I hail from the Scottish highlands. My father left Ireland to seek his fortune, or at least he claims— we know the truth, my mother and I, that he stole his brother's inheritance and packed him off to this place, and that my father was tossed here himself on a voyage to England. Somehow he reconciled himself with his brother, and then proceeded to murder him and take his wife for his own. "'Twas just and fair," my father would say, "He tried to take from me my lands, my properties, and so I resisted him, and took back what was mine. My son, when I am dead, 'twill all be yours— but do not be so hasty to take it from me. Wait until I am gone." But I don't want it. I don't know what I want.

I am a stranger here, though I was born here, I am a stranger and I am in love with Cordelia, the beautiful. She works at the broken down theatre that Bill Falks built back in the twenties. It should have been torn down, but Mr. Kawin keeps it running, for some reason, and I am grateful. It is where Cordelia works. She is the beautiful one— every time I see her I am reminded of God's work on this earth. Her face is round, her skin white, with the gentlest blush when the afternoon sun arcs in through the ticket window as she sits there, not reading a book, but staring with her wonderful deep blue eyes at the tiny screen of the marquee computer, trying to figure what exactly would happen if three adults and two children wanted discount tickets for the after-5:00 show. Her is a dark red, the sort of red that you don't know it's red until you come close to her, to buy a ticket for a matinee show, and then you see that deep within the dark tresses there is that red. It is short, curls around her cheek and hangs below her chin on one side; as she concentrates she pushes the strand behind her ear; perhaps it is silly be in love with an ear but it is s perfectly shaped, so perfectly white with that hint of red on the edges, it is a nibbling ear, a whispering-into ear.

And when you get close to her to see that her hair is red or to see how very blue her eyes are you will smell, too, that wonderful aroma of clean woman's skin, and you know that she can satisfy every one of your five senses. That is Cordelia, and I am in love with her beauty, though they tell me, those that know, that she is not the most passionate woman in the world, that she holds dear very little. And I have been fascinated with beautiful women before, and know that they can often be as cold as the sea which lies between where I was born and that which I call my homeland, that they can be as emotionless as the fish which lies, dead and dry, on the beach on a bitter October morning. But she is beautiful.

They tell me, those that know my problem, that it is good and healthy that I should be in love with these three women, and that I am capable of the depth necessary to love them all three at the same time, too, that not any man can do that, not any man has a soul rich enough to love three wonderful women at the same time, but that my soul is rich enough, I have enough intelligence, enough variety in my personality, enough patience. You also love Mendelssohn, Bach, and Mozart, they point out— do you eschew two of those for only one? We've seen you go from one record to the next, smoothly, without difficulty. But alas, I cannot listen to all three at once— it is a cacophony. And If somehow the gods granted me the opportunity to love these three women all together, I would want them to love one another as well. And that would not work, it is unnatural, not in a moral sense, but in the sense of numbers.

Then there is Natasha, the dark haired one, who works in the bookstore. She is pretty, I suppose, but it is the kind of pretty which sneaks up on you and catches you unawares. I do not like that. More often when I am trying to convince myself that Natasha is perhaps pretty, I am struck by how she can make expressions which are not pretty, how her hair is perhaps to high on her forehead, how her lips have almost too much sheen, how there are spots here and there on her face. Natasha will look good in the right clothes and with the right effort if we were to go to dinner, but in the morning when she sits up and puts on a t-shirt to make the coffee, I will probably notice her breath more.

But she is intelligent. For the love of God, she is so smart. We have wonderfully complex conversation about the books which she sells me, every one of which she has read. We talk about truth, about knowledge, wisdom, and I come away from the conversations with a deeper understanding of things. I replay them in my mind, and I marvel at just how deeply Natasha knows things, how expertly she understands them and how efficiently she makes me understand them. Other subjects, too, arise, and she is able to talk about them in such away that you are not offended by the discoveries she makes at your expense, dashing your theories and ideas into the rocks, you are delighted, you see things in a way you never saw them before.

She is an expert on any subject, knows not only the details but their ramifications, and no matter how much difficulty you have staying on the subject in a conversation, Natasha will follow you all the way and find a means to connect your seeming wanderings to the original topic. Natasha has the kind of brain that makes a man civilized, makes him want to make himself smarter for. She is genius.

There's a joke, and it is not a very good joke, I do not like the joke, but I will tell it to you anyway because it does not illustrate the solution to my problem, though many think it does. It seems there is this university mathematics professor who needs to hire a secretary. Three women apply for the job, so he gives them each a test. The test is one question— what is two and two? The first woman replies that two and two are tutu. The second woman says that two and two are four. And the third woman answers that two and two are twenty-two. So which woman does the professor hire? Here's the punch line— the one with the largest bosoms.

Obviously I cannot use this as a criteria, neither literally, nor figuratively. I mean, they all have virtually the same size bosom, and furthermore, I cannot pick one feature which I like in all women and use it to decide for me. Women are different, they are not constructs but entities, whole unto themselves. I can no more imagine Cordelia with fire in her heart than I can Natasha with real beauty. It would be to much, for me and for her, it would ache, and we would go insane. Does this makes sense to you? It must. If Cordelia where beautiful and pasionate she would go quite mad. If Natasha were intelligent and beautiful she would descend into a deep, brooding depression.

I cannot simply decide that I like beauty or passion more, because there are other woman who are as beautiful as Cordelia who do not appeal to me, and there are women as intelligent as Natasha who do not appeal to me, either. There is something else in there, which they both have, call it their bosom if you want— the soul lies in the bosom, after all— and Cordelia's beauty is just an aspect of it that I can grasp, Natasha's brilliance is just an aspect of it that I can grasp.

Finally there is Mary, the one who loves me. She has moments of beauty, when the light strikes her just so, or when my mood matches that of the temperament of her look. She glides from pristine to frumpled and back again through the course of a day, and at least once or twice I know that I will find her quite beautiful. Oftener I do not, but I am patient, and know it will come. However, whenever I reflect on her vision, it is usually not on when she is most beautiful, or most unbeautiful, but when she is at her most plain.

And for the most part, she is not what one would call intelligent, though she has her moments. I try to speak with her about books and life and truth, but she usually doesn't understand what I am talking about— though she is too stubborn to ever admit that, even to herself— and she is capable of the most confusing non-sequiturs that a mind could create, and without even the help of a segue. I suppose she thinks she is being intelligent when she does this, for she believes she is quite smart, but it is really the most frustrating thing to experience, and I find myself shutting my brain down when we speak.

But she loves me, she really loves me. When we are together she puts her head on my shoulders, or lays her head on my chest. She wraps her arms around me and warms her self on the heat from my body. When we are together and occasion puts my hand into contact with her body somewhere— her arm, her waist, the back of her neck— she sighs a peaceful, contended sigh, a sigh that belies deep satisfaction, a sigh that makes me feel like I am the most important man in the world.

I do not love her, however. I am in love with her, yes, but I do not love her. People get it backwards sometimes, they say I love you but I am not in love with you, but that is not correct. I think it is something jerk men say to waylay their guilt for thinking of another. They want to give the cake without the icing— the icing is just sugar, they would say, whereas the cake has all the ingredients in it, all the effort, it is the base, the icing is nothing without the cake. But I say that is backwards. I say you can be in love with anyone, for any reason, and it can be a deep and wonderful love that you are in, but love itself, true love, that verb love and not the object-of-the-preposition love, that love is unconditional. That love ignore that she is not so pasionate, not so pretty, or not so giving. That love ignores even that she is beautiful, is smart, is giving, it doesn't care, it is one hundred percent focused on the deep truth of itself. It negates the lover, renders him inexistent, the whole world, inexistent, and all that exist is the object of the love: she.

And there you have my problem. Which one to love? Even when I choose, I will still be in love with the others. But it is frustrating for me to not love. I want to lose myself, to no longer be, to escape the bad genes which my father left for me, and just love someone. And since loves allows it, love anyone. But only one. Which one? Cordelia, Natasha, or Mary? Or should I love myself?