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By Root 2371 0

spiraling tessellation. A wide staircase wrapped around half of the space and gracefully spilled into the room, moving us through the house less like wood than water. The staircase was like a wooden waterfall, a cascade of frozen visible music. The interior spaces of this house, in contrast to the rigid, boxy architecture I was used to—which always makes it seem like the architect’s top priority was to keep the lineaments between one room and another crystal clear—flowed in such a way that all the rooms melted smoothly together. At the bottom of the stairs, beneath the antler chandelier, a furry white rug lay on the wooden floor, and several white and brown couches and armchairs assembled around a low glass table beside a flagstone fireplace that contained a glass window, behind which the smooth flames of a gas fire burned in silence. Above the fireplace hung an oil painting of a group of cowboys riding muscular white horses across a snowy plain, with mountains in the background, and a storm threatening overhead in the top right corner. The walls to the left and right of the fireplace consisted of towering windows that filled the room with blinding bright light. Outside these windows, the earth all around the house crested into hundreds of cragged peaks, pink slabs of rock with clusters of pine trees between them, all powdered with bright snow. I had never seen mountains before. The light in the sharp blue sky was amazingly bright.

Dudley Lawrence sat in one of the white armchairs beside the glassed-in silent fire. He had not noticed us descending the stairs, noiselessly, in our socks. He was reading a newspaper and smiling to himself. His face looked like it smiled perpetually. He was barefoot in blue jeans and a blue denim shirt, from the open neck of which his white chest hair burst forth, and he wore reading glasses to see the paper. It was still quite early in the morning, but he looked as alert as if he had already been awake for hours. This man was a living illustration of wholesomeness, happiness, and vitality. Lydia and I were still damp-headed from the shower, and wearing clothes that were rumpled from being compressed two days in our suitcases.

Dudley Lawrence noticed us, looked up, snapped the newspaper in half backward and threw it on the side table next to the chair. Then he stood up, and I saw the giant decorative brass belt buckle that connected the lower half of him to the upper half. He radiated robustness and cheer. His white mustache lived inside of his smile like a snail lives in its shell. He opened his lean, strong, denim-clad arms to us.

“Mornin’!” he roared. “Welcome to the ranch!”

XXII

After our reunions and obligatory small talk, Dudley Lawrence clapped his hands and rubbed them rapidly together with friction vigorous enough to start a fire had there been kindling between his palms, and thereupon conducted us into the dining room, where Lydia and I sat at one end of a long dining table, a maroon mahogany oblong polished so sleek as to reflect images as sharply as a still lake. Mr. Lawrence sat at the head of the table, which was already set for seven. Nearby, from the adjoining kitchen, emanated the smells and noises of cooking. The woman who had opened the door for us late last night brought us a carafe full of coffee and a pitcher of orange juice and set them on the table, to join the glass pitcher of water already on the table.

“Thank you, Rita,” said Mr. Lawrence from beneath his white mustache, and the woman answered with a barely perceptible nod and returned to the kitchen. Presently we were joined by Regina Lawrence, full-bosomed and resplendent in a flowing white Christ-like garment that billowed breezily around her body, her white-streaked red hair twisted into a long braid behind her, with three fully dressed chimps. Two of them were holding hands, and one of them held Mrs. Lawrence’s hand.

The three chimps were named Hilarious Larry, Hilarious Lily, and Clever Hands. Informally: Larry, Lily, and Clever. All of them were older than me (I was still in my adolescence). For