Between Malachi and Winnitoba, which is the first town in Manitoba, he recollected for accidental reasons Diesel Bend, Utah, where he'd gone north through the green fields walled in by trees, the little farms and white houses all embraced by those chalky cliffs in which fossil fishes are sometimes found; these, too, were tree-greened. . and farther ahead lay the blue blue mountains that made you know you were going north. Families were sitting on the porch in the evening or hoeing their gardens, and beautiful white horses swished their tails, and everything smelled like clover. Diesel Bend was not so different from Winnitoba. But, like a platter of Mexican marzipans made to resemble miniature fruits (papayas studded with chocolate seeds, strawberries, pale green pears), while in color and sweetness they might approximate each other, there was no sameness anywhere (his clawing at identities but a failure even when he looked out into sunlight, his self but a grimacing face in chill sea-foam). No two things are not disparable, although life's proprieties pretend otherwise. His first love's letters lay sweedy in their envelopes, whose righthand edges had each been snipped just so because he'd loved her so much that he didn't want to mar anything with her writing on it; each envelope was from her to him, with a thirteen-cent stamp on it — but how disparable! The one that had been addressed in crayon contained a page which said: Of course Tina thought I was fantastic or unique. He had no idea who Tina had been. He was fairly sure that he'd never met her. His first love had passionately snatched up so many people, bringing them to her heart; and then when they hurt her or she tired of them she'd throw them away again. He'd be surprised if she still knew Tina. He'd be astonished if she still thought about whether or not she was unique. That was what adolescents did. He had done it. But it wasn't because I was; it was because of the life I led, living in a suite with six young men, drinking bourbon straight in my footy-pajamas in front of the fireplace, knowing the owner of the local Irish pub, seeing a cardiologist, an internist, having physical problems unique to my age, making love, roaming Philly, spending afternoons at the zoo like a child, balloon in hand. When the dope came in I sometimes had to weigh it and check it. But I am the same as I ahvays was, mostly. I am not so unique now because the novelty isn't there. She had tried so hard to be bad, to be glamorous, to have adventures. And she'd had them. Then what? In Thailand all the rigid figures relax into motion again at the end of the national song. (The train passed narrow-needled cones of green.) A mutual friend, now dead, had once told him that she was not and never had been unique. But everybody is disparable, and everybody dies. In answer to your picture: there are no squares, right? Only in three dimensions and I didn't know that counted. Are we getting to know one another quite well? I don't know you too well. But I suppose I'm willing to lean as you let me and to let me know you as you wish. The sweet earnestness of this young girl aroused his tenderness. Now he could be good to her. He could give her money and let her be and do whatever she pleased. That was goodness, wasn't it? I think this is an awful state — being in love. I wonder why people do it. I was happier not loving. That's a lie, you know. You are all I have in my life now that can make me happy. Of course you are also capable of making me miserable. After all, I am still feeling like a part of me is missing. He read that in amazement. Did I really have the power to make another person happy or unhappy? Was I ever that much alive? Jesus, I want to die of leukemia, too. Perhaps we are too much alike in thought. And now she had cancer and he didn't. The weirdness of her having wished that so many years ago chilled him. He had wished it, too, solely because she did: a true puppy lover, he'd yearned to be counted among the hues of her iridescence. Neither of them could have known what leukemia was. He supposed that she knew now. I'll do what you asked about the drinking. I suppose if it were for myself I would continue to drink and smoke. I want to die young, you know, and in disgrace. But then sodden mossy trees bloomed in his brain with white mushroom cups around which regiments of ants hurried on their voracious errands. It was cool and humid in the bamboo tunnels between dripping ivied boulders as high as two tall men. Water leaped down like liquid dirt, spewing and dipping in clumps as of an old dog's hair, seething into brown pools whose mist was drunk by pale yellow butterflies beneath those living fishing rods that grew down, steadying themselves with spade-shaped leaves, reaching wooden feelers into the water. That was the place of reddish-brown waterfalls near Chiang Mai; that was the place of cool sweat and slippery jungle paths. He'd ridden a train from there back down into the lowlands, the ricefields whose muddy rivers relaxed from time to time by forming cloudy puddles in which the travelling sun was reflected. An occasional tree rose out of the rice, with water around its roots. The bitter smell of diesel-smoke was exhaled by the train. The cloud-map rushed across square lakes of green-stubbled water. His wife put her arm around him as they passed an old ruined wat with dogs loping its edges (white birds on the ricefields), then another small wat rising gold-curlicued and red-roofed in the fields and his wife, his dear and darling wife, was whispering: I love you same same crocodile. . He was beside her in Bangkok walking to the seafood restaurant, every street calf-deep in brown water, so the two of them splashed barefoot — so pleasant to feel the warm dirty water against one's feet — and at last they arrived at the restaurant with its decorative tree dried leaves and all, studded with lights, ice and crabs in the windows. You could order Steammed Crab in Shredded Jelly, Fried Frog with Garlic, Peppered Paisa Serpent-Head Fish, or Steammed Crab with Anything. Ladies whose arms glowed with gold bracelets nibbled happily at breaded crab. The windows steamed themselves up against the hot rainy night. The waiters in their immaculate black vests and bow ties always smiled. It was a very happy restaurant, and he was happy; he said I LOVE YOU to his wife. (She cried later, of course, because he had to go away.)
