The Second Coming

almost remembers it. Sometimes I think she does. In fact, after one session with Ray at Virginia Beach, she did remember it.”
    â€œRay?”
    â€œA true mystic—and you know how hardheaded I am about such things. Well, I can tell you there was no humbug here. After trance and regression, first Ray’s trance without Allie present, then Allie’s regression, both wrote down what they saw. I was there, I took the papers, I read them. It’s scientific proof. The particulars differ but there is enough to know what sort of life Allie had and the explanation of what she’s going through now. The upshot is that our duty is to protect her and take care of her while she works it out.”
    â€œWorks what out?”
    â€œThe karma of that life. Or lives.”
    â€œLives?”
    â€œThey described two lives but essentially they were the same. Allie’s version was that she had been a camp follower of the Union Army before the battle of Chancellorsville. Now here’s the fascinating part. When Allie would get down on herself and crawl into her hole, she would say over and over again: I’m no good, I’m a liar, I’m the original hooker. Over and over again she would say, I’m the original hooker. Now, that’s not Allie’s style—I doubt if she ever even heard that word. But we look up the word and guess what. It turns out that the word hooker was first applied to camp followers of General Hooker’s army who fought—guess where?—at the battle of Chancellorsville. So when she said I’m the original hooker she was telling the literal truth. Those that have ears—?
    â€œWhat was the other version?”
    â€œOkay. Here’s what Ray had written after his trance. Allie had been not a hooker but a courtesan spy for the North in Richmond, where she was known as a great Southern belle who charmed many officers with her wit and conversation. Later we figured out that they might both be right. There had been a famous Union spy in Richmond who had been a prostitute, a hooker. Isn’t that fascinating? But of course what really matters is how it explains her present life.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œDon’t you see? Then she was too much of this world, she knew too many men, talked too much, lied too much, and abused her body. So now she is not of this world, knows nobody, can’t talk enough to lie, doesn’t use her body at all. Or as she would put it: my body doesn’t work—implying that, before, her body worked .”
    Kitty went on smoothly from Allie to herself and her karma and to him and his Scorpio tenacity: “Oh, I could have told you twenty years ago if you’d asked me, that you would have to undergo trial and exile before you finally won, like Napoleon and Lenin and Robert Bruce. Your destiny is the Return.”
    â€œNapoleon didn’t win,” he said.
    Her belief in such matters was both absolute and perfunctory. There was a plausibility to it. Things fell into place. Mysteries were revealed. Why could he not be a believer? Who were the believers now? Everyone. Everyone believed everything. We’re all from California now. Yet we believe with a kind of perfunctoriness. Even now Kitty was inattentive, eyes drifting as she talked. In the very act of uttering her ultimate truths, she was too bored to listen.
    â€œAh, I’ve got to go,” he said suddenly, getting out of the car stiffly and setting one foot toward the woods.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œHome.”
    â€œWhy don’t you drive?” asked Kitty, laughing.
    â€œRight,” he said, frowning and fumbling for the keys.
    â€œNow, you’re coming to see me after you’ve talked to Leslie?”
    â€œSure,” he said, feeling his face. Suddenly he wanted a shave, a bath, a drink.
    â€œJust remember. Villa number six. Dun Romin’.”
    â€œRight,” he said absently. “Dun Romin’.”
    2
    Things began to happen fast. For one thing, he noticed, the days were ending much sooner. The sun, smaller and colder, dropped quickly behind a mountain. Events speeded up. A general law of acceleration prevailed. His Mercedes fairly zipped along the highway yet other cars honked and passed him.
    The house was dark and silent when be stopped in the driveway. The sun seemed to be setting in the gorge. The stunted maple which looked like a post oak was nearly stripped of its leaves.
    He