“No, I’m crazy, all right,” I said with a grim little chuckle. “But at least I’m not crazy with a capital K.”
Sitting next to me on the platform, she said, “You’re not crazy at all, Hitch.”
“There’s an Air Force shrink who might disagree with you.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“No, I spent some time in the hospital after I got back from Hanoi, and it wasn’t just my body that was messed up. I was kind of a basket case.” Tap tap tap tap tap.
“But you seem so normal. Almost too normal. Even now, I’d never know you were tripping your teeth out.”
“You should have seen me a few minutes ago. I think it’s you being here, saying all the right things. I do have my demons, just like Bernie said, but most of the time, I can keep them under lock and key and act like nothing is wrong.”
“We all have those demons. We’re all putting on an act of one sort or another.”
She stroked my back, and I remembered that day in eighth grade when she came home early from school with cramps from her period; it was her memory, not mine, but I remembered it all the same. She went up to her room, and as she was passing by her parents’ bedroom door, she saw him hanging there, her dad, the one person in the world who really loved and understood her . . . She saw his twisted neck, his blackened face. Her head hit the floor, and that was the last thing she could recall for some time.
She said, “I think you really are an old soul, Hitch. I think that’s why you’re getting it together like this. It’s because you have a deep well of wisdom to draw upon.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek.
I took her face in my hands and kissed her on the mouth, a long, deep kiss, thinking a woman’s lips had never felt like this, so amazingly hot and soft, but of course I was tripping, but still . . .
A feeling uncoiled in my groin, a heaviness, a heat . . .
I kissed her harder, my heart hammering, thinking This isn’t possible. But it was happening. I was getting hard. Was it the acid making it happen? Would it still be possible when the drug wore off?
It didn’t matter. Permanent or temporary, it was a miracle as far as I was concerned.
I unlaced the front of Madeleine’s dress and caressed her breasts. She unzipped me, freed my cock—a full-on, ironclad hard-on, my first in over three years.
I laughed through my groan of ecstasy as she stroked me.
“What’s so funny?” she asked as she reached under her dress to pull her panties off.
“Nothing, I’m just . . . I don’t know. Happy.”
“Well, let’s make you even happier.”
She straddled my lap and positioned herself.
“Go slow,” I said, gripping her hips. “I want to feel everything.”
The thrill of penetration was even more acute than when I lost my virginity, not just because of my altered state, but because of my gratitude at being able to experience this again. As a horny nineteen-year-old, I’d assumed I would have a lifetime of sex ahead of me.
I savored every bit of it—her gasping breaths, her slippery heat. The sensation as she rode me, my cock sliding in and out of her, was heart-stopping. It was as if every nerve in my body were clustered in that one organ, quivering faster and faster as our thrusts grew sharp and frantic . . .
She came right before I did, her internal spasms igniting my own orgasm. I went off like a payload of cluster bombs, yelling till I was hoarse.
As we were holding each other, letting our hearts and lungs resume their normal rhythm, me still inside her, she said, “Oh, my God, we didn’t use anything. I never do that.”
“Lost in the moment,” I said, but she looked sincerely anxious, and little wonder. Slipups like this impacted the woman a hell of a lot more than the man. Turning her chin so that she was looking me in the eye, I said, “I actually still believe in doing the right thing. If anything happens, it’s your call. If you decide to have the baby, you’ll have my support, my money, whatever you need. You’ll have a wedding ring, too, if you want it—promise.”
“Wow, you really are Mr. Honor and Duty. Good thing you don’t have a girlfriend.”
I pictured Lucinda in my mind, hoping to God I didn’t have to follow through on that promise.
“Oh, my God,” she said, fixing me with a keen gaze. “You do have a girlfriend.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. How about Yeah, if she’ll take me back after I tried my damnedest to burn her off?
She kissed me. “You’re a good man, Hitch. There aren’t too many of them left out there.”
As we were tidying ourselves up, I said, “Listen, um, one thing. Don’t tell Emmett about this, okay?”
“Why would I tell him?” she asked as she shimmied into her panties.
“I mean, I don’t want him to find out. You know he’s got a thing for you, right?”
“Yeah, I kind of guessed that. He’s sweet.”
Sweet. Emmett, you poor bastard.
I said, “He’s crazy about you. I mean, head over heels. I need you to promise, Madeleine. I mean, really promise that you’ll never let it slip.”
I held out my hand.
She looked at it as if she’d never been offered a handshake before, and maybe she hadn’t. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing her crowd would be into.
She took my hand and met my gaze squarely. “I promise.”
Who did we encounter as we ducked out of the cave but Bernie and his minions standing right in front of us, passing a joint around, with everybody else still lazing around in bacchanalian euphoria.
Madeleine and I must not have tidied up as well as we’d thought, because he took one look at us and said, “Spreading them for the baby killer now, Maddy? I guess drippy little snatches like yours can’t afford to be too particular.”
I walked up to Bernie with my hand fisted, and slammed it into his face. His posse watched like a trio of baby birds as he hit the ground in front of them. He lay still for a second, and then he stirred, a whiny little whimper issuing from his bloodied nose.
I looked at his friends.
They stepped back in unison, as if they’d rehearsed the move.
Most everybody else in the bathhouse stood up and applauded. Some actually offered me a sharp salute.
“You see?” Madeleine said. “I told you he has no idea what grown-up men are about. He didn’t see that coming.”
“I knew that when I did it. I guess I should feel bad about that.” I smiled at her. “But I don’t.”
It was past midnight before Emmett’s car pulled up in front of the château. The library had a sort of terrace that looked out onto the front drive, so I sat there while I waited for him to return. The effects of the drug were much diminished, which I wouldn’t have expected so soon from what Madeleine had told me, but I wasn’t questioning it.
To tell Emmett, or not to tell him, that was the question I pondered as I sat there, smoking and thinking. Having secured Madeleine’s promise of silence gave me the option to go either way. I didn’t like to lie, and I most definitely didn’t like to lie to a close friend who’d taken me under his wing and kept me from becoming a gibbering lunatic these past two years.
But telling him . . . I rehearsed it in my mind. Emmett, I’ve got something to tell you. You know the girl you’re wild for, the one you can’t stop talking about? The one you just told me yesterday you’ve fallen in love with? Well, funny thing . . .
It would be like sticking a knife in his chest and twisting it, not something you wanted to do to a friend.
Of course, I could simply not bring it up, but that was tantamount to lying. It’d be like that time when I was a kid and my bully of an older cousin wanted night crawlers to fish with. He’s turning over stones in my yard and not having any luck at all, and I could have rolled aside that fallen log over by the back fence and shown him about a million of them. But I didn’t.
Emmett looked weary when he got out of his car and handed t
he keys to the guard, his T-shirt rumpled, jeans grimy—an unusual state of affairs for the crisply pleated flight lieutenant. I waved to him, and in a few minutes, he joined me on the terrace carrying a bottle of cognac and two snifters.
“Cheers.” We clinked glasses. The cognac was warm and nutty and felt pleasantly hot sliding down my throat.
“Sorry to have abandoned you,” he said. “I had no idea it would take so long to get the electricity sorted out over there. I had to call in these people, but they made a complete hash of it, so I called this other guy who didn’t even show up. I don’t want to talk about it any more than you want to hear it. So, how did you fare among the lotus-eaters?”
“I knocked Bernie Pease unconscious.”
“Who?” Emmett asked as he lit a Dunhill.
“Starbuck.”
“Well done.” He raised his glass.
“With any luck, I broke his nose and it’ll heal ugly.”
“Anything else happen while I was gone?” he asked. “Not to come off like some pathetic, lovesick prat, but did Madeleine ask about me?”
I took a long swallow of cognac, and then another one, staring out into the night.
“Well, did she or—”
“No.”I shook my head, still not looking at him. “ ’Fraid not. Sorry, pal.” It was the truth.
If you didn’t look under the log.
August of This Year
WHERE THE HECK is he?” demanded Isabel, her veil wrapped around her left arm while the other cradled a trailing bouquet of Auvergnat wildflowers. “What time is it? Shouldn’t he be here by now?”
Her father held his watch close to his face, squinting. The gatehouse, from which they were to enter the courtyard when the processional began, was unlit, and the last of the twilight was rapidly waning; night fell fast in Grotte Cachée Valley.
“Perhaps there was traffic,” Emmett said.
“Traffic? There’s no freakin’ traffic in Auvergne.” She heard the shrillness in her voice, but at this point, she was beyond trying to come off as the cool and collected bride. “Where could he be?”
Pulling a cell phone from inside his elegantly tailored tuxedo coat, Emmett said, “I’ll see if I can get a signal. These blasted mountains. Meanwhile, do calm down, my dear. They’re relaxed,” he said, nodding toward the courtyard, “and they’ve been waiting as long as you have.”
“Yeah, but it’s not their show.”
While her father punched out the number, Isabel went to lurk in the shadows of the gatehouse’s interior entrance, where she had a view of the castle courtyard. Even wrought up as she was, she had to smile at the effect of two dozen cherry trees twinkling with innumerable tiny white lights. It was breathtaking, a resplendent fairyland with the perfect background music—cool jazz, of course. Inigo, who had eagerly volunteered to be “Tunemeister,” stood at a rented professional DJ table spinning the LPs that she and Adrien had chosen for the prewedding cocktail party and the ceremony itself—mostly jazz, with some jazzy rock and reggae thrown in to mix things up a little. Two gorgeous young things were hanging all over the hunky satyr, whose interpretation of black tie included a vintage knee-length frock coat and top hat, both of which he’d owned for over a century.
At the far end of the courtyard, in front of the imposing entrance to the great hall—even now being readied for the dinner reception—stood an arch fashioned of thousands of white roses lit from within. Facing it were white-draped chairs arranged in rows beneath the trees, most of them occupied by guests who did appear, as her father had said, to be taking the delay in stride.
Not all chose to wait in their seats, though. Some strolled about the courtyard enjoying their drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and there were quite a few clustered around the arch. Among the latter was the youngish mayor of a nearby medieval village, a longtime friend of Adrien’s who’d been recruited to officiate. Elic, who was to serve as best man—and who looked even more godlike than usual all tuxed up—stood hand in hand with Lili, wearing a lubushu of gold-shot midnight blue silk and earrings that probably should have been sitting in a museum case somewhere. Even Darius was there, in his human form no less, standing somewhat apart from the rest to avoid being touched.
There were a handful of American friends and relatives, including Katie Hitchens, Isabel’s de facto sister and maid of honor, and her fiancé. The most striking among them, given her coppery hair and her height—unnecessarily boosted with a pair of crystal-studded Blahnik stilettos—was Isabel’s mother.
Madeleine Lamb Tilney took a sip of her martini—“ice-cold Cîesrroc in a pre-chilled glass with a drop of Lillet and four capers, please”—as she turned to look toward the gatehouse with a frown, proving that not all the guests were as blasé about the delay as Emmett would have it. She saw Isabel and made a what’s-the-holdup face.
Isabel gave an exasperated shrug.
Her expression morphing into one of maternal concern, Madeleine snatched another martini off the tray of a passing waiter—anybody’s guess who it had been intended for—and started up the courtyard’s central aisle toward the gatehouse. She paused for a moment at the aisle seat occupied by her husband, leaning over to whisper something to him as she gestured toward Isabel.
He turned and looked in Isabel’s direction, giving her a reassuring thumbs-up, which she acknowledged with a blown kiss. Doug Tilney was one of those men you would never recognize from his youthful photographs, like those in his old modeling portfolio, which held a place of honor on the living room coffee table of their Trump Tower duplex. The bitchin’ bod that had once captivated the heart, or at least the hormones, of his socialite wife had been transmuted by steady exposure to Sardi’s, Le Cirque, and gravity into its fat-suit doppelgänger. Too many San Tropez suntans had wreaked their dermatological havoc, and the hair was history. Doug was a great guy, and he treated Madeleine like a queen—as if she would have it any other way—but his sexual appeal had long since gone from pretty-boy to power-as-an-aphrodisiac.
Heads turned as Madeleine continued up the aisle toward Isabel, the skirt of her Naoki Takizawa evening dress billowing with each long stride, her gait so fluid that neither martini was at risk of losing a drop. When forced to reveal her age, Madeleine routinely subtracted a decade. Nevertheless, people had been known to say, “You’re forty-six? You don’t look a day over forty,” to which she invariably replied, “Healthy living.” Karen Hitchens’s youthful appearance was from healthy living. Madeleine Tilney’s owed more to a healthy bank account, which paid for the personal trainers, the posh spas and salons, and the occasional judicious nip or tuck.
Not that Isabel begrudged her mother these indulgences. For every dollar she spent “in the shop,” as she put it, she spent hundreds, maybe thousands, on her charities. And, too, she’d been as good a mom as one could hope for. Aside from the occasional mother-daughter contretemps during her adolescence, usually over Madeleine’s so embarrassing Tarot cards and crystal balls, they had enjoyed a relationship that was the envy of Isabel’s friends.
That closeness was what had inspired Isabel to accept her mother’s offer of her own wedding gown, a 1972 empirewaisted Christos confection of satin, Belgian lace, and seed pearls with dramatic Camelot sleeves. The only alteration it had required was five inches off the hem.
Madeleine thrust the purloined martini at Isabel as she entered the gatehouse. “The standard dose for a jittery bride is one of these half an hour before the ceremony, and another for every half hour it’s delayed.”
“And what’s the standard dose for the bride’s fetus?” Isabel asked.
“Oh!” She almost did spill it then, yanking it back. “God, that’s right.”
“I’ll take it.” Emmett plucked the glass from his ex-wife’s hand as he flipped the phone shut, slipping it back into his jacket.
With Adrien’s help, Isabel had gotten to where she could make out the occasional aura, if the emotion or condition that generated it was strong enough. Her mother’s aura, especi
ally visible in these dark surroundings, had been its usual sapphire when she joined them. Now, as she turned her attention to the husband she’d cut loose a little over two decades ago, it turned reddish with orange tips, like a low flame—a sure sign of intense attraction.
And why not? You didn’t have to have an Electra complex to see that Dad was looking pretty babe-a-licious of late. Following what the doctors called his “rétablissement miraculeux” two months ago, he’d resumed his former life as if he’d never been sidelined by a presumably terminal illness, up to and including his daily runs and workouts. The only change was his hair, which had turned a gleaming silver that, ironically enough, made him look even more aristocratically handsome than before.
Raising his glass, Emmett said, “To our beautiful daughter.”
Madeleine held his gaze as she touched her glass to his, her eyes awfully shiny all of a sudden. Isabel was pretty sure it was because of how “saintly” Emmett had been—that was how her mother had put it—when it all came out about her tricking him into marrying her to legitimize his best friend’s baby.
“He could have raked me over the coals,” she’d told Isabel, “and I would have deserved it, but he didn’t. He actually thanked me for what I did, because if I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have had you.” And then she had sobbed so long and so hard that her face was red and swollen for two days.
“So, did you get through to him?” Isabel asked her father.
“I did. Bloody good martini,” he said, taking another sip. For some reason, he had taken to swearing a bit more than before his illness, while Isabel had scrubbed her mouth pretty much squeaky clean.
“So, where is he?” Madeleine asked.
“Less than a minute away.”
“Oh, thank God,” Isabel said.
Emmett said, “Not only was there that six-hour flight delay, but the alternator on the rental car gave out around the same time as their phone reception. They just turned onto the drive, though, and he got dressed in the car on the way, so there shouldn’t be any further delays once he gets here. Maddie, if you could ask everyone to take their places . . . Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind telling Inigo that I’ll be cueing the processional in about five minutes . . . It’s a hand signal. He knows what to look for.”
Whispers of the Flesh Page 27
