I’d always been bothered by something in Brimmer and Death. Names. I’ve been through many of them and finally hit on a core but nuanced issue: Death herself. There’s a relationship here between a problem with linking in the story and their slow developing syntactical interference (which is a good thing). In the story, links interfere by creating a pause, a sort of breath of suspense: what’s going to come. So I had the notion that each link would have it’s own space.

The link would float between each lexia like a puff of smoke, not quite making meaning . . . yet. However this comes out, I think I have the set concept down finally. Here’s the new stage, the link in bold:

On the first evening of a two-day hike through the desert, Brimmer pushed through a dry stand of bushes and saw Dee seated on a flat-topped stone.

She said, “Hey, the moon’s just coming up. See it.”

Brimmer said, “The sky’s still blue, Dee, but the land’s in shade. Beautiful, right? Like time.”

“You’re still a mystery to me, Brimmer,” she said, hopping off the stone. She wore a plain black bandanna on her head. Silver rivets the size of nickels studded her belt, and she waved the heat away with a bone-handled fan. She wrapped Brimmer in a wrestler’s hug and touched him lightly on the cheek with her lips.

She set a small tape deck down and clicked play. She said, “A little ditty to take away your troubles.” Then she showed Brimmer an ancient dance. Dee circled him. She fluttered her long white fingers. She took his hand and spun him in the sand. The moon’s white edge rose like a scythe blade over the hills.