Chapter 2

This nightmare began the day I met Maria. It’s hard to believe that was only three weeks ago. I stood near the Arch in New York’s Washington Square with Michael Chen who was visiting my wife, Sara, and me. We were waiting for Ben Sachs to join us for lunch.
    The park was unusually crowded for early February due to a warm front out the Gulf of Mexico. The mild weather drew the full menagerie from hibernation—tourists, street people, business types, and students from City University where Ben was a professor of philosophy.
    Michael and I watched as John Clay, known in Greenwich Village as Preacher John, exhorted his pickup congregation.
    “In the beginning, every creature lived in the Kingdom of God and enjoyed paradise—the vision of all things as one. Then one creature, Adam, broke the symmetry and created a competing world by viewing things separately. At that moment, time began and consciousness appeared. God said, ‘I will send my son to privilege forever the vision of all things as one.’”
    A woman, whom I recognized as a professor of literature at the university, scoffed, “All points of view are constructs. Not even God can privilege a point of view.”
    Preacher John said, “Privileging a point of view is what it means to be God. When he returns to judge the living and the dead, Jesus will privilege the view of all things as one.”
    A man heckled John, “The Second Coming? Ha! Don’t hold your breath, folks.”
    Preacher John said, “Separate identities will become a living hell for those who do not answer Jesus’ call.”
    I turned to Michael, “Don’t you recognize the preacher? That’s John Clay.”
    “The former civil rights leader who became Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare? You’re putting me on, Paul.”
    “How many street preachers have you seen dressed as if they were on their way to a meeting with the President?”
    Michael said something, but I didn’t hear it because that’s when I saw Maria Perez for the first time. As I looked past Preacher John to the opposite side of his flock, there she was, an absolute vision.
    I nudged Michael. “What I wouldn’t give to meet that woman with the long, black hair.”
    Michael shook his head. “You haven’t changed since high school.”
    But I was captivated by the woman and didn’t take my eyes off her until I was distracted by my four-year-old daughter’s red coat as she ran toward us. “Daddy! Daddy! Come to the fountain.”
    My thirteen-year-old stepson, Rob, was right behind her. “You little twerp, come back here.”
Karen tugged on my coat sleeve. “Daddy, come hear the singers.”
    The woman looked at her watch. Was she about to leave? “Karen, I told Uncle Ben I’d meet him here at the Arch.”
    Rob corrected me. “He’s not our uncle.”
    “Come on, Daddy!” Karen insisted and pulled harder on my sleeve.
    The woman started to walk away. “Michael will go to the fountain with you, Karen.”
    “No, Daddy, you come with me.” Karen pulled me slightly off-balance with a hard yank on my sleeve. The woman moved into the crowd. I tried to see which direction she was headed.
    Michael said, “Go ahead, Paul. I’ll watch for Ben.”
    I stared into the crowd hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but she was gone.

The fountain in Washington Square became a theater-in-the-round for street performers when the city drained it for winter. Its tiered rim provided seats for the spectators. In spite of the crowd, Karen and Rob found seats on the top tier and I stood behind them.
    Two street singers were center stage introducing their next song when a drunk, who looked as if he’d slept in a cocktail blender, began to
taunt them.
    One of the singers stopped and told the drunk to get lost, or words to that effect. The drunk responded by baptizing the singer with cheap wine. Our young troubadour was not impressed by the sacrifice. He unslung his guitar and climbed out of the fountain to do battle.
    At this point, one of New York’s finest stepped in. He raised one hand to hold back the singer while he spoke to the drunk in a reassuring tone.
    I heard a woman’s voice. “Along with the music, a little street psychology. All for our entertainment, of course.”
The remark came from off my right shoulder. It was the kind of thing my wife might have said, and I turned thinking Sara had come up behind me. Instead, I was delighted to see the woman from Preacher John’s congregation.
    “Mind if I squeeze in?”
    I moved to provide room, but it was a tight fit. We were shoulder to shoulder.
    She said, “You seemed fascinated by the street preacher.”
She had noticed me at the Arch. I was so enchanted that I had to think for a moment. “I was interested in that business about two worlds…”
    “Two worlds?”
    “Two competing points of view—God’s kingdom, where all is viewed as one, and Adam’s kingdom where everything is seen separately.”
    “What’s interesting about that?”
    “Those two worlds exhaust the possibilities. We have no choice but to view the world as one or as many. What intrigued me was this.
    Suppose those two worlds were not only opposite but also were equal…”
    She was way ahead of me. “You mean, if they were balanced like the two sides of the yin-yang symbol? Or the two triangles of the hexagram?”
    “Exactly. What would it mean if God’s kingdom and Adam’s kingdom were balanced?”
    She parried, “You tell me.”
    “They would cancel out like two sides of an algebraic equation…”
    She finished my thought, “…They would represent everything and nothing at the same time.”
    I have on occasion been able to resist a beautiful women but never one who was as smart as she was.
    She asked, “Are you on the university philosophy faculty?”
    “Not a chance. There’s no original work left to do in philosophy.”
    “Perhaps I saw you on TV. Are you that artist whose exhibit is about to open in SoHo?”
    “All today’s artist can do is imitate what others have done as well as can be done.”
    “I know where I’ve seen you. You’re that famous writer whose picture was on the cover of Sunday’s literary supplement.”
    “Writers are lucky. There is one story and it has never been told.”
    She looked into my eyes, smiled, and said, “What story hasn’t been told?”
    “The story from which all other stories derive—the Final Story.”
    “Wouldn’t that be the First Story?”
    “First Story, Final Story, Only Story—take your pick. I prefer Final Story because it would end the conceit that there is more than one valid story.”
    The woman started to respond when three teen land skaters whizzed by us. One of them bumped me hard and knocked me into the woman causing her to fall. As I helped her up, I shouted at the fleeing skaters to come back. It was a mistake. They came back.
    The skater who bumped me said, “What’s your problem, dude?”
    I asked the woman, “Are you okay?”
    She brushed her coat. “I think so.”
    I said to the skater, “Go on, beat it.”
    He shoved me. “You got something to say, let’s hear it, dude”

Chapter 2 continued