The long, metallic hands on the antique clock intensify the sunlight into a harshness of presence. Ian remembers watching a gull at twilight skimming over a softly cresting, violet sea.

He enters his office. "Sanctum sanctorum" he says - ritual consecration, propitiation, futility. Dark curtains drawn against the heat. He turns on the lamp, sits at his desk, picks up a sheet of paper that is to be Ben's evaluation, and reads the only sentence he has written.

'The client presented as a thirty-eight year old white male with blue eyes and blond hair.'

He's stuck. Stupid and sterile, the sentence conveys no truth. Ben's eyes weren't blue. Or not only blue. But eclipsed suns, merciless intelligences, shadows that stole significance from others. And the miracle of tears, returning rain, hope, compassion? And his hair was the blond of dry wild grasses, the grey of stunted thorn trees, the grey of parched clay. A large bulbous mound of nose: reddish flesh with purple rivulets that ran down from the mound and out, overflowing the surrounding gullies. Rotten meat smell; stagnant water smell - Ben rots back into nature right before his eyes.

Does the land always reclaim its king?

Ian puts his feet up and sinks deeper into his reflections. He remembers that only last week Ben had accused him of a lack of imagination and, by extension, empathy. "Your imagination ... the forest is all petrified". Ian hadn't listened to Ben's diatribe following that. Instead, he'd found himself remembering a story that Ben had told him.

"My father used to get mad at us kids a lot. Especially at dinner. For nothing really. When he got mad you could see it in his eyes. They got real narrow. He'd sew his lips together and fold his hands on the table in front of him. But he'd never yell. He'd just stare right through all of us, one at a time, and then go out back to his workshed. There he'd sit for hours sharpening tools. I think he knew that sometimes we'd watch him through the window, but he never let on. He'd stay silent - sometimes until Sunday. Then he took his anger out on his congregation. In a soft, devotional tone he'd preach about the virtues and duties of humility. They listened in rapture to my father - as if he were a saint or something. And our punishment was to have to sit and watch this adoration. And to feel guilty, as if we had committed some horrible sin. What did we know?"

Ian imagines Ben's trees withering, dying, falling. Leaves and roots rotting, washing away with the rainwater. Water slowly seeping into the trunk. Formation of iron and dolomite deposits. Beauty of a spectacular sort. Sad through to its depths. 'No, it's you who are petrified.'

But the implication that Ian lacked empathy?

Ian glances at the scrawl on the inside of the file 'depression secondary to alcohol dependence'. He closes his eyes, and slows his breathing. 'There's more. But what should I call it?' He wonders whether Ben's self-absorption should be called narcissism. Ben was all about grandiosity, a sense of

uniqueness, fantasies of love, brilliance and beauty and an empathy that only extended to his own imagination. But Ben believed himself a kind of philosopher. And wasn't philosophy, by its nature,

or at least its aim, more elevated, more exalted than the common trade?

Does philosophy excuse?

Ian glances at the clock and startles as he finds that he's already a couple of minutes late for the conference. Quickly he throws off his tee shirt and pulls on the button down shirt and tie that he has worn for the past week and a half.

On his way to the door, he looks at the collage on the wall. Two merchants sit on a quay. One watches his ship sail into the harbor, laden with silk and spices, while the other watches his ship succumb to the black rage of the sea. Ian's eye moves in circles: one countenance to the other, serenity to despair, the blue water the blue sky the abyss of memory. Ian had formed a friendship with each of the merchants but now, victimized by the collapsing orbit of his moods, the intimacy has collapsed to dependency. "I'm sorry" he whispers. And he hurries away.

The case conference has already begun. Ian slips into a seat next to Marian. Conversation is about Susan, a former client of his.

Ian scarcely listens ... the sounds of pens scratching, fans beating the wet air, a gull squawking ... and finds himself wandering the rubbled shore ... He sees a scrawny, white gull, weirdly standing on a lone white stone that barely showed above the white spume of the incoming tide. Threatened by the slightest movement, perhaps only a shadow, she displayed perpetual ambivalence - part anger, part fear. Wings outstretched, feathers slightly apart, stance tentative, ready for a hasty departure, she held her head high. But she held her mouth open wide, ready to attack too.

He'd tried to give Susan the acceptance she wanted. Even so far as to imagine himself as the keeper of the lighthouse on the island where she would sometimes sit and strut. He'd offer her bits of fish and bread but she'd only take it after he put it down and left. And then only eat it back on her little stone. Ian was left with the feeling that there was still something - a sort of freedom - that he hadn't understood. A failure of imagination? Or empathy?

Glancing at Ian, Marian says "I'm worried about her. I think she means to kill herself this time."

A sudden screech and the the gull is lost in a glare of the sun.

Ian rubs his temples, straightens his spine, puts his elbows on the table and rests his head in his folded hands.

A chorus of voices. "What makes you think so?"

Marian sighs, "There's a tone of calculation, a tone of finality in her voice."

"Does she have a plan? The means to do it?"

"She hasn't told me, but she wouldn't. It's not a cry for help."

"You're sure? It's not a manipulation either?"

"No, I don't think so. It's real. I think she needs to be hospitalized."

Ian's face flushes. "I think Marian's right. Susan's not afraid to die. If she feels like there's no one there for her ..." Suddenly, "Please excuse me. I've got to go."

"Ian, what about Ben? Aren't we supposed to get to him today?"

Abruptly Ian stands, "I'm sorry." Stiffly, he turns, walk out.

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