The Second Coming

open and making a wet spot on the cotton.
    Suddenly he was tired, as tired as he had ever been in his life. Could it be that all these years he had not really slept or slept as lightly as a soldier on patrol? Could it be that not having an address, not living anywhere, meant that one was free to sleep?
    Taking off his jacket, and even as he hung it up, he was, alertly he thought and casting ahead as was his wont, looking around for his suitcase, which must have his pajamas, when he realized that he had no suitcase and therefore no pajamas. Where do I go when I leave here? he wondered, yawning and turning. The gyroscope in his head resisted the turn but not unpleasantly. His pH was up. Great haunted molecules boomed around in his brain. A smell of old newspapers and flour paste and Octagon soap rose in his nostrils. Was this Georgia?
    Though it was not late, the sun had already touched the top of the violet mountains. It glittered as if it had struck sparks from rock. The slot in the drapes showed a corner of the Holiday Inn property. The corner was empty, no pool, no lounges, no tables, no cars, no children’s playground. Yet the grass was well trimmed up to the fence separating it from the pasture. He wondered how many people had set foot in this empty corner over the years. Perhaps none.
    Yawning and moving slowly against his gyroscope, he undressed to his underwear shorts, closed the drapes on the sunset, and got into bed. Allison was in the middle of the bed and so inert and heavy with sleep that there was no ready means of making himself comfortable except by fitting himself around her.
    Suddenly bethinking himself, he jumped up and turning slowly like a ship heading up in a gale found the Do Not Disturb sign next to the Gideon Bible and hung it outside. He hooked up the chain and shot the dead bolt.
    Inert or not, she was not so unyielding that he could not put his arms around her and hold her cupped like a child in his sideways lap. Smiling in her neck, he gave her some hugs. What made him happy was the thought of her sleeping so soundly, having eaten so well, resting and digesting and fattening and restoring herself even as he held her. Already the corn bread was sticking to her ribs. Her warm breath blew regularly against his arm.
    5
    You packed the guns in the trunk of the car, remember?
    Yes. No. Leslie did.
    Go get them.
    No.
    Come, it’s the only way, the one quick sure exit of grace and violence and beauty. Come, believe me, it’s the ultimate come, not the first come which we all grow up dreaming about and which is never what we hoped, is it, but near enough to know there is something better, isn’t it, the second, last and ultimate come to end all comes.
    No.
    Come, what else is there? What other end if you don’t make the end? Make your own bright end in the darkness of this dying world, this foul and feckless place, where you know as well as I that nothing ever really works, that you were never once yourself and never will be or he himself or she herself and certainly never once we ourselves together. Come, close it out before it closes you out because believe me life does no better job with dying than with living. Close it out. At least you can do that, not only not lose but win, with one last splendid gesture defeat the whole foul feckless world. You’ll do better than I, you’re already in a better place, you a placeless person in a placeless place, a motel surely a better place for taking off than a swamp or an attic, yes.
    No.
    Go like a man, for Christ’s sake, a Roman, here’s your sword.
    No.
    Very well. Then it will close you out, since you’re already impregnated with death, a slight case of sickness in the head making you crazier even than you are, smelling the past, nigger cabins, pin-oak flats, not even knowing where you are, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, without looking out the window to check the mountain, and from here on out nowhere to go but down.
    No.
    Very well, let it close you out with the drools and the shakes and your mouth fallen open, head nodding away and both hands rolling pills. But you’ll never even get that far because you’ve got my genes and you know better.
    Yes.
    Then get up and go out to the car and get it and go to the empty corner of grass and fence where nobody’s been. We like desert places.
    All right.
    It was dark.
    His head as he turned to rise seemed to shift on its axis like the great world itself.
    He