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LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning i LOVE STORY LOGIC is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of persons and events portrayed here to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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2129 JKHB BYU Provo, UT 84602

Heather Nicole Iris

Benjamin Jessica

Raquel

These lessons in character and logic.

For my foundation and balance:

Karen

My own living love story. ADM

“Our Primary Colors,” original words and music by Marzelle Mangum. The Children’s Songbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1989. p. 258. (Added verses are creations of the author.) “It’s a Little Too Late,” Tanya Tucker. Capitol Records, Nashville. 1992. “Let's Dance,” David Bowie. EMI Music. 1983. “Be Still, My Soul,” text by Katharina von Schlegel. Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1985, no. 124. “Master, The Tempest is Raging,” text by Mary Ann Baker. Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1985, no. 105. “Memory”(Come as You Are), Kurt Cobain/Nirvana. DGC Records. 1992. “Color My World,” James Pankow/Chicago. Columbia Records. 1970. “Three Times a Lady,” Lionel Richie/The Commodores. Motown Records. 1975. “Each Life That Touches Ours for Good,” text by Karen Lynn Davidson. Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1985, no. 293. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” Bono/U2. Island Records Ltd. 1987.

FILM CREDITS (See Lecture VII) “The Pump,” Brigham Young University Motion Picture Studios. 1986.

CONCEPTUAL CREDITS The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vols. I-VIII, ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, Arther Burks. (Harvard University Press, 1931-1935, 1958). A Color Interpretation of Peirce’s Cateories. John S. Robertson. Brigham Young University. (Personal Conversations. 1990-1999). The Color Code, Taylor Hartman. (Scribner, 1998). Note: Hartman’s “yellow” and “blue” personalities are reclassified as orange and purple within Peirce’s larger system of types.

I. Blood Red

THE FIRST DAY: Professor Preston enters the classroom. His face is unusual, but I like it. He wears dark blue slacks, a bright yellow shirt, and a blood red tie. His tie clashes with his shirt. It makes me feel nervous. He goes to the blackboard and begins to write. “You won’t understand these ideas yet,” he says over his shoulder, “but copy these lines in your notebooks anyway. Please remember them.” He hums a tune. The tune goes with the words he’s writing. Our Primary colors are one, two, three, Red, yellow, and blue... I smiled. About a third of the class laughed out loud. The rest of the students looked around the room, puzzled. It was an inside joke. “What’s going on?” the boy next to me asked. “It’s a song that Latter-day Saint children learn in their Primary classes,” I said. “Oh nuts,” he exhaled. “I didn’t know you were a Mormon.” There was regret in his LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 2 voice. He’d been flirting before class started. I shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” I loved the hunger in this boy’s eyes. I got out a pen and jotted down the last lines on the blackboard. I had NOT learned this verse in church, back when I was three or four. The professor wrote lines more cryptic: Red Opposition, blood conflict, hard fight. Yellow, Potential in morning sunlight. Blue is for Pattern and far destiny. Find these in all that we speak, do, and see.

Professor Preston began in a lively voice. “Red, yellow, and blue can be mixed to create millions of colors,” he said, “just as Potential, Opposition, and Pattern are the primary ingredients of everything that has meaning. I speak of thought, culture, and language, of course, but also logic, life, and love. These are all topics we’ll touch on. “In these lectures, we borrow the ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, nineteenth-century philosopher of science, semantics, and logic. Yellow Potential was his first logical category. Things must be abstract and potential before they get concrete and actual. Fictional characters must be developed before narrative conflict makes sense…” I found my attention wandering. Looking around the room I saw many blank, even sleepy pairs of eyes. I forced myself to turn back to the professor. I tried to take more notes on what he was saying. “…but consider the conflict of a story. Opposition is typically raised into first position. In the first line of the ancient Greek Iliad, Homer sings the wrath of Achilles. These days, mystery writers all include a dead body on page one. Opposition forces people to pay attention and keep reading…”

SLAM!

Quicker than you could say “Iliad,” Professor Preston wheeled around on one foot and shot a karate kick at his teaching desk. It was a heavy, hardwood desk and it slid several, LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 3 screeching feet across the linoleum floor. All eyes were on the professor. He smiled. His voice became lively again. “For some of you, that is the first meaningful thing that I’ve done today. That’s Opposition at work. The velocity of my foot came into conflict with the inertia of the desk, and there was noise. Your survival instincts forced you to pay attention.” Now he waved his ugly tie at us. “It’s the same with this color. Red puts people on edge. People react when there's blood or even the potential for blood. They're jumped on by survival instincts, to bind up the wound, or fight the attacker, or spy out the prey. Remember that a story is mostly Potential, mostly what-if and make-believe, but the conflict in a story has an actual effect on people. It keeps them reading.” I raised my hand. The professor stopped talking. “You have a question, Miss Reid?” I paused. Now I did have a question. We’d never met before. I wondered how this professor knew my name, but I kept that question to myself. Instead I made this smart- sounding remark: “Not every story has violence and blood on the first page. What about Hawthorne, or Melville, or Tolstoy? The old writers developed characters for a hundred pages before they got to the real conflict.” The professor shrugged. “Like I said, it’s logical to start with characters and then move to conflict. Logical, but not practical. These days, stories have to fight with each other for survival, just like animals and plants do. The stories with great characters but no conflict until page 101, they did fine when there weren’t many other stories. Now they lose grazing space in people’s heads, especially minds being strip-mined by action movies and video games. “These days, it’s the violent threat of a failing grade that compels people to read the classics. Many students would rather be punched in the mouth than forced to read War and Peace.” Laughter filled the room around me. I felt my face coloring. I put up my hand. “What is it now, Miss Reid?” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 4

“What about love stories? People still read romance novels and they’re not full of blood and violence.” His face brightened. “Now there’s a good and serious question. My answer is this. Opposition is not just a foot slamming a desk, or a knife to the heart. Red isn’t just the color of violence; it’s also the color of passionate love. It’s whenever two different physical bodies struggle to occupy the same space.” This caught us all by surprise. The whole class laughed. “Yes, it can be what you’re all thinking,” the professor said, “but red opposition can be so much more than passion or violence.” “But Professor...” I let my voice be both playful and breathless, “what else is there?” I winked at him too. He pretended not to notice. “Two answers struggling for the same question, that is Opposition as well. Who finally gets the girl in Gone with the Wind ? It’s hard to say but impossible not to wonder. Scarlet loves Ashley. Scarlet loves Rhett. Rhett loves Scarlet, or does he? Sentences, conversations, or stories, all success in language begins with a question. “A hard and vexing question,” the professor concluded, “a question where life and love hang in the balance. Write from this beginning, and many will follow the words forever.” I noticed his eyes for the first time. They looked black at first, wonderful and dark. Then he turned toward me, and sunlight from the side windows danced reflections across his eyes. In better light, they were a twilight kind of blue, deep on the edge of a violet dawn. There was need in his eyes too, but not a hunger for my body. That kind of need I was used to. That kind of need sustained me. This man was different. He had a need to answer hard questions. I was a hard and vexing puzzle. Even a brilliant man might need an eternity to solve it. From that September morning, I could have followed Felix Preston forever. Nine months later, I felt the full impact of his words. More time would pass, before I finally knew their truth. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 5

Chapter ONE:

Nine months later and a thousand miles away, Professor Vanessa Grove of Greensboro College tightened her grip on a third bottle of Corona. She looked world-weary, more than most women in shouting distance of forty. “So Felix, how many women did you make love to before you got married?” In Texas summer twilight, she raised one eyebrow, and waited for her friend to answer. Felix Preston of the University of Eastern Idaho sipped his club soda. The drawl of her question itched in his ears. Her speech, he knew, was a rural variety of a South Midlands dialect. It was not a smooth molasses Southern, not what one expected from a Dixie college professor. Her voice spoke of a childhood spent in some trailer park in Arkansas. Her tone carried with it all the unpleasant furniture of such a life, a life reflected in the well-sculpted but rock-hard angles of her face. He looked around as if in thought. He’d weigh the useful depth of his answer against the number of empty beer bottles on the table. They belonged to Vanessa and Professor Jerry Flint of the City University of New York. The rough-hewn picnic table belonged to an open-air pub, one of several on St. Mary’s Street in San Antonio. The live band had finished their break. They got ready to play another set. Felix turned back to his friend and searched her face. He hoped for a playful look that would permit him to dodge her question. He found her face unreadable. He only knew that she knew. He’d heard the question and she expected a clear answer. “Shoot, Vanessa,” he finally said. “Who keeps score?” “I do,” Jerry Flint broke in. Vanessa kept her gaze fixed on Felix. “Not a score, Jerry. Unlike you, Felix would never count women like points. Somebody who recalls everything he reads is not likely to forget any woman he’s been with. So tell me, Felix, how many were there before your wife?” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 6

Her mouth was set, puzzled and uncomfortable. At best, Felix hoped he could soften the truth for the sake of a years-long friendship. “Among Mormons,” he said, “the correct answer is zero.” “Which is why I’ll never be a Mormon,” Jerry Flint added. Vanessa didn’t smile. “I didn’t ask you, Jerry. And I didn’t ask for the right public- relations answer from Felix Preston, lovely spokesmodel of the Latter-day Saints. I want the truth from Felix Preston, the reasonable human being.” Felix shifted in his chair. “The true answer is also zero.” Jerry Flint snickered a little. Vanessa Grove’s face fell. “Well that’s just great.” She dropped a staccato accent on each word. “I thought I did well to keep my score less than the fingers on both my hands. That was just before I left high school.” Felix spoke gently. “It’s not a contest, Vanessa.” “Well, it can hardly be called a contest, Preston, if you don’t even try to play.” Flint stood with his hand out to Vanessa. Against the back fence, the band began playing It’s a Little Too Late. The woman shrugged and stood with him. They moved off toward the music to dance. Vanessa glanced back for an instant. She caught Felix’s eye and blinked twice. The signal. The young men in the band played with gusto. A small bachelorette’s party was in full swing at that end of the courtyard. A dozen or so college-age girls danced in front of the stage. The bride-to-be wore a white veil on her head, white denim jeans and a blouse decorated with a corsage of small, brightly colored balloons. As she danced among her girlfriends, she waved a squirt gun in their faces. It was full of beer. Felix guessed they were summer students from Trinity University, a few blocks away. He was spending a week of long days at Trinity himself, along with Vanessa and another three hundred English instructors. They assembled here from around the English- speaking world. Each year they spent a week of short evenings such as this one. They tried LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 7 to unwind from days at hard labor for the Educational Testing Service. The ETS paid them to score thousands of essay tests, essays handwritten by high school seniors each Spring. A high score would allow the students to avoid freshman English classes when they entered college in the Fall. Felix himself had read more than six hundred essays that day. He was one of the Service’s fastest reader-consultants. Hours after quitting time, images still swam before his eyes, scrawled ink and scrawled thinking in black or blue. Now and then a student would write in pink ink, maybe with hearts dotting every “i” on a page. Visions of Valentine lollipops still danced in Preston’s head. This year’s essay asked the students to consider this question:

Is it true that the main figure in any great work of literature must have a fatal flaw in his or her character?

A standard correct answer this year might refer to the prideful self-confidence of Oedipus or the indecision of Hamlet. They might argue that all the great stories of the world followed that pattern. The standard bad answer this year cited Achilles and his famously vulnerable heel, with no mention of his wrath anywhere. Felix had seen hundreds of these:

Throughout the great history of literature there has been no greater fatalistic flaw than the heel of Achilles. Other than that, he was totally unbeatable…

…it seems like every hero to be called a hero has to have some kind of an Achilles’ heel, especially Achilles himself…

His photographic memory always haunted him this way, unless he found other work to occupy himself in the evenings. Work such as this. The pub band drifted into the bridge of their song. Felix took a final reading of Vanessa’s body language. That confirmed her backward glance a few minutes ago. An hour ago, she’d been dancing close-quartered two-steps with Flint. They now moved in a stiff- armed shuffle. She leaned backward slightly each time the rhythm called for Flint to pull her closer. Felix gathered himself for the task. He reached across the table and picked up beer bottles one by one. Without leaving his seat, he soberly plunked each one into a trash barrel just over twelve feet away from his table, never missing a toss. Last of all, he lobbed his solitary club-soda bottle. As it flew, he stood up. As it rattled into the barrel, he was already stepping out to the dance area. …but it’s a little too late to do the right thing now… The band was dying away the last refrain with the last twang of their guitars. At that moment, Felix moved in and put his hand on Vanessa’s shoulder. “How ya’ doin’?” he asked with exaggerated cheerfulness. She turned her back on Flint in an instant. “Well just fine, Felix! Say, you wanna dance one or two with me?” He looked pointedly over her shoulder at Flint. “Well sure, if you want to. Then I need to get on back to the dorm. It’s getting a little too late, if you know what I mean.” “You are so right,” she replied with a wink. Then the band started another song. Vanessa pulled Felix into a close two-step. A perplexed Jerry Flint stood a pace or two back for a moment. Then he faded back to the picnic-table area. “My hero,” Vanessa sighed in his ear. “Thanks for bailing me out …again.” “You’re welcome…again.” He opened the space between them but kept dancing. “This is some kind of record. You just met this one. Already you’re tired of him.” “He was in an uncommon hurry to wear out his welcome. All his cheap innuendo was LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 9 fun, but he didn’t know when to cut back. Men are such confounded idjits. Sorry, Preston. I didn’t mean you. You’re not the common breed of man.” Felix shrugged. “There are many men like me.” “Not in my part of the world. Your wife must be quite a woman.” “Celeste sees beneath the surface of things. She didn’t marry me for my looks.” “Oh, c’mon,” Vanessa countered playfully. “You have an interesting face and nice shoulders. You still have most of your hair and you have no beer gut at all. Compared to my ex-husbands and most of the men I date, you’re a Greek god.” Felix shrugged. “For a married man, age thirty-seven, sure. It was a different story when I was twenty-two. Back then, Celeste had her pick of dashing actors with longer chins, better clothes, and smoother personalities…” The music faded and Felix felt a sharp hand on his shoulder. He turned. He expected to face down Jerry Flint, trying to cut back in with Vanessa. Instead a small flashlight dazzled his eyes. Felix put a hand up to shade his face. Beneath the glare he saw a girl of twenty-two or so, one from the party of the white-levis bride. She held her penlight on him and motioned to one of her friends. “Hey, Heather! Will this one do or what?” The one called Heather came over and peered at Felix’s face. This one shook her head. “Nyuh-uh. The eyes need to be blue.” “Wul yea-uh,” the penlight girl said. “His eyes are sooo blue. That darkish blue. Tawny’s baby had eyes like that when it was newborn, before they went brown.” Heather’s face brightened. “Oh yeah-uh,” she said. Vanessa took Felix’s arm possessively. “What’s up, kids?” “Well, it’s Brittany’s last night as a free woman,” Penlight Girl said. “She needs to have this one last dance with a hottie guy, ‘six-foot two, eyes of blue.’ It’s just that we’re having trouble finding one in this place, one not too old-looking and one whose girlfriend will let him do it.” “There’s no way he’s six-foot two,” Vanessa said. “No offense, Felix.” “None taken,” he replied. Then he held up his left hand. His wedding band flashed in LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 10 the girl’s penlight. “I’m sorry, ladies. My own ‘last night of freedom’ was a very, very long time ago.” “Aw, c’mon,” Penlight Girl pleaded. “Brittany’s as good as married too. Her fiance’s thirty-one, even older than you. You’ve been dancing with her.” She swept her light over Vanessa. “And she’s not your wife, or even your girlfriend.” “Who told you that?” Vanessa bristled. “Old five-foot eight, eyes of brown over there.” Heather pointed at Jerry Flint. Flint grinned like a clown. He was helping seven other girls slide a picnic table down to where Felix and Vanessa stood. “C’mon, Felix, old buddy,” he said cheerfully. “Hop up on this table here and you’ll be more like eight-foot two.” “We promise, she’ll be gentle,” Penlight Girl said. “Yea-uh, gentle as a lamb,” Heather agreed with a smirk. They both waved to Brittany. She stepped up in her white veil and balloon corsage, not quite steady on her feet. The band members stood patiently watching. Now they began working up various funk riffs on their guitars. These soon converged into the opening bars of Let’s Dance. Vanessa stood on her toes and spoke low in Felix’s ear. “Flint will dance with her if you don’t. Will you leave a drunk little girl in his hands tonight? You can do this, Felix. Who decides how she remembers herself on her wedding day? You or Flint?” Felix closed his eyes for a few seconds. The grim set of his mouth melted into a cheerful smile. The muscles in his shoulders relaxed. He sprang up on the table and then let down his open hand to the bride-to-be. “Pleased to meet you.” He raised his voice over the music and lifted her up. “My name’s Felix.” The girl smiled knowingly, as if this name were an alias and a private joke between them. She took a step back and began to rock with the music. Felix followed her swaying rhythms, but he muted his steps to move less than she did. He eyed the edge of the table behind Brittany. He calculated angles. He estimated that he LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 11 had about two feet between his own heels and the unseen edge behind him. Both of them had less than a foot to the left and right edges. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues, As the band reached the chorus, the girl suddenly stepped her dancing toward Felix. She passed him tightly on the right and pressed her moves against him. while color lights up your face. The crowd began clapping in time with the music. If you say run, I’ll run with you; Felix countered to face her again. He kept turning as she turned, then he naturally stepped backwards into the table space she’d started from. He recovered a foot of space between them again. If you say hide, we’ll hide. The girl matched him with her own step forward, and then another. The space between them shrank to an inch, to a millimeter, to zero, to less than zero. Because my love for you, Felix’s right heel froze at the edge of the table, the same edge he’d been watching from the opposite side a few seconds earlier. Would break my heart in two, Now the girl closed her eyes and gave her body over to the backbeat. If you should fall, into my arms... Whistles and catcalls rose all around them. For several measures Felix didn’t move at all. The chorus ended and the band struck into the bridge of the song. His hands flashed out and clasped the girl’s arms. Folding them gently, he wheeled her body rightward under his left arm. The two of them ended up facing the same direction. Felix crossed his arms over hers. He bumped the girl forward and regained six inches of table space behind him. On the bounce he wheeled her fully around in the opposite direction and this time gained another foot. Back in full control, Felix spun the girl a half-turn back to face him. His LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 12 darkened indigo eyes locked on her astonished pale green ones. Her mouth formed up a perfectly shaped, ruby-painted ‘o’. All clapping and catcalls died away, but the music remained. After two skipped beats, Felix pushed her backward, fairly lightly. Then he pulled her to him in a full-throttle swing step. She flew past his sidestep, turned under his arm again and found herself at the edge of the table, falling backwards. If you should fall, The last instant, Felix snatched her arms up and pulled her to him again. Their noses passed within a fractioned inch of each other before he dipped her, lowering her body down, down until her parody veil and strands of her bottle-blonde hair brushed the tabletop. Into my arms, “We’ll both be happier if we do this my way.” Felix said. And tremble like a flower! She had no breath to actually answer. Her eyes and lips shaped the words. “I SURRENDER.” Satisfied, Felix lifted this girl named Brittany up. Within the close edges of the tabletop, they continued to wheel and swing through the last chorus of Let’s dance. At some point the crowd started clapping again. That soon gave way to the chaos of applause. On his last turn, Felix spun off the end of the table. He lifted up his open hands. The bride-to-be jumped into his arms. He promptly set her on her feet. “Thanks,” she breathed. “You gave my friends a good show.” “You’re welcome.” It was the first calm moment since they’d met. Now he studied this girl. He looked past her made-up party face, past the parody bride’s outfit. His voice was gentle. “Brittany, this person you’re marrying... Is he a good man?” “As good as men get. He’s a Unitarian minister. His sermons rock.” “No kidding? What does a Unitarian minister do at his bachelor party?” The girl’s face scrunched up a little. She bit her lower lip. “He’s out with his buddies…playing cards and…and I don’t want to know any more than that.” Then her face LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 13 brightened. “Tonight, I’ll just think about you.” “I’m flattered,” he said. “Tell your fiancé that you danced your last dance of freedom with a Mormon. That sermon will rock his world.” Her mouth fell open. “It sure will!” “I have to go now.” She pursed her lips and nodded. “I thought you might. Can you at least kiss the bride before you go?” Felix paused a half second, then he nodded. The girl named Brittany wrapped her arms tightly around him. Her lips just brushed the corner of his mouth. “You were right,” she whispered. “Your way is best.” She broke the embrace and spun on her heel. She walked over to the huddled group of her friends. They all looked at Felix over her shoulder, frankly curious. He watched the back of Brittany’s blouse. It soon faded away, from white to gray to invisible in the dim light. He turned in the opposite direction. He looked around for the exit. Vanessa Grove was nowhere in sight, but Jerry Flint was there. Flint still grinned like a jolly but demented harlequin. Felix gave a perfunctory wave, but pointedly made his way to the courtyard gate. Flint called out again to Felix’s back. His voice lost its good humor. “I think the real question, Preston, is how many women you’ve had since you’ve been married!” To this, Felix gave no reply. He reached the gate and exited the courtyard. He crossed St. Mary’s Street and made his way down a sparsely lit side street, back in the direction of Trinity University. He’d gone about a block when he saw Vanessa, waiting in the shadows of a large magnolia bush. She stepped out into the pool of lamplight on the sidewalk. Felix nodded to her and kept walking. She fell in beside him as he passed. Her voice was light and conversational, as if nothing had happened. “You remember that woman from Ohio, here a couple of years ago? The one that drank way too much at Club Ed and started throwing her clothes off in every direction?” Felix nodded fractionally, but kept walking. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 14

Vanessa persisted. “The other men were just letting her do it. You’re the one that threw a blanket around her and got her back to her room. “And then there was the time at the bus stop downtown. Those Chicano toughs were harassing Maria Sandoval, and you walked up on ‘em, pretending to be her husband, speaking Spanish like a native, making them think your gang would pound them all into the ground if they gave you an excuse. How on earth did you learn to speak Spanish so well?” “I spent two years in South America as a missionary.” He stopped and turned to Vanessa. “How did you know about Maria and that gang? You weren’t there.” “Stories go around. You’re an ETS legend. Didn’t you know? Then there was the time,” she said, hardly missing a beat, “that you took the car keys away from Carl and Nadine and you went and got more booze for their party yourself.” Felix and Vanessa had come to another lighted street corner and a busy road. They waited while a string of cars passed. “What’s your point, Vanessa?” “Well, you don’t drink, Felix. You never drink, but you made it possible for them to drink even more, without getting themselves killed.” Still looking at the road, Felix shrugged. “My rules, not theirs.” “And then there was the time,” she went on, as if she hadn’t heard him, “the time a woman came to an ETS reading when she’d just divorced her louse of a husband. He came back one last time and forced her on the living room floor. ‘For old time’s sake,’ he told her, right after signing the bloody papers. “You sat up all night with that woman,” Vanessa said, “and you let her talk it through, and you let her cry it out, the way a true friend would.” “Does that story go around the ETS too?” Felix asked. “Only two people know it,” she replied. “Those who were there.” She changed the subject as they crossed the street. “Where did you learn to dance like that?” “You saw that part? I thought you’d left already.” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 15

“Not till you jumped off the table. Flint was after me to stay and dance some more. I told him to go chase those little girls he made friends with. I made like I had to go to the powder room. Don’t dodge my question. Where’d you learn the swing?” “Mostly in church,” he said. “Youth dances on weekends.” “You gotta be kidding! I thought your church wants to keep young, unmarried minds off each other’s bodies.” “That’s not quite what I said. More than anything, the Church wants lively, happy marriages and another round of happy children. That won’t happen if boys and girls don’t have a few things about each other’s bodies worked out beforehand.” “But you said y’all keep your love-making score at zero before you get married,” she said. “With zero practice, how exactly are you supposed to work anything out? Why don’t you just teach your young people to practice safely?” Felix frowned a little more at this. “That kind of safety is an illusion. Nothing you buy in a drugstore can protect against betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak, or guilt...” For this, Vanessa had no answer. They were nearing the edge of the university campus now. A few other ETS readers could be seen making their way across the parking lots to the dorms, but most were already safely in bed. In the morning, one more hard day of reading waited. “So how do you solve this dilemma?” she asked. “Learning without practice?” “We hold lots of church dances for one thing. The dance teaches important, basic things about physical give and take with a partner. The dance is a vertical pattern for the horizontal lovemaking that comes later. The dance is wrapped inside discipline, musical ritual and symbolic rhythm. It is safe, behind those boundaries.” “Oh really? It didn’t look safe to me, the way that little girl wanted to dance.” “No. Not safe at all,” Felix said ruefully. “But I doubt she learned her kind of dancing in a church. Speaking of which, thanks ever so much for getting me caught in that little misadventure. It’s another story for people to tell, isn’t it?” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 16

Vanessa stuck out her chin. Defiant, her drawl sharpened just a bit more. “Well, that’s what you get, for being such a disgustingly healthy drudge-- no smoking, no drinking, no coffee or tea, and on top of everything you get up at 5:30 every morning and run five or six miles. It was just nature’s revenge on you for actin’ so unnatural.” “I don’t follow you.” “Well, Felix, those little girls thought you were thirty, at most. Otherwise they wouldn’t have asked you to be their entertainment. There’s no way Flint could’ve passed for thirty. For that matter, neither could I.” “Oh,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t know; you might not look so young in broad daylight, but it was pretty dark back in that bar and…” He trailed off because he was being slugged repeatedly. “Hey! Ow! What?” “Felix honey, how many times have I told you? When a woman runs down her own looks you do NOT agree with her!” He bowed his head. “Sorry, Miss Vanessa. I forgot.” Vanessa softened and smiled. “I’ll let it go this time, hon. Thanks for playing chaperone while I checked out Jerry Flint. If you hadn’t been guarding me, he wouldn’t have thrown that girl at you. Still, you sucked it up and handled her the way you handle everything, every time. You let us play by whatever rules we have. Sometimes we have no rules. You always follow your own rules just the same. “Mind you, I wouldn’t necessarily be runnin’ to tell your wife what all happened,” Vanessa added. “If your rules say you have to tell her, just be sure to tell her that it was my fault and not yours.” Felix blinked. “That’s the spin you want me to put on it this time?” “I just want Celeste to let you come back next year.” They finished their walk in silence. They first reached the dormitory where Vanessa had been assigned a room. Red-brick blocks were arranged motel-style. Each room had a blind-covered window and an outside door. Felix said goodnight, with no parting chat or fanfare. He left Vanessa standing by the LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 17 door of her room. He went down a flight of steps and crossed the courtyard to the building where his room was. The travel clock on his desk read 11:45 pm. Felix didn’t plan to sleep soon. He never slept well in strange places. All places were strange to him, more or less. When he was eighteen months old, he’d been adopted by a physician’s family in McCammon, Idaho. He’d been given up by a mother he still remembered. Felix remembered nearly everything. From that age, even he could only recall a smell, a feeling, and a drift of a face darkly outlined. All places were strange to him, except the shadow homeland where that face moved. He slept somewhat better in the arms of his wife. On trips like this, he barely slept at all, an hour or two at most. Felix always said it was because he slept on the job here. All day and every day, he visualized at a brief glance the sense or nonsense of one student essay after another. This satisfied whatever psychological need he had for dreaming sleep. He sat nearly motionless in a chair for hours at a time, reading these essays. That satisfied any need for physical rest. He got ready for bed anyway. He peeled off his light shirt and pants, sticky from the Texas summer humidity. He brushed his teeth, wrapped himself in a light robe and turned up the air conditioning. The dorm room had two narrow beds in it. One bed had only a bare mattress. On that one, Felix laid out a t-shirt and exercise shorts for his morning run. He sat down on the other bed. The ETS organizers had furnished that one with a blanket and sheets. Felix reached for a yellow notepad on the side table. It was covered with handwriting, his work from the previous night. He picked up a pen and began extending an outline for a research article. It was nearly midnight before he noticed it. The message light on the room’s telephone had been blinking all this time. Scolding himself for overlooking it, he got up, picked up the receiver and punched up the phone-mail system. The automated voice reported that he had ONE new message. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 18

Hi, Felix, it’s Celeste. I guess you’re still out tending your flock of girlfriends. Gabe Reid called from the INEL site. He needs your copy of that funding proposal, the one you’ve been helping his waste-disposal team to write. His computer at work crashed this evening and he lost the main copy. He says he has to have it first thing tomorrow morning. Some quote, Nuclear Regulatory Goons are making a surprise visit, unquote. Call me back and tell me where I’m supposed to find this file and how I’m supposed to get it to Gabe. Love you, Bye.

Not for the first time or the last, Felix would regret taking on consulting work at the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Labs. He cared little for the money but he needed it for his family, to supplement his sparse university pay. He rechecked the clock. It was an hour earlier back in Idaho, just now 11:00 pm there. He dialed his home phone number. Hello? “Celeste?” No, Daddy, it’s Eden. “Edie? Gosh, you sound grown up. I thought you’d be asleep.” Mom said I could stay up till you called. She says we might have to drive up to Blackfoot. “Is Arby awake too?” I dunno. He got invited to a sleepover at the Kennedy’s. He’s probably still up, fighting trolls on the Nintendo with Jordan; I betcha a dollar he is. Felix chuckled. “No way I’m taking the other end of that bet; I’d just be handing over my money. Anyway, I don’t want keep you up too. Could you go get your mother for me?” Can’t we talk a little more first? “I want to, Edie, but it’s late and we need to solve this work thing.” Oh, all right. I miss you, Dad. Here’s Mom. Celeste’s very similar voice came over the line. Felix? “Hey, Celladonna. Sorry I’m so late calling back. How was your play practice?” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 19

Only as good as community theater gets, I’m afraid. “I’m sure you’ll be great, as usual,” he said. “Anyhow, what’s up with Gabe Reid? Eden says you’re supposed to drive up to Blackfoot tonight. Why can’t he come down to our house and get that file himself?” Celeste explained. Gabriel Reid was out at the nuclear-waste reservation, another thirty miles northwest of his home in Blackfoot. He was riding his engineering team to get their prototype processor ready for NRC inspection in the morning. Celeste said it wasn’t kind to make him drive past his own home so late at night, south another thirty miles to the Preston home, then all that way back to his own house. Felix hated to agree, but he did. He told his wife to start up their home computer, which was right by their phone. When the desktop screen came up, he told her to activate FIND FILE and enter VITRIFI.PROP.FNL. Celeste soon found the file. “O.K., Celle, you’ve got two choices: Save the file to a storage disk and drive it up to the Reid house. Or, you can attach the file to an e-mail message and send it over the internet to Gabe at his office. That way you never leave the house.” That second thing sounds good. Walk me through it. “The first thing is, hang up the phone. Turn on the computer’s modem…” On the other end of the line, Celeste sputtered. If I hang up the phone, how are you going to tell me what to do next?” “It’s O.K., Celle. I’ll tell you everything first; just write it down.” Felix began his instructions, but soon he was interrupted by firm pounding noises. The door to his dorm room visibly shook. Felix told Celeste to hold the phone. He went over to the door. Vanessa’s voice outside. “Felix! I gotta come in and quick.” He opened the door. She stood there, breathless. A dusty black streak ran down the front of her denim skirt. Her blouse, with a matching streak, was untucked, the lower two buttons undone. She wore a reddish spot on her left cheekbone that was beginning to purple. Felix pulled her inside. He quietly closed the door behind them. “I’m on the phone LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 20 with Celeste. Just sit down and relax.” Felix turned to the phone. The bedsprings creaked as Vanessa settled down on them. He picked up the receiver again. “Sorry. Where were we?” What’s going on this time, Felix? Who’s that with you? “You remember Vanessa Grove from North Carolina? We had a little mishap with one of her prospects. I thought we ditched him but it looks like we didn’t.” He looked to Vanessa to confirm his theory. She nodded tightly. “Anyway, Celeste, you turn on the modem, and then activate the network browser; it’s in the netware folder on the computer desktop. You with me so far?” Not really. You know I majored in Theater so I wouldn’t have to deal with keyboards and computer codes. I could be in Blackfoot already, by the time you explain it to me. It’s a nice clear night, and I’m not the least bit tired. Besides, you need to get busy and solve Miss Grove’s problems. Get her off your bed and back in her own, okay? Felix sighed. “You’re right. You be careful on the road, Celeste.” Of course. Then the distinct sound of three taps came over the phone line, loud enough that Vanessa could hear it too. Felix took the phone’s handset from his ear and rapped it twice on the desktop. He lifted the phone to his ear again. “I’m squeezing the phone as hard as I can, Cel.” Me too. You be careful with this Vanessa woman. “I’m always careful, and I’m always loving you,” he responded. Then the phone clicked and the room was silent. Vanessa broke the silence. “What’s with all the tapping?” Felix smiled. “It’s a code Celeste worked out, back when we fell in love. It was before we were ready to tell other people, my foster mother in particular. Three taps means I- LOVE-YOU. Two taps asks HOW-MUCH? Then Cel would squeeze my hand once or press against my shoulder. That showed how much. It became a habit, even after our secret was out.” “Your wife is quite a woman.” “You already said that,” Felix said absently, “when we danced.” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 21

“Well I wanna say it again, for emphasis,” Vanessa said smartly. “I’m pretty sure any other wife would have ended that phone conversation with a fight, not a ‘be careful,’ not an ‘I love you.’ Normally a wife won’t put up with a strange woman, in a strange town, sitting on her man’s bed after midnight.” Vanessa paused, as if remembering something. “Not if she finds out about it, that is.” “Speaking of that,” Felix said, “what are you doing here really?” She explained. Jerry Flint hadn’t stayed at the pub to dance with the college girls after all. Keeping a couple of blocks back, Flint had trailed them back to the Trinity campus. He moved in as soon as Felix left Vanessa alone at her door. She’d just gotten her door open when he called out to her. At first, he was charming again. He apologized for being so intense at the pub, and for setting those girls on Felix. He politely suggested they go out again for one quick night cap. Vanessa said that she’d had enough of the bar scene and she moved into her doorway. Flint hinted that he’d like to come in and sit with her for awhile. Vanessa said she was worn out. She got the door partly closed between them. He offered to come in and rub her shoulders and feet, if that’s what she wanted. At last, Vanessa said NO flat out. She moved to close the door. Flint, suddenly less charming, put his hand on the door and tried to push it open. He leaned on it. “That’s when I got this.” She pointed to her cheek. “It’s going to bruise, huh?” “You told me never to agree with a criticism of your looks, so the answer is no.” “You’re getting smarter, Doctor Preston. So you do think it’ll bruise, don’t you? Nuts. My right hand slipped off the edge of the door. Flint bounced it right off my face. It hurt like the devil, but that’s what saved me. I let off a yell. For a split second he let go of the door. That’s when I kicked it shut and threw the deadbolt.” “Good reflexes. Why are you here and not safe in your room?” She became visibly angry. “Well that drunken idjit wouldn’t take a hint and go away! He just kept standing at my door, telling me it was all a mistake and would I please let him in. I try to ignore him. I’m trying to get myself ready for bed all this time. I turn off the lights LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 22 and shut the blinds tight. Then he starts tapping at the door. “Like this.” She rapped in a light staccato on the bedside table to demonstrate. “Not so loud that my neighbors call campus security, mind you, but loud enough to drive me nuts.” “And you didn’t call campus security yourself because...?” “And have them do what?” she asked wearily. “The rentacops would come, and he’d tell them it’s all a misunderstanding, then they’d go away, and he’d come back and start all over. Felix, I’ve had some experience with stalkers, and that’s how the dance works. Meanwhile I’m getting no sleep at all, and unlike you, I need sleep. So, I got dressed again in the dark. My room has a small balcony in back. I snuck out there and shimmied down a drainpipe to the grass. Then I ran over here…” “…thinking to spend the night here,” he concluded for her. “If you don’t mind,” Vanessa said. “I’d just feel safer. Please.” He fell silent for a couple of seconds. He would measure Vanessa’s proposal against other likely outcomes. These all involved waking up innocent bystanders. He could have an open fight with Flint, loud enough to wake a whole dorm. Or, he could wake another female friend and ask her to put up with Vanessa for the night. “Suit yourself,” he said suddenly. “I don’t have an extra toothbrush, but you can use the mouthwash in my travel bag if you want. It’s in the bathroom there.” As she did this, Felix quickly gathered up his exercise clothes and pulled them on for makeshift pajamas. He took the blanket off his own bed and spread it on the bare mattress of the spare bed. He rolled up one of his spare towels for a pillow. He pushed up the thermostat until the air conditioning switched off. This way neither of them would need a cover, on a warm Texas night like this. When Vanessa returned, he gave her the choice of beds. She took the one with sheets. Felix promptly switched off the lights and lay down on the other one. He tried to relax and let his guest sleep, even if he wouldn’t. In a moment his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Floodlights washed over the courtyard LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 23 outside. Their glow filtered through the closed blinds. In this fractional light, the angles of Vanessa’s profile softened somewhat. A feminine whisper came from the shadows, a smoothed-out South Midlands drawl. “Good night, Achilles.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Felix asked. “You’re the classic hero,” she whispered. “My hero. Even better than the old Achilles, your Mormon rules make you completely invincible. Your wife doesn’t give a fig whether I’ve borrowed your bed here or not.” At this point, Felix wouldn’t have the heart to tell her. Celeste had expected him to kick Vanessa out of his bed, not make it up for her. Instead, he would lay near her in silence. Awake and yet dreaming, he would again oversee all those student essays, for a very long time in the night. Very like Achilles, he could feel--and very soon he would feel--like someone held him hanging by one leg. By one heel hanging over the darkened Styx, a river at the borderland of Hell. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 24 LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 25

II. Yellow Amber

Call me Amber. I told Felix Preston that, back when I took his class. Back then, he never did. I had to be “Miss Reid,” just like everybody else was “Mr. Smith,” or “Mrs. Jones,” or maybe “Ms. Jones,” if the girl had a feminist thing going. Other professors called us by our first names. Some let us call them by their first names. Many never learned our names at all. Professor Preston...already just Felix in my own head...Felix knew everybody’s name by the end of the first day. He knew my name from the beginning. My father is Gabriel Reid. Felix did consulting work for Papa at the INEL. Felix had sometime seen my picture on Papa’s desk. “Call me Amber,” I told Felix again on the second day of that class. “This sounds like the beginning of a Melville novel,” he replied. “‘Call me Ishmael,’ Melville wrote, and then he developed characters and background, hundreds of pages in Moby Dick, before the white whale appeared. It so happens, Miss Reid, that today I want to talk about characters, and the color of amber.” He stepped to the back of the classroom. All heads turned. Moving from window to window, he threw open the blinds. Morning sunlight struck our faces. I blinked and shaded my eyes. As Felix returned to the front of the class, he repeated a couple of lines from his first-day song:

Red Opposition, blood conflict, hard fight. Yellow, Potential in morning sunlight.

“If Red is the color of Opposition, the bloody conflict in a story,” he continued, “then Yellow is the color lighting the scenery in the background, and that background is full of Potential. The morning sun lights up the land and the world is full of possiblities. “Mr. Pitman!” Felix said suddenly. “If I excused you from classes this fine September LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 26 morning, what would you do instead?” The boy sitting next to me was caught off guard. “Uh...shoot. I guess I’d go to work early...try to sell an extra car or two today.” Felix pointed at another student. “Ms. Parker, how about you?” “I’d find some friends and get a volleyball game going.” “I’d climb Meditation Hill and enjoy the view,” another girl said. “You mean Make-out Hill,” a boy replied. “Who’d you be with?” Felix held up a hand to cut down the laughter. He pointed at some lines that he’d written on the board:

You are what you are, When you do what you do, When you have nothing to do.

“Characters in stories,” he said, “and real people’s characters too, are defined by Potential, what they could do and would do if they had freedom. But, at the end of the day, as the red sunset gives way to blue twilight, only some of those yellow possibilities ever get lived as actual fact.” Then he really did dismiss the class. He told us to go out and think about this difference, between all that we might do this morning, and what we would actually end up doing by noon. I lingered by the door after all the other students had fled the room. I waited for Felix to finish erasing the board. At last, he turned to me. “And what will you do with your free time, Miss Reid?” “I can’t decide,” I said. “So many possibilities.” “Your father named you well. You have an amber-colored personality, full of Potential. There’s beauty in that, but in time everyone must commit to something.” I hoped he’d say more, but he excused himself and left me behind, like the others. I LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 27 wandered the campus, and found myself climbing Meditation Hill. I thought I’d find the other girl here, but she’d been shamed out of coming. I found myself alone on top of the hill. There was a stone bench and three tall, Grecian pillars. These had been donated, Papa once told me, to the university by the owner of a mortuary. I sat on the bench and closed my eyes in the sunlight. I knew some things never would be fact, but I dreamed anyway of possibilities.

Chapter TWO:

I was out with Dirk Pitman on one particular night, nine months later. He brought me home a few minutes before Celeste Preston drove up with that computer file for Papa. Unfortunately, he brought me home an hour after Bud Gardner came to the house. Dirk turned his car into our cul-de-sac. Out of habit I looked up at our windows and saw that each one was dark. That was a good thing. It meant Papa was still at work. He wouldn’t have to know that I’d been with Dirk at all. His headlights swept past Bud’s car, still parked in our driveway. The lights swept over Bud himself, still sitting on our front step. Then I realized my error. Bud also thought he had a date with me for that night. I normally didn’t make mistakes like this. I have some talent with math which includes skill at juggling boys in my schedule. Bud had just started the summer term down at Utah State, and we agreed to go out when he “came up for the weekend.” I thought he meant Friday night. It was only Thursday, but here was Bud. Now I remembered him telling me how he had no Friday classes this term. “Who’s this guy?” Dirk asked me. “Your brother lock himself out?” “I don’t have a brother, or sisters either. That’s my fiancé, sort of.” If Dirk was shocked, he didn’t show it. He chuckled instead, a deep sound in his throat. “Well, I guess he’s not a very impressive sort of fiancé, sweetcheeks. He doesn’t look nearly as fun as me.” Dirk parked his car and turned off the engine. He left his lights on, shining on LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 28 our house and Bud’s irritated face. He opened his door at the same time I opened mine. Bud raised a hand to shade his eyes. “Amber, is that you? Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting an hour. Who’s that with you?” “Oh, this is Dirk,” I said, trying hard to sound casual. “He’s just a friend.” “Oh yeah,” Dirk said, his tone a little too helpful. “We’re just friends, honest. I swear she’s never let me touch her…yet.” Bud’s face began to work in distressed ways. I tried to explain how I’d thought he wasn’t coming until tomorrow night. That came out sounding wrong, like I coldly meant to be sneaking out behind his back. Bud began to pace back and forth on our front lawn. He made sharp sounds with his mouth. I’d take them for swear words, except that Bud never swore, ever. I turned back to Dirk. “I think we better call it a night.” Dirk swore more often, for punctuation. He said one off-color word now. “I can’t leave you alone with this guy, not if he’s going to take this so hard.” “No, I mean it, Dirk. Bud would never hurt anybody.” “Well, I’d want to hurt somebody, if I were in his shoes. But,” he added with a shadowed smirk, “I’ll never be in his shoes, because I’ll always keep closer tabs on a girlfriend as beautiful as you.” My cheeks warmed as he said this, but just the same I made myself walk away. Dirk moved quickly around the other side of his car. He got in my way. I bumped into him as I tried to get around. He took me firmly by the shoulders. Half of his intense, grinning face now glowed in the lights from his car, the other half was darkened in my own shadow. I sensed Bud’s eyes burning through Dirk’s back and into me. I was gripped at once by both exhilaration and dread. I felt the need to break away from both of them and dash into the dark street beyond our cul-de-sac. But the street was no longer dark. Dirk’s face was suddenly fully lit. His half-grin melted like frost at sunrise. He squinted at the car pulling up to us. He decisively moved his hands from my shoulders to the back of my waist. “See ya’ later, sweet cheeks,” he said in LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 29 my ear. “I’ll call you.” His arms felt nicely warm around me. Just the same I squirmed inside, feeling cold at the thought of Papa driving up and seeing me with Dirk like this, and with Bud standing right there, for Pete’s sake! Dirk broke away and gave me a little half-wave as he climbed back in his car. He started it up and swung his car around on the asphalt. “You are soooo dead, Amber.” Bud said it behind me as Dirk’s car turned out of sight. “Your dad will kick your little round behind, clear to Idaho Falls and back.” Bud would have been right, but I felt at ease. I knew it wasn’t Papa who’d just pulled up. For one thing, the garage door hadn’t opened. Papa always activated the remote control as soon he saw the house. For another thing, Papa drove a two-year old Lexus with a very quiet engine. The idling sound behind me came from a noisy old domestic car, one with loose valves maybe. I turned and saw a ten-year-old Chevy, sure enough. The driver already stood outside her car, the driver-side door open. In the glare of her headlights, I couldn’t see the woman clearly. The dome light inside the car lit up the thin, elfish face of a girl, twelve or maybe thirteen years old. The girl peered at me curiously from the back seat. She brushed ringlets of dark auburn hair back from her sharp eyes. She had a lavender blanket around her shoulders. It looked as if she’d been sleeping back there. “Amber Reid, is that you?” The woman’s voice carried well enough over the noise of her car. Her words projected a theatrical tone that I was on the verge of recognizing. Images of kilted bagpipe players stepped lively through my mind. They marched past a classroom chalkboard covered with triangular diagrams. “My name is Celeste Preston.” She spoke to my puzzled expression. “My husband works with your father.” “Brigadoon!” I shouted back, suddenly alight with the connections. The woman paused at this. “I beg your pardon?” “You played the part of Fiona in Brigadoon a two years ago, down at the Bannock Community Theatre.” That explained the bagpipes in my head. “You’re married to Felix LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 30

Preston,” I added. That explained the chalkboard and the diagrams. I told her that I’d taken one of Felix’s classes down at the University of Eastern Idaho last year. “Oh yes,” Celeste Preston said carefully. “He sometimes mentioned you.” She turned off the ignition and stepped towards me. I could now see her better. Even in the harsh glare of headlights, she was stunning to look at. She was as tall and trim as I was, but unlike me her posture was flawless. She held her neck and shoulders with an authority just slightly softened by relaxed feminine curves. Every step she took was deliberate and gracefully balanced. “I’m sorry to interrupt…” She looked back with some concern at Bud. “whatever it was you were doing.” Bud was still fuming, but at least he was doing it quietly. “I brought an important file to give to your father. Is he home yet?” “He should be back soon,” I said. “Would you like to come inside and wait?” “Thank you, but no.” She reached into her breast pocket and handed me a storage disk. “It’s so late already. Your father told me that if he wasn’t here yet, I should just leave this disk where he’d see it.” As Celeste was saying this, the skinny girl from the back seat climbed out of their car and came to her mother’s side. “Mom, I have to go to the bathroom.” She said it in a stage whisper that we could all hear. Bud let out an audible puff of air as the girl spoke. Celeste Preston glanced back at him again. Bud began to look nearly as uncomfortable as the girl. “It’s all right,” I told them. “C’mon in the house.” I walked up the driveway, past Bud. “As for you, Bud, I’m sorry about tonight, but I can’t talk about it right now. Call me later, will you?” “Not this time, Amber,” Bud said sternly. “You owe me an explanation.” I turned, feeling very nervous. What must the Preston women be thinking? “Bud, please don’t act like this.” “Listen,” he burst out, “just a minute ago you let that Dirk jerk embarrass me right in LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 31 front of these people. You deserve to be embarrassed a little too. I’ll wait while you take care of business with these ladies. After they leave, we’ll settle this.” I shrugged at this, turned and went up the front steps to our porch. The girl and her mother caught up as I fumbled in my purse for my keys. I glanced up at the girl. “It’s nice to see you again, Eden Michelle.” “Have we met?” Eden asked in a grown-up tone. “I took a class from your father. You stopped by one day and he introduced you to us. He also talked about you and your brother sometimes.” I unlocked and opened the front door. “Your brother’s name is Arby, right?” “Actually it’s Rhett Butler,” Eden said. “Everybody but Mom calls him R.B.” “I guess everybody’s not as big a fan of Gone With the Wind as your mom.” I meant that to be a lighthearted remark but Mrs. Preston didn’t smile at all. Trying to keep my voice cheerful, I showed Eden to our guest bathroom, then I led her mother back to Papa’s home office. I asked her why Felix hadn’t brought the file himself. His wife explained how he was scoring high school essays for college credit that week, way down in San Antonio, Texas. I said she was an awfully understanding wife, doing her husband’s work. “Sometimes I’m a little too understanding,” she replied absently, “but over the years he’s put up with my theater group. He watches while other men play my husbands and lovers. They hold me in their arms and kiss me in public. I guess Felix and I are even.” I didn’t know what she meant. Delivering her husband’s files didn’t seem to balance with him letting her kiss other men in plays. I decided not to question her equation though. It was past midnight and Celeste looked suddenly very tired. Strength seemed to leak out of her neck and shoulders as we talked. I turned on Papa’s computer and pushed Felix’s disk into the drive slot. Papa couldn’t possibly fail to notice it when he came home. We went back to the front hall and found Eden. I felt my chest tighten as I walked them to the door. I was all too aware of Bud waiting outside. I put my hand on the knob and Mrs. Preston suddenly asked if she might go to the LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 32

“powder room” as well. I sighed with relief as she went. I turned to find her daughter looking intently at our hallway mirror. Its frame was fine gold leaf, a gift from Mother’s parents to Papa, back in better days. From the way Eden’s eyes moved, I saw she was comparing my image to hers in the mirror. I didn’t look there. I always hated what this mirror revealed, what all mirrors showed me. A long, dry stick of a girl, eyes too large, nose too sharp. I trusted no mirror, but often took pleasure in other people’s eyes when they looked at me. “You’re pretty,” Eden said. “How do you get your hair like that?” I reflexively put a hand to my hair. It was long in those days and had always been naturally waved. She was referring to its color though. My hair is mostly dark brown, but it is shot through with a few very natural but very blonde streaks. I told Eden that my hair had never been touched by dye. One of my mother’s grandparents was a full-blooded Cherokee. His genes got in a tumble with my father’s Nordic ancestry, my hair being the chaotic result. My eyes are colored in that brassy no-man’s-land between light green and light brown. Another thing is, my skin is just a shade dark. People who first meet me always think that I’ve been wasting my time in a tanning salon. On the positive side, I never had to put on much makeup, like most fair-skinned women do. That way I never had to look at myself in the mirror much. “I hope I get to be as tall as you and Mom,” Eden said. “You probably will. Three years ago, I was shorter than you are.” “No way,” Eden said. “Serious?” “Seriously serious,” I said. “Shorter and skinnier than you, almost the whole time I was in high school. I didn’t hit puberty until right before I turned eighteen…oh…you do know what puberty is, right?” Eden rolled her eyes at this. “Wull yeah! I’ve had cycles and everything since last Christmas. Dad explained it all to me. You had a class from him. You know how he just has to explain everything.” We both laughed at this. Come to think of it, there couldn’t be much about life that a LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 33 daughter of Felix Preston wouldn’t know. “I guess it explains why you’re so different,” Eden said. I knew I was different. Papa and other boys always said so. I just didn’t expect to hear it from a little girl though, and this late at night too. “What do you mean?” I asked sharply. “Just how you were with those boys outside,” the girl said simply. “You’re awfully pretty, but you don’t act pretty, I guess.” “What don’t I do?” I was both curious and frustrated. Eden paused. Her eyes searched our two images in the hallway mirror. “It’s hard to say what. You don’t have the same feeling around you; that’s all. You should ask Dad about it. He’s always making lists of things people do or don’t do and how other people feel about it.” Then her eyes brightened and she looked up at me. “You don’t act like Mom would act. I mean in a play when men are after her. It feels like she puts up this invisible wall to keep them back.” “But why don’t I do that?” I really wanted to know. “Probably ‘cause you haven’t been a woman very long,” the girl said. “You don’t have my Dad or an actress mom to teach you. You haven’t had time to learn the trick for yourself.” I didn’t know what to say. It felt like I was being lectured by Felix again, except that he was being channeled by his daughter, this elven woman-child. She had his same eyes, that strange and dark blue color. I started to wonder what was keeping her mother so long in the bathroom. The next instant I wondered what I was going to say to Bud outside, after she was gone. Then I heard it, through the walls of our house, the grinding sound of our garage door opening. Papa was home. I could imagine what he’d say when he saw Bud’s angry face outside. I felt hemmed in, trapped. Tears sprouted on my cheeks. I blinked and groped for one of the chairs in our front hallway. I slumped into it. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 34

Eden knelt next to me and put her arms around my neck. “It’s O.K., Amber,” she whispered softly. “I don’t know much about boys either. Dad won’t tell me everything. He says it’s dangerous to know too much when I’m so young. But I know a few tricks. I can go outside and make this Bud guy go away, if you want me to.” I wanted to laugh at this, but it came out as a harsh sob. I didn’t doubt for a minute that this Eden knew how to get rid of Bud, even if I didn’t. But it was all too pathetic. I was a grown woman and here I was, about to let this girl do my dirty work. “No,” I finally told her. “I have to do it. But…what would you say to him?” Eden took my left hand and raised it. The ring I was wearing caught the light. It was a thin silver band trimmed on both edges with little braids of gold. “This is from him,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “Uh-huh,” I said, sniffing a little. “How did you know?” “You’ve been twisting it on your finger ever since we got here. It’s not an engagement ring, is it? There’s no diamond or anything.” “No. It’s called a promise ring.” Bud had given it to me when I was still in high school. We dated a few times when I was a senior and he was a freshman in college. Then he quit college and went away for two whole years to serve as a missionary for our church. He gave me this ring before he left, a promise between us that he’d ask me to marry him when he got back. He still hadn’t officially done that. I liked to think that he was just having trouble getting together money for a real ring. The truth was, I wasn’t the same little girl he’d made promises to three years ago. I looked then like Eden did now, short and rail-thin, only the faintest outline of womanhood on me. Back then, I’d prayed to heaven that I’d never look any different. I didn’t want to turn out like Mother, bloated and heavy. Most of the time, she’d been a prisoner of bolted doors and medication, shut up in a mental clinic up in Idaho Falls. Dreading this same future, I was perfectly happy to be nothing more than a stick-figure sketch of a girl, as long as I was sane. Fat or thin, no other boys wanted anything to do with me. No one but Bud ever asked me out back then, let alone hinted at marriage. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 35

So I’d taken his ring, and three years later I still prized it. Since then, a woman’s body had taken shape around me. Now I had all the boys that I wanted, maybe more than I could handle. I’d come to prize that too, to be honest. Even so, Bud’s ring still meant something. It meant he once saw something worth loving in me that had nothing to do with how I looked. I just wished that I could see it too. Eden listened to all I told her. She nodded sympathetically. “You have to give it back,” the girl said simply. My heart grew tight in my chest. “The ring?” I asked. “I can’t!” “But you have to.” Her tone sounding much softer than her words felt. “If you want to make Bud go away right now, then go out there and give him that ring back, right now. Dad says there’s an old caveman part inside boys that makes them think they own you when they give you things. It was the same when Kevin Tyler gave me a little stuffed unicorn for my locker. All week after that, he hung around between every class and lunch hour too, driving me nuts. Dad said to give the unicorn back. I did and Kevin backed off.” “But I don’t want to lose this ring,” I protested, “or Bud.” “If you really still want them, you can get them both later. Kevin’s still around, and I know he still has that unicorn. Someday I’ll let him give it back, sometime when I’m ready to have him around more.” “She’s probably right…” a similar voice said. I jumped in my chair. Celeste Preston stood in the hall. Her eyes looked a bit bleary and red. “Eden, honey, this is none of our business. We have to go.” “But Mom, she asked me what I’d do about Bud.” “And now she knows all about what you’d do, doesn’t she? I’m sorry I took so long, Amber. I’m afraid I dozed off a little back there.” “It’s all right, Mrs. Preston.” I told her how much I’d enjoyed talking to Eden while we waited. I suggested that maybe the two of them should just lie down in our guest room until morning. Celeste seemed to half consider it, but she declined, very artfully of course. It was only LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 36 a half-hour drive back to their house, she said. She didn’t want to inconvenience Papa and me. She and Eden didn’t have so much as a toothbrush with them and she really hated to sleep in her clothes. “Me too,” I agreed, “but you could at least lie down on the couch in the parlor, just for a few minutes. Sometimes when I’ve got to drive at night, a little catnap is all I need to get me home safely.” Celeste smiled weakly and her shoulders relaxed. “Actually that does sound like a smart thing to do, thank you. Come on, Eden.” “But Mom, what about Bud? He’s still waiting to yell at Amber for hugging that other boy. I want to help her get rid of him.” “You let Amber take care of her boyfriend in her own way, honey.” She looked straight at me as she said this. “We’ll just wait in here.” She took her daughter by the shoulders and led her into the parlor. Eden didn’t seem at all pleased by this, but she went with her mother. She looked back at me with her father’s darkened eyes. I turned and put a hand on the front door knob. I took a deep breath. Between Eden’s firm plan, and Celeste’s advice that I do this my own way, I still wavered. I went out to face Bud, and my father. Papa was out on the grass still, talking with Bud. It didn’t seem possible, but Papa looked even more upset than my would-be fiancé. Papa had always liked Bud. He once thought Bud was the only man who’d ever want to marry me. Papa came to like him even better over the last couple of years, when he saw the other kinds of boys that I started to attract. I stepped out on the front porch. Papa looked more angry, but it was Bud who spoke first. “Well finally!” he said, loudly enough to wake neighbors. “How long does it take to help a little girl go potty?” “Papa,” I said, ignoring Bud altogether, “Celeste Preston brought that file that you wanted. She’s lying on our couch now and I think she’s exhausted. You ought to go in and talk her into staying the night.” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 37

Whatever my father meant to say, it got jammed up good by this news. The stern look on his face broke into fragments. He grumbled darkly that we’d discuss Dirk Pitman later, then disappeared through the front door. One problem down. I sighed with relief. I’d gotten off easy with Papa. One problem left. I went down the front steps. “Bud, I’m sorry I made you wait, but things have gotten kind of crazy tonight. I’d really appreciate it if you’d just go on home.” His answer was loud and abrupt. “I’d really appreciate it, Amber, if you’d can the sweet talk and play straight with me for once. You say you just forgot about our date. That doesn’t explain what you were doing with this Dirk guy. You owe me more than a quick ‘I’m-sorry-Bud-call-me-later.’ Blast it, Amber. You owe me more!” It caught me off guard, Bud’s sudden, shouting rage. Surprised at myself, I shouted back an echo of Eden’s words. “You don’t own me, Bud. I don’t owe you anything!” As Eden noticed, I’d been absently twisting Bud’s promise ring. Now I was tugging at it, to see if I could get it off, in case I ever wanted to. That promise ring was loose enough when Bud gave it to me. I’d grown over the years and now it was stuck tight on my finger. Getting that ring off is all I could think about. I didn’t want to lose it, really. I just couldn’t bear the thought of being stuck with it, whether I wanted it or not. My freedom to choose mattered more. I bit my lip and forced it. The gold braid on the edges cut into my knuckle, but the ring came free. The pain shocks me. Too hurt to think, I hurl the ring away. It bounces off Bud’s chest. It pings and bounces and lies glinting on the driveway. For a heartbeat or two, Bud looks down at it stupidly, as if he can’t quite remember the ring or what it means. Then I see him realize. He bends down and picks it up. Then he looks back at me, rather like a plush unicorn in the process of having his stuffing pulled out. I took a breath. “Let’s calm down and look at this logically, Bud. You’ll always be my first boyfriend, but now I have many, many friends who are also boys. Whatever you say about Dirk Pitman, at least he went away when I told him to. The same rules apply to you, Bud. You can go away when I tell you to, or you can go away for keeps. You can understand LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 38 that, can’t you?” This seemed like a calm, logical thing to say. As the words actually came out of my mouth, they rang like cold metal on the pavement. Bud meditated on what I’d said for a moment or two, and he finally nodded. He put the ring in his pocket. He absently brushed a hand across his eyes. “I really am sorry, Bud,” I said anxiously. “I’ll call you later.” “Whatever,” he said. “Suit yourself.” There was a bitter sting in his voice, and he was already walking back to his car. Papa’s Lexus was parked right behind it. He pulled ahead into our garage, parallel with my little Honda. Then he backed his car out and swerved around Papa’s. He drove over our grass, but he made it around and pulled off into the night. I waved as he went. I couldn’t see if Bud waved back. Part of me felt wounded and empty inside. I’d done what Eden said, but I’d done it mostly by accident. Even so, I had to admit that part of me felt light and unburdened now. I felt a racing energy down around my navel. I felt a sudden certainty that Eden was right. I could call Bud or any boy back to me if I chose. Did I even want to? I didn’t know, and not knowing what I wanted dampened that energy a little. Then I remembered how much my empty ring finger hurt. I put it to my mouth. I tasted blood. I turned back to the house. Coming up to the front door, I heard Celeste’s voice carrying through the wood. Papa was replying to her as I opened the door. Both the voices suddenly stopped. I went to the parlor and found them there. Celeste sat up on the couch. Eden curled up on the other end, already asleep. Papa had the large chair. “Well that was quick,” he said over his shoulder. “I thought Bud was ready to chew on your ear for an hour at least.” I stole a glance at Celeste. She was looking intently at my left hand. “No. I just had to explain a couple of things. Then he had to go.” I hid my left-hand fingers in my right as I said this. Salty sweat from my palm made that wounded, empty finger sting. “I see,” Papa said skeptically. He stood and turned back to our guests. “Celeste says LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 39 she has to go too. I wish she’d let me carry little Edie upstairs. They could sleep in our guest room. You could find her a spare nightgown, couldn’t you, Amber?” I agreed that I could. Celeste still wouldn’t be persuaded. She roused Eden up and gently got her on her feet. Eden blinked at me. “Hi, Amber. You got rid of Bud all right?” “Yes.” I was anxious that Papa hear no more than that. “Eden, why don’t you call me tomorrow? I’ll tell you all about it then.” “I’d like that!” Eden smiled. “What’s your number?” Celeste took her arm. “I’m sure your father knows their number by heart. Come on, honey. We need to go.” “Actually, Mrs. Preston, I have my own phone in my room. We just had it changed a couple of months ago. Now it’s unlisted. Papa, could Eden borrow a pen?” Being a bureaucrat-engineer, Papa always had several pens. He lifted one from his shirt pocket and handed it galantly to Eden, along with a used envelope from his jacket. But, when I recited my phone number for Eden, she wrote it on her left hand. Celeste saw what her daughter was doing. “Oh, Eden, really!” “This way I won’t lose it, Mom.” Eden handed the pen and the envelope back to Papa. “Thank you, Mr. Reid. Goodbye, Amber. I’ll call you tomorrow.” “You do that, Eden Michelle.” I dropped my arms over her head and gave the girl a tight squeeze. “You give good advice,” I whispered in her ear. Her indigo eyes danced with pleasure. Papa walked her and Celeste out the front door. Celeste looked back over her shoulder at me with visible concern. My father held open a rear door of their Chevy while Celeste tucked Eden into the back seat. I turned away from our front door and quickly made my way upstairs. In the first place, I wanted to be well on my way to bed before Papa came back in. That way, he wouldn’t ask me awkward questions. He had to get back to the INEL reservation first thing tomorrow. There was an excellent chance that the government inspectors there would make him forget all about Bud and Dirk by tomorrow evening. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 40

In the second place, I wanted to catch the final piece of whatever Celeste and my father had been saying before I’d interrupted them down in the parlor. I ran to my bedroom window. As quietly as I could, I slid the window open a few inches and then knelt by it to listen. When I held my breath, I could hear Papa talking down on the driveway in a low voice. He seemed to be pleading his case with Celeste. His voice had urgency in it. “…that Pitman character and Bud might have killed each other if you hadn’t stopped by. You know we’ve had the police out here three times in the last year. She leads boys on, to the point where they won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” “I don’t think your daughter realizes,” Celeste said. “She doesn’t understand men well enough to lead them anywhere on purpose.” “That’s my point,” Papa said. “She doesn’t understand. You remember that lunatic who stalked her last year. He ended up killing himself instead of her, but the police said that was just her dumb luck. “She needs to learn how to keep her distance from men. Heaven knows I’ve tried to tell her, but she doesn’t listen to me these days. Can’t you help her, Celeste? Amber seems to have bonded with your daughter. Couldn’t the three of you find some things to do together? Anything?” “I could try, Gabe, but like I told you, I’m no social worker. This is all more the sort of thing that Felix deals with. We both know there’s something broken inside of Amber and we both know that Felix is a natural healer. Your daughter respects him, and I think she’ll listen to him. He understands people. He can explain things to people, better than anyone I know. He’d do it for her sake, I think.” “I’m sorry, but no.” Papa said bluntly. “There’s no way I’m turning my daughter over to any man for this. I don’t care how much older he is or how trustworthy he is. You don’t want your precious husband getting too close to a girl who looks and acts like Amber either…” I winced at this. I shut the window with a clunk, not really caring if they heard me down below or not. It hurt to find out that Papa expected so little of me. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 41

I turned away from the window and stared into the darkness. I noticed that the message light on my answering machine was blinking. I hit the play button. Bud had called several times this afternoon. Each message sounded more frustrated. He finally said he’d come over himself and wait for me. Along with Bud’s recordings were messages from Thomas, Rick, and Harley. Each of them asked how I was doing. Each of them was fishing for a date. Each was yet another boy that my father wouldn’t like. Thomas had been sent home from a Mormon mission after one year’s careless service. Rick had never been enough involved in church to want to serve a mission. Harley was like Dirk, a hedonist and agnostic, not a member of our church at all. I was disgusted tonight with all of them. I tossed off my clothes, went into my bathroom and bandaged my wounded finger. A couple of moments later I came back and threw myself into bed without saying any prayers. But who was I kidding? I hadn’t prayed by myself for at least two years. I only prayed at mealtimes with Papa, or at church when I was asked. I heard the grinding sound of our garage door closing downstairs. This meant Papa had brought his car inside. Celeste had finally gotten away, more than an hour after the poor woman had just “stopped by” to drop off that file. I pretended to be asleep but I never heard Papa come up. He must have stayed downstairs to print out that file from Felix, to have it ready for his morning meetings. Meanwhile I fell asleep. I had one of those bad dreams where a figure stands over me wearing a dark mask. As always, it was hard to breathe, and I couldn’t move. Later on, Eden came to me dressed in a crimson red camisole. She said something about finding myself by losing myself. She told me something about trusting the future. I couldn’t quite hear her. There was a bird chirping too loudly in my ear. It turned out to be my bedside telephone. The clock said 4:30 am. Weary, I picked up the handset, hoping the noise didn’t wake Papa. I imagined it would be Bud, or Dirk, or one of the others, but it was instead the very business-like voice of some other young man. I had never met him. I never would meet him in person. This young man worked a night shift LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 42 with the Idaho State Police. They found my number written on Eden’s hand. They were getting desperate now to find anyone who knew the whereabouts of a man named Felix Preston.

* * * *

At that very moment, Felix would just come awake himself, back in that dorm room at Trinity University, down in Texas. Anyone can fall asleep for a couple hours in the afternoon, if they lie still. Felix also napped a little in the wee hours of morning. Then a mysterious internal clock would click in his head. He would open his eyes and check his actual clock. Normally he would swing his feet to the floor, switch on a light and pick up his jogging clothes from the opposite bed. This morning would be a little different. Vanessa Grove was on the other bed, and Felix was already wearing his exercise outfit. He felt for his running shoes in the dark and put them on. He opened the bedside table and took out his walkman radio and his door key. He would move quietly in and out of the bathroom, and then out the front door, slipping the key in his pocket and stereo headphones over his ears. There are two cultures at any of the annual Educational Testing Service Readings: One culture consists of those college professors and high school teachers who stay up a little late to unwind in the bars and byways of places like San Antonio. The other culture consists of those who get up a little early to wind themselves up for each hard day with some hard exercise. Felix belonged to both cultures. He was a legend in both cultures, the last reader escorting friends out of the bars at night, and the first one out on the Trinity football field, burning up quarter-mile loops on the running track, there in the early Texas-morning twilight. He would usually go a mile before his best friends of the morning culture arrived. Don, a professor near retirement, who ran senior 10Ks and occasional marathons across the upper Midwest. Kate, a high school teacher from Kansas. She ran to keep ahead of her LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 43 arthritis. Liza, who ran back home because her husband did. At nineteen Liza had married a college professor. Now in her mid-thirties, she had just gotten her own Ph.D. and a teaching job at a small liberal-arts college. It was Liza who appeared first this morning. Felix saw her step out on the track as he rounded the far curve. He let the pounding beat of the music in his headphones push him along a little faster. In seconds he caught up with her and slowed down to match her stride. He pulled the headphones from his ears. “Hey, Felix. One of these years I’m going to be out here ahead of you.” “Anything’s possible,” he would reply. They would finish Liza’s warmup laps in conversation, before they began any serious running. Liza would ask, “Did I ever thank you for writing all those great letters to Mark and me last year?” Felix smiled. “Of course you did. I’m just glad Mark came his through his surgeries all right. Celeste’s mother died of cancer when she was young. I can only imagine how hard it’s been for you.” “Yes, but thank you again.” Liza would ask how Celeste was doing. Felix would start to tell her about his phone conversation with Celeste the night before. Then he noticed blue and red lights flashing, a police car’s lights, somewhere beyond the hedges and bleachers on the far side of the track. He would have expected them to pass on down the road, but the lights flashed directly in his eyes. The car would turn through the football field’s main gate and drive right out on the track. It blocked the track. Two uniformed men got out and they stopped another pair of runners, the ones who reached their car first. “I guess they were running too fast,” Liza said. “Or they let the registration on their Nikes expire,” Felix replied. His joking tone melted as the two runners pointed directly at Liza and him. The men from campus security looked pointedly at them. Felix would sprint ahead of Liza to reach them, blown forward by a terrible LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 44 premonition. Dread swallowed him whole as he came within shouting distance of the car. One of the officers called out his name. “Professor Preston?” “No!” Felix shouted. “Well, can you tell me where he is?” the officer asked. Felix stumbled to a stop. He caught himself on the side of the squad car, his chest heaving. “Sorry. I mean, I am Felix Preston. Don’t let this be about Celeste.” The officer’s face was unreadable. “I’m sorry. That’s not for me to say.” The man handed him a cellular phone and a folded sheet of paper with two phone numbers on it. “You need to call the Idaho State Police right now, sir. It’s the first number there.” Felix was already dialing with unsteady fingers. “What’s the second number?” “We don’t know. Dispatch said to let you call that one next.” The phone was answered on the first ring, by a young man working a graveyard shift for the Idaho State Police.

* * * * He gave Felix the same news. I’d forced the young man to tell it half an hour earlier. He had to tell me before I’d agree to say where Felix was. The second phone number on that sheet of paper was mine. Celeste Preston had not fallen asleep at the wheel of her car on the way home. The driver of a large semitrailer truck had. Maybe Celeste could have gotten out of his way if she’d been more alert herself. There was no way to know. The truck ran her Chevy off the road. It rolled down a steep embankment. Celeste was critically injured. They took her to Bannock Medical Center. She lay there in a coma on the edge of death. Eden had been killed instantly. I hung up the phone and wept bitterly. I didn’t want Celeste to die. I prayed that Eden had at least slept through it. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 45 LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 46

III. Blue Horizon

Felix announced that we were all going up to Meditation Hill. Nobody called it Makeout Hill that morning, but several students exchanged sly looks. We followed Felix into the hallway. Going out the east doors, our group crowded past two other English professors just coming in. I overheard as one grumbled to the other. “Do all linguists have this field-trip habit, or is it just Preston?” “Who knows. Maybe it’s a Mormon thing.” “Isn’t this man being paid to lecture?” Ten minutes later, all thirty of us had climbed the hill and gathered around the Greek pillars, fluted columns that had once framed the entrance of a funeral home. Felix stood on the stone bench and waved to get our attention. He then turned. With a straight arm, he pointed away to the northwest horizon. “Take note of what you see!” Beyond the orange-brick buildings of the university, and beyond the treetops of this college town, what lay before us was the great Snake River plain of Southern Idaho. In the midst of the plain, about fifty miles away, stood a row of dead volcanic craters. I’d often seen these up close, three large hills of olive sagebrush and ancient lava, darkish yellow and reddish black. From Meditation Hill, through miles of invisible air, they only appeared as dark blue mounds in the distance. Beyond these dead craters, out of sight, was the nuclear-waste reservation where Papa worked. Beyond that, the high ranges of the Lemhi and Lost River mountains, their jagged indigo edges crossed the far horizon. I raised my hand. The Red and Yellow lectures behind us, I knew this was coming. Before Felix could call on me, I sang out the third line of the verse he’d taught. Blue is for Pattern and far destiny. “It’s also the color of your eyes, Professor.” I said this in my most sultry voice. Everyone laughed. Now we were even for what happened on the first day of class. “That is correct, Miss Reid,” he said carefully. “Can you also give us your insights on LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 47 how the blue-colored horizon relates to thought, culture, and language?” “No, I can’t.” I raised my chin and tipped my head seductively. “But I’m just dying to have you teach me.” His cheeks were slightly flushed, but his smile was still composed, almost angelic. “Very well, Miss Reid. In that case, you wouldn’t mind helping me now with a little role play, would you?” “What?” “Just play along.” He turned back to the group. “In the shadow of these pillars, in the finest Greek tradition, we’re going to enact a bit of theater, a little play about Blue. Miss Reid has volunteered as the first actor. I’d also like Mr. Korth and Mr. Oman to step forward. The rest of you step back. Clear them some space.” Felix swung a small pack from his shoulder. He opened it and pulled out four party masks. The yellow one he handed to me. The orange-red one went to Jason Oman. He was thin, and maybe an inch shorter than me, but he had a sweet, heart-shaped face and large, lively eyes. A second, blood-red mask went to Burt Korth, square-jawed and the largest boy in the class, second string on the football team. The final, blue mask, Felix held over his head. “The rest of you will be the Greek Chorus,” Felix said. Your song is the primary-colors song we learned on the first day, but I have another verse for you to learn.” When everyone sang the new verse without Felix’s help, he went on to set the play. “I call this little drama, ‘The First Love Story.’ In the first scene, imagine Mr. Oman and Mr. Korth here as primitive creatures. Imagine a time before language evolved. These creatures aren’t quite human beings yet. This is a world of yellow and red, restless possibilities and active conflict, but no blue, no language patterns. Both these creatures want Miss Reid, but being typical red males, they cannot share or negotiate; they can only oppose each other.” On this cue, Jason shuffled up close and started gesturing for me to follow him. Burt promptly came over and beat him to the ground, lifeless. I jumped back in shock. They made a very convincing show of it. Felix had obviously coached them both before class. Me, he’d left in the dark, to ad lib as well as I could. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 48

In the second scene, Jason wandered off down the hill a few yards. Burt went off in the opposite direction and turned his back. I was watching him when someone else pulled on my shoulders from behind. I cried out, turned and saw it was Jason. At the sound of my cry, Burt ran back. Once again, he beat poor Jason into the ground. Before the third scene, Felix had the Chorus sing the new verse he’d taught us:

Blue seen in distance, not forced now and here, Blue sense for words, such as Death that we fear, But Blue words Immortal, our true destiny, All these the Pattern of Humanity.

Then he took Jason’s reddish mask away, and had him put on the blue one. “In open conflict, the orange-red creature is usually squashed by the blood-red one,” Felix said. “Even when the Korth creature wanders off, the Oman creature without language is stuck in the here and now. All he can do is try to drag the Reid girl away before the stronger, faster Korth creature catches him. Not very likely. “But now Mr. Oman has language,” Felix continued, “and he can talk about things in the distance. He no longer needs force. Now he can promise Miss Reid the sun and the seasons...” The third scene began. Burt wandered away once more. Jason came up behind me again, but this time he spoke a stage whisper at my shoulder. “Psst...hey, Amber. Come away with me.” In a real whisper too low for others to hear, he said that he’d love it if I really did go out with him. “Why should I?” I answered out loud, without turning. “Ummmm....” Jason stammered. “I’m sorry, Professor. I guess I forgot.” “Never mind,” Felix sighed. “This would be the part,” he told the group, “where Mankind discovers poetry, and then uses it to persuade Womankind.” And then he recited these lines himself, from Shakespeare’s Eighteenth Sonnet. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 49

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ownest, Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

“What would you say to that, Miss Reid?” I let Jason take my hand, but I still looked squarely at Felix, the man who knew the words. “I’d follow those words forever, Professor.” “Well said,” he answered. “Mr. Oman, do you remember where you’re supposed to take your love in the end?” “Oh yeah,” Jason said, and he stretched out an arm toward the northwest, over the plains to the distant mountains. “We’re outta here, over that blue horizon.” “Tell the audience why, Mr. Oman.” “So Korth doesn’t come and kill me for taking his girl.” “You never worried about that before,” Felix said. “You took your chances with Miss Reid and just let the Korth creature kill you. Why?” “I never had a name for myself,” Jason said. “I didn’t know who was dying. I never had a word for death before.” “And that’s the first love story,” Felix concluded. “It looks like a happy ending, but in some ways it’s not. When people were merely red and yellow creatures, they died perhaps, LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 50 but they never saw death coming. Our ancestors only became human when they fixed their eyes on the blue horizon. Because of this, they could speak of love for their newly discovered selves, but also now, they feared for death.” “They escaped some blood-red battles this way. Yet, to avoid merely physical death, they created the very concept of Death, the knowledge of a coming time when death might strike them down, them and all they loved. Destruction out of the blue.” Felix Preston’s voice became grave. “Such knowledge can be far, far worse than the actual moment of death.”

Chapter THREE:

“Papa, please wake up. Oh please.” I hadn’t set foot in Papa’s bedroom in years, not since I was eighteen. I was there now, a few minutes before five am. My hands trembled as I shook him awake. He rumbled and turned over. “Amber,” he said hoarsely. “What time is it?” He lifted himself on one arm and looked at his clock-radio. It was a little after 5:00 am. “My alarm goes off at 5:30,” he groaned. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait?” I began to stammer out an explanation, about the phone call from the police and how they’d gotten my number. I explained how they’d been dialing the Preston’s home number all that night. Felix wasn’t there to hear it, to get the news about his wife and daughter. My father quickly rolled to the other side of the bed. He found a robe somewhere in the darkness. He came to my side of the bed and turned on a light. “Tell me exactly what they told you about Celeste.” “The trooper said she’s in intensive care, in a coma and listed as critical.” In the background, I also overheard some woman say Celeste had ‘coded’ twice in the ambulance. She said the hospital needed to know right away if the family would allow organ donation. The trooper told her to shut up. She thought he had a family member on the LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 51 phone. “Papa, I’m scared. I don’t want her to die.” My father reached out and pulled me to his chest. He spoke softly in my ear. “You have a big heart, little girl. It’s amazing how you can feel so much for people you just met. I need you to be strong now. I won’t say this was all our fault, but this is the hard truth. Celeste would’ve been safe in her bed this morning if I hadn’t called her last night and if you… if we hadn’t kept them here so long…” “Talking about me and those boys,” I said in a small voice. “That too,” he said softly. He leaned back and looked me in the eyes for a silent moment. His face was serious now, and business-like. “That’s in the past now, Amber. Now we owe it to the Preston family to do everything we can for them. Whatever we can make right, we will make right. Whatever we can’t make right…” Papa paused and shut his eyes tightly. “Whatever we can’t make right, we will suffer for, right along with them. Do you understand me?” I nodded solemnly. We had a pact now, Papa and I. Things were bad, but this one thing was settled between us. I was still my father’s daughter, enough to share his sense of justice. There was still that, no matter how much we fought over boys I dated. “I told the trooper to give Professor Preston my phone number.” “Good girl. Will you be able to talk to him when he calls?” “I think so.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’ve run out of tears for now.” Papa nodded. “I’m sorry to dump this in your lap, Amber. I’ve got to meet that inspection team this morning. Preston put a lot of effort into that NRC proposal. It would be criminal now to let his work go to waste, after all it’s cost us. I’ll meet you at the hospital this afternoon. “Use every charm you have. Persuade Preston to let you help him. He’ll probably resist, but you just keep insisting. At the very least, you should pick him up at the airport. Remind him that other people should know about the accident. They should be called before he gets back from Texas. You’ll spare him quite a bit of pain if you’ll do some of that calling LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 52 for him.” Papa always kept a notepad and pen on his bedside table. He handed these to me. “You’d better start writing this down.” “Tell the people he goes to church with, his bishop and the Relief Society president at least. Look up their numbers and call them. Call his department secretary at the university. Call Celeste’s father if Preston will let you. It won’t be so great if he has spread the news himself from a public phone, or worse, from a seat phone in a crowded airplane. “There’s another thing. You should find out where Celeste left her son last night. A friend’s house or something. Call and tell them that the boy’s mother is in the hospital. They should keep him until his father arrives. Don’t say anything about the girl. The boy should only get that sort of news from family.” I scribbled notes as Papa talked. Then I remembered the last thing the trooper had asked me. My heart began to swell as I thought of it. He had asked if I could come down to the county morgue this morning and officially identify Eden’s body. Somebody had to do it before the coroner could make out a death certificate. Somebody needed to call a funeral home and arrange to have Eden taken there. I still had tears left in me after all. Papa held me until I stopped shaking. His face grew a little more weary. He looked at the clock again. “Well, that’s another thing we can do. I just can’t spare the hour it would take to go with you.” He looked at me grimly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to drive over there by yourself, Amber. The state you’re in, you could get in an accident too.” Then his face brightened. “Here’s an idea. When Preston calls, find out what funeral home Eden should go to. Don’t even mention the morgue. After you speak to him, you should go ahead and call Bud. He told me he had the whole day off today. I think he should be the one to drive you down to see the coroner. More than me, your future husband ought to be the one who sees you through this. He should hold your hand while you do what you have to do…” Papa’s voice trailed off as my face dropped into my hands. I began to rock back on LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 53 forth on the edge of the bed, moaning softly. I’d forgotten all about Bud. I was sick at the thought of calling him back, at the thought of begging for his help. It was less than five hours since I’d given back his ring. I’d been hoping to hide this from Papa for a few days. Everybody’s hurt feelings might have calmed down. There was no place to hide anymore. I held up my left hand with the bandaged finger. In a few seconds, Papa realized that Bud’s promise ring was gone. “That’s why he left so quickly? You two broke up? Oh, Amber!” “I didn’t really break up with him. I just gave his ring back to make him go away. He was being so rude to Eden… and Celeste.” At this, Papa’s mouth fell open a bit. “What’s really amazing, little girl, is how you feel so much empathy for people who don’t even know you...” He sighed heavily. “...and then you turn around and treat people who love you with such cruelty.” “Are you going to make me call Bud?” I asked in a small voice. Papa quietly counted to ten, holding his temper with both hands. “I’d like to,” he said after a moment, “but no. Don’t call him. It’s time you learned what life without Bud is like. He’s not perfect. He still needs to grow up a little. But, not one of the other boys you’ve had sniffing around here is even half the man he is.” That was when the phone in my bedroom began to ring. It would be Felix. Papa waved a hand at me. I was dismissed. “Call one of those other boys,” Papa said to my back, “whoever you think is least unreliable. Have him drive you around today. There’s a big difference between a boy who’s all fun and games on a date, and a man who will stick with you in a bad stretch of real life.” His words fell heavily on my shoulders, but Papa and I made a pact and I meant to keep it. I answered my phone. For the first time in six months, I heard Felix Preston’s voice again. It was distant and monotone on the other end of the line. Trying to sound more brave than I felt, I told him it was me. I offered to help him, with everything Papa told me to write down. Papa was wrong about one thing. Felix didn’t resist my help at all. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 54

Instead he thanked me and told me to write down several phone numbers. Of course he’d know them all from memory, people from his church ward and the university, his widowed foster mother in Arizona, Celeste’s father in Utah, and the family that his son Arby had spent the night with. I only had to look up the number of a funeral home. Pick whichever one is closest, Felix told me. He then said he’d catch the first plane he could get out of San Antonio. He quickly said goodbye and hung up. Just like old times, Professor Preston had given me my assignments. Just like last year, I did what I could. Just like last year, nothing turned out very well. It was Harley Johnson who agreed to drive me around on my errands. He wasn’t the first boy I called. Harley had a tendency to show up late. This morning I waited an extra hour for the sound of his motorcyle in the driveway. He drove my car to the county morgue, where I identified Eden’s body. Harley also waited in the hospital lobby while I went upstairs to ask about Celeste. Nothing had changed for better or worse. I forced myself to make the rest of those heartbreaking phone calls. A bit later Harley bought lunch with money I lent him. I couldn’t eat anything myself. Afterwards, we drove out to the airport to wait for Felix. Harley stood next to me at arrival gate. He had an arm draped on my shoulders but I wasn’t paying much attention. My eyes were on the last trickle of passengers coming through the gate. They stopped coming, and a flight attendant was closing the outside door. It looked like Felix had somehow missed his connecting flight from Salt Lake City. I wondered what I was going to do with Harley for another three hours, until the next commuter plane from Salt Lake arrived. Suddenly I saw a hand, wearing a familiar watch. It reached out and grabbed the edge of the outside door. The door and the attendant holding it got gently but firmly pushed back. The man I’d been waiting for stepped past her into the terminal. I hadn’t seen him in over six months, not since our class ended last December. If anything, he looked a little more trim, a little more athletic. Like Merlin the magician, Felix Preston seemed to age in reverse, getting a bit younger with each passing year. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 55

He wasn’t short by any means, but he wasn’t tall. Neither was he especially handsome by the narrowly angular and block-jawed standards of Hollywood and GQ magazine. Even so, I never wondered why Celeste Preston had chosen this specific man over other, more fashionable men who once pursued her. It was enough that this man wore his high forehead beneath thick, blue-black hair. It was enough that his largish brow and longish nose had their own lionish nobility. It was enough that he had those wide, strong hands and those broad, powerfully muscled shoulders. It was more than enough when you counted in the man’s eyes. They were the color of high and distant mountains. They were deeply intelligent and far-seeing eyes. Celeste had chosen this man and she would bear him a daughter with these same eyes. A few hours ago, the coroner led Harley and me to the cold table where their daughter lay, her eyes closed forever. Something Felix once said in class now rang in my head. Thinking about death can be far, far worse than the actual experience when it comes. Little Eden had died in her sleep. The rest of us would suffer much longer. I sat mute at the coroner’s desk for almost an hour while Harley paced the floor. Finally I came to myself and signed papers affirming, on penalty of perjury, that I did in fact identify the deceased as Eden Michelle Preston. I saw the living eyes of her father that afternoon. They made me ache inside, in all the old ways, and in new ways. Felix saw me a few seconds after he entered the terminal. The briefest flicker of surprise crossed his face. I waved a trembling hand. He turned fully toward Harley and me. I noticed a bluish-purple bruise on his cheek. A vaguely bullet- shaped mark just touched the right corner of his mouth. “That’s the guy?” Harley asked. “He looks like he’s been in a fight. Funny, he don’t look like any moldy old college professor. He don’t look old enough to be the dad of that girl we saw at the morgue.” “Don’t tell him about that,” I whispered sharply. “Remember to think before you talk, Harley.” I absently brushed his hand off my shoulder and went to meet Felix. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 56

I stepped forward and threw my arms around him. He looked like he needed this, and I knew I did. Felix returned my embrace awkwardly. He quickly pulled back and looked me over. For a split second, he glanced at Harley. I’d never known Felix to be judgemental, but I saw how this boy registered in Felix’s eyes. Harley’s long red hair, his sleveless denim shirt and his shoulder tatoos were a bit much, even for me. “Nice to see you again, Miss Reid. I didn’t expect you to meet me at the airport, on top of everything else you did today.” I smiled. “You always told us to stay with an assignment to the very end, Professor. What happened to your face? Your mouth is bleeding.” Felix frowned and brushed the corner of his mouth, but he ignored my question. “How is Celeste?” I told him what the ICU desk had said. We’d been waiting for his plane to land when I last called the hospital. Celeste had ‘coded’ again just after noon. They restarted her heart, again. This time her heartbeat and blood pressure began to stabilize. It was a small improvement, but his wife was still in a coma. Frown lines on his face deepened. “I thought I’d have to take a taxi to the hospital. I didn’t even know what flight I’d be on when I called you this morning. How did you know when I’d be here?” I allowed myself a small, self-conscious smile. “I called a travel agent and asked her for the quickest route from San Antonio. Seven-thirty am 737 to Dallas; Nine am MD-80 to Salt Lake, 12:30 pm Brazilia turboprop to here, and here you are.” I took Felix’s arm and turned him toward the baggage claim area. Harley fell in behind us. “That fellow isn’t Bud, is he?” Felix whispered as we walked. Of course he’d never met Bud, but we’d talked a bit about him last year. Felix remembered, as always. When I was taking Felix’s class, Bud was down in Mississippi somewhere, just finishing up his two years of telling people about the Mormon church. “No, that’s just Harley,” I said. “We met at a party last week…” As I tried to explain, Felix turned and shook his hand. “Hi, I’m Felix Preston.” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 57

“And I’m Harley Davidson Johnson,” Harley was always louder than he needed to be. “Say guy, what kind of a name is ‘Felix’ anyway?” I let my irritation show. “C’mon, Harley, what kind of a name do you have?” Felix held up a hand. “It’s no problem, Miss Reid. Harley has a perfectly sensible name, I think. Your parents liked motorcycles. Right?” “Liked ‘em?” Harley replied. “Lived on ‘em is more like it.” “So it’s a good name,” Felix said. “To answer your question, my birth mother named me Felix. She didn’t keep me long enough to explain why. That name is all I have from her, so I wear it proudly.” “Sounds good to me, Felix,” Harley said. “My mother’s a dock supervisor over at the Simplot fertilizer plant. I betcha she’d like you. I haven’t seen my dad in years, so I kinda know what you mean.” Felix recovered his suitcase from the baggage area. By then, he and Harley were far into a discussion of Harley’s family and motorcycles. They talked steadily and sometimes shared laughter. They were like that all the way out to the parking lot. When we got to my car, Harley threw Felix’s things in the trunk, opened the driver’s side door and tipped the seat forward so Felix could get in the back. Harley got in the car while I still stood on the passenger side. I huffed a little, got spare keys out of my purse and unlocked the door on my side. I climbed in the back myself and sat next to Felix. I got two sheets of kleenex out of my purse and handed one of them to him. “Your mouth is bleeding, Professor.” I turned to the window and wiped away several quiet tears. Harley stopped telling whatever biker story he was in the middle of. He started the car and drove us out of the airport parking lot in silence. We reached the freeway entrance. I felt a light touch on my shoulder. “Grief is not a constant thing, Miss Reid,” I heard Felix say. “It comes and goes in waves. You first get the news and it crushes you. Every move you make and every word you speak is a tremendous effort. But then it isn’t long before normal life forces you to get LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 58 up and get going again. You suddenly find yourself doing normal-life things, signing a credit- card slip, joking with a clerk, running to catch a plane. You find yourself feeling almost normal. “Then in an instant the grief is back. You learn to allow for it. When I caught that plane in Salt Lake, I was doing well enough. By the time it landed here, I couldn’t even get out of my seat. All the other passengers got off, and I just sat there.” “Until some stewardess threw you off,” Harley said over his shoulder. “Exactly,” Felix said. “And that brought me back to normal life again. Normal life is where I want to spend a few more minutes, Miss Reid, just taking it easy with you and Harley. As much as normal life has to allow for grief, the grief has to make room for normal life.” “So does your normal life include getting in fights with the cops?” Harley asked. “Or is that just your way of grieving, Felix?” I turned back from the window, shocked. Felix looked just as surprised. He was holding the kleenex I’d given him to his mouth. He looked at Harley through narrowed eyes, but he didn’t answer. Harley jumped right back into the awkward silence. “Hey, it’s cool, Felix. I’ve been sweated by the fuzz a time or two myself. I know what the mark of a cop’s nightstick looks like on someone’s face.” “Have you lost your mind, Harley?” I shot back. “Professor Preston would never get in that kind of trouble...” Felix put up a hand and waved me to silence. “It’s all right, Miss Reid. As a matter of fact, I did get clipped by a policeman’s nightstick this morning. It wasn’t a fight. It was more of a misunderstanding, with Trinity’s campus security people.” “That’s what I tell my mother every time,” Harley said over his shoulder. “The cops are always just misunderstanding me too.” I asked Felix what kind of misunderstanding would cause a policeman to club him with a nightstick. My question brought shadows in waves across his face. He asked me if I’d LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 59 called the bishop of his church ward, and who else I’d reached. I got out my notepad and started going over the names on it. Early that morning, I’d been a little surprised when Felix gave me the name of his foster mother. He flatly told me that I should call her along with all the others. I understood better after I’d spoken to Adele Preston myself. She sounded genuinely sorry to hear that Eden was dead. She did not sound any more sorry than she would be if she heard about any tragic car accident involving strangers. She reminded me that Arizona wasn’t on daylight savings time. I might have be a little more considerate, she said, to have called a little later in the morning. I didn’t tell Felix this. I only told him what the woman had said next, that she had “pressing commitments” in Arizona. It was possible that one or two of her daughters might be able to return to Idaho for Eden’s funeral, but she would “have to call them first, before making promises.” Her adopted son must have sensed the tension in my voice. “Eden and Celeste really are strangers to her,” he told me, “emotionally and biologically speaking. Adele and I never bonded. It wasn’t her fault. She thought she’d be the only mother I’d ever remember, but she wasn’t. We haven’t had much contact with her since Dad died…her husband, I mean. She moved to Arizona to be closer to her favorite daughter. That was a few months before Arby was born…” Felix slapped himself on the forehead. “…and here I’ve gone and forgotten all about Arby myself. Harley, we need to stop and pick up my son before we go to the hospital. It’s this same freeway exit, but you need to take the second left…” I interrupted Felix. I had to remind Harley that Arby was already at the hospital. And having said this much, I had to swallow hard and explain to Felix why I’d disobeyed his instructions about Arby.

I called the Kennedy house right after I hung up on Adele. Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t upset that I had called so early. I heard the soft, contented sounds of a baby at her shoulder, LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 60 recently fed and diapered. She’d already gotten up, she explained. I told her about Eden and Celeste. They had not been strangers to this woman. I had to wait several moments in silence while she broke the first wave of her own grief. Afterwards she agreed in a few halting words. It might be best if she just told Arby that his mother was in the hospital and nothing more, until Felix could come for him. I thanked her, hung up the phone, and checked off the Kennedy/Arby note on my list. It was a little more than three hours later when Harley drove me from the morgue to the hospital. I went up to the Intensive-Care floor to ask about Celeste’s condition. The nurse at the duty station answered my question with a question. “Are you a relative?” she asked primly. “Yes…,” I said in a tone matching hers. “I’m her husband’s niece. He’s on his way back from Texas. He called and told me to come and check on Celeste’s condition.” It was too awkward to explain my actual relationship with the Prestons. Years of visiting my mother in hospital psych wards had taught me a great deal. This nurse wouldn’t tell me anything unless she thought I was a relative. I rationalized my answer with the thought that Papa was more of a brother to Felix than anyone else. The duty-station nurse sighed with relief. “Finally. We had no idea what we were going to do with the boy. He’s been sitting here for two hours. He refused to wait downstairs.” “Arby is here?” It caught me off balance. The nurse nodded and pointed over my shoulder. I turned. In a far corner of the reception area, on a hard and solitary metal chair sat a dark-haired boy. By his size, he looked to be about ten years old. He sat like someone much older. He aged even as I watched. His head was down; his arms folded tightly against his chest, and he was rocking back and forth very slowly. I stood there looking at him, not knowing what to do next. The nurse left her desk and nudged me in his direction. I should have run right over to him, before he could tell the nurse that I wasn’t his cousin. It seemed too late. The nurse stayed right at my heels as we crossed the floor to where the boy sat. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 61

“Rhett Preston, your cousin is here,” the nurse said. I felt my face color with embarrassment. The boy didn’t even look up at us. “That means you can now see your mother for a few minutes.” Now the boy looked up. He narrowed his eyes as he saw me, but he didn’t comment on our non-relationship. He stood up surprisingly fast. “So let’s go already.” The nurse led us back to the intensive-care ward. We walked through security doors and down a short corridor into one of the side rooms there. It was dimly lit and full of medical equipment. A heart monitor there beeped constantly, among other devices. Most I didn’t recognize. I wouldn’t have recognized Celeste, except that her name was typed on a chart at the foot of the bed. From the eyes up, her head was mostly wrapped in gauze. What wasn’t bandaged on her face was badly bruised or partly hidden by tubes and monitor wires. Arby knew his mother in an instant. He pushed past the nurse and me, and ran to the other side of the bed. He took up Celeste’s left hand, the hand that didn’t have intravenous lines taped to it. “Mom, it’s Rhett. I’m sorry it took so long. They wouldn’t let me in.” “I know it seems cruel,” the nurse whispered to me, “but we couldn’t let him into the ICU without an adult relative. It’s hospital policy.” I shrugged and asked once more about Celeste’s condition. The nurse said she’d try to find a doctor to explain things to us. She left us alone in the room. For a long time, Arby didn’t look at anything but his mother. I pulled up a stool on the opposite side of the bed. He briefly glanced up at me. “You’re not really my cousin.” he said bluntly. “No,” I agreed. “Thanks for not telling the nurse.” The boy shrugged. “You got them to let me back here. I didn’t wanna mess with that. Who are you really?” “I’m Amber Reid. I used to be one of your dad’s students. I’m the one who called Mrs. Kennedy about your mom. Why didn’t you wait for your dad at the Kennedys, Arby?” “It takes hours to fly back from Texas,” he shot back, “and I just knew Mom was hurt LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 62 bad. Jordan’s mom tried too hard to sound like it was no big deal. When she got busy with Jordan’s baby sister, I snuck out of the house and came to the hospital.” I got my cell phone out of my purse to call Mrs. Kennedy again. I imagined she was sick with worry about Arby by now. “You’re not supposed to use those here,” the boy declared. “Radio signals foul up the hospital’s machinery. Don’t you read signs?” Tight lipped, I put my phone away. “My sister is dead, isn’t she?” His question came so suddenly, I dropped my purse. I turned away without picking it up again. Arby waited a few seconds for me to answer. When I didn’t, he came around the bed and stood next to me. “C’mon. Just say it already.” His voice rose in pitch. “Eden was with Mom. If Eden were O.K., she’d be here with you. If she got hurt like Mom, she’d be in the hospital somewhere. She’s not here anywhere. I asked already. C’mon Amber. Don’t be like Roboto-Nurse out there. Why won’t you just come out and say it?” I wheeled on the stool to face him. His face was now brightly red and tear-streaked. I didn’t know what else to do. I put my arms around the boy’s shoulders. He resisted me at first but I persisted and pulled him close. Suddenly he collapsed in my lap and buried his sobs in my neck. “I’m sorry,” I cried. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.” “Why not?” His tone was bitter. Papa’s words from this morning still rang in my ears. “You should get that sort of news from someone in your family,” I whispered. I invited Arby to come with Harley and me. We’d get lunch, and then go out to the airport to meet his father. The boy insisted that he wasn’t hungry and he refused to leave the hospital. And so it was that I had to explain to Felix how I’d left his son sitting on a metal chair back in the corner of the ICU-floor reception area. “I’m really sorry, Professor Preston,” I said. “I should have known Mrs. Kennedy LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 63 wouldn’t be able to hide a thing from your son. She took the news hard.” “It doesn’t matter now, Miss Reid. You did very well, I think. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.” His approval warmed my ears, but I could only look down at my hands. I remembered the doctor’s pessimistic words about Celeste. Nothing I’d done or could do was going to matter in the end. There was only one hope now, and it was in Felix’s hands, or perhaps God’s, but not mine. Last night, I overheard Celeste reminding Papa that Felix was a natural healer. She said that I was broken inside and maybe Felix needed to use his gifts to fix me. Papa once told me how one of the INEL workers had fallen off a test platform. He landed hard across a safety railing, twenty feet below. Everybody there heard his spine snap. It should have paralyzed the man for life. Felix happened to be visiting the site that day. He ran over and put his hands on the man, and said the ritual healing prayer that Mormon men are taught. Afterwards the ambulance came. They took the man to the INEL infirmary. There the X-rays showed that a single vertebra in the man’s back had shattered, exploded like a bomb. The spinal cord itself somehow passed straight through the tiny fragments, whole and undamaged. After surgery and three months in traction the man came back to work. It was a bona fide miracle, or maybe he was just incredibly lucky. Either way, Arby knew similar stories about his father. He waited at the hospital, counting on another miracle from his father, this time to heal his mother. “Arby says you’ve healed people who’ve been injured almost as badly.” Felix stole a sideways glance at Harley, who seemed to be focused on his driving. He had just taken the freeway exit and we were within a mile of the hospital. “I feel like…it’s possible,” Felix said in a low voice. “All day I’ve been praying that I can. So far I’m getting no sense of God’s will. Maybe I’m not in tune with the Spirit today, or maybe it’s Celeste’s choice, to live or to die. I won’t know until I see her. “Were you able to reach the bishop this morning?” Felix asked me for the second time. In all our talk about Adele Preston and then Arby, I’d never answered that question, LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 64 and I couldn’t answer it yet either, because Harley jumped in again. “Is this bishop gonna show up at the hospital in fancy robes and everything?” Felix smiled. “You haven’t been with Mormons much, have you, Harley?” “No. I only know that back in Ohio, their missionaries were everywhere. Here, their churches are everywhere. I know that they’re not supposed to smoke, drink, or party. I happen to know that some of them do it anyway. I happen to know that Amber here is still trying to make up her mind which kind of Mormon she’s gonna be. That’s all I know.” I buried my face in my hands. Felix already knew what a poor excuse for a Mormon girl I was. I hated having Harley here to remind him. “Well,” Felix said, “here’s one more thing to know, Harley. A Mormon bishop is the supervisor of just one church congregation, which is called a ward. He dresses just like ordinary people. He always has a wife and he usually has children to support, and the church doesn’t pay him for being a bishop, so he has an ordinary job. Mine sells carpet for a living.” “And he’s down in Salt Lake today, picking up a truckload of carpet,” I added. “I’m sorry, Professor Preston. His wife said he wouldn’t be able to get to the hospital until late this evening.” “But your bishop is the one who hears your confessions,” Harley ventured. Felix absently brushed his bruised mouth again. “Um… we don’t practice ritual confession like the Catholics,” he answered, “but you aren’t far off the mark, Harley. The bishop is the one we talk to, when we have something on our conscience.” “You think you need to confess to your bishop today?” Harley asked. “You keep asking if he’s gonna be there. You oughta relax about that, Felix. I don’t think anything you’ve done or anything you will do today is gonna make any difference to your wife now, one way or the other.” My anger with Harley grew. “Professor Preston really has healed people. You should call some of them and ask them whether he made a difference or not.” I didn’t expect someone like him to accept Felix’s beliefs, but it seemed rude of Harley to question them right now. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 65

Felix put a light hand on my shoulder. “Miss Reid, why don’t we just drop this whole subject? As a rule, we don’t talk about this with people outside the Church. No offense, Harley.” “Oh, don’t mind me, Perfesser,” Harley said briskly over his shoulder. “I am just the driver here. I should mind my own business.” He brought us into the hospital parking lot. We got out of my car and Harley threw the car keys over the hood at me. He said he’d rather not wait around the hospital anymore. He named a bar across town and said we could find him there shooting pool. He said he’d try not to drink too much, in case I needed him to drive me back to Blackfoot later. Otherwise, he said, he’d hitch a ride with somebody else. Felix and I walked into the hospital without him. “I actually like Harley,” Felix said as we got into the elevator. “Maybe you were a little hard on him back there. I have to agree though, things might’ve gone better if you’d invited Bud to come along.” I really hated it when Papa turned out to be right about boys. After being out in the sunshine of that June afternoon, the cold, conditioned air and fluorescent light in the hospital felt oppressive and dim. We stepped out of the elevator and I took Felix’s arm. I did this partly to warm myself and partly to turn him back toward the corner where Arby still sat. He looked the same as he did before, ten years old going on fifty, the normal age of someone who had to watch his mother die. Felix called his name and Arby immediately stood. I expected him to rush into his father’s arms, but he stayed where he was, by the chair. Instead Felix went to his son and knelt down, so that they were eye to eye. “Arby, are you all right? Would you like to go down to the cafeteria with Miss Reid? You should get something to eat.” The boy shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I just wanna see Mom again. Could you tell the nurse you’re finally here, Dad. Please?” Felix left me standing by Arby. He went over to the nurse’s station. The one I’d dealt with this morning was still there. She cast a stern glance in our direction. She handed Felix a clipboard that was heavy with forms and permissions. In a few minutes a white-coated LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 66 doctor appeared at the desk. It was a woman this time, not the man who talked to Arby and me before. The woman also used a low and pessimistic tone that I knew too well. Felix nodded as she spoke. He began leafing through the paperwork the nurse had given him. “Nuts,” Arby sighed. “It’s gonna be another hour. I’m sick of this chair. You wanna sit down, Amber?” It looked like Arby was right, so I took the chair. He stood by me, his waist just touching my shoulder. He and I already felt like comrades in arms, both veterans of this grim battle. I put my arm around his waist and this time he didn’t resist. I noticed a notepad with the hospital logo sticking out of Arby’s pants pocket. I asked him about it. He admitted that he’d “borrowed” a pad and pencil from the nurses station. He showed me how he’d passed the time after I’d gone to the airport. He’d filled the pad with drawings of cars and planes. Many boys drew those, but Arby also drew their transmissions and brake assemblies, intricate cutaway views of working machines. I admired his work for several minutes. “Amber, what’s does ‘Code Blue’ mean?” With so many hospital dramas on T.V., it was a phrase I’d heard before this morning, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it until today. “It means someone is dying,” I said plainly. “Their heart has stopped beating, or they’ve stopped breathing. But it also means a group of people who are running to help, to try and save that person. Did you hear that expression up here?” “Yeah. A couple of hours ago. An alarm went off at the desk where Dad is now. People ran by saying ‘Code Blue! Code Blue!’ Then Roboto-Nurse came by and told me to stay calm, that Mom was more stable now. So I figured the code blue meant her.” “You mean Roboto-Nurse actually told you something?” “I’m sure it was an accident.” It wasn’t so long after all, before Felix came back with the nurse in tow. He could read and fill out convoluted medical forms almost as quickly as he could read and score student essays. He still carried the clipboard under his arm. There were only a couple of sheets of LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 67 paper on it now. He waved the clipboard at us. We stood up followed him through the security doors, back to the area where Celeste was. I was about to go in when I felt small, firm fingers. They grabbed my arm, like claws. “Only two at time in the Intensive-Care rooms,” Roboto-Nurse said. Felix shrugged at this. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind waiting outside. I was about to agree, but Arby protested. “Amber should stay with us.” His voice had a high edge. “Without her, the nurse wouldn’t let me in before. I need her now too.” “It’s hospital policy,” the nurse replied, but I heard worry in her voice. Felix didn’t argue. He put a firm but gentle hand on his son’s head to quiet him. He fixed his darkened eyes on the nurse, but said nothing. An uncomfortable moment passed. The woman shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “All right then, but all of you keep your voices down.” She turned back the way we’d come. Her pace seemed to quicken as she walked away. Felix led us into Celeste’s room. He went to the far side of the bed and took her free hand. He checked readings on the equipment around him, and then turned down the volume on her heart monitor. The room was now quiet except for an oxygen tube. It whispered under Celeste’s splinted and bandaged nose. A broken nose would be the least of her injuries. I watched Felix’s face as he counted them. I could see him silently verifying a list he’d already memorized, the same sad checklist another doctor gave me earlier in the day: broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a bruised heart. Her liver and spleen showed signs of bleeding. That must have stopped, since her blood pressure had stabilized. Vertebrae in her neck and back were cracked, and her skull was badly fractured. Her brain stem was intact but higher structures had hemorrhaged. Doctors said, if they could keep her heart beating for a week, that Celeste could live for some years. She might never regain consciousness though. If somehow she did, she would probably never recognize any of us, or speak. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 68

“Can you heal her, Dad?” Felix still held his wife’s hand. Now he closed his eyes and paused before answering. “It’s possible, son. But I’d still like to wait until some other priesthood bearers get here. Amber called your Grandpa Perry; he should be here soon. Amber’s dad might come too.” Or Bud would be here right now, I thought, if I’d had the sense to call him this morning. I hoped it wouldn’t matter so much. “Papa says you were alone when you healed that man at the INEL site,” I said. “Why do two or three men usually come to bless a sick person, if one priesthood holder can actually do it?” Felix half smiled. “Father, Son and Spirit, Miss Reid. Even the Lord God Omnipotent prefers to follow that pattern and work in a group. Even if you can lift a boulder all by yourself, you don’t necessarily want to do it alone, if you have a choice. Healing is a tangible, physical thing, and it takes significant energy. For a whole week after knitting that man’s back, I barely had the strength to get out of bed. But that was an emergency. Your father wasn’t close by when it happened. The only other priesthood holder was the man on the ground. “This is an emergency too,” Arby said. “What if Mom goes ‘Code Blue’ again before anybody else gets here? What if they can’t get her heart started next time?” Felix closed his eyes, longer this time, as if he were praying. He finally looked at us again. “You’re right, son.” I wished that I could help heal Celeste, the way Bud or Papa could if they were here, but only Mormon men controlled the priesthood power. “…and women control the men, so we’re even,” Papa always told me. If I started to doubt that belief now, then I might as well doubt that Felix had any power at all. Right now I needed to believe. “Is there anything I can do, Professor?” “What if both of us held on to you,” Arby said, “while you blessed Mom? There’s no rule against that, is there?” “Well no…,” Felix raised his eyebrows, struck by this new thought. “Come to think of LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 69 it, that sounds like a very good idea, Arby.” Arby immediately went around the bed to stand by his father. “C’mon, Amber,” he said. “It might help.” A strange feeling came over me, a kind of fear. When Felix had first entered the airport terminal, I’d rushed to embrace him. I sat close by him in the back of my car, all the way to the hospital. I’d come up to the ICU floor on his arm. I’d passed puberty just three years ago and discovered how men reacted in strange and endearing ways whenever I stood close to them. Felix was a man that I liked, one of many that I liked. I wanted to stand, sit, or maybe lie close to any of them, all of them, whenever I could. What Arby now suggested, this was different, a new order of intimacy. I didn’t understand it. I’d never been offered it before. I felt unsure. Felix saw my fear, but there was compassion on his face. “It’s all right, Miss Reid. Arby, maybe this should just be a family thing.” The boy caught my eye as Felix said this. I knew what he was thinking. I knew what had passed between us this morning. I had already declared myself for this family. In the robotic view of the hospital-policy nurse, I had lied, but what was the truth? If I held back from Felix and his son, then I really was a fraud and a liar. I went over and stood at the head of the bed, next to Felix. I reached around his waist and entwined my arms with Arby’s. His father tensed a bit as I pressed close, but in a moment his shoulders relaxed. Felix took a key ring out of his pocket. Attached to the ring were the usual keys, but also a small metal cylinder. Bud had carried one like it all through his mission, as had Papa. Such a cylinder contains a few drops of olive oil. Among Mormons, the Blessing of the Sick begins when a priesthood holder anoints the head of the injured person with a drop of oil. Felix found a gap in the bandages around the top of Celeste’s head. He applied the oil there and then put both his hands over that spot. We all closed our eyes. In a soft, unsteady voice he uttered the ritual prayer of Anointing. Then he began the next prayer, the prayer of Sealing. He finished the fixed part of that prayer and fell silent. Now Felix had to find words LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 70 to fit just Celeste and her condition. He might command her to heal and be whole, or he might surrender her to the will of God. He did neither. A minute passed and we still waited, eyes shut. Another minute, and I had to shift my feet. Arby sighed and adjusted his grip on my arms. Where he held me, where we both touched his father, I first noticed a distinct tingling sensation. It spread gradually back to my chest, and then suddenly it shot up to my head and down through my body to my toes. It was just then that Felix spoke. His voice was still gentle, but his words were steady, solid things. “Celeste Perry Preston, I release you to eternity according to your desire, but I also give you power to return to mortal life as you will. Look on your family once more. Look on each of us. Choose your place…” I felt these words pass through me as much as I heard them. Without thinking, I opened my own eyes. I saw that Arby had done the same. Felix removed his hands from Celeste’s head. Arby let go of my arms and we both stepped back. And his mother opened her eyes. She didn’t speak, but it was clear that she recognized us. Arby quickly took up her free hand. His true name formed on her lips. “Rhett Butler,” she whispered. Her reddish-brown eyes brightened like fresh-minted pennies. They quickly shifted from him to his father, and tears welled up in them. She also saw me. Her eyes looked a question at Felix. “That’s Amber,” the boy said. “She’s nice. She got me past that awful nurse this morning, remember?” Celeste nodded slightly, then closed her eyes tightly. A cry of pain seeped between her teeth. “Try to hold on, Celladonna.” Felix’s words caught in his throat. “Please forgive me. For everything. Oh, please, Cel.” She suddenly let go of Arby’s hand and tapped on the bedside rail. One-Two-Three. As if by reflex, Felix tapped the same rail twice. Then she grasped his hand and squeezed it tightly. Her husband bent down and kissed her cheek, the one unbandaged space by her mouth. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 71

Celeste still held Felix’s hand but her eyes shifted to the other side of the bed. I followed her gaze. She was looking at the far wall. I turned back to her. As I watched, her pupils began to dilate. For that moment, it made her eyes seem more beautiful than ever. “Mom, what are you looking at?” Celeste couldn’t answer. “It’s Eden,” Felix said softly. “She’s alone over there. Your mother had to choose. Son, I’m so sorry...” “No, Dad. Mom’s with us now. She’s going to be all right.” But Celeste’s eyes were slowly turning to dark glass and thin rings of tarnished copper. I looked at her heart monitor. Felix had turned the volume off, but a status light was blinking furiously. The screen wavered, and soon showed a flat line. Somewhere outside the room, an alarm sounded. From the distance there came a pounding of feet. A man was shouting. Code Blue. Felix touched my shoulder. He handed me the clipboard the nurse had given him. His signature was scrawled on the last two forms. “Quickly now. Take these to the people outside.” I glanced down. One was a Do-Not-Resuscitate order, his consent to let Celeste die naturally. The other was permission for organ recovery. “Take my son too,” Felix added. “Go to the cafeteria and get him to eat something.” The tone of his voice kept me from questioning. Even so, I couldn’t turn away from him. “I need some time alone,” he said, answering my unasked questions. “Please go, Amber. I’ll join you soon.” I did as he told me. First I intercepted the revival team. They looked at the forms. They turned and fled down the corridor in search of an organ-recovery team. The hospital would have the donor they wanted. I returned and gathered the boy in my arms. I glanced back once as we left the room. Exhausted and pale, Felix leaned against the blank wall, the exact place that Celeste seemed to be watching still. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 72 LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 73

IV. Test Pattern

With perfect memory, Felix never needed a seating chart for us. But just as church goers usually have their favorite pews, we all usually sat in the same places. Dirk Pitman had been sitting on my right from the first day. Today he was late and Jason Oman took that desk. Another boy already sat behind me. On my left was the south wall. Dirk was left standing, looking sharply at Jason and me. Felix was ready to start the lecture. He cleared his throat. “Two bodies can’t occupy the same space, Mr. Pitman. Opposition colors all the physical world. All you can do is be careful of the side you choose.” Dirk mouthed a rude word and dropped into an empty seat in the front and center row of the class. “And speaking of choices,” Felix continued, “let’s take a vote on what flavor you think you’d like best.” He reached into a sack behind the teaching desk and lifted up three plastic ice-cream buckets. The first looked like it held a bright lemon sherbert, and the second a red raspberry. Naturally, the third bucket contained something blue, but it was not a “blueberry blue,” a more appetizing purplish color. This was an electric, early-twilight kind of blue. About two-thirds of the class voted for raspberry. Another third, including me, chose the lemon. Only one hand went up for the blue. It was Jason. I gave him a disgusted look, but he smiled and winked at me. “I’m thinking of last week’s lecture. Blue is where the power is.” “So plug your tongue into a wall socket,” I heard Dirk mutter. Felix looked in his direction and cleared his throat again. “Remember this. Your natural instincts are for reddish or yellowish tastes. Blue feels slightly alien at first. Not often a natural food color, people need time and distance to grasp blue. But, as Mr. Oman points out, blue is power. It represents the pattern of language.” Then Felix took the lid off the red buckets. He pinched out a small blob of color and quickly rolled it into a plum-sized ball. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 74

“Nuts, I thought we were getting ice cream,” Burt Korth said from the back of the room. “What is that stuff?” “It’s a clay made out of salt, flour, and food coloring,” Felix said. “See for yourself.” He tossed the red ball across the room. Burt caught the clay and mashed it with his fingers. “Hey, my Primary teachers used to bring this to church. We’d make animals for Noah’s ark, little Bible villages, Book-of- Mormon warriors, things like that.” He grinned and put some of the clay in his mouth. Girls sitting around him groaned in disgust. “Tastes just the same, too,” Burt said. “What are we making today, Professor?” “A test pattern,” Felix answered. “Like a television station, before I can broadcast any more ideas into your heads, I need to put up a test pattern, a point of reference we’ll use to fine-tune our color concepts. In the test pattern, the primary colors combine to make a spectrum of other colors.” He then told the row of students along the north wall to stand and quickly file past the teaching desk. He told each of them to take a plum-sized blob of each color as they walked past each clay bucket. When the first row had passed, Felix called up the next row. My row along the south wall would be the last one called, but the process went quickly. Jason’s row, next to mine, soon stood and lined up to get their clay. Soon after Jason left his seat, Dirk came over and took back his place next to me, looking smug. I smiled back at him. I always felt flattered and secure when at least two boys wanted me at once. Three would feel even better. The feeling wilted a little when Jason came back and I saw the look on his face. He quickly turned away and took one of the empty front seats. I stood with the rest of the final row. On the way back with three balls of clay in my hands, I decided to sit next to Jason again. Felix returned to the front of the class. I almost tripped him with my longish legs. He stopped. I pulled my legs back a bit and primly smoothed my short skirt a little. In doing this, I raised the skirt’s hem another inch on my thighs. I smiled innocently at Felix. He frowned at me and stole a worried glance at Dirk. I didn’t dare look. I knew Dirk was LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 75 fuming now. “We start by making worlds,” Felix told us. He took red and yellow balls of clay and held them against the blackboard. They did look like planets hanging in space. “Some say men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It’s because men tend to be more red in their personalities, more often drawn into physical conflict. Women tend to be more often yellow, more aware of their feelings, their senses, and their possibilities.” He rolled another ball of blue and held that up. “But red and yellow must resolve their differences and live together on the blue Earth.” He looked pointedly at Dirk, Jason and me as he said this. “From the simplest sentence to the longest story, this is the problem that language solves.” Felix took something from his shirt pocket, a clay figure he had made ahead of time. It had long strands of yellow clay for hair, an hour-glass body formed in red. Face, legs, and arms it had from clay carefully mixed, from pale red and yellow into peachy flesh tones. “Can you see what this IS?” he asked the class with emphasis. “A woman,” several students said at once. Felix shook his head dramatically. “No. It’s just a piece of clay.” The class groaned. “But it REPRESENTS a woman,” Jason sitting next to me said, “a beautiful one as a matter of fact.” “Very true,” Felix said, “but to represent is not to simply confuse one thing with another thing.” He then turned on an overhead projector and put up this figure on the screen in front of the classroom.

This clay Predicate Blue SPEAKS beauty. =Yellow A yellow rose Orange DOES grow tall. beauty ?? this clay Humans DO die. tall growth ?? a yellow rose death ?? humans Subject =Red LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 76

“Remember this chart when we get to our grammar unit. All sentences are built from a predicate and a subject, but you can’t just throw these two things together. Beauty is NOT this clay; growth is NOT a yellow rose; death is more than human, and humanity is more than death. As I said before, the miracle of language is that it solves this sort of Venus/Mars contradiction in each and every sentence.” I found myself puzzling over the chart. “But how is the conflict solved?” I asked out loud. What does a sentence do exactly?” “The process is hard to see because sentences are so small,” Felix replied. “That’s why we talk about stories so much. Stories are language made large, the basic pattern of every word and every sentence reflected in the larger pattern of every story. Stories and the characters in them serve as our microscope because they magnify language patterns.” He had everyone pinch off a bit of clay from their red “world” and another bit from their yellow. He told us to mix these together and make the rough figure of a man in orange. Next we all made the figure of a woman in pure yellow, another figure in pure red, and another figure in blue. I thought of the three Grecian pillars on Meditation Hill. “This is the first love story, isn’t it?” I said this out loud. I thought of Jason and me, and Burt. I thought of Felix and Shakespeare’s sonnets. “Actually, Miss Reid, it’s a single pattern reflected in thousands of stories, and thousands of stories reflected in a single pattern. Orange seeks Yellow, but is opposed by Red. That’s conflict without solution until Orange is inverted and reversed into Blue.”

Straw Pig BEAR blue TOO COLD yellow Bricks blue BEAR yellow Pig JUST RIGHT Wolf orange Goldilocks

He then put another figure on the overhead screen. “It’s our first love story, but also Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or Three Little Pigs, plus a Big Bad Wolf. Every story that people tell and tell again across time has to touch this pattern in some way.” “What about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?” Dirk Pitman asked sarcastically. “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Pitman.” Felix kept his tone carefully diplomatic. “Those seven characters come when we expand the primary pattern farther along into the blue. This is the logic of combining three colors.” He then put a third chart on the overhead screen, now with three overlapping circles.

1+3

1 3

1+2+3

1+2 2+3

“On your desks you have four characters so far: red, orange, yellow, and blue. Each of you make another orange figure, but this time mix blue clay into it. Make another yellow figure and mix blue in it. Make another red character and mix blue in it. You’ll get three more clay figures, blackish, green, and purple. Add those to the first four and there will be seven. That’s why we have seven dwarves, or seven samurai, or seven corpses at the end of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or seven stranded castaways on Gilligan’s Island. Snow white is just what you get in the background, where you don’t add any dye at all to this clay.” Most students followed Felix’s directions. We worked out this same pattern of seven, colored characters on our desks. Dirk, in the meanwhile, mashed all of his clay into one LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 78 grayish-black lump and left it smeared across his desk. Making disgusted noises, he gathered up his books. “I’m sick of these stupid nursery-school games,” he muttered to Felix on his way out the door. “Why can’t you lecture like everyone else?” Felix didn’t answer. I didn’t dare look up from my desk, but I felt Dirk glaring at me as he passed by. I felt Felix’s eyes on me too. They felt even heavier and I had to endure them for the rest of the hour. The class finally ended. Students stood and began to file out. Some approached Felix with questions, but he excused himself and left the room. I’d expected him to call me aside and lecture me. Papa used to do that after an incident like this between my boyfriends, but lately he’d given up. I pushed past other students and tried to catch up with Felix in the hall. Not finding him there, I went to his office. His door was dark and locked. I sat down on the floor and waited. Felix had left the classroom carrying books and that sack with three buckets of clay. I figured he’d come back to unload those before too long. After about fifteen minutes, he did come. He saw me waiting for him. He stopped short in the hallway and took a deep breath with his chin in his chest, as if to lift a great weight. “What did I do?” I asked defiantly. He looked up at me, not with anger, but with something akin to pity. That made me feel worse. “I think you know what you did, Miss Reid. I don’t have the power to make you stop. I can’t even make it clear to you why you should stop, not without stepping too far into your personal life.” “You’re more than welcome in my personal life,” I replied. “So it seems,” Felix sighed, “but I can only come so far. As a personal favor to me, don’t do whatever you did in my class anymore.” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 79

Chapter FOUR:

I could hardly get out of bed for four days. My body ached with the memory of that awful June day when the Preston women died. That was a Friday. On Saturday, boys called and left messages on my answering machine, as usual. I pulled its power cord from the wall and turned off my cell phone. On Sunday, Papa had to go to church without me, but I read verses from the Book of Mormon and prayed softly by myself. On Monday, Papa went to work, as usual, but I stayed in bed still. By Monday morning, I felt I’d recovered just enough energy to get up, but I lacked the will. Now I sank down in depressed self-hatred. Like an addict struggling to reform, I felt the first real pangs of an old, cursed habit that still demanded satisfaction. I tried to save myself from myself. I called the Preston house first. There was no answer that morning or that afternoon. The last of my will power broke down. I plugged in my answering machine. I listened to messages and called several boys back, as many as I could reach. The fourth morning, Tuesday, was the day of the Preston double funeral. I forced myself to get up early, to shower, fix my hair and dress for it. I only owned one black dress. I’d bought it for a very different kind of social occasion. The hemline was too high, the neckline too low, but black was the only color that suited my mood that morning. I fully expected Papa to argue with me about the dress when I went downstairs. Instead, he looked me over and told me where to adjust my slip. He said he had an early birthday present for me. He disappeared into his bedroom for a few moments. When he returned, he carried an old green box fading to yellow, not even wrapped. He handed it to me with no more ceremony than this. “My grandmother used to make these by hand,” he said simply. “She wanted you to have this some day, when you’d grown up enough to appreciate it. Today might be the day.” I took off the lid. The box was stuffed with wads of fine, white string. Puzzled, I reached in and lifted out a snowy chaos of threads. They fell from my hand in a densely- woven pattern of fine lacework. I gathered more of them up. The box fell away and I held LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 80 the whole of it, a handworked shawl. I found opposite corners and spread it wide between Papa and me, a large triangle woven together from dozens and hundreds of three-pointed lace flowers.

There was something about the pattern of the shawl. It felt comforting and familiar. “Papa, have I seen this before?” “No. Like I said, I’ve been keeping it as a surprise.” I shrugged and wrapped the shawl around my shoulders. I folded the corners across each other and over the low cut of my dress. Papa smiled. He handed me one of Mother’s best pins, a tiny deco archangel of ebony and gold. It matched my hair and dress perfectly. I used the pin to secure the shawl. I thanked Papa and hugged him tightly. “I love you, Amber,” Papa said. “Never doubt it. I’m sorry I haven’t been much use to you lately. This has been hard for me too.” I nodded. I’d seen exactly how hard it was for him, but I didn’t understand why. He’d arrived at the hospital last Friday, about an hour after Celeste had died. He found Arby and me in a back corner of the lobby. Arby had cried himself to sleep by then. I told Papa about our last moments with Celeste in whispered tones. He collapsed in the chair next to the boy. He did not move or speak until Felix came. After that, he’d spoken no more than five sentences to me, not the rest of that day and not in the three days since. He still wore a haunted expression, a look that I knew too well. I’d seen it three years LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 81 ago, for weeks and months after Mother had gone through electroshock therapy. Papa had always opposed that, but her parents had eventually assembled lawyers, expert opinions, and a court order. The therapy helped, but it didn’t quite cure Mother of her manias and depressions. What it did do, and completely so, was destroy her memory of Papa and me. After the treatment, her last clear memory was of her seventeenth birthday. In her mind, she was now only seventeen and wanted nothing to do with a fiftyish husband and a scrawny-looking daughter a whole year older than she felt. She asked us to stop visiting. That was three years ago. More lawyers came. They had divorce papers that Papa could no longer refuse to sign. Papa and I were once close, but not after that. He threw himself into his work at the INEL. Meanwhile, I grew up, filled out, and started being chased by boys. I found I liked that better than dealing with Papa, his silent moods and his shouting. When Celeste was still alive on Friday morning, injured and needing our help, I had hope. Papa and I might’ve grown close again. That hope died when I saw how he took the news when she died. Why Papa should equate her dying now with Mother’s leaving us back then, I did not know. I was working up the courage to finally ask Papa about this. I watched him straighten his black tie and pull on his white sport coat. “Well, it’s a two-hour drive down to Utah,” he said. “That will give us a chance to talk about some things, Amber. What do you say?” My heart sank. I struggled to put the words together, and braced myself for Papa’s explosion when he heard them. “Papa… I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t know what you wanted…whether you cared, if I drove down with you or not. I talked to Dirk Pitman on the phone yesterday. He said he wouldn’t mind taking me down to the funeral. He should be here soon.” Papa’s eyebrows fell. “Pitman.” Venom filled in his voice. “Why does he want to go? He’s never met these people. He has no respect for their beliefs. I know he wants to hit on you, but I’m sure he didn’t tell you that. What did he say?” LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 82

“Dirk minored in English literature down at the university,” I answered defensively. “He knows Felix Preston.” “And I’m sure they’re very close friends,” Papa said sarcastically. We heard a car pull up outside. A car horn sounded. “Speak of the devil,” Papa said. “Not even man enough to come to the door, is he? Tell me something, Amber. How reliable did that Harley Johnson turn out to be, the kid who drove you around on Friday?” “Not very,” I admitted, because Papa already knew. Harley had vanished and Papa was the one who had driven me home that night. We’d left my car in Felix Preston’s garage, a few blocks from the hospital. We hadn’t seen or heard from Harley since Friday, when he left Felix and me in the hospital parking lot. “You know I’m right about this punk too,” Papa said. “You want me to waltz out there and tell Dirk to leave?” “That’s up to you,” Papa said abruptly. “Go on with him now, if you want, Amber. I’m just as happy to have Dirk himself prove to you what a louse he is.” Maybe I should have thanked Papa for at least letting me choose for myself. The words wouldn’t come. I picked up my purse and went out the front door. Dirk honked his horn again and waved. I got in and we drove across town to the I-15 ramp. We turned south toward the Utah border. I wasn’t in much of a talking mood, but Dirk didn’t seem to notice. He passed the time with one of his favorite conversation topics: other people’s dark secrets. He was good at learning those of people he knew. If he didn’t know the people or their faults, he speculated freely. “You see that couple in the van we just passed?” Dirk asked me. “I bet they’d like to get a divorce, but they’re staying together for the kids.” I didn’t care either way, but I asked Dirk for his evidence, as usual. He cited the tired look on the wife’s face, and the irritated look of the man driving. I replied that maybe it was just the kids acting up in the back of the van that made the mother tired. “My point exactly,” Dirk replied smartly. “The husband never helps with the kids and LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 83 she’d leave him if she could. If you ever let me love you, I swear I’d never do that to you, sweetcheeks.” “Is that because you’ll help with the kids,” I replied, “or because you’ll never marry me to begin with?” Dirk smiled and said nothing. Then I asked him what these strangers might imagine about us as we passed them on the highway. “They see a devilishly handsome man with a raving beauty. They see we’re both dressed in black and guess we’re going to a funeral for people we hardly know. It’s just an excuse to spend time together. They see right through all your worldly posing and rightly guess that you’re still a virgin, and they know that makes things complicated for me.” I frowned. “That’s not such a dark secret.” “It is for some people. I’d like to give you some better secrets.” I found him amusing enough last Thursday. Five days had passed and they felt like an eternity. Now I found myself not caring much for Dirk’s cheap talk. I gave nods and short answers to all he said. All the while, I traced a finger in the floral patterns of my shawl, wondering at the strange familiarity of it. I wondered what Papa would have told me if I’d ridden with him. I wondered if he’d ever explain to me the full burden he was carrying because of Celeste. Celeste Perry Preston had grown up on a large farm in the Bear River valley, only a few miles south of the Idaho border. As Utah farm families go, hers was unusually small. Garth and Charlene Perry had only two children before Charlene had been taken away by cancer. Her husband now wanted to bury his daughter and granddaughter here, in the family plot next to his wife. Felix had agreed. The brothers and sisters of Garth and Charlene Perry had all raised large families. Most of them still lived close by. Celeste in youth had performed in beauty pageants and theater groups across Northern Utah. She’d been something of a minor celebrity here, just as she would be in Southern Idaho a few years later. And so it was that her funeral was held at the old Bear River Stake Tabernacle. The building seated two thousand people when the balcony section was open. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 84

The balcony was nearly full when Dirk and I found seats up there. We stood up as the caskets were brought in by the pallbearers. I saw Papa was one of the men carrying Celeste in. Her casket was finished with brightly polished copper, the color her eyes had been in life. Eden’s slightly smaller casket was a painted a deep purple, a playful child’s color. Perhaps her favorite color, I thought, remembering the lavender blanket the girl had when I first met her. I was surprised to see that I recognize two other pallbearers. They were both in the group laying Eden’s casket on its bier. One had long, red hair tied back in a neat pony tail. He was wearing a faded blue suit that didn’t quite fit him, but it was indeed Harley Johnson. Another light-haired man in a pale grey suit turned. It was Bud Gardner, my own Bud…but was he mine anymore? The instant I saw them both there, I felt…what? Jealousy seemed the wrong word, but I felt left out. How could Felix have invited those two men to have a part in this intimate ritual. He never even spoke to me about it. Harley certainly didn’t deserve the honor, I thought, and I didn’t understand what Bud was doing here at all. Then Dirk gave me one more thing to wonder about. “Who’s the woman down there on Doc’ Preston’s arm?” he whispered. A string of Perry cousins filed into the first gallery below, the benches reserved for family members. Felix and Arby led them, along with a woman who didn’t seem related to any of the Perrys. She was much shorter than any of them, with a different sort of beauty, hard and angular. Her black dress was trimmed with green. Even from the balcony, I could make out the dark roots of her bottle-blonde hair. I quietly told Dirk that she might be a sister from Felix’s adoptive family. “Really?” Dirk said, smirking. “I’d say she’s holding his arm like a lover, not a sister. Something kinky is going on, and at his wife’s funeral too. Dark secret number one for Felix Preston.” I jabbed Dirk in the ribs and told him to shut up for once. A man approached the podium. He introduced himself as Bishop Harper and opened the service. After the opening prayer, a woman came to the the podium and gave the eulogy LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 85 for Eden. Eden had been the regular babysitter for her young children. Something in the speaker’s voice was familiar. I finally looked at my copy of the funeral program. This was the same Mrs. Kennedy I’d spoken to last Friday morning. She spoke of Eden’s quick intelligence, how she was her father’s daughter, a helper and a healer. She told of how Eden and Felix had taught ballroom and swing dancing to the other teenagers of their ward, to Catholic and Baptist youth groups too. She also spoke of how Eden had once saved the life of her son when he’d accidentally swallowed and choked on… something. I couldn’t hear what. She broke into tears. Mrs. Kennedy recovered briefly and said she hoped to meet Eden again in the afterlife, to hold the girl close again. She said that was the hope that had kept her going these past few days. Then she sat down. A chorus of Celeste’s childhood friends sang in sweet, clear tones, a hymn called “Be Still My Soul.” I made a mental note then to look it up and memorize it later:

Be still, my soul: The hour is hastening on When we shall be forever with the Lord, When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone, Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored. Be still my soul: When change and tears are past, All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Even without a copy of the program, I would have known Jonathan Perry on sight. Celeste’s younger brother had masculine versions of her same fine features and her same, graceful bearing. In a strong, theatrical voice, he gave the eulogy for his sister. He’d been about Arby’s age when his mother had died. Celeste at fourteen had shouldered the main burden of raising him. Their father worked and struggled to pay old medical bills. Jon fought his sister over housework and homework. He hurt her out of his own angry grief, and Celeste had no one to mother her. He quoted a song Celeste often sang in her teen LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 86 years.

Master, with anguish of spirit, I bow in my grief today. The depths of my sad heart are troubled. Oh, waken and save, I pray!

Jon Perry had left Utah at eighteen, thinking he might never return. He’d joined the Navy, and became the chief engineer on a submarine. He’d married an admiral’s daughter. She’d sued him for divorce last year. He’d come back to Utah and reconciled with his sister. Just in time, it turned out. He found Celeste still sang this same song. Now he understood that she’d never sung it for herself, but always for the brother she’d wept over. A quartet of men, their cousins, sang the rest of it now:

Whether the wrath of the storm tossed sea Or demons or men or whatever it be; No water can swallow the ship where lies The Master of ocean and earth and skies!

During their last chorus, I’d noticed a darkening in the pattern of multi-colored light as it played on the lace of my great-grandmother’s shawl. Sunlight faded from the stained-glass windows behind me. Just as the singing ended, a clap of thunder boomed outside and the Tabernacle shook. Gasps and whispers rose from the congregation. “Nice touch,” Dirk said, too loudly. I hit him again, hard this time. It only made me feel worse. The last hymn had left me wondering about Arby. He’d lost both his mother and his sister. He was worse off now than Jon Perry had once been. I knew exactly how bad off he was. I had no sister at all, and no mother for most of my life, and I was now broken inside. Celeste herself had said so. Thinking of her favorite song, I felt no comfort, but only dark rain falling down upon Arby LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 87 and me. Where was God’s power to save when we were drowning last Friday? Where was it now? The final speaker was Bishop Harper. I knew the bishop’s talk to be part of Mormon funeral custom. The words would vary, but it was essentially the same sermon, always given in some form at our funerals. I heard it when my grandparents died. I heard it when boys I was dating sometimes killed themselves with beer or with motorcycles. I heard it once for another boy. People said he just plain killed himself. This bishop spoke, as someone always did, about the Plan of Salvation, the elaborate Latter-day Saint story of the meaning of life. Except for outsiders here like Dirk and Harley, the whole congregation already knew this story by heart. Even so, custom required that we all hear it again. Bishop Harper began by quoting the Bible, from the Book of Revelation:

There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

Efficient storytelling starts with opposition and conflict. Felix had always said so, but there are many ways to tell this story. When I was six or seven, I was old enough to remember one Primary teacher’s version of it. She brought us clay made out of salt and flour sometimes. One Sunday morning we made worlds, fist-sized planets with red mountains, green valleys, and blue oceans. As we played, she told us the story:

Back in the bright dawn of the universe, long before we were born in blood as human children on this Earth, we lived as little sparks of intelligence, part of the eternal intelligence that shines through all the universe. Our teacher said that we little yellow sparks were the source of God’s power. We once helped God make the worlds, just like we were now modeling these little planets in clay with our teacher. I had sometimes daydreamed that our teacher was my mother. Unlike my actual LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 88 mother, she never locked herself away in a bedroom for days at a time, and she never screamed at her daughter when she came out, or slapped her little girl’s face before running back in. My Primary teacher, always beautiful and kind, was the wife of the man who was the bishop in our ward back then. To this day, when I try to picture what God’s wife might look like, I still see this woman’s face. Since then, I have heard people from other religions call God “our Heavenly Father.” They think of it as a fine, intellectual metaphor for a formless, partless, passionless force that created humans from scratch out of the mud of the earth. Mormons remain defiantly pagan on this point. They claim the Father has the physical body of a man and all that logically follows from that. He has manly, physical passions. He loves and makes love to a woman, the Mother who gave first birth to us, their spirit children. Long before this Earth was made, some of us intelligent sparks were given a first shape inside the body of the Mother, my teacher said. The Mother gave birth to us then as spirit images of the physical Gods, both male and female. That’s the next part of the story. One day, the Father called a council meeting with His spirit children. When I was a child, I pictured that as a church meeting, the only kind of meeting I knew. The Father stood up there at the podium, just as Bishop Harper was standing here now. His wife, the Mother sat where every Mormon bishop’s wife sits, not up on the stand but down in the pews with her arms around me and Her other children. Bishop Harper quoted another verse, not from the Bible this time but from other Latter-day Saint scripture, the Book of Abraham:

We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever their Lord God shall command them...

September. I now imagined the council in heaven like our classroom at the university, and the Father had Felix’s face. He had reached into a bucket of red clay on the teaching desk. He shaped a lump of it into a red ball. Later he’d pulled smaller pieces out of the ball, and shaped these into tiny figures of people. “We’ll start by making a world,” the Father would say, “and we will then make physical bodies for each of you out of the mud of that world. When you are down in the physical world, away from my influence, we can test your character. We’ll all see if you’ve learned the right Pattern for yourselves.” But a test has to have questions, and questions have to have at least two answers competing for the same space. The bishop read a verse from the Book of Mormon:

...there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.

Red opposition, Felix always said. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Even sitting here motionless, at a funeral, I could feel my own backside pressing against the hardwood bench. The bench pressed back, opposing me. It had to. If it didn’t, it would just collapse in splinters under my weight. My right thigh had fallen asleep. I crossed my legs in the other direction, kicking Dirk while I was at it. I wanted to make sure he was still awake. The Father had called a meeting of his spirit children, our Primary teacher once told us. The Father outlined His plan and then turned the microphone over to his first spirit son, our older brother. I had no brother, but my Primary teacher had a teenage son back then. He had a sweet heart-shaped face and nice, large eyes. I worshipped him when I was six. Years later, I had agreed to go out with Jason Oman because he looked like this boy. I imagine one like him stood up at the Father’s request. He took the microphone and went over the Father’s plan in detail. The plan to give us physical bodies was good, but there were problems we had to solve. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 90

It was the logic of the physical world: for every action there’s a blind physical reaction. Any careless thing we did would cause damage. From this we would learn for ourselves about good and evil, but the cost of these trial-and-error lessons for us would be pain and punishment. This part was more than a story, I knew. The whole world is filled with war and bloodshed, insane mothers who abandon daughters, and careless men who fall asleep at the wheel of trucks. Helpless children and innocent women die in every case. The whole plan sounds impossibly cruel, the work of demons, not gods. Another hand would go up in the heavenly congregation. An older brother would wave in protest. “There’s no need to suffer through this game,” he’d say. “There’s got to be another way.” “I know there are problems,” the Father would reply, “but you’ve got to have physical bodies if you’re ever going to be like your Mother and Me.” “Conflict is unavoidable when Yellow is mixed with Red,” the first son looking like Jason Oman would add. “This will be conflict without solution until Orange is reversed by Blue.” The other son frowned. “I don’t understand any of that.” “It’s the logic of all stories,” the Father like Felix Preston replied. “A yellow logic seeks unity. Everyone is innocent. Everyone is likewise blessed and happy. Here in the heaven of spirits, this is so. “A red logic seeks opposition. Good actions have good reactions. Guilty acts bring automatic punishments. There on the physical earth, the guilty will always suffer, even if their actions must strike down the innocent. “Blue logic seeks the reconciliation of red and yellow. There in the blue of eternity, the logics of yellow and red are reversed, as if in a mirror.” “Celeste and Eden Preston were among the best of women,” Bishop Harper was saying. For a moment, his words merged with the version of the story that played in my head. “Their deaths were terrible and we can even say their deaths were unjust. We can also LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 91 say this: Their lives mirrored the pattern of One who lived the most perfect life of all. The Word of God, the most innocent of all, willingly suffered the most unjust death of all. Because of that, all terror and injustice will one day be erased.” “There must be an easier way,” the second brother protested. “The universal sparks of intelligence always love and obey you, Father. Give their love over to me. With their power to form worlds, I will rule this Earth as your Chosen One. Everyone will be told exactly what to do. The wicked will be immediately punished and they will repent. The righteous will be immediately rewarded and they will obey. No accident or injustice will be allowed. No one will have to die before their time and everyone will pass life’s test. All will be saved.” “Every story needs conflict and resolution,” Felix would argue. “The first son is chosen,” the Father in the story said. The second son was angry and stormed out of the classroom alone. It was only afterwards that he persuaded others to leave too. And that was when the War in Heaven began. And as the story goes, that war is still going on. Lately I leaned toward the rebel brother’s opinion. I wanted a god who wouldn’t just leave me to fail this life test just because my pencils were all broken. But maybe none of that mattered, I thought. If Felix Preston had taught me anything, he’d taught me how the recognize the pattern of a fairy tale. Orange desires yellow, is stopped by red, and resolves to blue. After hearing it again, I saw the Plan of Salvation story had just the same shape as Three Bears, Three Pigs, or Snow White and Seven Dwarves. Exactly the same shape, and maybe exactly the same truth value.

Bishop Harper’s talk ended, like all funeral sermons ended, without resolution for me. The church service ended, and rain started to fall outside. Dirk suggested that we skip the last part, the ceremonial dedication of graves at the cemetery. He pointed to the long line of cars already assembled behind the hearse. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 92

“It’ll take a half hour just to get there. We’ll get wet if we go, and I’m getting hungry. Let’s go get lunch instead.” I shook my head. I’d been through too much with the Prestons to leave now. I had to see this thing to the end, in rain or hail or utter darkness. I wanted to give Arby another hug. I wanted to find out what Bud and Harley were doing here. I taunted Dirk for being a wimp about a little rain and a little hunger. I dared him to leave without me. I said I could get a ride with practically anybody else here to the cemetery, and another ride back to Idaho too. He gave in. We ran to his car and got in line with the funeral procession. Rain pelted the windows in dense-packed drops. Dirk tried to punish me by giving me the silent treatment on the long, slow drive. I didn’t care. I had other things to worry about, like the mystery woman at the funeral with Felix. Ancient, rounded mountains run along the west side of the Bear River Valley. The funeral procession moved north and turned west, up toward the lower skirts of these mountains. There we stopped, at a cemetery bordered by pine trees and weathered cement pillars. As if by command, the rain also stopped. About three hundred people emerged from about one hundred cars tightly packed and parked along the access road. I took Dirk by the arm and we weaved our way through the crowd. I wanted to get as close to Felix and Arby as I could. They stood with the strange woman and the pallbearers by the hearse. The purple and copper caskets bearing Eden and Celeste still sat in the back. I found a place just on the other side of the flower-strewn grave sites. I caught Arby’s eye. He raised a hand in my direction, but he didn’t smile. His father’s eyes were on the sky beyond us. A static but electric air hung over the cemetery. Separate thunderstorms trailed sheets of rain and fire across the valley to the north and east. They moved and shifted, a stately party of titanic bridal veils. They covered and then revealed again the sharply broken faces of the eastern mountains. One of these storms drifted down on us from the north. Lightning forks stabbed the LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 93 earth less than five seconds ahead of sharp cracks of thunder. These were only punctuation to a steady rumble from more distant storms. One gust of wind broke the stillness. More wind followed, pushing through the funeral crowd in waves. The fringes of my shawl whipped smartly at my crossed arms. Dirk squinted and ducked his head. “This is getting dangerous.” People were moving to leave. This seemed to be exactly what Felix was waiting for. He signaled to the pallbearers. They shouldered the caskets. At the same instant, a low burring noise rose over the wind. It came from the edges of the cemetery. Shrill tones converged into one stark and keening melody. People who were leaving stopped in their tracks. Everyone turned. Several men stepped from behind the bordering trees. They were playing bagpipes. They formed up columns and marched down to us in their ceremonial tartans and kilts. I recognized them, the men who performed in Brigadoon two years ago. They came with this final tribute to Celeste. Seeing them, I was struck with double recognition. They came to me in a kind of vision, blurred together with Felix’s lectures on the Pattern from last year, when just last week I’d struggled to even remember who Celeste was. Their bagpipes cry grief in my ears. I clutch at the lacework pattern of my shawl, holding it against the storm. Now Celeste standing tall and graceful, now immortal in my memory, she is the ghostly vision. In that vision she sings, as she once sang hope to her brother. To the tune of the pipes here before us this day, she sings now to a husband, to a son, and to me.

Be still, my soul: Thy God doth undertake To guide the future as he has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; All now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul: The waves and winds still know His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 94

The pipes played. Pallbearers came and set the caskets down. Now they rested on slings, suspended over the open graves. The pipes played and the wind rushed over us. Then it faltered and died. I looked to the north. The looming storm broke apart even as I watched it. Heavy curtains of rain suddenly thinned and separated. In a moment there was nothing between this hillside cemetery and the distant, blue mountain peaks. The bagpipes fell away to silence and there was no more thunder. Garth Perry stepped forward to pronounce the ritual prayer of Dedication over the graves. When the prayer was over and I opened my eyes, all the cemetery and every face around me was awash in tears, and sunlight. Everyone except Dirk. He watched the people around us with disdain. “In another week, the whole county will talk about this thing as if they’d seen it firsthand. They’ll all say it was a miracle.” “You don’t think so?” I asked. “What about the storm?” Dirk shook his head. “Just Felix-the-Cat Preston and his famous bag of tricks. He worked the crowd. He probably checked the weather forecast and scripted his wife’s funeral to fit it, bagpipes and all. The bad weather was the red conflict. The emotional funeral stuff was the yellow background, and the bagpipes repeated music from the funeral service, all about beating a bad storm. All that was crafted to set up a blue pattern. It’s Doc’ Preston’s favorite lecture, you know. If it really works for fairy tales, it’ll make people remember his wife’s funeral forever too.” “Dirk, what makes you think you know so much? You dropped Felix’s class before he ever explained any of that.” Dirk raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes, and you wouldn’t believe how popular that made me with the other English professors. They hate Preston, you know. They hate him because he’s made a mathematical science out of literary criticism and they became literary critics to escape math and science. They hate him because he gets converts with his teaching and all LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 95 they get for students are brown nosers.” He gave me a sly smile. “I hear all the rumors about him though.” I was about to ask Dirk more about those rumors but I felt a tugging on my shawl. It was Arby. The angry red in his cheeks almost matched the tie he wore. “I tried to call you Saturday, but your dad said you couldn’t come to the phone.” “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I was sick. I thought you would be too.” The boy looked at his shoes and clenched his hands. “Just tired mostly. Where were you this morning? Why didn’t you come sit with me and Dad at the funeral?” “I’m sorry, Arby,” I said. “It looked like you were with family down there. I came with Dirk here, and he wanted to sit in the balcony.” The boy’s eyes were sharpened points. “What kind of a name is ‘Dirk’?” Dirk returned his stare. “Beats me, kid. What kind of a name is Arby? Did your mother like hot sandwiches, Rhythm-and-Blues, or what?” Arby turned back to me. “Amber, I think I want people to call me Rhett from now on. It’s the name Mom gave me. Dad said it’s O.K. if that’s what I want.” “It’s a good name,” I said softly. “Um…Rhett, I’d like to talk to your father. Do you think you could get us past all those people?” He took my hand and led us down to where Felix was. Most of the crowd had gone for their cars. A number still lingered and most of these now gathered around Felix. I recognized several students from our old class in the group, a few young men, and many girls about my age. The strange older woman was still on Felix’s arm. She alternately flirted with the young men and kept the girls at a distance. Felix seemed content to let her do most of the talking. He would nod and briefly thank people for coming so far to the funeral. The woman stood not much taller than his shoulder, but it looked like she was what kept him standing. “Rhett, who is that woman? Is she one of your aunts?” “None of them came,” the boy said flatly. “That’s Vanessa Grove. She likes me to call her ‘Miss Vanessa.’ I guess it’s a Southern thing. Dad says she’s a college professor like him, LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 96 back in North Carolina. She goes to some of the same conferences as he does. She just showed up on our doorstep Saturday night.” “I told you so,” Dirk said. “But you’ve got to admire a man who can work miracles…like bringing a lover to his wife’s funeral.” “Shut up, Dirk.” I said it through clenched teeth. “You have no evidence.” “No, but I have a witness. Tell me something, Rhett-boy. Has Miss Vanessa been sleeping at your house since Saturday night?” “No way, Dirk-wad. There’s an apartment built onto the downstairs part of our house. Dad sometimes rents it to students, but it’s empty this summer. He let Miss Vanessa stay down there.” “Yeah, but I bet there’s an inside door between your basement and that apartment,” Dirk argued. “Yeah,” Arby answered, “but you can also bet Dad locked it and handed me the key.” He turned back to me, glaring. “Your boyfriend stinks, Amber. I’d lose him if I were you.” Saying this, the boy tossed my hand away. He disappeared into the crowd around his father. In a moment, the crowd parted and Felix Preston stepped out of it, but without Arby or the Grove woman. He came straight to me and put out his arms. I stepped into them. For once Felix held me close. “I’m a little surprised to see you here with Dirk Pitman,” he said in my ear. There was no anger in his voice, just the question hanging between us. What was I doing here with Dirk when Felix had reasons to hate him? Dirk had stormed out of the classroom by himself last September, but Dirk sold used cars for a living. By the next week, he had persuaded several people to drop the class and they petitioned the department chairman to force Felix to change his teaching methods. Dirk tried to get me to follow him too, but I knew all his complaints about Felix’s class were just smoke. “Dirk, you’re just jealous,” I told him. “You wish you’d been chosen instead of Jason, to be in that play with me. I’m flattered, but there’s no way I’d ever drop Felix’s class. I love LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 97 it too much.” That was when Dirk accused me of loving not just the class but the professor too. He said I wanted to steal Felix from his wife and children. He called me a sick little tramp, and worse, and then he stormed away. We didn’t speak the rest of the semester. I never saw him for several months after the semester ended. Just four weeks ago, I happened to walk past the one of the used-car dealerships up in Blackfoot, and there was Dirk, selling a used lemon to some unsuspecting young housewife. It’s strange how we can forget things, or pretend to forget. Without thinking twice, I wandered across the corner of the car lot, to a place where Dirk couldn’t help but see me. He came right over and we started chatting like old friends. I let Dirk start driving me around town. Papa complained, but I tried to make sure we only went out when Bud wasn’t around. I was careful, but Bud and Dirk met last Thursday anyhow. I told Felix the truth, how I’d called Dirk out of weakness and boredom yesterday, and how he’d volunteered to bring me to the funeral. I also made a big point of telling Felix that I’d called his house first, but that no one was home. He explained that they’d already come down to the Perry farm to make the last funeral arrangements. “It was a beautiful service,” I said automatically. Some forced tone in my voice told him that I wasn’t comforted by any of it. He looked at me intently. “Tell me what’s bothering you, Amber. You’ve done so much for Arby and me, I’ll return the favor if I can.” “The funeral,” I said quietly. “You used the Pattern to script it, didn’t you?” Felix laughed softly. “I didn’t think anyone would notice, but then again, you always were one of my best students.” “What about when the storm suddenly went away? Did you trick people into thinking it was a miracle?” He lowered his voice so that only I could hear him. “That was no trick, but it wasn’t me who calmed the storm. When you lay things out in the right way, by the Pattern, nature itself LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 98 bends freely to help you.” “You never taught us that in class,” I said. “No,” Felix said. “Most people aren’t ready to hear how the Pattern creates worlds.” He looked at my shoulders. “That’s a nice shawl you’re wearing. One flower mirrored in a thousand flowers. It looks familiar, doesn’t it?” “Yes, but I don’t know why. Papa just gave it to me this morning. What is it?” Felix was about to tell me something, but there was commotion behind my back, and I heard someone say my name. “…she looked like a boy back when you started dating her,” Dirk was saying. “Now that she looks like a real woman, I don’t think you want her so much. Who’s the pervert here, Buddy?” I turned and discovered Dirk jabbing a finger at Bud Gardner. They stood about five feet apart, facing off. Bud looked pale. He was shaking a little, but he edged closer to Dirk . “I’d still marry her to protect her from scum like you.” Dirk laughed. “You think she’ll lose interest in me, just because she gets married? I’ll have her then instead, if that’s how you want it.” Bud got ready to throw a punch, but the next instant Felix appeared behind him, with a firm hand on Bud’s upper arm. Felix whispered something and Bud shook his head firmly. Then he relaxed and stepped back. Harley Johnson and Papa came too. They stood close behind Dirk. “Well, isn’t that nice?” Dirk said. “Can’t a couple of men clear the air without Doc’ Preston being there to mediate?” “Maybe at your funeral they can, Mr. Pitman,” Felix said. “Not here. I don’t care if you only pretend, but act like you have some respect for my wife and daughter.” “You’re one to talk about pretending, Professor. You have another woman here, and your wife isn’t even in the ground yet.” I felt paralyzed, as if in a bad dream. Felix turned cold on Dirk’s accusation. His reply LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 99 came like lightning on the horizon, bright, and sharp, yet distant and quiet. “You are on dangerous ground, Mr. Pitman. Go now. Get away from this place while you’re still whole and healthy.” I found myself counting, waiting for the thunder. Dirk blinked in the sunshine. He spoke after a few seconds. “I’m not afraid of you, old man, but I never wanted to come here in the first place. C’mon, Amber. Let’s go.” I shook my head. “I’m not finished here. You go on without me.” Dirk’s mouth fell open. “You came with me,” he said fiercely. “You should leave with me.” Harley took another step toward him. Dirk gave me a last hard look, and then he stalked away. When I turned back, Felix was walking away with Bud and Papa. The three of them looked like they were in a deep conversation. Harley and Arby stood quietly together. I still wanted to ask Harley what he and Bud were doing here. I moved to join them. I was stopped by a hand on my elbow. “You must be Amber.” Her voice had a backwoodsy accent. “Arby’s been talking about you.” “You must be Vanessa Grove.” I turned and faced the woman. “And Arby wants to be called by his real name now.” “I know he does, honey, but a Southern belle like me has a hard time calling a little boy Rhett Butler. Wouldn’t you?” I have never been very comfortable talking with other women. Other women and I had so little in common for most of my life. If Professor Grove sensed this awkward fact about me, she pretended not to notice. She drew me into a conversation about womanish things. She told me about her teaching college in North Carolina. She complimented me on my shawl, and on my dress. Her black dress was similar to mine, but it was trimmed in green and it covered more of her shorter body. Her conversation turned, as women’s talk will, to the men we both knew. She said nice things about Papa. She’d met him just this morning. I asked her if she’d met Bud and Harley. She explained how Felix had wanted some balance with all the Perry cousins in the LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 100 funeral party. To do that, he had to quickly round up substitutes for the male relatives he didn’t have. He’d called Papa of course, but Harley too. Felix saw promise in this red-haired, denim-clad biker with tatoos, even if Papa and I didn’t. Bud showed up on his own. He came to the Preston house with the Sunday paper’s obituaries in his hand. He knew they were dead, this woman and child he’d been so rude with on Thursday. He’d come to beg forgiveness. Felix had given it freely. He offered Bud a chance to do penance, as a pallbearer. Vanessa went on to talk about Felix and herself. “I guess I’ve been sister and mother to him lately,” she explained. “Either way, he always gets himself stuck playing the part of my hero,” she added, “trying to guard my honor. Not that I have that much honor left to guard. He got that nasty bruise on his face because of me.” I asked her what happened. She told me what Thursday night had been like down in Texas. Jerry Flint tried to push his way into her room. “The drunken idjit” had slammed a door against her face. She told me how she’d fled to Felix’s room. “Of course,” she added, “I had no idea his phone would start ringing on Friday morning. Felix had gone out to run his miles already. I’m not so stupid that I’d answer the phone in a married man’s room. So I unplugged it. Then the rentacops came pounding at the door. I didn’t answer them either. But then these two idjits use a pass key and come waltzing in. They find me clutching a blanket to my neck in bed. One of ‘em gives a sickly laugh. The other one just gives me dirty looks. I tell them Felix is running on the track and out they go again.” I began to understand. “They already knew that his daughter was killed that night. They knew his wife was dying.” “That’s right, honey,” she said sadly. “And they assumed he was fooling around with me right when that was going on. One of the rentacops finally couldn’t take it. I think it was the one who was giving me the dirty looks. When he found Felix acting all innocent about it, he threw some kind of fit. He blew up and started yelling. He swung one of those cop sticks to make his point. LoveStoryLogic.pdf part I ©2003 by A. D. Manning 101

“I don’t know if he really meant to do it or not, but he hit Felix in the face. It was just like he’d poked his stick at a wounded mountain lion.” Other runners at the track told Vanessa about it later. A rush of air. They say they heard it when Felix moved. They heard when the other man’s knees popped. They couldn’t avoid hearing, no matter how much they wanted to. The man fell to the ground and began to scream. His partner called an ambulance. Felix sat down on the grass, in shocked, trembling silence. Later he was lifted into a police car. He expected a ride to jail. Instead, he was taken back to his dorm and allowed to pack his things. They gave him a ride to the airport. All witnesses, the ETS runners and the the other officer too, they all agreed that Felix had been provoked. In one fluid instant, he wheeled around with a kick that could break a man’s legs out from under him.

If Dirk lied, that was normal for him. If he really meant it, then he was a fool. He said he wasn’t afraid of Felix Preston. I was afraid for all of us, but mostly for myself. I found myself in love with this perilous ground, in love with this fearful longing. Still wishing to be near him, after all these months. This man in such dangerous grief.