Equilibrium regained?

It took three days for Gilbert to recover his equilibrium. Three days of almost constant sleep. Abby was convinced that his mind was healing itself with all this rest from fictive reality and factive reality. He was up and about and making a reasonable amount of sense by the time Abby's birthday rolled around. Not complete sense - he still rambled now and then but never uncontrollably. He had stopped sobbing and shaking but he was dry - creatively. She had watched him sit and stare at his notes: observed him, pen in hand, hovering over a ream of paper his head shaking: that was it - he was shaken up. Whatever he had seen or heard or thought that he had seen or heard had damn nigh unhinged him.

He was looking his age these last few days and he never spoke anymore of what he did at night. He was becoming forgetful too. He had made her a beautiful birthday card but had failed to sign it. He had left the car windows wide open one night, well the driver's side window at least, and his seat had been soaked by a nocturnal downpour. The idea that his theories about quantum literary transference were correct worried at her: and if ... No, she scrubbed the idea from her conscious mind.

It was his idea to go up to the lake for coffees. It was along time since they had been there alone and it was, weatherwise, a very unusual day. Tomorrow, rain was forecast and today the clouds were agathering. A mackerel sky was in the offing and the reflections and light at the lake would be a tonic if the rain would just hold off. Under normal circumstances it was either glaringly blue white or it was in the depths of winter grey skies that they visited this most wondrous place.

Perched in the corner of the Empire cafe like en eyrie overlooking the inland lake they could spy on everything going on on the surface and the peripheries of the lake - Godlike, if you beleived in a god but Abby thought them more like gerakia, the elegant buzzards that played above their valley day in and day out displaying a mastery and grace beyond the earthbound. They would circle the thermal in threes crying like babies - clearly playing just for the fun of it. She wondered quietly to herself whether that was akin to the sensation Gilbert experienced when he went walkabout at night. She thought of his analogy with following the thread up and out of this reality into another and concluded that it might be like flying - or soaring. Would that she could follow him one night and find out for sure - she'd settle that Lazarou's hash! - she'd give him "You're a very lucky man".

Later that evening they ate out at a quiet little taverna that they had used for 20 years now and where the maw of rapacious football commercialism and the Mundial could not reach them. They ate well and drank of the sharp white wine. Gilbert had calmed considerably when the finally made their way to bed having fed the dogs their leavings from the meal and she was pleased that what had been for her a memorable birthday (just another number she told herself) had so lifted his spirits too.



(to be continued ... )