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Well, it appeared so, though I felt mighty strange right through. For a particular reason, I did not see fit to tell them then and there what had happened, as best I understood it. I pled the dope; begged to be fetched to our motel at once; was. Then, whilst Ambrose at my insistence showered first, I investigated the clammy sog I’d commenced in the cab to feel between my legs. My clothing, I’ve reported, was in place, underpants included, though now sopping; it even occurred to me, along with the obvious ugly alternative, that my belated menses had arrived after all. But now I discovered (here goes, John) a dime-sized tear or… puncture, smack in the crotch of my knickers, and a greenish discharge unlike anything I’ve leaked hitherto: neither semen nor menstrual flow nor spontaneous abortion nor thrush nor monilia nor cystic discharge nor, for that matter, urine either normal or jaundiced. The old vulva, too, was a touch inflamed and tender. I hid the drawers under trash in the basket, showered, applied my travelling douche. Seeing I wasn’t ill, Ambrose made to make love to me by way of solicitude and reassurance. I demurred, slept like a tot from the dope, awoke this A.M. clearheaded and feeling fine. Then we did make love: no problems; tenderness and “discharge” gone; a great comfort to leak the real thing again. No evidence whatever of Whatever: the whole P.M. a clear but distant dream, a dream.

Well! was I Mickey-Finned and raped? By André Castine in an old Volkswagen? By whom, then, and with what? Could it truly have been a terrific hash dream? (No: I rechecked those drawers. Ugh.) Thank heaven John Schott won’t be reading this letter!

I am damned if I know. I will keep last night to myself — ourselves — at least until I can check out “Monsieur Casteene” across the river, where no doubt our filmage will fetch us in time for the great Fort Erie Assault & Explosion of 15 August 1814. If I actually was raped last night, I must say it was as painless, scarless, hangoverless a business (but for that single shock) as smoking dope, its main consequences one ruined pair of knickers, a powerful curiosity to learn what’s come over my old friend André these days, that he gets his sex by C.I.A. methods… and, even as I speak so lightly, a welling up of tears from what I had believed the long-healed fracture of my heart.

Whew! As I’ve spent the morning abed in the Scajaquada Motor Inn, penning this and shaking my head over last night, the Author and the Director have been prepping Delaware Park for the Conjockety and Mating-Flight shots (with echoes of Long Wharf and that mike boom business), which I myself am to play some role in later in the afternoon or evening, if I feel up to it.

I find, to my surprise, I rather do. Ambrose was truly tender with me this morning: not a word about my going off to look for André, only concern and — well, love. I may never know what hit me last night in that rose garden, but I know I’m anxious about the coming confrontation between my Author and his adversary, especially if Bea Golden has rejoined Prinz and if Ambrose’s only ally, besides myself, is that erratic—

Omigod.

No. And yet…

No!

No more now!

G.

V: Todd Andrews to his father. His Second Dark Night of the Soul. 13 R.

Dorset Hotel

High Street

Cambridge, Maryland 21613

July 11, 1969

Thomas T. Andrews, Dec’d

Plot #1, Municipal Cemetery

Cambridge, Maryland 21613

Old Father,

Very hot, still, and airless where I am. How is it with you? Time itself has gone torpid in Maryland since the solstice; summer limps like one long day, my last, after my last Dark Night.

In an eyeblink this mid-morning — in mid-sentence in mid-committee meeting — the clear message of the three weeks past was delivered to me, with its plain postscript re the future. It’s a message I ought to have got two chapters ago at least, in May: but never better than late, and I’m as buoyed as the Choptank channel by it.

Where were we? That was Jane, of course, on the telephone back in June, calling my bluff. Ah, so I was back from Baltimore early — or hadn’t I gone? In any case, she’d be a bit late for our evening, was tied up at work. And could we take a rain check on the fish? No no, she wasn’t breaking our date; but she’d spent the whole day on an exciting proposal to extend m.e. (remember me, Dad?) into the fast-food-chain business, a real growth venture, wait till I heard; and then she’d happened to learn that Jeannine (Bea Golden) was flying in to open a revival of The Parachute Girl on the O.F.T. II at 8:30. Why didn’t I meet her at her office at six? We’d have a drink somewhere, catch dinner at one of those Awful Colonel Sanders Things to check them out, and then take in the show?