24 ... Gabriel Morrisready to say hello. He was watching me with fixed attention, as if
he’d been sitting there on that couch all evening, just waiting for me
to walk through the door. I pretended not to notice his fixed gaze as
I walked across the kitchen, making a comment about the cold or
some trivial thing as I approached him.
The couch he was sitting on was right next to a swinging door
that led out of the kitchen and into the large living room. He con-
tinued staring silently at me, boring his eyes into my soul, making
me increasingly self-conscious as I neared him and the door out of
the kitchen. I was trying my best to ignore the fact that something
strange was going on here. Just as my hand touched the door and I
was about to leave the room, he spoke. His voice was almost aggres-
sive, like a drunk stepping directly in front of you as you walk down
the sidewalk.
“What is your quest?” he asked, as if he were shouting from be-
yond the clouds.
I stopped and turned my head, my hand still on the door, facing
him as he sat at the far end of the couch.
“Excuse me?” I said, pretending I hadn’t understood him, hoping
he had actually said something else—commenting on the dust, or
that I needed some rest, perhaps? But how could I have not under-
stood him, when he was asking me the very question I’d been asking
myself for so long?
“What is your quest, Gabriel?” he said again with deep conviction,
catching my eyes with his, reeling me in. Part of me was still trying
not to acknowledge him, to persuade myself to continue on my way,
and pretend that I hadn’t heard his cumbersome question to begin
with.
But of course, I couldn’t. I was suddenly faced with a primal con-
flict between two opposing aspects of my being. There was a mo-
ment of timelessness in which normal reality crumbled around me,
and something previously buried away became tenderly and pain-
fully exposed. I was up against a question deep inside myself that I
could no longer avoid: do I continue hiding inside my private, familiar