AMBERJACK

Amberjack was called Daniel when he first met his old lady, the girl 'Rue. And they fit. And they went on fitting, summers in the park and winters in the ski train, and after a while summers and winters in Amber-jack's little pad. But they were very careful not to call it love.

Amberjack wouldn't call it love, because he came from a small nuclear family in White Plains where love was his Janie-Mother coyly exsanguinating Danny Senior, and his father's phony bonhommie bitter in the patio and steel cattle prods from both of them sparking Amberjack in his helpless liver, 4.00 average— spark!—National Merit Finalist—spark!—Johns Hopkins Pre-Med—Spark! Spark!—NIH Fellowship Award—Spark!!—Until suddenly there was only Amberjack, address unknown, working in a VISTA clinic in Cleveland with no sparks at all.

So he carefully didn't call anything about him and 'Rue love, but when he held on to her wrist coming blinking out of the Emerald Street flickhouse, he felt as if he were holding his real-live little rabbit foot who would bring him luck and life forever.

And 'Rue couldn't possible call it love, because she came from a randomly expressive large family in Scars-dale where love was the name of a seamless soundproof

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glass wall sticky with bloody handprints and tufts of soft brown hair where an unwanted, untalented middle kid battered herself into a numb eyeball fixed on the brilliant players on the other side. And sometimes her young sister Pompy, who looked a lot like an improved 'Rue, would reach an arm through the wall and hug 'Rue with her soft needly paddy-paw and say I love 'Rue, let's swap pantsuits for the thing tonight, wow, don't say you're not coming I'll find you a date, and 'Rue would walk right through the wall speechless in Pompy's old yobbo pantsuit until they got in the car and nobody knew her name and the wall was back. Or her mother would say I wish I didn't resent you kid but it's better to be honest, the damn diaphragm slipped and your father tore up the cruise tickets. And sometimes 'Rue's father's hand would come through the wall and he would tousle her head and call her Pompy.

So 'Rue wasn't about to name what she and Amber-jack were having love, but when he mumbled her name in the nights (which he did a lot), a big tuning fork rang inside her like the sea-bottom racking the harp of forever.

But there came that hottest of all hot nights when Amberjack and 'Rue squeezed their mattress out onto the fried rusty rails the geraniums had died on and lay sweating and arguing dreamily about an air-conditioner, while the thermal inversion over Emerald Street flickered in the dark window glass beside them. And 'Rue felt where her stomach was beginning to tighten some, and her areoles, and casually told Amberjack she was going away. She had always intended to go away when that happened, because she knew how it went when the diaphragm slipped. (Only she had pills, and it wasn't a mistake, redly.) And after a convulsive time, Amberjack got it all out of her, which wasn't hard when he took one look at her with the eyes he wore at the clinic.

So pretty soon there were words like love and blood tests all over the crazy railings like noncommittal birds. And they lay crying on each other's stomachs and

Amberjack

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stealing looks at the word-birds and trying to comfort each other and saying things like it won't be like that with us never ever.

At which minute the faggots two floors below plugged one last variable strobe into their light-show just as the basement person in the yellow sheet pronounced a pathological prime number of the names of god and the local stress-field everted PHLOOP into the frozen tail wind of Zeon's arrow, where Everything intersects with Nowhere.

And Amberjack found himself congealed in stasis and staring into the suddenly lit-up window of his pad and watching himself come in his own front door.

And a midget boy-person staggered over and began to beat on the legs of this other Amberjack's three-button suit, whereupon the other Amberjack put down his naugahyde doctor's bag just like an insurance commercial, to hoist up his small son. Only his face looked like a commercial for hell, and the soundtrack carried a female voice as sweet as cold jelly on a proctoscope. And there was 'Rue-wifey's hair gone all polished and her bottom switching forward in scream-blue tights. And Amberjack perceived that he was looking at—No—his own future.

And then he found that he—the real, horrified Amberjack—was rising slowly, slowly up like a wet sailboat righting, and his real 'Rue was rising too, and somehow they were grappling on the rails and making terrible slow-speed noises—

—When everything crashed back around them perfectly normal except the moaning accelerated up six screaming octaves and he was all alone on the fire escape looking down at 'Rue turning in the Emerald Street air like a collapsing umbrella-girl getting smaller and—

His clinic eyes covered the place in his head that couldn't look down anymore.

"I won't tell," breathed the dark window behind him.

He whirled. 'Rue alive in there? It was 'Rue!

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And he was plunging through the window, on his knees in broken glass, staring at blue legs.

She found the light switch.

He saw it was all wrong.

"You."

"I finally found you." Pompy smiled, looking him over. Then she nodded to herself and walked to the phone.

"I'll call the police," she said. "I'm your witness/' She winked, setting down her gloves and wig box.

As if she had just come home forever.