Divine Fantasy

by Melanie Jackson

  “Weirder and weirder.”

  I rolled back to the turtles and picked up my camera, trying to recall how to make the zoom lens work.

  I didn’t believe that this stranger was really Ambrose Bierce, I assured myself. Of course not. Nevertheless, he was very plausible and pleasant, and I began to think idly about the commercial possibilities of a supposed biography about Ambrose Bierce in the years after Mexico. They do things like that now. It’s called speculative fiction. Two years ago there was a biography about Santa Claus released by some millionaire who claimed to be an elf, and it had made quite a stir. I’d write under a suitable pen name, of course, so Harold would never know that I had sold out and produced something popular for the masses. Maybe I would begin with Ambrose’s love affair with Amorosa who put condensed milk in her coffee.…

  Woman, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication…. This species is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey…. The popular name (wolf-man) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.

  Spooker, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially the doing of spooks.

  —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  Chapter Two

  Dinner that night was in turns wonderful, lonely and then fascinating. Wonder came at what the chef could do with tuna and chutney, loneliness developed at watching the other couples cuddle and talk in intimate whispers, and fascination began with the man who called himself Ambrose Bierce.

  Sometimes, if a person is sufficiently interesting at first glance, I like to know things about them—even when it’s none of my business. Especially when it’s none of my business. Ambrose was one of these people. My nascent curiosity would not be thwarted.

  Nobody else called him Ambrose. I questioned the staff and one of the guests, a rather vapid if excellently Botoxed creature called Pamela, who had two impressive piles of strategically placed silicone on her chest and a blank look in her eyes. When they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, I don’t think they mean an absence of expression. Of course, she was also wearing expensive cruise couture and seemed happy in a vague way, so I didn’t know if I should feel pity or envy for her. Pamela seemed to be under the impression that his name was Caleb Harris and that he was a multimillionaire property developer who vacationed frequently on the island. He never brought any women along with him, had never made a pass at her, and she thought he might be gay.

  I attempted to subtly question Pamela about Caleb’s other hobbies as she knocked back some pink blended drink, but it didn’t work. My delicately worded questions flew over her head. Or, since this wasn’t a particularly elevated conversation and she had a lot of airspace up there, the observations might have sailed right through. I thought about quizzing her husband—or whatever he was—when he rejoined those gathered for cocktails before dinner, but the man—Greg? Garth? I can’t remember much about him except that he was beef-faced, specifically a medium-rare chateaubriand, which suggested he’d been getting too much sun—seemed intent on nothing except getting his hairy hands inside Pamela’s gold sarong.

  The one other eyesore in the otherwise beautiful setting weighed in at about two hundred and forty pounds and talked all the time, even with his mouth full of prawn cocktail. He wore a sort of poet’s shirt that must have been made of Kevlar and laced with piano wire, as it functioned as a sort of corset. Perhaps he was an opera star. Even braced with this modern marvel of engineering, his growing paunch was evident. I would have forgiven the affectation if I thought he was doing it to please the woman he was with, but I got the feeling that he was more interested in showing off for everyone else. He was also loud. Very loud. He was apparently quite a catch, too, and willing to offer endless anecdotal evidence to support this claim, in case anyone was interested. I had to marvel and even feel a pang of annoyance. Even this boor had a girlfriend who looked at him admiringly. What the hell was wrong with me?

  To add injury to insult, he wore some kind of cologne that crept through the room like a chemical fogger. I prayed that no plants or animals had died to produce such an abominable smell.

  Feeling emotionally apart from this mini Noah’s ark of lovers, I escaped Pamela and then chose a chair at the end of the bar, half hidden by an elephant-sized ficus, and told myself it was a good thing that I had been inoculated with the loneliness antivirus and no longer envied people who weren’t reserved and distrustful—you know, people whose parents and significant others actually wanted them.

  I sipped cautiously at my margarita. It was my concession to paradise-appropriate drinking, but I had it on the rocks and without salt. I had also eschewed the paper umbrella. The ripe lime was refreshing, but I found myself wishing for a whisky. Smoke and ash were better matches for the bitter taste in my mouth.

  The bartender smiled at me and let his eyes flick over my body. This cheered me up. I was pleased with how I looked, even if I was hiding in the shrubbery. As I’d started dressing for the evening I’d suddenly realized that the one thing I really missed since the breakup—and I was fully aware that it wasn’t specific to Max—was getting ready for an evening and picking out something to wear that is attractive. For someone special and not just for myself. I hadn’t dressed for someone else for a long while.

  At the time I was fleeing, I’d questioned the wisdom of packing my one teeny, tiny, backless, strapless black dress with the barest excuse of a rhinestone strap that draped over my right shoulder, but now I was glad that I had. I hadn’t told myself that I was zipping into my favorite cocktail frock for Ambrose, but I was. He might be a bit weird, even a lot weird, but I was pretty sure I liked him and wouldn’t mind if he noticed that I was gorgeous.

  Also, I look good in black when I am my usual shade of winter pale.

  As though guessing where my thoughts trended, Ambrose/Caleb made an appearance. He was dressed casually in linen slacks and a cotton shirt of finest Liberty lawn. The shirt sported palm trees; the slacks had been tailor-made.

  The clothes were casual, but some men have a certain male gravitas that overcomes even silly attire. They wear their clothes rather than letting the clothes wear them. Perhaps it was just the role he’d been playing for me since I arrived, but I kept seeing him as a serious man of upright posture in a dark wool suit and white linen shirt that was stiff with too much starch, and I had the feeling that no amount of Jimmy Buffett casual wear was going to change that. The sober wolf had been spotted hiding under his eclectic sheep’s clothing. That he was hiding at all was very interesting.

  The wolf had no trouble finding me among the ficus leaves, and pulled up a stool beside me without asking. Again I noticed his eyes, as black as a witch’s cat and every bit as curious.

  “I prefer you without a mustache,” I said when he failed to speak. “I don’t feel like I’m looking into the face of a walrus. And it’s easy to tell when you’re smiling.”

  Ambrose caressed his chin, a gesture Max had often made after he shaved his winter beard, and it made me wonder if Ambrose had been sporting chin fur in the recent past.

  “There is a school of thought which holds that after forty a man’s responsible for the face he has.”

  “Hm. Your face is completely unlined.” I pointed out gently, “I think the theory must therefore be flawed. If you’re really Ambrose Bierce, of course.”

  “I sleep the sleep of the just these days.” He smiled slightly and gestured to the bartender. A moment later a shot glass of whisky came skating down the polished smoothness of the bar. He intercepted the speeding alcohol and set the glass in front of me without spilling a drop. “Go ahead. Any woman who loves green olives as much as you isn’t going to enjoy sweet drinks. You don’t have to pretend in front of me.”

  He gestured again and a second shot glass came skating our way. The bartender was grinning. I think he enjoyed showing off. Ambrose captured this one as well.

  “There�
��s a similar saying about women’s faces,” I remarked, taking a sip of whisky. It wasn’t a brand I recognized but I liked the smoky smoothness as I swallowed.

  “Yes?”

  “After forty, you’d better give your face to Estée Lauder or you get what you deserve.”

  Ambrose nodded. “Will you have dinner with me?” he asked.

  “Of course.” He wasn’t being coy, and I decided not to be either. Ambrose was interested in me, but not because of my little black dress. Or not solely because of the dress. That left me feeling more pleased than piqued.

  He picked up his whisky and stood. I followed suit, though I was more careful getting off the stool, since I had a longer drop, higher heels and a short skirt.

  Ambrose led the way out an unnoticed side door and to a small round table set up on a rug laid over a clear patch of sand. There was a definite breeze and the smell of rain in the air, and the shifting currents made the tiny flames inside their glass bowls dance wildly.

  I had thought that the in-room guidebook was perhaps indulging in hyperbole when it called this restaurant a culinary paradise, but for once the praise was insufficient. The food cost about as much as God’s eyeteeth and smelled like something they’d eat at a heavenly barbecue where everything was cooked by cherubim. Guests understood this and spoke in a reverential hush. All except Mr. Loud, who drew a frown from Ambrose as he bellowed an off-color joke and slurped his wine. I saw Ambrose’s right eye twitch, and a moment later there was a pained exclamation and someone said: “David, did you back into a candle?”

  Ambrose smiled at this, a not-very-nice grin that held a certain mischief. Suddenly slightly on edge, in a good way, I crossed my legs, enjoying the whisper of silk on silk as my stockings rubbed together. I felt ready to play any game.

  Ambrose’s head turned my way and he stared at my legs as though he, too, could hear my hosiery’s murmurs. His smile changed and I thought that there was actually a chance that he might eventually charm me out of my garter belt.

  “What do you think of my island?” he asked, raising his eyes before the gaze could go on long enough to be rude. I was a lady and I expected men to treat me that way. Ambrose understood this, or at least understood that I expected to be treated politely. “Lady” would have carried a slightly different definition in his day.

  “I think that I should have come years ago.”

  It was no idle comment. Everything on the island was green and lush and usually wet. If I don’t mention this in every other paragraph it is because I don’t like to be redundant, but feel free to mentally insert any of these adjectives. The island was beautiful—is beautiful. To call it paradise would be understatement. Which only goes to show that even paradise can have its problems if you bring them with you. Still, any shadows hanging over me that night were my own doing and not the fault of the geography.

  I touched the linens as I settled into my seat. The damask was heavy and, though I couldn’t be sure, felt old. One can still buy linens with five-hundred-thread count, but they tend to be quite stiff. The tablecloth draped beautifully.

  There was a bowl of flowers on the table, a kind of bloom I didn’t recognize. I bent over the blossoms and breathed warily. At first sniff, I recoiled a bit. The scent was a mishmash of dirt, feral moss, marsh gas, and the bittersweet of the crushed peel of pomegranate that reminded me of childhood Christmases. But on second smelling, I noticed that there was also the barest hint of lemon. I wouldn’t wear it as a perfume, but oddly enough, the smell managed to stimulate my appetite.

  “The local name for the flower is The Hunger Plant.”

  I looked at my companion and again marveled at his resemblance to Ambrose Bierce. Except the eyes, I reminded myself. Ambrose Bierce hadn’t had such dark eyes. No one I knew had eyes like this. They were a bit spooky.

  A stray breeze blew a strand of hair across my face. My hair has never been well-mannered and I am always plucking it out of my eyes and mouth. As I pushed the offending lock aside, I caught a whiff of something unpleasant that raised the small hairs on the back of my neck. I can’t describe the smell exactly, but it made me think of a sly winter wind in the hour before dawn, creeping through empty beer gardens near my apartment, licking up the spilled lager in the cracks between the stones and biting at the abandoned picnic tables with sharp, gnawing teeth that could eventually splinter wood. It wasn’t an odor that belonged on the island.

  “You smell it?” he asked me, eyes narrowing.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. But the wind has shifted around to a new direction. I’ve never seen it blow northeast to southwest at this season.”

  “Could it mean a storm?” I asked uneasily, recalling some of the recent weather disasters in the area that had carried high body counts.

  “No,” he said slowly. “I would know if there was a storm coming. At least if it were coming tonight.”

  “How?” I asked, half expecting him to lick his finger and stick it in the air and then come up with some fey folk wisdom like red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

  “Satellite hookup,” he said prosaically. For one moment, I actually thought he was—for reasons I couldn’t even begin to guess—lying. Then he added: “We don’t do TV, phones or Internet in the cottages since it ruins the whole primitive paradise experience, but as a matter of safety we do get regular weather reports and have contact with the big island in case of emergencies.”

  “Oh. Good,” I said, feeling a bit stupid for having been so imaginative.

  A waiter appeared, bearing a large platter adorned with a number of goodies, including the tuna I had requested on the dining card turned in at the front desk earlier that day. True to his word, Ambrose had also arranged for some olives, but these were gigantic and stuffed with something I couldn’t at first identify.

  “Blanched horseradish,” he said, guessing what I was thinking as I chewed my way through the first of the green globes piled in the small teak bowl.

  “I’m going to have to go on blood-pressure meds if I keep this up,” I said as I swallowed and then licked the brine from my lips. “These are delicious though.”

  “I’m glad that I could so easily please you.”

  “Good whisky, good olives—I’m easy.”

  “Somehow, I really doubt that.”

  “What gave me away?” I asked, just playing at conversation. I liked his voice. Swiveling sideways, I crossed one leg over the other. There is more than one way to flirt.

  “Seamed stockings.” Ambrose smiled appreciatively. “I haven’t seen them in half a century. Only a particularly adventuresome kind of woman would wear them.”

  I found myself smiling back. Adventuresome woman? I liked that. A new me couldn’t do better than to be adventuresome.

  Seamed stockings—Cuban style, they are sometimes called—are a pain to get on. It takes forever to get the seam running up the back of the leg perfectly straight. It generally requires two mirrors. Then you have to attach your garters just so, or the stockings begin to spiral inward and the seams get crooked. Straight seams are very controlled and sexy, even a bit dominatrix-styled; crooked seams make you look way too la dolce vita. And, finally, you can’t carry the look off in anything under a three-inch heel. Four is even better. Very few women wear actual stockings anymore, let alone with four-inch heels. They prefer to risk yeast infections in pantyhose and avoid the orthopedist. I think they have their priorities confused.

  “What’s it like here on New Year’s Eve?” I asked.

  “Quiet. We aren’t like some of the resorts that do saturnalian orgies to welcome in the New Year.”

  “I’ve never been to an orgy,” I replied.

  “They’re overrated.”

  I was about to ask if he knew this from firsthand experience when he spoke again.

  “Do you feel it?” he asked suddenly, leaning forward. The table was small. With a little leaning on my part I could bring my lips within kissing distance.

>   Instead, I froze while I did a quick check of my senses. I could see nothing alarming, the odd scent was gone, and all I could hear was soft water easing up on the sand.

  “Um…no.” Jumpy. I was feeling very jumpy and couldn’t think why. Again I smoothed my arms, trying to rid them of the feeling of tiny stings and shocks that danced over the skin.

  “Ah.” He sat back a bit. “A pity.”

  “What is it?” I nearly whispered.

  “It’s the sound of a plot thickening.” His eyes were very warm as they looked into mine, which I know widened for an instant.

  Pretending to be annoyed, I reached out with my foot and kicked his leg. Not hard, but with enough force that his leg should have moved. It didn’t. I might as well have nudged a tree.

  “You knew Mark Twain, didn’t you?” I asked, changing the subject. I did not hide my legs away, though. My skirt had inched up just enough for the edge of my garters to show. Ambrose didn’t stare but I was betting he could see them with his peripheral vision.

  “Yes. I liked Twain. We knew each other quite well. And Bret Harte was my editor at Overland. He published my first story, ‘The Haunted Valley’”

  “You were also friends with H. L. Mencken. But you hated Oscar Wilde. I have never read a more comprehensive excoriation of a fellow writer. What did he do to annoy you?”

  Ambrose appeared both surprised and pleased that I would know this.

  “It’s true. I detested him with the blazing hot passion of a million suns. The bastard was arrogant, a genius but contemptuous of everyone…and he reminded me of me. Except he always wore that infernal carnation in his buttonhole, along with that damned floppy necktie. He was a fop, a disgrace to the Irish race. And he got paid five thousand dollars for that speaking tour. Worst of all, he had the nerve to invade the sanctity of the Bohemian Club, which was where I reigned as the literary genius!” He grinned. “I used to care about things like that.”