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THE MAYFAIR WITCHES 16 page

They made a right turn, west, he figured, into a dark wooded street that climbed a hill and then descended. Flash of the great clear dark sky again, full of distant uninteresting stars, and across the black midnight bay, the great lovely spectacle of Sausalito tumbling down the hills to its crowded little harbor. She didn’t have to tell him they were almost there.

“Let me ask you something, Dr. Mayfair.”

“Yes?”

“Are you … are you afraid of hurting me?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I just got the strangest idea, that you were trying … just now when I held your hand … you were trying to throw me a warning.”

She didn’t answer. He knew he’d shaken her with the statement.

They drove down and onto the shoreline street. Small lawns, pitched roofs barely visible above high fences, Monterey cypress trees cruelly twisted by the relentless western winds. An enclave of millionaire dwellings. He almost never saw such wonderful modern houses.

He could smell the water even more keenly than he had on the Golden Gate.

She pulled into a paved drive, and killed the motor. The lights flooded a great double redwood gate. Then went out. Of the house beyond, he could see nothing but darkness against a paler sky.

“I want something from you,” she said. She sat there quietly staring forward. Her hair swung down to veil her profile as she bowed her head.

“Well, I owe you one,” he answered without hesitation. He took another deep foamy drink of the beer. “What do you want?” he asked. “That I go in there and I lay my hands on the kitchen floor and tell you what happened when he died, what actually killed him?”

Another jolt. Silence in the dark cockpit of the car. He found himself sharply aware of her nearness, of the sweet clean fragrance of her skin. She turned to face him. The street lamp threw its light in yellow patches through the branches of the tree. First he thought her eyes were lowered, almost closed. Then he realized they were open and looking at him.

“Yes, that’s what I want,” she said. “That is the sort of thing I want.”

“That’s fine,” he answered. “Bad luck for it to happen during an argument like that. You must have blamed yourself.”

Her knee grazed his. Chills again.

“What makes you think so?”

“You can’t bear the thought of hurting anyone,” he said.

“That’s naive.”

“I may be crazy, Doctor”—he laughed—“but naive I ain’t. The Currys never raised any naive children.” He drank the rest of the can of beer in a long swallow. He found himself staring at the pale line of the light on her chin, her soft curling hair. Her lower lip looked full and soft and delicious to kiss …

“Then it’s something else,” she said. “Call it innocence if you like.”

He scoffed at that without answering. If only she knew what was in his mind just now as he looked at her mouth, her sweet full mouth.

“And the answer to that question is yes,” she said. She got out of the car.

He opened the door and stood up. “What the hell question is that?” he asked. He blushed.

She pulled his suitcase out of the back. “Oh, you know,” she said.



“I do not!”

She shrugged as she started towards the gate. “You wanted to know if I would go to bed with you. The answer’s yes, as I just told you.”

He caught up with her as she went through the gate. A broad cement path led to the black teakwood double doors.

“Well, I wonder why the hell we even bother to talk,” he said. He took the suitcase from her as she fumbled for the key.

She looked a little confused again. She gestured for him to go inside. As she took the sack of beer from him, he scarcely noticed.

The house was infinitely more beautiful than he had imagined. Countless old houses he’d known and explored. But this sort of house, this carefully crafted modern masterpiece, was something unfamiliar to him.

What he saw now was a great expanse of broad plank floor, flowing from dining room to living room to game room without division. Glass walls opened on a broad apron of wooden decking to the south and to the west and to the north, a deep roofless porch softly illuminated from above by an occasional dim floodlamp. Beyond, the bay was simply black and invisible. And the small twinkling lights of Sausalito to the west were delicate and intimate compared to the distant splendid southern view of the crowded and violently colored skyline of San Francisco.

The fog was only a thin slash of mist now against the brilliance of the night, thinning and vanishing even as he gazed at it.

He might have looked at the view forever, but the house struck him as similarly miraculous. Letting out a long sigh, he ran his hand along the tongue and groove wall, admiring the same fine inlay of the lofty ceiling beyond its heavy beams which rose steeply to a central point. All wood, beautifully grained wood, pegged and fitted and polished and preserved exquisitely. Wood framed the massive glass doors. Wood furnishings stood here and there, with dim flashes of glass or leather, chair and table legs reflected in the sheen of the floor.

In the eastern corner of the house stood the kitchen he had seen in the early flashing vision—a large alcove of dark wooden cabinets and countertops, and shining copper pots strung from overhead hooks. A kitchen to be looked at as well as worked in. Only a deep stone fireplace, with a high broad hearth—the kind of hearth you could sit on—separated this kitchen from the other rooms.

“I didn’t think you’d like it,” she said.

“Oh, but it’s wonderful.” He sighed. “It’s made like a ship. I’ve never seen a new house so finely made.”

“Can you feel it moving? It’s made to move, with the water.”

He walked slowly across the thick carpet of the living room. And only then saw a curving iron stairs behind the fireplace. A soft amber light fell from an open doorway above. He thought of bedrooms at once, of rooms as open as these, of lying in the dark with her and the glimmer of city lights. His face grew hot again.

He glanced at her. Had she caught this thought, the way she claimed to have caught his earlier question? Hell, any woman could have picked up on that.

She stood in the kitchen before an open refrigerator door, and for the first time in the clear white light he really saw her face. Her skin had almost an Asian smoothness, only it was too purely blond to be Asian. The skin was so tight that it made two dimples in her cheeks now when she smiled at him.

He moved towards her, keenly aware of her physical presence again, of the way the light was glancing off her hands, and the glamorous way her hair moved. When women wear their hair that way, so full and short, just sweeping the collar as it sways, it becomes a vital part of every gesture, he figured. You think of them and you think of their pretty hair.

But as she shut the refrigerator door, as the clear white light went out, he realized that through the northern glass wall of the house, far to his left and very near the front door, he could see a mammoth white cabin cruiser at anchor. A weak floodlamp illuminated its immense prow, its numerous portholes, and the dark windows of its wheelhouse.

It seemed monstrously large, an altogether impossible thing—like a whale beached on the site—grotesquely close to the soft furnishings and scattered rugs that surrounded him. A near panic rose in him. A curious dread, as though he had known a terror on the night of his rescue that was part of what he’d forgotten.

Nothing to do but go to it. Nothing to do but lay his hands on the deck. He found himself moving towards the glass doors; then he stopped, confused, and watched as she pulled backed the latch and slid the heavy glass door open.

A gust of cold salty wind struck him. He heard the creaking of the huge boat; and the weak lunar light of the flood seemed grim and distinctly unpleasant to him. Seaworthy, they had said. He could believe it when he looked at this craft. Explorers had crossed the oceans of the world in boats much smaller than that. Again, it appeared grotesque to him, frighteningly out of scale.

He stepped out on the pier, his collar blowing against his cheek, and moved towards the edge. The water was perfectly black down below, and he could smell it, smell the dank odor of inevitable dead things of the sea.

Far across the bay he could just glimpse the Sausalito lights, but the penetrating cold came between him and anything picturesque just now, and he realized that all he so hated in this western clime was coalesced in this moment. Never the rugged winter, nor the burning summer; only this eternal chill, this eternal inhospitable harshness.

He was so glad that he would soon be home, so glad that the August heat would be there waiting for him, like a warm blanket. Garden District streets, trees swaying in a warm and inoffensive wind—

But this was the boat, and this was the moment. Now to get on this thing with its portholes and its slippery-looking decks, rocking gently now against the black rubber tires nailed to the long side of the pier. He didn’t like it very much, that was for certain. And he was damned glad he had on his gloves.

His life on boats had been limited exclusively to large ones—old river ferries in his boyhood, and the big powerful tourist cruisers that carried hundreds back and forth across San Francisco Bay. When he looked at a boat like this all he thought about was the possibility of falling off.

He moved down the side of the thing until he had reached the back, behind the big hulking wheelhouse, and then he grabbed hold of the railing, leapt up on the side—startled for an instant by the fact that the boat dipped under his weight—and swung himself over as fast as possible onto the back deck.

She came right behind him.

He hated this, the ground moving under him! Christ, how could people stand boats! But the craft seemed stable enough now. The rails around him were high enough to give a feeling of safety. There was even a little shelter from the wind.

He peered for a moment through the glass door of the wheelhouse. Glimmer of dials, gadgets. Might as well have been the cockpit of a jet plane. Maybe a stairs in there to the cabins below deck.

Well, that was of no concern to him. It was the deck itself that mattered, for he had been out here when he was rescued.

The wind off the water was a roar in his ears. He turned and looked at her. Her face was perfectly dark against the distant lights. She took her hand out of the pocket of her coat and pointed to the boards right before her.

“Right here,” she said.

“When I opened my eyes? When I breathed for the first time?”

She nodded.

He knelt down. The movement of the boat felt slow now and subtle, the only sound a faint creaking that seemed to come from no specific place. He took off his gloves, stuffed them into his pockets, and flexed his hands.

Then he laid them on the boards. Cold; wet. The flash came as always out of nowhere, severing him from the now. But it wasn’t his rescue he saw, only bits and snatches of other people in the very midst of conversation and movement, Dr. Mayfair, then the hated dead man again, and with them a pretty older woman, much loved, a woman named Ellie—but this layer gave way to another, and another, and the voices were noise.

He fell forward on his knees. He was getting dizzy, but he refused to stop touching the boards. He was groping like a blind man. “For Michael,” he said. “For Michael!”

And suddenly his anger over all the misery of the long wasted summer rose in him. “For Michael!” he said, while inwardly he pushed the power, he demanded that it sharpen and focus and reach for the images he wanted.

“God, give me the moment when I first breathed,” he whispered. But it was like shuffling through volumes to find one simple line. Graham, Ellie, voices rising and crashing against each other. He refused to find words in his head for what he saw; he rejected it. “Give me the moment.” He lay out flat with the roughened deck under his cheek.

Quite suddenly the moment seemed to burst around him, as if the wood beneath him had caught flame. Colder than this, a more violent wind. The boat was tossing. She was bending over him; and he saw himself lying there, a dead man with a white wet face; she was pounding on his chest. “Wake up, damn you, wake up!”

His eyes opened. Yes, what I saw, her, Rowan, yes. I’m alive, I’m here! Rowan, many things … The pain in his chest had been unbearable. He could not even feel life in his hands and legs. Was that his hand, going up, grabbing her hand?

Must explain, the whole thing before

Before what? He tried to cling to it, go deeper into it. Before what? But there was nothing there but her pale oval face the way he’d seen it that night, hair squashed beneath the watch cap.

Suddenly, in the now, he was pounding his fist on the deck.

“Give me your hand,” he shouted.

She knelt down beside him. “Think, think of what happened at that moment when I first breathed.”

But he knew already that was no good. He only saw what she saw. Himself, a dead man coming to life. A dead wet thing tossing on the deck under the blows she repeatedly applied to his chest, and then the silver slit between his lids as he opened his eyes.

For a long time he lay still, his breath coming unevenly. He knew he was miserably cold again, though nothing as cold as that terrible night, and that she was standing there, patiently waiting. He would have cried, but he was just too tired for that, too defeated. It was as if the images slammed him around when they came. He wanted just stillness. His hands were rolled into fists. He wasn’t moving.

But there was something there, something he’d discovered, some little thing he hadn’t known. It was about her, that in those first few seconds he’d known who she was, he’d known about her. He’d known her name was Rowan.

But how could such a conclusion be trusted? God, his soul ached from the effort. He lay defeated, angry, feeling foolish and yet belligerent. He would have cried maybe if she hadn’t been there.

“Try it again,” she said now.

“It’s no good, it’s another language. I don’t know how to use it.”

“Try,” she said.

And he did. But he got nothing this time but the others. Flashes of sunny days, rushes of Ellie and then Graham, and others, lots of others, rays of light that would have taken him in this direction or that, the wheelhouse door banging in the wind, a tall man coming up from below, no shirt on, and Rowan. Yes, Rowan, Rowan, Rowan, Rowan there with every figure he had seen, always Rowan, and sometimes a happy Rowan. Nobody had ever been on this boat that Rowan wasn’t there, too.

He rose to his knees, more confused by the second effort than the first. The knowledge of having known her on that night was only an illusion, a thin layer of her profound impression on this boat, merely mingling with the other layers through which he’d reached. Knew her maybe because he held her hand, knew her maybe because before he’d been brought back he’d known how it would be done. He would never know for sure.

But the point was he didn’t know her now, and he still couldn’t remember! And she was just a very patient and understanding woman, and he ought to thank her and go.

He sat up. “Damn it all,” he whispered. He pulled on his gloves. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose and then he pulled his collar up against the wind, but what good did that do with a khaki jacket?

“Come on inside,” she said. She took his hand as if he were a little child. It was surprising to him how much he appreciated it. Once they were over the side of the damned wobbly slippery boat and he stood on the pier, he felt better.

“Thanks, Doctor,” he said. “It was worth a try, and you let me try, and for that, I can’t say thanks enough.”

She slipped her arm around him. Her face was very close to his face. “Maybe it will work another time.” Sense of knowing her, that below deck was a little cabin in which she often slept with his picture pasted to the mirror. Was he blushing again?

“Come inside,” she said again, tugging him along.

The shelter of the house felt good. But he was too sad and tired now to think much about it. He wanted to rest. But he didn’t dare. Have to get to the airport, he thought, have to gather up the suitcase and get out there, then sleep in a plastic chair. This had been one road to discovery and now it was cut, and so he was going to take the other road as fast as he could.

Glancing back at the boat, he thought that he wanted to tell them again that he hadn’t discarded the purpose, it was just that he couldn’t remember. He didn’t even know if the doorway was a literal doorway. And the number, there had been a number, hadn’t there? A very significant number. He leaned against the glass door, pressed his head to the glass.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered.

“No, I don’t want to go either,” he said, “but I have to. You see, they really do expect something of me. And they told me what it was, and I have to do what I can, and I know that going back is part of it.”

Silence.

“It was good of you to bring me here.”

Silence.

“Maybe … ”

“Maybe what?” He turned around.

She stood with her back to the lights again. She’d taken off her coat, and she looked angular and graceful in the huge cable-knit sweater, and all long legs, magnificent cheekbones, and fine narrow wrists.

“Could it be that you were supposed to forget?” she asked. That had never occurred to him. For a moment, he didn’t answer.

“Do you believe me about the visions?” he asked. “I mean, did you read what they said in the papers? It was true, that part. I mean the papers made me sound stupid, crazy. But the point is there was so much to it, so much, and … ”

He wished he could see her face just a little better.

“I believe you,” she said simply. She paused, then went on. “It’s always frightening, a close call, a seeming chance thing that makes a large impact. We like to believe it was meant … ”

“It was meant!”

“I was going to say that in this case the call was very close, because it was almost dark when I saw you out there. Five minutes later I might not have seen you at all, couldn’t possibly have seen you.”

“You’re casting around for explanations, and that’s very gracious of you, I really appreciate it, I do. But you see, what I do remember, the impression I mean, it’s so strong that nothing like that is necessary to explain it. They were there, Dr. Mayfair. And … ”

“What is it?”

He shook his head. “Just one of those frissons, those crazy moments when it’s as if I do remember, but then it’s gone. I got it out there on the deck, too. The knowledge that, yes, when I opened my eyes I did know what had happened … and then it was gone … ”

“The word you spoke, the murmur … ”

“I didn’t catch it. I didn’t see myself speak a word. But I’ll tell you something. I think I knew your name out there. I knew who you were.”

Silence.

“But I’m not sure.” He turned around, bewildered. What was he doing? Where was his suitcase, and he really did have to go, only he was so tired, and he didn’t want to.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said again.

“You mean it? I could stay for a while?” He looked at her, at the dark shadow of her long lean figure against the distant faintly illuminated glass. “Oh, I wish I’d met you before this,” he said. “I wish I … I like … I mean, it’s so stupid, but you’re very … ”

He moved forward, the better to see her. Her eyes became visible, seeming very large and long for deep-set eyes, and her mouth so generous and soft. But a strange illusion occurred as he drew closer. Her face in the soft glow from beyond the walls appeared perfectly menacing and malicious. Surely it was a mistake. He wasn’t making out any true expression. The figure facing him seemed to have lowered her head, to be peering up at him from beneath the fringe of her straight blond hair, in an attitude of consummate hatred.

He stopped. It had to be a mistake. Yet she stood there, quite still, either unaware of the dread he felt now, or uncaring.

Then she started towards him, moving into the dim light from the northern doorway.

How pretty and sad she looked! How could he have ever made such an error? She was about to cry. In fact, it was simply awful to see the sadness in her face, to see the sudden silent hunger and spill of emotion.

“What is it?” he whispered. He opened his arms. And at once, she pressed herself gently against him. Her breasts were large and soft against his chest. He hugged her close, enfolding her, and ran his gloved fingers up through her hair. “What is it?” he whispered again, but it wasn’t really a question. It was more a little reassuring caress of words. He could feel her heart beating, her breath catching. He himself was shaking. The protective feeling aroused in him was hot, alchemizing quickly into passion.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.” And now she was silently crying. She looked up, and then opening her mouth, she moved very gently into kissing him. It was as if she didn’t want to do it against his will; she gave him all the time in the world to draw back. And of course he hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so.

He was engulfed at once as he’d been in the car when he touched her hand, but this time it was her soft, voluptuous, and all too solid flesh that embraced him. He kissed her over and over, feeding on her neck, her cheeks, her eyes. With his gloved fingers he stroked her cheek, felt her smooth skin beneath the heavy woolen sweater. God, if only he could take off the gloves, but if he took off the gloves, he’d be lost, and all passion would evaporate in that confusion. He was desperate to cling to this, desperate; and she already mistakenly believed, she was already foolishly afraid …

“Yes, yes, I do,” he said, “how could you think I didn’t want to, that I wouldn’t … how could you believe that? Hold me, Rowan, hold me tighter. I’m here now. I’m with you, yes.”

Crying, she collapsed in his arms. Her hand ripped at his belt, at the zipper of his pants, but these were clumsy, unsuccessful gestures. A soft cry came out of her. Pure pain. He couldn’t endure it.

He kissed her again, kissed her neck as her head fell back. Then he picked her up and gently carried her across the room and up the iron stairs, walking slowly round curve after curve, and then into a large and dark southern bedroom. They tumbled down into the low bed. He kissed her again, smoothing her hair back, loving the feel of her even through the gloves, looking down at her closed eyes, her helpless half-open lips. As he pulled at the sweater, she struggled to help, and finally ripped it over her head, her hair beautifully tousled by it.

When he saw her breasts through the thin covering of nylon, he kissed them through the cloth, deliberately teasing himself, his tongue touching the dark circle of the nipple before he forced the cloth away. What did it feel like, the black leather touching her skin, caressing her nipples? He lifted her breasts, kissing the hot curve of them underneath—he loved this particular juicy crevice—then he sucked the nipples hard, one after the other, rubbing and gathering the flesh feverishly with the palm of his hand.

She was twisting under him, her body moving helplessly it seemed, her lips grazing his unevenly shaven chin, then all soft and sweet over his mouth, her hands slipping into his shirt and feeling his chest as if she loved the flatness of it.

She pinched his nipples as he suckled hers. He was so hard he was going to spill. He stopped, rose on his hands, and tried to catch his breath, then sank down next to her. He knew she was pulling off her jeans. He brought her close, feeling the smooth flesh of her back, then moving down to the curve of her soft clutchable and kneadable little bottom.

No waiting now, he couldn’t. In a rage of impatience he took off his glasses and shoved them on the bedside table. Now she would be a lush soft blur to him, but all the physical details he’d seen were ever present in his mind. He was on top of her. Her hand moved against his crotch, unzipped his pants, and brought out his sex, roughly, slapping it as if to test its hardness—a little gesture that almost brought him over the edge. He felt the prickly curling thatch of pubic hair, the heated inner lips, and finally the tight pulsing sheath itself as he entered.

Maybe he cried out. He didn’t know. She rose on the pillow, her mouth on his mouth, her arms pulling him closer to her, her pelvis clamped against him.

“Ride me hard,” she whispered. It was like the slap—a sharp goad that sent his pent-up fury to the boiling point. Her fragile form, her tender bruisable flesh—it only incited him. No imagined rape he had ever committed in his secret unaccountable dream soul had ever been more brutal.

Her hips slammed against his; and dimly he saw the red flush in her face and naked breasts as she moaned. Driving into her again and again, he saw her arms flung out, limp, just before he closed his eyes and exploded inside her.

Finally, exhausted, they tumbled apart into the soft flannel sheets. Her hot limbs were tangled under his outstretched arm, his face buried in her fragrant hair. She snuggled close. She drew the loose neglected sheet over them both; she turned towards him and nuzzled into his neck.

Let the plane wait, let his purpose wait. Let the pain go and the agitation. In any other time and place, he would have found her irresistible. But now she was more than that, more than succulent, and hot and full of mystery and seemingly perfect fire. She was something divine, and he needed it so it saddened him.

Her tender silky arm slid up around his neck as he gathered her to himself. He could hear her heart beating against him.

Long moments later, swinging perilously close to deep sleep, he sat up with a start, and groggily stripped off his hot clothes. Then he lay naked with her, except for the gloves, his limbs against her limbs, breathing her warmth and hearing her soft drowsy sigh like a kiss, as he fell to dreaming beside her.

“Rowan,” he whispered. Yes, knew all about her, knew her.

They were downstairs. They said, Wake, Michael, come down. They had lighted a great fire in the fireplace. Or was it simply a fire around them, like a forest blazing? He thought he heard the sound of drums. Michael. Faint dream or memory of the Comus parade that long-ago winter night, of the bands beating the fierce, dreadful cadence while the flambeaux flickered on the branches of the oak trees. They were there, downstairs, all he had to do was wake up and go down. But for the first time in all these weeks since they’d left him, he didn’t want to see them, he didn’t want to remember.

He sat up, staring at the pale milky morning sky. He was sweating, and his heart was pounding.

Stillness; too early for the sun. He picked up his glasses and put them on.

There was no one in this house, no drums, no smell of fire. No one at all, except the two of them, but she was no longer in the bed at his side. He could hear the rafters and the pilings singing, but it was only the water making them sing. Then came a deep vibrant sound, more a tremor than a noise at all, and he knew it was the big cruiser rocking in its mooring. That ghastly leviathan saying I am here.

He sat for a moment, staring dully at the Spartan furnishings. All well made of the same beautiful fine grain wood he had seen downstairs. Someone lived here who loved fine wood, who loved things put together perfectly. Everything quite low in this room—the bed, the desk, the scattered chairs. Nothing to interrupt the view from the windows that rose all the way to the ceiling.

But he was smelling a fire. Yes, and when he listened carefully he could hear it. And a robe had been set out for him, a nice thick white terry-cloth robe, just the kind he loved.

He put on the robe and went down the stairs in search of her.

The fire was blazing, on that account he’d been right. But no horde of dream beings hovered around it. She sat alone, legs crossed, on the deep stone hearth, in a robe of her own, her thin limbs almost lost in its folds, and again she was shaking and crying.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry,” she whispered in that deep velvety voice. Her face was streaked and weary.

“Now, honey, why would you say a thing like that?” he asked. He sat beside her, enfolding her in his arms. “Rowan, what in the world are you sorry for?”

In a rush her words came, spilling so fast he could scarcely follow—that she had placed this immense demand upon him, that she had wanted so to be with him, that the last few months had been the worst of her life, and that her loneliness had been almost unbearable.

Again and again he kissed her cheek.

“I like being with you,” he said. “I want to be here. I don’t want be anyplace in the world … ”

He stopped, he thought of the New Orleans plane. Well, that could wait. And awkwardly he tried to explained that he’d been trapped in the house on Liberty Street.


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 508


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