Not Julie

His name never occurred to her, as indeed it did repeatedly throughout her waking state, without being followed by a significant pause. He had been that kind of person -- one whose memory is always followed by a significant pause. These pauses were not initially filled by any thought at all. It was as though there were some kind of shuffling going on in her brain to an appropriate thought to think in his regard. But it was also as though there were some mechanism at work in shuffling certain thoughts back out of sight. Yes, there was definitely an aspect of that that must be thought about when she had time. Well, it wasn't as though she had not had the time these last months. But then... as Ray would probably have said, there is no such 'thing' as time. Time and space are just relations that specify how far an observed event is from the one who observes it. That is all there is to time. Those events and her observations of them had been a long time ago now even if sometimes it seemed like yesterday. But today it seemed again as though it had been a long time indeed, but she was using the term differently again. Such thoughts employ the 'other' definition of time, memory time. She tried now to remember how he had explained that these senses of 'time' could be rectified. It doesn't matter; it's just what happens 'in the fullness of time'. This event right now in this place and time, staring out through the landscaped shrubs and small manicured trees to the wooded cascades with their bare clear-cut patches out across the unseen reservoir was so awfully far from any of those events that mattered."One doesn't really have the privacy in these places to sit and ponder without being at risk for having one's medication upped, does one, Reverend?"The smiling reverend Randolph Etherington had entered and settled in beside her now."No. I guess that's true, but I won't tell. Am I disturbing you, Julie?""Oh no. There's lots of time until there isn't." She returned his smile."Penny for those thoughts." Then, "I won't turn you in. If we smile a little and insert a chuckle here and there, they'll think they have the dosage just about right." One of those deceptive chuckles was inserted here that defied her to not respond in kind.Her upper teeth grabbed a flabby lower lip that had once been so full and sensuous. Watching her, Randy added, "Ray Bonn, I'll bet."...More than four decades earlier Ray Bonn had published a book, having no illusions of grandeur. He just wanted to get his innovative alternative physical theories 'out there' where they could be evaluated. But in the process of an unusual promotion on his first attempt, he was ensnared in weird contractual commitments. In a Kafkaesque turn of events, he had been "duct taped" to a contract by a beautiful but quite capricious woman with whom he had become infatuated.