Further improvisations of Gérard

Never one to have subscribed to the

new-fangled fetish for security in

travel, Gérard remembers when it was

perfectly reasonable to take a week-

end in Eleuthera in a well ordered

scholarly calendar, and still ex-

pect to be able to improve one's tan

between departures. In pondering his

way toward that remedial improvisa-

tion which he'd grown to trust he'd

fashion, given time, he did consid-

er himself fortunate to book an hour

in the gymnasium backstairs window.

Yet even there, delays were wilting.

Reasoning in the first principles 

of tanning, were it not probable 

that in their simplicity they bore

the answer to the new travel exper-

ience's abduction of time? Had it 

been, he wondered, for tanning's de-

light in its approximations of nu-

dity, or for such approximations'

residual benevolence of hue, that

people flew so fast to savour its

extractions of the clockface? What
part had temperature or humidity
played, without uv radiation? It

came to him, as night follows day,

that he might explore the compro-

mise of the mushroom in its flour-

ishing, even out of doors.