(an excerpt from chapter one of OTHER AVENUES, a first novel)

by Ann Knight

May 26,1990

"Oh, yes. Mmm." Bliss stirs on her side of the rectory's kingsize bed after voiceing her ecstasy. But the cry hasn't disrupted her sleep. Dreamtime is a priestly dimension, and the Rev. Bliss Bihar Birch claims each night's joys as enthusiastically as she cherishes the opportunity to step into her pulpit on Sundays. "Mmm." The sleeping woman priest can make out her dreamlover's features well enough to see they are not those of her husband, Sam Garland. In fact, if she were to consider it, Bliss would discover she's never made love to her husband in her dreams. Two priests at play in the garden of nocturnal delights might be one too many.

As if on cue, Sam rolls in the direction of his wife and sleepily drapes an arm over her body. His fingers remember the way. They have teased this nightshirt back from her flesh many times. Even before he realizes he's ready for love, Sam has pressed his naked thighs against the backs of Bliss's bare legs. Gently, he pumps one of her breasts.

"Beeb?" he whispers. "Bliss?"

"Yes!" Her voice is deep and erotic. But so loud, Sam goes limp with the realization his wife is still asleep. Cuckold or a passive voyeur? Again, his fingers make the decision. Active voyeur. He'll pleasure his lady even though he is blocked by the curtain of sleep. At the window, a black Southern California sky flashes white with heat lightning. It's threatening to rain. The idea, "I'm a pretender, threatening to reign," pushes itself into Sam's brain. It feels like his own thought. Sam incants it softly--an unbidden mantra of pretense, kingship and proposed power. "I'm a pretender... threatening..."

An agreeable kingdom greets him in the collection of photos atop the dresser. It's an odd array, of clergy friends mostly--poised at ordinations, weddings, baptisms. There's even a colourful funeral procession. One large postcard shows, Is it Westminster Abbey? St. Paul's? Where is it they conduct coronations?

Sam Garland is pretty sure he remembers. The stone beneath the coronation seat is the one they say Jacob used as a pillow the night he was visited from above. It's been the object of many an international Capture-the-Flag intrigue. Boyish, if brutal battles have been waged to secure possession of this particular rock, as if it were the one upon which Christ proposed to build his church. Can the protection extended to an ancient stone pillow tucked beneath a monarch's chair, bleed conscience into the prick of a king? Do a few monuments keep the peace between warring societies? Somehow, after midnight, Sam finds it easier to accept unique takes on human ancestry. Humankind may have had little to say in the beginning. Godlike giants came down from heaven. Yes. According to the Old Testament, they intermarried with earthlings and defined diplomacy. Or, defied it.

Sam realizes it's a strange thought for a man cradling an orgasmic woman to consider. But, some things are older than sex. Sam, rector of L.A.'s second-largest Episcopal Church, rides the night and its lightning flashes to a world away. Feeling Bliss's passion, he journeys toward an unwitnessed climax of his own. On a Sunday, standing at his All Souls' pulpit--some twenty miles and possibly that many light years from Bliss's platform in the barrio--Sam often breathes-in the emotion he feels rising in him now: Though we are apart, yet we are one. We are one.

Thoughts less noble come on the heels of the good ones: This ISN'T the only time you've sacrificed yourself on this woman's altar. A pattern here? Payback for every occasion you took pleasure at another's expense? Sam knows he couldn't begin to name each person, each woman, he cheated. You called them your beach bitches! You didn't speak with a civil tongue in those days, Father Garland. The seasons weren't long enough on the Northern California coast for a good-looking guy who liked to surf to get all the summer satisfaction he could want. But the seductive Sam Garland seldom came up short.

There are worse ways of opening the night than holding the most beautiful woman in the world, Sam thinks as he rolls back to his side of the bed. When James was a baby, Sam endured many sleepless nights with nothing for comfort but the departed spirit of his mentor, San Francisco's bad boy bishop, James Pike. His family life was in a shambles; his promising career as the rising star among Colorado Episcopalians, was on the rocks after his failure to win election as their bishop. Many, but especially Bliss, had presumed him capable of being his father-in-law Donald Birch's, successor. Sam had courted a form of insanity then. Nightly, he reviewed the prospect of laying aside his vocation. Finally, the very day he turned down a respectable university teaching job, the invitation to interview for the All Souls' post came.

"Go back to sleep." Sam hears it clearly.

Sleep returns without another thought. Sam's mentor and guide, the former Bishop Pike, has spoken it.

Waking, Bliss Birch will reclaim her memories of the night and put them in a mental scrapbook. Pictures made in heaven. Harmless enough by moonlight, but the pageant couldn't play without hazard by day. Too sensually explicit. This dreaming of hers, which began only after she was made a priest, seems to be a form of escape. Following in her father's footsteps, Bliss took up the challenge of preaching. And shortly after that, perhaps because Anglicans teach that one isn't held responsible for anything undertaken in a dream, she began to make love in that secret place, to strangers. Custody of this nocturnal scrapbook poses no burden, though Bliss finds that keeping it a secret gets harder.

Sam's private thorns aren't private, like his not having anyone who tell him whether or not his name stands for something. Is Sam short for Samuel or, Bliss sometimes jokes, Samson? On their first date, Sam told her, "I'm a kite that's broken free. I might crash. But I'll get a glimpse of heaven first." Although she was engaged to someone else, that served as an engraved invitation: Come, fly with me, Bliss. The conservative bishop's feminist daughter, whose feet had been rooted as long as anyone could remember, couldn't resist Sam's sky. She still can't. But rather than annoy him with any particulars, she feigns amnesia regarding certain dreams. It's not a territory she documents. There's no bedside dream diary.

Ann Knight