In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round . . .
“There he goes again,” said Chip, tucking his book in his leg pocket. “Rafting down the River Ralph.”
Ann had been rereading the poem lately, savoring the mellifluous but dramatic tones, the sensuous melody. She had forgotten she had been looking forward to sex on acid. But then that thought escaped. If you felt disembodied, what could you do? Desire was like an envelope she had dropped into her purse. Where was her purse?
Jimmy, pointing to her, meant that she was the damsel with the dulcimer—who else? She was wailing for her demon lover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted . . .
Jimmy was tottering and weaving on the log.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion . . .
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Coleridge the poet seemed a seer, envisioning all the wars to come, she thought. He wouldn’t be surprised at all by Vietnam. Ugly thoughts scattered.
By the end of the poem, though, she felt the sensuous pleasure of the milk of Paradise. She was in Paradise, with Jimmy. She was “meandering with a mazy motion.” It was true—the earth was breathing in “fast thick pants,” and even the fallen redwood tree was breathing. She laughed. All she could say was “Wow.”
“Let’s go,” Jimmy said. “I feel the dark coming on.”
“‘At one stride comes the dark,’” Ann quoted out of nowhere. She was seeing a horror movie: Coleridge’s ancient mariner meets the spectre-woman on the skeleton ship.
“I almost know that damned ‘Kubla Khan’ by heart myself,” said Chip, as he hustled them along the trail towards the car.
“Keep your ‘fast thick pants’ on, Sarge,” Jimmy said. “Hark! What’s that? A patch of sunlight?”
Ann could see a bright yellow stump just off the trail. “What is that? Let’s go see.”
The surface of the stump was alive, dozens of slimy blaze-yellow creatures wriggling together. A mass of little snakes. Ann grabbed Jimmy’s hand.
“It’s banana slugs!” cried Chip. “They’re mating.”
“How do you know?” Jimmy asked.
“I’ve studied mating,” Chip said. “I’ve been studying it all day.”
“Then it’s an orgy,” said Jimmy.
Ann touched a slug. It was slippery.
“Don’t touch,” Chip said. “Salt from your sweat will have a chemical reaction. A pinch of salt would make it melt.”
“Are they like snails?” Ann asked. Salted snails would melt in your stomach.
They stared at the slithery creatures, stretching and touching, glomming onto one another. They were over six inches long, in tangles. Jimmy had a smile on his face, his lips curved in the same shape as one of the slugs, the curve of a banana.
“Slugs on drugs,” said Jimmy. He slapped his forehead as if he had just divined the key to the universe. “‘A flash of golden fire.’”
Bright yellow. Ann saw clouds of bright yellow.
“They’re fucking,” she said aloud.
AT AN INDIAN restaurant later, the familiar smells of Sanjay’s cooking blared like horns. Ann thought she was supposed to chew each bite thirty times, sip tea, fold more naan, plop on chutney. The meal was long and funny, and the flavors were deep and sensuous—clever, Ann said. Yellow and cinnamon. Then somewhere there was a movie. What’s New Pussycat? Each scene was a dreamlike world of its own, like Dante’s rings of hell but intensely real. She forgot at times that Jimmy was beside her. He was holding her hand like a potato. The theater lights gleamed on, and she was with Jimmy in a slow-moving throng, cows heading into the barn for milking. Chip had gone ahead to get the car. Or maybe he had gone to church.
Jimmy was quiet. His face sagged. He shooed Ann into the back seat and shoved himself into a heap beside her.
He jerked his head away when she tried to touch his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just a headache,” he said. “Are you O.K.?”
“Yeah, I think so.” The movie was still in her head, scenes flashing.
“Chip, can you take me home and then take Ann home? I don’t feel so hot.”
Jimmy told Chip that Ann would sleep with him. Chip shrugged.
“Sure, that makes sense. Fair play.” But they were kidding.
Ann somehow thought that would be all right even though she knew it wasn’t, but it was what people were doing—sharing with friends, from the goodness of their hearts. Jimmy hugged her goodbye silently and suddenly she was in the front seat with Chip. Chip, who had been the kind friend all day, was still kind to her as he drove her home. She tried to imagine going to bed with Chip, who was attractive enough, though the jumpsuit really was not flattering and she wouldn’t be able to get Porky Pig or Yvor Winters out of her mind. Then she remembered Pixie.
“Don’t worry, Ann,” Chip said as he opened the car door for her. “Sometimes Jimmy ODs on altruism.”
“Is that what it is?”
“Surely you know that about him by now. Jimmy doesn’t think he should have anything for himself, so he tries to share everything.”
Chip walked her up the stairs to her door. Ann unlocked her door and flipped on the kitchen light. Chip followed her.
He said, “I think Jimmy had early lessons in self-doubt.”
“That’s not all bad,” Ann said, picturing her and Jimmy, bowing to each other in a drawing with the tagline, “No, I don’t doubt you.”
“Can I go get you anything, Ann? Do you need anything to eat? Donuts? Pretzels?”
“No, thank you.”
Chip was a walking palm tree, tall and thin, with a tufty head.
“I’ll go back and check on Jimmy.”
“Please.”
“Let me take a whiz first.”
While Chip was in her wine-dark bathroom, she lost track of him. When he reappeared, she was staring into her cupboard, mentally alphabetizing the soup cans and spices.
“Your bathroom is like a cave,” he said.
“‘Caverns measureless to man.’”
“You poetry freaks.”
“Good night, Chip,” she said at her door. “Thank you for taking care of us.” Chip gave her a warm hug and skipped down the steps, Porky Pig riding the jumpsuit piggyback. She watched as Chip pulled away in Jimmy’s Mustang.
“Poetry is not conversation,” she whispered to the darkness.
SHE DID NOT sleep right away, and the next day she was still tripping mildly. The normal chaos of her thoughts became bright colors, fragmented and sent through a kaleidoscope. She saw faces everywhere in the everyday patterns around her—book spines, windowpanes, shadowy maroon tub tiles. The cabbage roses in the carpet grimaced underfoot.
Chip telephoned to check on her. He had stayed overnight at Jimmy’s.
“Was he still awake when you got there?” she asked.
“Yeah. He claimed he was O.K. I told him I got you home safely. He’s still asleep now.”