It was nice, while it lasted. Alfonse would never have imagined himself content in his own company after a lifetime surrounded by fans, colleagues, friends, lovers. Age did strange things to a man. As did a failing body. When the mind was the only part left functioning, it had more than enough time to remember, reflect, regret. Two days, it appeared, was his limit, too.
Laboring to the door, he took deep, even breaths. He rested his hand on the knob. Shoulders as straight as he could get them, he opened the door. “Livy.” Her name gushed out of him in a breath he hoped she heard as the joy it was, and not his failing lungs. “You gorgeous creature. Come in, come in.”
Old. So old. Weren’t they all? But Alfonse saw her still, that menace with her red hair and whipcrack blue eyes, transposed over the frail frame. He recalled curves and softness and a willingness to let him explore every lovely inch. Were he not so withered himself, he might even have entertained the notion of seeing how much of it remained.
“Sit, sit.” He gestured to a leather chair set in the sunshine streaming through his massive window. “Shall I call for tea? Coffee? Anything at all?”
“I’d ask for a bourbon but I guess that’s not in the cards for either one of us.”
“Sadly, no.”
“I’m fine. Sit, Alfie, before you topple over.”
He did as he was told. Alfonse had used up all his energy to deny her in his two days of solitude.
“So you’re finished avoiding me now, are you?” she asked.
“I have not been avoiding you, Livy. I simply needed time to acclimate to my new surroundings.”
Her gaze traveled the length and breadth of the room, came to rest on him. “This was Cornelius’s suite, you know. It’s been vacant nearly a decade. Waiting. Shall I wonder why?”
“You can wonder, but I will tell you it was in his will. This was not just his dream. It was our dream, this home where old writers go to die.”
“For fuck’s sake, Alfie. I was there, too. Or is it true you’re losing your marbles and don’t remember?”
“My marbles are all accounted for,” he said. “Cornelius was content to be here to usher in those old greats who came before us. I wasn’t.”
“He was one of those old greats.”
“And I was the protégé he took under his wing.”
“Protégé?” Olivia chuffed. “Still in denial, I see.”
“I deny nothing. Cornelius was . . . I loved him. Just not only him. As you know.” He wagged a finger at her. “Intimately.”
“And yet you didn’t come to his funeral, and have not visited me even once since I became an inmate here. That is what I wonder why, Alfie. Why it is you waited so long.”
“Inmate?” Alfonse laughed softly, the only way he could. “You are free to leave, my dear. No one demands you stay.”
“And where would I go? My children despise me. And don’t think you can sidetrack me. Why didn’t you come?”
Alfonse let his shoulders slump. It was too much effort to keep them square and talk at the same time. Memories and regret took their toll, too. “We had not seen one another in a long time, Livy. It was better for him that way. I couldn’t give him what he wanted. What he deserved. He understood that. He loved me, not what he wished I would be.”
She chuckled softly. “You still haven’t said why you didn’t come for his funeral.”
Love. Respect. Regret. Relief. “He was already gone,” he said. “What was the point? Let this go now, Livy. Please. I am here now.”
Olivia’s chin raised. He knew that combative look. So well. So dear. The spun sugar of her hair still held the gentle waves he used to lose his fingers in for hours, for days. Her face was that of an old woman, but within the lines he found her youth.
“It’s good to see you, Livy.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” Her smile melted a little of the ice in her eyes. “So what’s wrong? Why are you here?”
“I’m dying, of course,” he said. “My heart and lungs are failing slowly every day. My liver and kidneys are shot to hell. One day, something will simply stop. I’ve had DNR orders written up. It won’t be long I’m a resident here.”
“How long?”
“A month? A year? No more.”
“You never know,” Olivia said. “They didn’t give me long when I got to the Pen. It’s been almost six years now.”
“You did not abuse yourself the way I did.” Alfonse inhaled carefully. Slowly. Already he was light-headed with the exertion of speech. “A lifetime of cigarettes, bourbon, and bad choices takes its toll.”
“You lived well, Alfie. Would you change anything? Really?”
Would he? Alfonse shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t. We were the music makers, for a time, the dreamers of dreams, were we not?”
Olivia nodded. “The world is so different now.”
“As those we once took it from thought as well, I imagine.” Pain, soft and stealthy, rippled across his chest. Alfonse quelled the urge to clutch it. “Forgive me. I tire easily. I need to rest.”
“Then rest.” She patted his knee. “I’ll sit here and read.”
“You don’t have to keep an old man company.”
“No, I don’t. Which is why you should be grateful I offered. Don’t be a martyr. It’s unbecoming.”
“Vanity prohibits any argument from me.”
“As if you’d win.” She chuffed. “Shall I read aloud?”
“I’d like that.”
“What shall we read?”
“You pick. Something new. Something I’ve never read. Or written.”
Olivia moved, slowly, to the extensive bookshelves he himself had not had the energy or will to inspect. Pulling a book from the stacks, she made cooing sounds, like a mother to her child. “This one.” She handed him the book. “I’m surprised they included it in your collection.”
“This is a children’s book.”
“Only an old man would say such a thing.” Olivia’s eyes twinkled. Ah, he remembered that, too. “You mark my words, this is going to be bigger than even the greediest publicists have ever dreamed about. You’ll want to be ready when the next one releases. If you’ve not expired, we shall read that one together, too.”
To the rustle of turning pages, the whisper of her practiced voice, Alfonse Carducci closed his eyes. A boy who lived, under the staircase, in the home of his terrible relatives. A book he’d never have read but for coming here to this place he’d always known he’d die in, alongside all those others who once ruled the world.
Sunlight, warm on his face. Sweet humming. Disoriented musings involving an owl perched upon his armrest and a giant riding a motorcycle. Alfonse slipped from slumber, certain he’d died in his sleep. The proof was in the humming, and the angel reaching into the sunlight. He’d seen her before. A fleeting glimpse sometime in his past.
She was, now, warm and lovely on his arm. An unfamiliar gift. A grief to come. Always and always, his . . .
The words filled his head the way they once had; in those days words came so swiftly his pen could not keep up. Notebooks filled with scrawl and scratch he could scarcely decipher days later, but could only coax out of memory in fractured bits and jagged pieces.
“Please,” he said. “My laptop. There, on the desk.”
He shouldered higher in his chair. Olivia was gone, but the young woman who’d first been in his rooms upon his arrival in the Pen was already grabbing the laptop computer from his desk. He reached. She handed. Words already sifted out of dreaming, out of the world.
“Damn this thing!” He pounded on keys as if that would boot it up faster. “Please, write this down. Hurry. Hurry!”
The young woman yanked the band from her hair as she darted back to the desk, but not before he saw what she tried so valiantly to hide. Beauty and Beast. Jekyll and Hyde. Proof of the duality in every human soul—hers was simply worn in the open. Or not so open. She hid her face behind her hair, angled the worst of it away from him.
&nbs
p; “Go ahead. I’m ready.”
Alfonse gave her his words, a mad jumble that didn’t sound as lovely coming from his mouth as it would have flying out of the tips of his fingers. There was enough to pull the beauty back from oblivion, later when his computer finished booting up.
“Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand for the notebook. “And forgive me. I was dreaming. I didn’t want to forget.”
“It’s an honor, sir,” she said. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Head bowed, gaze on the chair leg or her shoes or the pattern in the carpet, she was a golden cascade standing before him. Model tall, but not model thin. Voluptuous, like the bombshells of his lusty youth, when he fell as hard for the feminine curve of a hip as he did for the masculine cut of a shoulder. She’d been in his rooms quite often; he’d caught her several times lingering. Young Alfonse would have opened his eyes, caught her hand, and seduced her into his bed. Old Alfonse had to be content imagining it.
“Tell me your name?” he asked.
“Cecibel,” she answered. “Cecibel Bringer. I’m an orderly here.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Cecibel. A lovely name, for a lovely young woman.”
A sound, something like laughter. A slight shift of her shoulders. A small exhalation of breath. “Charming. So the stories are all true.”
“I imagine most of what you may have heard about me is true,” he said. “The good and the bad.”
“A lifetime of hearing things. Some must be lies.”
“Some.” Curiosity burned. Not the desire to see her face; that, he’d already seen. Dr. Kintz’s assessment of her was all wrong. The man was sincere if not very astute. Alfonse’s ability to read body language well enough to transpose it onto a page deduced she was not quiet and shy, not potentially addled by the accident that took half her face. Not mousy and ugly and all those things a first glance would have seen. Alfonse Carducci did not put much stock in first impressions. Human beings were far more complicated. “Would you sit with me?”
“I only came in to collect your breakfast tray. I should go.”
“Of course, you have duties.” He waved his hands over his head, an old gesture once full of sarcasm and humor, now one that took his breath away. “Forgive me.”
“It’s not that.” She nearly looked up. Only nearly. “I don’t want to go all fangirl on you, and I will if I get half the chance. You probably get that a lot.”
“Fangirl.” A soft chuckle. Another moment of breath gone. “I have not heard that one before. Yes, I used to get it a lot, and I loved every moment of it. These days, I do not warrant so much attention. I’m a relic of a bygone day.”
“There are whole college courses dedicated to your work.”
“Alfonse Carducci as a subject to be studied, not a writer to be admired.”
“Do you need admiration to be proud of all you’ve accomplished?”
“That, my dear,” he said, “is what we call a loaded question. I don’t need the admiration to feel pride in my work, but do I need it in general? Yes, I do. I’m a vain man, Cecibel. A vain man who happened to have the talent to continuously feed that vanity.”
“I think you sell yourself short, sir.”
“Alfonse, please. And I can assure you there is not a being on the planet who thinks more highly of me than I do.”
A glance through lashes. Progress made. “An enormous ego is a handy shield, Mr. Carducci.”
“Slain by my own words.” Alfonse clutched his heart, part drama, part need. “Touché, my dear. Touché.”
“I’ve read everything you wrote. Wicked Tongues has always been my favorite.”
“Everything?” He sifted through dates and releases. “Even after Night Wings on the Moon?”
She nodded, her gaze again on a chair leg or shoes or carpet.
“A dark story, full of unlikable characters,” he said. “Do you believe it is true, what the critics said of it? That I betrayed my loyal readers writing so dark a tale?”
“I’ve read it more times than I can count,” she said. “I keep it on my bedside table.”
“Didn’t you say Wicked Tongues is your favorite?”
“Yes.” Cecibel picked up his breakfast tray. “I should get back to work.”
“If you must.” He let go a deep breath. Alfonse was tired. Always tired, but Cecibel was right; he lived for admiration. He absorbed it like sunshine, like the drugs keeping his ill-used body going. Waking to words conjured by her presence revived his body, pulled his soul back from the brink of oblivion like nothing had in far too long.
“Cecibel?”
She turned her head, fair side, hand still on the lever of his door. The round blush of her cheek, the slope of her nose, lashes so thick and long they cast shadows, waves of blond hair cascading down the curves of her waist, her back, Cecibel was a fairy princess stepped out of an old German folktale.
“Would you visit me again?” he asked. “When duties don’t conflict?”
Her hand fell from the lever. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Switch . . . um . . . Raymond Switcher has been asking after you,” she stammered. “Many of the residents have. Perhaps you’d like to have one or two of them come visit. Or your nurse can bring you down to the gathering room for a little while.”
“I’m not quite up to that just yet,” he said, and it was true. “I don’t wish to dwell in the past. Not yet, at any rate. And that is what will happen. Reminiscing about the old days when we were young and immortal. But I am lonely here. Indulge a dying old man, my dear. The company of a lovely young woman, a fangirl at that, is exactly what I require to make it through another day.”
A soft chuckle. Musical, from her. “I see the drama hasn’t been embellished either.”
“Not even slightly.”
Her pause lasted far too long. The blush of her cheek burned brighter. “All right, Mr. Carducci. After my shift. As long as you’re still up for it.”
“I will nap the rest of the day to ensure it.”
Cecibel opened the door. “Your nurse will be up soon with your lunch, but can I get you anything before I leave?”
A new heart? A fresh liver would do in a pinch. “No, thank you. I’m content as a cat in the sun right now.”
* * *
How silly it was, to be so aflutter. The man was seventy-nine, and dying. She was enamored of a reputation, of years of hero worship, of a past so grand and wild. But it felt so good. She was new, to him, even if Cecibel felt as if she’d known him all her life. As, in fact, she had. The familiarity, bred in a past long before the one that took everything from her, freed her somehow, from something she’d stopped noticing.
Infatuation offered to gather his breakfast tray when Sal groused about schlepping all the way out to that far wing of the residence to do so. For the third day in a row. Sal thought he was playing her. Or maybe he knew. Infatuation had lingered longer today, tidying up while he slept. It stood beside his chair watching the rise and fall of his chest, even if that felt like crossing the line between fangirl and stalker. He didn’t know. And if he did, Cecibel was pretty certain Alfonse Carducci would get a kick out of it.
Gripping her copy of Dark Wings on the Moon tighter, she smoothed the front of her dress, the hair against the side of her face. She lifted her hand to knock, and froze. In all her years working at the Pen, she’d rarely gone into Dr. Traegar’s private suite; it had already been closed up and waiting when first she was hired. Rumors varied as to why that was so, but all included Alfonse Carducci. Mentor and protégé. Lifelong friends. Lovers. In the weeks since reading of the famous author’s failing health, Cecibel had been in there quite often, tidying. Preparing. Snooping. Dr. Traegar hadn’t only left the suite, but all its contents, to his old friend. Inscriptions in many of the books left little to wonder concerning the nature of their relationship.
“Don’t just stand there, Cecibel,” she muttered. A quick knock before her nerve gave out, and s
he opened the door.
“You are here, at last.” A diminished but still regal Alfonse Carducci sat in the same easy chair, now moved closer to the fireplace kindled to the perfect flicker. In the lines of his face, she saw the man from book jackets, on Johnny Carson. He was there. Oh, he was there. And Cecibel’s heart fluttered all over again.
“Come, sit beside me.” He gestured to the chair opposite. “I took the liberty of making tea. It’s not quite the proper time for tea, but not so far off.”
The second easy chair loomed. Cecibel sat on the edge of the cushion, ankles crossed. She didn’t have to angle her face away; the chair had been set to do that for her. “Can I pour for you?”
“No tea for me, thank you. I’m afraid my doctors don’t allow me caffeine, and I despise that herbal nonsense. I have my glass of water with lemon. And your company. I have all I require.”
Cecibel set her book on the tea table, pleased that her hands didn’t tremble the way her insides did. Pouring herself a cup, she coaxed herself calm. He was just a man. An old, dying man. A resident, and she, one of his caregivers. The fangirl shit had to stop.
“Your copy has seen better days.” He picked up the book from the table, turned it over in his hands. “It is like me. Battered. Dog-eared. Still intact but falling apart.”
She laughed softly. “I suppose it is. Does that bother you? Your book being in less than stellar condition, I mean.”
His smile spread. “A book is like a woman. She should leave your bed with her hair tangled and her clothes on backward. A book without creases is a book that has never known passion.”
She stirred cream and sugar into her tea. There was fire in the old man’s eyes. He’d been waiting all day for this, just as she had. “What about people who love a book so much they want to keep it pristine?”
Alfonse leaned a little closer. “Love is not passion, my dear. Love is sweet and good and righteous. Passion is wild and messy and dangerous.”
The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses Page 2
