The Second Coming

see.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe feelings are more than revealing.”
    â€œYes, I see what you mean. Yes, you may have hurt my feelings a little, but maybe not as badly as you think. At any rate, it is not an awful thing. I’ll leave so you can enjoy the avocados.”
    â€œIt’s not you.”
    â€œYou mean it’s not that you dislike me but you don’t know how to get rid of me and that makes you nervous. What if I don’t leave? Yes, it’s a problem sometimes. I developed an art of moving people out of my office. It was a matter of placement of chairs and of getting up and moving in such a way that the other person moves in front of you and finds himself at the door without knowing how he got there.”
    â€œLe cool is coming soon,” she said, gazing around.
    â€œLe cool? Yes, fall is upon us.”
    â€œLe dad is no better than le doc and what are you in le plan?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know. But I wasn’t trying to be your father or your doctor.”
    â€œUnderstanding can also be a demand. De man. Le mans.”
    â€œYes. I guess you are fed up with people trying to understand you. And I guess I was sounding like—who? De man. What man is that, I wonder. I’m making you nervous. I’ll be going.”
    â€œYes, I have to go also.” She hugged the bag. “They’re mine when you leave.”
    â€œThey’re yours now.”
    â€œBut I cannot inspect them with your inspection.”
    â€œI understand. Very well, I’ll leave so you can inspect them.”
    â€œOkay then.”
    She waited. Why didn’t he leave? It is difficult to talk to people, to stand around wondering what to say and what to do with your eyes. Maybe it is easier to be crazy than to put up with people’s pauses. Suppose he didn’t leave.
    He left. Whew. She began to think of topics of conversation in case he should come again.
    Later the dog walked toward the chestnut fall, sat, and cocked his head.
    The man was getting up from a log where he had been sitting (watching her?). He began to walk and fell down. She hurried to help him but he was up quickly, brushing himself off.
    â€œWhat happened?” She took his arm and was thinking not so much about him but about herself, the sudden weakness at the pit of her stomach when he fell, her heart still racing. What happened to me? she meant.
    â€œI fell down.”
    â€œI know that. But why?”
    â€œI don’t know. Lately I tend to fall down.”
    â€œThat’s all right I tend to pick things up. I’m a hoister.”
    â€œWe’d make a twosome.”
    â€œDon’t joke.”
    â€œAll right.”
    Was that the world’s secret then, that you have to joke all the time? Is that how you live?
    The man was sitting on a polished chestnut log, one arm stretched over his knee, hand open. He seemed to be looking at the barbed-wire fence. Now he stood and putting his hands in his pockets bent over them as if he were cold.
    â€œWhat?” she asked.
    â€œNothing. I—” He looked at his watch. His brown smooth hand still had tooth marks from the dog. She could not take her eyes from his hand.
    â€œI love—” she began.
    â€œYou love what?”
    She loved his hand.
    â€œIs it time and if it is, time for what?” she asked.
    â€œTime? Yes.” He was gazing at the fence in an absent staring way. He broke away, blinked. “Yes. I have to be somewhere at five-thirty.”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œI know. This is your home.”
    â€œWhere is your home?”
    â€œOver there.” He nodded toward the one-eyed mountain.
    â€œYou own a home on the mountain?”
    â€œI own the mountain.”
    â€œOkay. Then go home.”
    â€œRight.” They were both startled by her command. He left.
    She watched as he stepped through the fence, paused, then went quickly through. Now, standing and facing her from the golf links, he seemed to feel freer, as if the fence allowed a neighborliness.
    â€œPerhaps you would not mind a suggestion,” he said.
    â€œNo, I wouldn’t.”
    â€œDo you know what a creeper is?”
    â€œVirginia creeper?”
    â€œNo no.” If he could have smiled, she thought, he would have smiled. “No, it’s a little platform on wheels which mechanics lie on when they work under cars.”
    â€œI know it but not the word.”
    â€œYou have some planks,