Contours of Darkness (Vassi Collection )

The table was a palette of color and smell. An unvarnished wooden bowl filled with fresh vegetables sparkled with a dressing of safflower oil and cider vinegar. Next to it a black lacquer bowl of brown rice rich with tamari and sesame salt. Alongside that, a platter of succulent soy beans, simmering in their own juice, cooked with garlic and onions, garnished with half a dozen herbs. A loaf of sourdough bread ranged beside it, while two mugs held chilled apple cider mixed with cold mu tea. Under the cover of a casserole sat a heap of steamed broccoli dripping with melted cheddar cheese. Cynthia wore a thin cotton shirt-dress that came halfway down her thighs. Her nipples were dark and pointed under the fabric; when she moved the faint aroma of recently fucked cunt stung the air.

"Has he got you converted to macrobiotics?" Aaron said. His tone was heavy and quarrelsome.

"Actually, a purist would consider her a revisionist," said Conrad, his voice lilting in counterpoint to the dense mood. "The people who run the food shop would shudder if they saw this spread. They all shave their heads and wear steel-rimmed glasses and are as fanatic over food as their ancestors were over revivalist religion. It's just American Gothic in Eastern drag."

Cynthia smiled at the conceit, the quiet expression she showed only when she was deeply pleased. Aaron veered toward the deep end of his black mood. The bond between Cynthia and Conrad was palpable, and he found it easy to resent their friendliness. A single sharp suspicion exploded in his mind, like a glass shattering on a stone floor. "Is it possible they are fucking and I don't know about it?" he thought. He entertained the idea for a few seconds; he found it both frightened and titillated him.

Through the window, the sky glowed purple, and the light of the Bay Bridge stretched out toward the towers of downtown San Francisco. For a moment his interior monologue was captured by the external environment, and he experienced a margin of relief. He took shelter in the image of himself as a young man, earning a good salary at a secure job, living in a beautiful urban area, in a deep and complex relationship with a handsome woman, about to enjoy a healthy meal which had been cooked with care and concern, and entertaining a somewhat bizarre schoolboy.

"Americans don't know what good food is anymore," Conrad was saying. "We've forgotten. We can't just eat wholesome fresh food without giving it some esoteric or fashionable name, linking it to a movement. Health foods are the new kosher. It's almost subversive not to buy prepackaged foods. When they start rounding people up for the concentration camps, not having DDT on your lettuce will be as incriminating as having matzohs in Germany."

"Smash the state," said Cynthia, smiling again.

"Coming to Berkeley has turned you into a revolutionary," Aaron said. "We should have stayed in San Francisco."

They gave their attention to the food, not talking, relishing the texture of each of the dishes, getting high on simple taste and nutrition. A silence pervaded the space, a quality that sustained the sounds of wood hitting glass, tooth grinding against tooth, the unceasing hum of the refrigerator, the occasional noise from outside. Conrad, who was feeling the first rushes of the mescaline he had taken earlier, read it as the sense of psychic pressure which always builds up prior to the full onset of the drug's effects. Aaron rationalized the experience by considering himself in a serious mood. Cynthia sat in perfect solitude, feeling herself equidistant from the two men, tasting the flavor of Aaron's cock and Conrad's mind, exciting at the memory of the bulge in the younger man's jeans when he stood up, and wondering whether she would ever penetrate the fog that seemed to surround Aaron's understanding of life. She had changed since their move to the college town, in ways she was still too frightened to look at in all their implications. She knew Aaron to be a good person, sincere in his efforts to lead a blameless life, but he lacked a certain sharpness of insight which Conrad, for all his youthful pretentiousness, possessed in large measure. She had gone to several of the countless meetings that were always being held in Berkeley, once to a group that called themselves Radical Psychiatrists, and then to a poetry reading, and twice to seminars held by a women's liberation organization. She had come to disdain the large city newspapers, and now regularly perused the underground periodicals. One night, when Aaron had gone to Big Sur for a few days by himself, she read all the sex ads in the back of the Barb and with a burst of surprising courage, called one of the numbers. It had run: "Super hung black stud. Wants white woman under thirty-five. 546-8739. Charles."

She had reached for the phone three times before going through with it. "If I panic I can just hang up," she thought as it rang on the other end. "Maybe he won't even be home."

But the man answered. His voice was like rose thorns dipped in honey. "Hello," he said.

She didn't reply, and all at once felt very foolish.

"Is anybody there?" the voice went on.

"Yes," she said, the word sticking in her throat. She coughed once and said again, "Yes, I'm here," and then blushed at the phrase.

"Well, what do you want?" he said.

She blinked at the effrontery of his question. "I ... don't know what to say," she muttered. The deference in her attitude surprised her. In the clear light of electronic impersonality the basic monkey male-female gestures stood out sharply. In a bit, if she got to know him better, she would use her power of redress before law as a fulcrum to wield the lever of dominance in her relationship with him. Her brief exposure to the liberation thinking of the intensely political town had already served to give her a focus on the structure of society as a struggle for supremacy.