a shrug.
“What’s your life like? Is it what you wanted?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
He wanted to sigh. She was acting obtuse—and he knew it. He adjusted his perch on the concrete mushroom and wondered about Tom, if she was seeing him or if she wanted to. One of her knees was bouncing: Was she impatient? Nervous? A pale scrim of light lay on the surface of her skin, painting green on her bare shoulder like the glow of the sun on a half-dark earth, carving a green shadow beneath her jaw. Sam felt as if a thousand green eyes were scrutinizing him, nightmarish but beautiful in the gloom.
“You didn’t bring a lot of stuff with you,” Olivia said, glancing at him. “When you moved in, I mean. I thought maybe you were just … checking up on the house. I didn’t think you’d actually stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
And for the first time since he’d returned, he’d felt sure that he actually was going to stay, that being back in Green Valley was more than a temporary pit stop so he could put his life back together and move on. He felt the luminous green dark expanding within him, filling him up, green seeping in between the cells of his body, pushing them infinitesimally apart. And though the sensation was heady and not exactly pleasant, he welcomed it, courted it in the silence of his mind, because it had been so long since he’d felt anything, and this, this was something. Orpheus descending into Hades must have known this feeling, must have known hell by its eerie green mushrooms. Or maybe this wasn’t Virgil’s version of hell, but Dante’s—with Olivia as Beatrice to guide him through the inferno, into the circle of punishment where a man was doomed to love the torture of being simultaneously near to and distant from a woman he wanted quite badly to know, a woman who looked so verytouchable but whose smooth skin was completely wasted on him, a woman who was herself as luminous as foxfire and who even now was leaning slightly away. “Olivia—”
“What will you say in your report?” she asked. “You’re going to tell them I’m not watering, right?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Not because he didn’t have an answer, but because he didn’t like the question. “I’m not going to give you a hard time. Gloria does enough of that for all of us.”
She smiled crookedly in the half dark. “I should get back to work.”
“Right now?”
She laughed. “I told you I only had a few minutes. You can stay down here a little longer, if you want to. Just shut the door when you go.”
She stood.
“I’ll see you again,” he said. “Now that we’re neighbors.”
“Seems like,” she said. And that was all.
After she left, he stayed in the dark until it seemed to him the mushrooms had started to fade and so had his weird brain fever. (Olivia as Beatrice— really ? Maybe the mushrooms gave off something less innocent than phosphorescent light.) He realized, now, that Olivia had not asked after his parents, or if he was married, or if he’d thought of her. She had not asked him anything, nor had she offered him anything of substance.
He got to his feet. There was magic in the maze, people said. Magic that gave inner clarity, that stripped away all the pretensions that a person fabricated around himself. He felt oddly shaky, light-headed, and strange. On Moggy Knob when he’d died, he’d given up on life in the most fundamental and complete way a man could. Then, when he’d found himself in the hospital—still very much living but unable to feel—he’d given up again, choosing Green Valley not because he meant to startanew but because he meant to quit. To return to Bethel, he had simply needed to stop resisting its pull, to give up fighting, and Green Valley simply absorbed him back into it, easily and naturally, like a tree that grows around and eventually engulfs a fence or pipe. In Green Valley, he could allow himself to be puppeted by
“What’s your life like? Is it what you wanted?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
He wanted to sigh. She was acting obtuse—and he knew it. He adjusted his perch on the concrete mushroom and wondered about Tom, if she was seeing him or if she wanted to. One of her knees was bouncing: Was she impatient? Nervous? A pale scrim of light lay on the surface of her skin, painting green on her bare shoulder like the glow of the sun on a half-dark earth, carving a green shadow beneath her jaw. Sam felt as if a thousand green eyes were scrutinizing him, nightmarish but beautiful in the gloom.
“You didn’t bring a lot of stuff with you,” Olivia said, glancing at him. “When you moved in, I mean. I thought maybe you were just … checking up on the house. I didn’t think you’d actually stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
And for the first time since he’d returned, he’d felt sure that he actually was going to stay, that being back in Green Valley was more than a temporary pit stop so he could put his life back together and move on. He felt the luminous green dark expanding within him, filling him up, green seeping in between the cells of his body, pushing them infinitesimally apart. And though the sensation was heady and not exactly pleasant, he welcomed it, courted it in the silence of his mind, because it had been so long since he’d felt anything, and this, this was something. Orpheus descending into Hades must have known this feeling, must have known hell by its eerie green mushrooms. Or maybe this wasn’t Virgil’s version of hell, but Dante’s—with Olivia as Beatrice to guide him through the inferno, into the circle of punishment where a man was doomed to love the torture of being simultaneously near to and distant from a woman he wanted quite badly to know, a woman who looked so verytouchable but whose smooth skin was completely wasted on him, a woman who was herself as luminous as foxfire and who even now was leaning slightly away. “Olivia—”
“What will you say in your report?” she asked. “You’re going to tell them I’m not watering, right?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Not because he didn’t have an answer, but because he didn’t like the question. “I’m not going to give you a hard time. Gloria does enough of that for all of us.”
She smiled crookedly in the half dark. “I should get back to work.”
“Right now?”
She laughed. “I told you I only had a few minutes. You can stay down here a little longer, if you want to. Just shut the door when you go.”
She stood.
“I’ll see you again,” he said. “Now that we’re neighbors.”
“Seems like,” she said. And that was all.
After she left, he stayed in the dark until it seemed to him the mushrooms had started to fade and so had his weird brain fever. (Olivia as Beatrice— really ? Maybe the mushrooms gave off something less innocent than phosphorescent light.) He realized, now, that Olivia had not asked after his parents, or if he was married, or if he’d thought of her. She had not asked him anything, nor had she offered him anything of substance.
He got to his feet. There was magic in the maze, people said. Magic that gave inner clarity, that stripped away all the pretensions that a person fabricated around himself. He felt oddly shaky, light-headed, and strange. On Moggy Knob when he’d died, he’d given up on life in the most fundamental and complete way a man could. Then, when he’d found himself in the hospital—still very much living but unable to feel—he’d given up again, choosing Green Valley not because he meant to startanew but because he meant to quit. To return to Bethel, he had simply needed to stop resisting its pull, to give up fighting, and Green Valley simply absorbed him back into it, easily and naturally, like a tree that grows around and eventually engulfs a fence or pipe. In Green Valley, he could allow himself to be puppeted by
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