Regression

          Mary Jane the green grocer sold her locally grown produce from a tent with perfect location. She owned a vacant lot in the heart of town. Cedar Crossroads, where rush hour traffic clotted for only fifteen minutes, was a nexus for zoning misfits The Wicker Man and Andes Bean Company, a homecrafted furniture store specializing in wicker peacock thrones and a gourmet coffee bar catering to unpublished poets, unemployed grad students and underdressed telemarketers. Mary Jane was a rich heiress free to be a counter-culture Mother Jones. Her fortune had been made by a spruce logging empire supplying that special wood needed for World War One aircraft, chiefly the S.P.A.D. pursuit fighter flown by Captain Eddy Rickenbacker and crew. Mary Jane was one fifth Oregonian Chinook, white complected, with high cheekbones and tanned crowsfeet. She wore her silver hair in a long french braid. Her gray eyes danced with clandestine mirth. Always clad in denim longsleeves and jeans, railroad engineer gloves, scuffed wellington boots, and a floppy straw sombrero tricked out with a bluebonnet scarf. A familiar sight, she garnered a continuous parade of honking motorists. Everybody loved Mary Jane. Especially Sonya Chekov.
            The Skell Van parked in the dirt outside the tent and Sonya lumbered down from the shotgun seat, alarmingly rotund for such a strap of a woman. Mary Jane fancied that gravity would haul the baby out, dropping it like a little Buddha at mother's feet. Sonya's buzzcut whitewalls had sprouted lustrous raven plumage, tips flashing electric amethyst hues of purple and violet. She wore a brown paisley burnoose with the hood gaily thrown back. Her elfin face glowing.
              "Hello, darling," Mary Jane said, waving to Brother Ambrose behind the steering wheel. He returned the wave.
               "Hi, yourself," Sonya smiled.
               "How did he like your arugula?"
               "He ate it all up!"

                                                                           *

                 Mary Jane offered Sonya a puffy sofa seat next to a potbelly stove in the "office."
                 "Take a load off," she said. "And tell me what's on your mind. Something's troubling you."
                 "No. No trouble. Just--"
                 "Just what?"
                 "I wish he would tell me about his dead wife."
                 "The one who visits him in the spirit?"
                 "She used to do that. I sense she has truly passed on."
                 "And you want to know what she was like."
                 "Uh-huh."
                 "Well, why don't you ask him?"
                 "Oh--"
                 "Pick a good time and tell him flat out you'd like him to share her with you."
                 "Yes. That sounds right."
                 "I think so."

                                                                 *

                  "Her name was Cherry Blossom and I was called Ziggy. Short for Mister Zig-Zag because I smoked a lot of grass. We made love all the time. She painted the crazy mural on my old van. What can I say? I don't know where to begin."
                   He forced back a sob, stood up and walked out to the patio balcony. Beneath his checkerboard flannel shirt shoulder blades jutted like wings of a gargoyle.
                   Sonya sat with a ringing in her ears.