the rest of us. I was very young in the last of the pre-war years, but I had been reading since before I was two and spoke four languages by the age of four. I was aware even then. It makes the present chaos more maddening.
        Besides the threat of plague, there was the super-nuclear accident in Arizona which had claimed thirty-seven thousand lives, a number too large to carry emotion with it.
        And there were the Anderson Spoors which had riddled half a state with disease before the Bio-Chem Warfare people had been able to check their own stray experiment.
        And, of course, there were the twisted things the AC labs produced (their failures), which were sent away to rot in unlighted rooms under the glossy heading of "perpetual professional care." Anyway, I turned the radio off.
        And thought about Child.
        And knew I should never have taken the job.
        And knew that I wouldn't quit
        

    IV
        
        At home, in the warmth of the den, with my books and my paintings to protect me, I took the dust jacket off the book so I wouldn't accidentally see her face, and I began reading Lily. It was a mystery novel, and a mystery of a novel. The prose was not spectacular, actually intended for the average reader seeking a few hours of escape.
        Still, I was fascinated. Through the chapters, between the lines of marching black words, a face seen at a party weeks before kept drifting through my mind. A face which I had been fighting to forget…
        Amber hair, long and straight.
        "See that woman? Over there? That's Marcus Aurelius. Writes those semi-pornographic books, like Lily and Bodies in Darkness, those."
        Her face was sculpted, smooth planes and milky flesh.
        Her eyes were green, wider than eyes should be, though not the eyes of a mutant.
        Her body was graceful, provocatively in vogue.
        Her…
        I ignored what he was saying about her, all the foul things he suggested, and studied amber hair, cat's eyes, fast fingers touching that hair, clasping a glass of gin, jabbing the air for emphasis in conversation…
        When I was finished with the book, I went and made myself some Scotch and water. I am not a good bartender.
        I drank it and pretended I was about sleepy enough for bed. I stood on the patio, which is slung over the side of the small mountain which I own, and I watched the snow.
        I got cold and went inside. Undressing, I went to bed, nestled down in the covers, and thought about ice floes and blizzards and piling drifts, letting myself find sleep.
        I said, "Damn!" and got up and got more Scotch and went to the phone, where I should have gone as soon as I finished the last page of the novel.
        I could not understand the logic of what I was doing, but there are times when the physical overrides the cerebral, no matter what the proponents of civilized society might say about it.
        Punching out the numbers for directory assistance, I asked for Marcus Aurelius' number. The operator refused to give me her real name and number, but I esped out and saw it as she looked at the directory in front of her:
        MARCUS AURELIUS Or MELINDA THAUSER; 22-223-296787/ UNLISTED.
        So I said sorry and hung up and dialed the number I had just stolen.
        "Hello?"
        It was a competent, businesslike voice. Yet there was a sultriness in it that could not be ignored.
        "Miss Thauser?"
        "Yes?"
        I told her my name and said she would probably know it and then sounded pleased when she did. It was all