sixth happiness

      At age sixty-three Kit Pico took to sleeping nude.
      His wife had departed for an indefinite stay at a fitness resort. Whenever someone asked him what ailed her his reply was that she suffered from a case of nerves. Hardly anyone knew what that meant. Among strangers Kit and Kat were oft mistaken for the rogue father and his tipsy daughter. Their seaside promenades prompted savage tongues to wag.
       Kat had departed with a paunch and breasts the size of gourds. She would kill a bottle of vodka and then crawl into his bed and nuzzle like a grizzly cub. He missed her enormously.
       His theory was that sleeping nude would produce erotic dreams.
       All kinds of things influence the dream state. Indigestion, bedbugs, dripping water. And, of course, the libido. Before too long, Modigliani's women began to slither between the sheets and kiss him in stimulating places. Upon waking he would have an erection and a need to urinate.
       He was certain that he levitated during sleep. None of that archetypal Flying Boy stuff. What convinced him that he had been aloft were those terrifying plummets just before or during his awakening. Lucid dreaming, his Kabbalist friend Lev Segal called it. Bloody skydiving, Kit called it.


                                                                                              *


       Today he remembered having sex with the green-eyed woman with cinnamon skin and henna hair who served coffee at the Breakfast Hut on Sunday. On waking his heart raced like a mustang. Lourdes's patrons were sportsmen who talked of deep-sea fishing and American baseball. In the winter there were tweedy old duffers who argued politics. Each desired her in his own way.
       Kit noticed Lourdes early on, but never spoke. Until one golden Sunday when she winked. She was no Modigliani. At forty, she was a Titian. With plenty of everything, wrapped in a tangerine hostess uniform.
       He arose rejuvenated. As he showered semen from his inner thighs he thrice uttered her name.
       God may be an uncertainty, Kit wagered. But he was dead certain that Lourdes was his succubus.


                                                                                                *


       It was an hour before the Breakfast Hut would open. So he walked across the bowling green to the newspaper kiosk. There Chubby Guzman sat on an orange crate behind the counter. Not all the papers had arrived, so Kit sprang for a fairly recent baseball magazine. The Marlins, he saw on the cover, were having a rotten time.
       "Those your guys?" Guzman asked.
       "Not particularly."
       Kit favored a coquina bench beneath a nearby banyan. It was always shaded and cool. He could read in peace and watch passersby.
       Half way there he saw that the bench was occupied.
       Lourdes. As if to intercept him, having read his mind? That, he told himself, was crazy.
       He walked on by, nodding to her. A mute chicken-hearted hello.
       She was eating a slice of mango. Her green Creole eyes met him like strobes from the sun. Snapshot in his brain: her sharp little teeth biting into the fruit.


                                                                                       *


       Sunday siesta included the magic of Moon-Li, his taoist witch from Vancouver. Perhaps he would ask her to banish his succubus. Perhaps not.
       Whispering globes of air. A micro-language. Chiming dulcet tones behind his ears like  Tibetan prayers. Upon her entrance he half-turned (wicker chair complaining) and saw her as if in a jimson dream. Optic edges writhing. Colors shifting from present moment into past moment at chaotic speed, recycling shimmering beads of time along his eternal rosary. In the midst of this velocity she was speaking: "--then comes the kona."
       "My jade mistress," he acknowledged Moon-Li. "What were you saying?"
       "Nothing weighty."
       "Something about tides. Or waves of consciousness."
       "Yes. The way we imagine rhythms in nature. Patterns."


                                                                                                *


       Moon-Li was an adept in several healing arts.  
       She laid hands upon his body and meditated, focusing upon a select symbol known as Yantra, bestowed to her through occult initiation. Energy sluiced through her. Coming down from the cosmos and into a spirit hole atop her crown. Her anjani chakra lit up, illuminating her whole being. Her hands grew warmer.Her Master said this was the God Force. Rightly so, she surmised.
       Normally she avoided touching pubic regions. However, Kit had requested special attention.
       Moon-Li wore her customary kimono. She had tied her obi snugly, girding her narrow waist. The fabric clung like gossamer. Unshorn since her mother was buried with the family scissors thirty years ago, Moon-Li's silver hair swayed fluidly when she too was naked, down to the dimples of her ass.
       She guided her hands among the molecules of his belly. Warmth plumbed his troubled guts and he felt a great loosening, as if a tremendous knot were being untied.  As she worked her siddhi the clot of negativity dissolved like an after-dinner mint.
        Moon-Li murmered, "Do we need horny goat weed?"
        "No, mistress. Not today."
        He felt so wonderful that he did not wish to complicate things.


                                                                                                 *


       Long before the taxi arrived Kit heard its low-pressure tires pummeling the cobblestones of Hummingbird Lane. The huge Chrysler Windsor had the girth and sway of a Michigan brown bear. The sinews of its WW2-era machinery bawled like a runaway rollercoaster. It approached the wrought-iron gate Kit had left unlatched, so he would not have to get up. Kat was coming home.
       "Hello-o-o-o, stranger." Her Joel Gray made him wince.
       She took the chair across from him and crossed her incredible tanned legs. Lincoln green cargo shorts. Gray varsity tee-shirt with lettering: CONSERVE YOURSELF.
       "You look good, wife."
       "Ought to. Cost me fifty grand."
       Kit was lounging in a silk robe, dangling a slipper from a ghostly foot. His white hair appeared to be strewn by dynamite.
       She commented flatly, "You look like Howard Hughes. Anybody ever tell you that?"
       "Getting old."
       "Suit yourself."
       Adding to her athletic appearance, her auburn hair was gathered into a french braid.
       "Moon-Li humors me."
       "Moon-Li?"
       "A new addition."
       Her face crinkled into a leathery smile. Crowsfeet. Eyes dancing.
       He sat in silent astonishment. She was a new woman. Vibrant and glowing.
       "What?"
       "Wife, you are amazing."
       She stood and gently touched his head. "You need combing."
       "That can wait."


                                                                                              *


       By the time she finished with him she thought he resembled the frail Robert Donat in his final movie. "Inn Of The Sixth Happiness." Ever proud, Kit would insist he looked like Peter O'Toole in "Man Of La Mancha." Still tall and straight of spine, with that thin oblong face of a blue-blood, he had nevertheless aged profoundly and grown elfin.
       She treasured this man. Would always remember the tantric thrill of the endless fuck.
       Yet the time had come to store him away in a jewel box, for safe keeping. So precious, he was. So breakable.
       Pointing to the manila SASE and a cardboard packet from Express Mail on the coffeetable, she said, "Brought those in from the postbox."
       "Thanks." Frostily ignoring the fat SASE, Kit picked up the red-white-and-blue packet and took out a magazine and cover-letter.
       "Copy of Semio-Stage. My interview."
       "Oh yes. I remember that pudgy dork. Sweaty and nasty-minded, drinking all the free booze he could."
       "Real turd. He deffinitely had an agenda."
       She let him read in silence. Then he said, "Hmm. Not as bad as we expected. Not bad at all. It seems that the editor and publisher is an old acquaintance. She overhalled the project. It's not flattering, but it's fair. I like it very much. Here, tell me what you think."
        "Who is this Cassandra Cruz?"
        "Oh, wife. She is a specter from my hoary past."