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eyes.
    "Is that on the menu?" Beth said, stepping through the door, seeing her husband and the employee at the rail of the fish pond.
    Audie was not embarrassed by his reverie of possessing Anna. He was pleased with himself. He was someone who seldom craved anything. He'd had everything he ever wanted, he was content, he could not imagine wanting more. And here he was, experiencing desire—a rare emotion for him these days.
    Anna stepped back and became formal, deferring to a superior in the Indian way, as Dr. Nagaraj approached and greeted them.
    "We were discussing the fish," Audie said.
    "Ah, yes. Fish." He said
peesh,
making it sound inedible.
    "The Christian symbolism. Jesus is represented as a fish."
    Dr. Nagaraj waggled his head. He was saying yes, but didn't have a clue.
    Anna, self-conscious, perhaps suspecting that she would be referred to as the bringer of this news, sidled back to the table of menus and the brass dish of seeds.
    "Will you join us for dinner?" Beth asked.
    As the doctor waggled his head again, Audie said, "Just pineapple juice for me. I'm not eating after six."
    "Avoid sour juices," Dr. Nagaraj said. "You are
kappa
body type."
    Beth said, "I'm hungry, I'm eating."
    The massage had given her an appetite, made her thirsty, tired her, and reminded her that she had a body—her hunger she took to be a sign of health. She loved her body after it had been stroked by the young girl, whom she had trouble simplifying in the word "therapist."
    "Hinduism predates Christianity by many centuries," Dr. Nagaraj said at the table, without prompting. "You can find god Agni in Rig Veda, more than three thousand of years back. It is our path, our way of seeing the world, our consolation and salvation. Multiple functions and essential to Ayurveda."
    Audie asked himself again: Is he a real doctor? Is he a quack? And, Does it matter?
    Dr. Nagaraj was still speaking, perhaps answering one of Beth's questions. He had the Indian habit of monologuing, which was a gift for rambling on past all obstacles, deaf to any interruptions, indifferent to anyone's boredom, as though no one present had anything worthwhile to say—which, Audie reflected, was probably so, since neither he nor Beth had much to add. Beth was intent on what had become one of Dr. Nagaraj's stories. Or was it the same story?
    "Elephants," he was saying, "bearing down on my friend Sanjeev."
    Surely he had told this story before?
    "But Sanjeev could not swim. He sank to his knees as big bull elephant approached. And elephant, too, fell to knees and enclosed poor Sanjeev between his great tusks."
    His teeth gleamed on the word "tusks."
    "And protected him from the other elephants," Beth said.
    "In beginning, yes, protection was there. Tusks were there," Dr. Nagaraj said. "But elephant rose to his feet and withdrew. Sanjeev remained on his knees, head down. When coast was clear I went to that side and found that my friend was dead."
    Surely this was the same story, with a different ending?
    "He had not been crushed," Dr. Nagaraj said. "He somehow died of heart failure. I could not help him, yet I had brought the poor man to this place. Of course, I was devastated."
    "Did he have a family?"
    "No wife, no children. But parents are there."
    "Life's so short," Beth said.
    Dr Nagaraj smiled. "No, no. Life continues. It flows. There is no end."

3
    Mr. and Mrs. Blunden, Audie and Beth, lay in bed side by side, but apart, sinking into sleep by tumbling and bumping in the narrowing cave of consciousness, along the flowing stream of their vagrant thoughts. Sometimes they stirred in the shallows of embarrassed memory, often slowed and heavy in the eddies of the darker past, but always going down deeper, wishing for the gulping light to cease as they vanished into slumber and different images, twisting in the underground river of darkness, sleeping. Yet they were both awake.
    They had said good night and "Love ya," enacting their bedtime ritual, and kissed with