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Gill.” I rose, not unlike a cow would, a piece at a time, and looked into the flashlight. “What time is it?”
    â€œDan?”
    â€œYeah.” I stood facing him, holding the ball nonchalantly in front of my private parts. He lowered the light and I came to understand there was a personage standing behind Gill.
    â€œYou all right?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Late night swim got away from me. Can you take me around to my boat? It’s at the grove.” My eyes adjusted by steady, painful degrees in the starlight, and I could see that this was the three acre front lea of the Ballowells’, and that Annette Ballowell was backing steadily toward her dark and significant mansion.
    It wasn’t until I sat my bare ass on the seat of Gill’s Rover that I lifted the ball onto my lap and saw the disturbing and exciting truth: it wasn’t the same ball. It wasn’t my ball at all.
SEVEN
    THE next morning when I removed the thermometer from Story’s mouth, she looked up at me. “It’s the deep end you’re over, isn’t it.”
    I read the thermometer with new intensity. “Ninety-seven point seven.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just paint household objects until it takes. You’ll get it. You’ll see it again. School will be out this week, and you can just take some time.”
    â€œI’m going to do that. I’ll be all right.” I nodded and heard the angry little tides inside my ears. “I’m going to paint everything.”
    When Story left for Town Hall, I burst into action. I didn’t have class until four, so I ran to the studio barelegged in my Sears robe and stretched three canvases, 60 by 60, my shrunken hands atremble. I could feel the heat. I was in motion; I couldn’t do it fast enough. I had one palette wet under cellophane and without changing it a bit, I started in.
    The volleyball that had saved my life in the confidential waters of Lake Mugacook ten hours before was a Sportcraft Professional Model manufactured in New Castle, Pennsylvania. In postal blue magic marker script along one seam was the name: Allen. Luther Allen was a retired broker who clipped coupons on his lakefront property in town. His children and grandchildren came up from New York and New Haven on weekends.
    On the first canvas, I broadbrushed the curve of one side in vermilion. I had to hold my head cocked a certain way as the lakewater gurgled up and down my eustachian tubes. Many times when I changed positions, water ran out of my ears. I worked fast because I figured I had two hours tops before Story ran into Gill Manwaring and I’d get a phone call. If I could grab a secure start on three canvases, it might testify to my equilibrium. But as my hands moved across the paintings, working all three in one stroke, then one for twenty minutes, I wondered. They didn’t look like volleyballs as we know them.
    So many times the magic in painting transpires in the twelve inches between the palette and the canvas, and your head, hand, or heart better get out of the way. I felt that warmth in my arms now, and I tried to proceed with caution or reason or passionless purpose, but I might as well not have been there. This was not the way I used to paint. I ran from the studio several times, whenever my neck would get too sore, and I dressed a piece at a time, retrieved the hammer, all my roofing nails, the butcher knife. My garlic was arriving at noon.
    When the phone did ring, Story simply said, “What’s going on?”
    â€œStory, I’ve got a start on three good pieces. Can I call you back?”
    â€œDan, what’s this with Gill?”
    â€œDon’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you later. All about it. I gotta go.” And I did go. I found myself an hour later in the studio, one canvas finished, the others running to a close. The first looked like nothing, like a rose moon in a blue blanket, I