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wives (Rotary Anns) sat around hotel banquet tables and listened to a visiting anthropology professor at the junior college say, “Pick an animal, any animal, fish, fowl, beast. Concentrate on aspects of the animal. Is it big? Small? Cute? Does it eat other animals? What color fur? If the animal is a bird, what color are its feathers? What song does it sing?”
    “This is stupid,” I whispered to Meredith.
    “It’s your fault we’re here. Why don’t you give it a chance?”
    The anthropologist said, “Why don’t we all think about it for a minute? Okay, everybody got one?”
    “Yes,” “No,” “Wait,” people said. Meredith whispered, “What’s yours?”
    “I don’t know, what’s yours?”
    “Coelacanth.”
    “The prehistoric fish?”
    “I need a volunteer,” declared the professor. Meredith raised her hand, and the man at the podium said, “Yes, back there. Tell us your name and the name of the animal you’ve chosen to become today.”
    “Meredith Robinson. Coelacanth. It’s a kind of fish that scientists believed extinct until one was caught off the coast of Africa.”
    “Excellent. Come forward. Sit here. Would someone please dim the lights?” I watched Rotary guys watch my wife. Bill Nixon, Tom Thompson, Abraham de Leon, Dick Morton, Terry Heinemann, Robert Isaac—all the usuals, plus others. Jerry and his wife, Rita, sat up front. The professor soothingly said, “Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and tell us about the coelacanth. Everybody else, let’s all breathe deeply too, and be thinking about our own animals. Go ahead, Meredith.”
    “Well, it’s five feet long, deep slate blue, with bony, protruding fins and big jaws with scary teeth. It goes back seventy million years. It moves slowly, it dwells in dark water.” The professor nodded. Audience members inched forward in their seats. Meredith said, “At night it swims upside down with its head pointed to the sea bottom, bobbing along.”
    “A feeding technique?”
    “Maybe.”
    “How’s the water?” I could see Meredith’s head settle forward as she softly answered, “Cold.”
    “Feel the cold. Breathe that cold. Inhale that water. What do you feel?”
    “Colors.”
    “Colors?”
    “Blue, black, indigo.”
    The anthropologist stepped from the stage and came forward into the crowd gathered around tables set with plates that were littered with discarded skeletons of poached red snapper (the luncheon’s fish course, provided by Jerry and Rita); he collected white small bones from several plates and carried the bones back to the stage area and scattered them in a circle around my wife’s chair. He produced a portable cassette deck and loaded a tape that played hollow drum rhythms. He intoned along with the drums, “There is a circle of sea and you are in it, Coelacanth, bobbing above the ocean floor where the lonely crab rests on rocks where no mollusk grows. Blue squid drift on black tides lit by lanternfish. The solitary shark pays a visit but that doesn’t concern you. You are the last of the ancients. Swim your swim!”
    I watched Meredith’s head and shoulders gently moving. Rita Henderson clutched her husband’s arm. Men I knew and others I didn’t sat still with their wives, all focused on my wife’s feet suddenly dancing like bottom fish above bone-strewn hotel carpet. The visiting professor commanded, “Rise, Coelacanth. Cavort in the blue cold.”
    Meredith did rise. She hopped from foot to foot inside her private bone circle, head hanging, arms shivering, hands with tapering fingers churning air—she was working up a sweat. People in the audience swayed along with the echoing taped drumbeats. Everywhere, heads oscillated and feet tapped. Abraham de Leon was particularly into it: his mouth fell open, his tongue wagged, his body visibly trembled. I couldn’t imagine what kind of animal he was. And Tom Thompson! Unlike Abe, Tom did not tremble so much as quake. He bounced in his chair in a violent manner