Sometime later Christian disappeared, and “In the Mood” blared from the roof. They all strolled out to the dance floor, pleasantly buzzed. A second bottle of absinthe had mysteriously appeared and swung from Zoey’s hand. Andrew felt pretty sure Tommy Dorsey would roll over in his big band-loving grave if he saw Zoey and Christian’s interpretation of swing. Simon held on to his drink at the edge of the dance floor, but Margot had retreated and sat on the edge of a planter watching, her foot twisting almost imperceptibly to the music.
“Can Simon dance?” Emily asked with a little hiccup, her shoulder brushing Andrew’s.
“Like nobody alive.”
“Then why isn’t he?”
“Fear of failure.”
Finally Christian, gasping for air, announced, “Enough!” and trotted over to the gramophone, pulled out an album, and smiled. He gently placed down the needle. The haunting swells of violins misted through the air. Eyes burning, he found Zoey. “Come here,” he whispered, and rather than wait, walked toward her, enclosing her in his arms. They rocked in the blissful contentment of two stowaways.
“Dance with me,” Emily commanded Andrew. She swayed slightly, the air heady about them. Her eyes reflected the stars, each and every one. He reached out his hand.
“Are you ready?” he whispered. She nodded.
He took Emily Thomas in his arms. Truly took her in his arms. He was holding the woman of his heart against his own, in a room furnished by a dead man, while a table of Spotted Dick, jambalaya, and red hot dogs lay half-eaten nearby. It was bloody perfect.
“Stardust” continued with its music of years gone by. Her nose, straight and small, twitched against a fluttering of curls. He could not look away from a face this beautiful—the force was too strong. She must have felt it too, and her body nestled closer.
Closing his eyes, he sang to her. This old song, these old words, as if he had sung them to her before, as if he had held her gorgeous and radiant, their bodies moving in a tempo lovers had known for all eternity. The haunting melody echoed along the garden wall, and he was with her “once again.”
“Andrew,” she breathed into his neck as though she were unsure. His hand found her face and lifted it. His breath caught as he saw tears glisten in her eyes, reflecting the candlelight. There was an invitation in her gaze; he knew it.
Was this the right thing? Was it too fast? Could he stop once he started? He had never doubted his control so much. His gaze, taking the place of his lips, moved from her face to her neck, to her shoulders. Something wicked and untamed rose up in him. The smell of the night air perfumed her skin, and her eyes flashed with a longing so familiar his step faltered for a moment.
There were other people here. His mind was telling him this. You cannot ravage this girl. You cannot peel her dress off as slowly and wantonly as you desire. You cannot lay her down and cup her head against your shoulder and whisper what you’ll do to her, what you’ll make her feel, what you’ll make her cry out. You cannot. But bloody hell, you want to.
“Andrew, I need to tell you something. In the park, I…I did see you play. Once. I wanted to tell you, but I thought you’d think I was some crazed fan. I know how I’d feel if someone stalked me—I’d be terrified. And I know you must get that all the time. Not that I stalked you…” She seemed conflicted now, as if she had backed herself into a corner. What she saw in his face must have given her courage to go on. “I know how you crave your privacy. I thought you’d think less of me, somehow, that it was better if—”
“If what?”
“If you didn’t know what I felt.”
“And what do you feel?”
She said nothing; they had ceased dancing. The air in the room had gone entirely still as they stared at each other. Her eyes were so light, they were almost silver. Then without warning, her hands found his jacket and her lips found his. The taste of music, of light, coursed through him. It sang like a spirit, loose and wild. Then his body stiffened in realization. The truth of what was happening slammed into him. Emily Thomas was kissing him, and he was blown away like Margot’s stardust. He kissed her back like a madman. He had no choice. She melted in his arms, giving herself away. With all his strength, he tried to make the kiss gentle, lingering, not filled with the force that fuses metals and explodes stars. He failed miserably.
He reluctantly pulled away, the taste of licorice and Emily still ripe on his tongue. Taking a ragged breath, he kissed her forehead first, then her eyes, then her lips. He rested his forehead against hers, and they rocked back and forth, cocooned in each other’s arms.
“Andrew,” she whispered, her lips pressed to his ear, her fingers gently laced through his hair. “I need to tell you something else.”
“Hmmm…” he nuzzled into her cheek, euphoric, in space. Tell me anything. Tell me you love me. Tell me you want me.
“I take no prisoners.”
He chuckled and kissed her again.
“Oh, and Andrew?”
“Yes, Emily?” he responded dreamily.
“Margot and Simon just set fire to the canopy.”
10
* * *
Why wouldn’t it stop? Please make it stop. Someone, anyone. Make the sunlight stop.
Emily peered from under her ice pack and moaned at the flash of brightness. “What time is it?”
“No effin’ clue. I think it’s a.m., though,” Zoey mumbled. She was stretched out on the living room sofa like the spoils of war. Her multi-colored hair medusaed around the collar of her pajama clad body, and the back of her hand tumbled over her eyes like she should be tied to some railroad track. Margot was hunched over in the nearby club chair and curled up in a ball, looking like black-haired death.
Emily had chosen to lie on the floor, as it was the only surface that wasn’t moving, although the ceiling rippled every now and then. Oscar Wilde was right about absinthe—tulips could be growing from her legs, or maybe they had replaced her legs, since she actually had to drag herself from her bedroom a few minutes ago, roused by the wounded animal sounds of her friends.
In their war with The Lost Boys, they had lost the latest battle brilliantly and went down in a blaze of glory. Now where was the ravaging and pillaging? Or had they slept through that too? God, she hoped not. How much more mortification could she have endured in one night? She moaned at what must be going through Andrew Hayes’ mind this morning.
“That bad?” asked Zoey.
“Worse,” Emily muttered back and placed the icepack over her face as the room began to reel again. Her hand pressed down on the cool hardwood floor to steady herself. He was there beneath her, just a few beams and joists away.
Though perhaps he was still asleep, a casualty of war himself, nursing his own wounds and lying there on the floor with his wild hair, his sweat pant clad legs falling lazily apart, a hand tossed over his eyes. Or maybe the party was just business as usual for him given his lifestyle, and he had already finished running five miles after shot-gunning his third Red Bull. Or maybe he was hiding from the bat-shit crazed she-devils he’d experienced last night, and music would be blaring through the floorboards any moment in retribution. Oh, please God, not that. The inside of her skull would shatter out her eyes.
“Just so I understand,” Emily said, titling her face to the side to get a good look at Margot from underneath her ice pack. “You were explaining a comet’s trajectory to Simon using a candelabra and a flaming piece of red hot dog?”
Margot pawed her question away like a bear coming out of hibernation, as if the thought was apparently too gruesome to discuss. Then one of her eyes peeled opened. “Did you really have to heave the ice chest over the both of us? Was that necessary?”
Actually, it was Andrew’s quick thinking that had saved the day. Emily tried to help, but he hauled her to his side as he muttered something about ruining her beautiful dress.
Margot had stood there dripping wet, hair plastered over her eyes, nipples erect, and her black thong clearly outlined wh
en she commenced wailing the litany of the saints. Simon stared at her as if she were the second coming of Christ, although Emily was pretty sure Jesus never used verbs like that, nor in that particular order, or for that matter even owned a push up bra. Christian and Zoey, who were still dancing while Rome burned around them, narrowly avoided the ice that scuttled around their feet.
Once satisfied the fire was completely out, Andrew stepped back and with a curse chucked the empty chest aside where it clattered loudly on the tiles. His eyes met Emily’s. “I should have let them burn.”
The anger in his tone, the ache in it, was the sexiest sound she had ever heard, and she shuddered in response. Mistaking her trembling for a chill, he immediately took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders and ran his hands roughly up and down her arms. She nestled closer in response and felt the heat of his lips on her forehead.
“Oh, Emily…sweet girl.”
Her body caught at his words, remembering their frantic embrace from moments before. But it wasn’t only that kiss that ignited her memories; it was the kisses before that, and before that still. It was the kisses from another lifetime that reverberated through her, and laughter and music, brassy and loud. The crush of bodies surrounding her on a dance floor, swinging and twisting as a pompadoured man crooned at an old standing microphone in front of a row of trombones and big band music stands. And she felt the ferociousness of a man’s arms surrounding her, grabbing her, spinning her, kissing her wildly and without restraint. Sweet girl. Sweet girl.
Suddenly from across the room they heard a scream. Their embrace shattered, and they whipped about to see what had happened. Simon lay on the floor, dazed, his lip bleeding. Margot towered over him, her stiletto bearing down on his chest, her fist raised, raring to punch him in the jaw—again. Andrew swore under his breath and launched himself across the dance floor.
Five expletive-filled, snarling, punch-blocked minutes later, the fires were finally put out and the boxers had retreated to their respective corners. Beyond mortified, Emily gathered up her two inebriated friends and promptly escorted them out the door before anyone could wreak more havoc. Her last image of Andrew was that of his tall, tightly wound body, sleeves rolled up over his forearms as he studied the canopy in disgust, his eyes opaque in the smoldering remains. It left her with an inexplicable feeling of sadness.
Zoey’s cell phone rang on the end table, blaring a syrupy version of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” into Margot’s ear. In stake-through-the-heart fashion, she smashed it with her hand and nearly threw it against the wall, only deciding on Zoey as a target at the last moment before she returned to her fetal position.
Once Zoey had slinked off to her bedroom with her phone, Emily propped herself on her elbow and looked at Margot. What had passed between her and Simon last night before they committed arson had clearly unnerved her. She appeared pale and severe in the morning light, the remains of her mascara giving her a prizefighter’s aura. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought that was obvious. I don’t like being made a fool of.”
“He didn’t make a fool of you.”
“No, I was entirely capable of doing that myself.”
“Margot.”
“I don’t want this, any of this, understand? Just because you two have decided to play house doesn’t mean I have to make it a threesome.”
Emily felt stung. “What are you afraid of, getting hurt?”
“Please, I’m nearly thirty. I’m too old for that dreck. And he’s what, twenty-three, twenty-four maybe, and that’s chronologically—let’s not even try to determine where he falls emotionally. Every time I’m near that man, he’s either snide or openly hostile. I have to deal with a thinly veiled version of that with the good ol’ boys on the faculty every day, so I have no desire to allow some faux-intellectual rocker to do the same.”
“If you gave him a chance—”
“He doesn’t want a chance. He wants a fuck. Which would be all fine and good if I wasn’t sharing a roof with him. No, I take that back. It would never be fine and good, because what he really wants is a conquest.”
“Isn’t that all you’ve ever wanted?”
She didn’t answer right away. Emily could imagine her rubbing her long fingers together, the way she did whenever her words hadn’t matched her thoughts.
“I like order, Emily. I like the scientific process, the ability to predict an outcome. I’m not some romantic-comedy girl who meets a boy she hates and once they’re thrown together enough they fall madly in love. That’s too much risk—it’s chaos, actually. It’s not a state I wish to enter.”
“But you believe in love, right?” Emily pressed in a voice that made her question whom she was asking.
“I believe that last night was a result of absinthe goggles. That whatever transpired between all parties, good, bad, or indifferent, was a direct result of psychotropic alcohol. We were drunk and high. If you want to call that love, then by all means, be my guest.”
Emily’s stomach churned with the insecurity that lives in every woman, no matter how accomplished or beautiful. It was the drop down a missing step, the wobble and the recovery, made with a laugh and a tight swallow. Margot was right; everything to do with Andrew was chaos. A constant falling.
At that moment, Zoey returned from her call with a huge smile and the announcement, “Simon made us all breakfast. In apology. He wants to know how we like our eggs and take our coffee.”
Both women turned to her in alarm. “What?”
The front door shut behind Emily, and before she knew it, she was running. Having secretly slipped out of her apartment clad in a hastily assembled outfit of jogging shorts, T-shirt, and a jacket, she had left behind her roommates while they dressed for a breakfast she had no intention of attending.
Sweat soon covered her face and neck, and before long her muscles burned, the hangover dissipating in the exercise. She reached Golden Gate Park, the surrounding greenness drenching her senses, the air salty and foggy at this early hour. The coolness felt sharp against her hot face, a stark relief. The Conservatory of Flowers passed in a blur. She ran, not even stopping to enjoy the quiet emptiness of the rose garden.
You’re a coward, Emily Thomas, a coward, the fog seemed to whisper to her, but she ignored it, willing her body to run faster; the macadam whizzed by like a black wheel under her feet. Nearing the ocean, she yanked her jacket around her as the fog became denser, and soon she could barely see three feet in front of her. She was forced to stop and slam her hands down on her knees, panting madly.
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” she cried, dragging in a gasp of air. “What the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t face him. The first thing out of his mouth is going to be ‘about last night, Emily…’”
The gray shroud remained silent, a distant fog horn sounding mournful and lost. She felt the need to cry with it, so lost in her emotions. She backhanded away a tear. “Oh, damn it to hell.”
The wind blew coldly in reply, and she shuddered. She took a few steps forward, trying to find a place to collapse, when she realized she was standing on the edge of a small lake and there ahead of her loomed a series of tall, stately columns.
The Portals of the Past crept out of the mist. A grand and ghostly structure, a portico without a house, it was a survivor of the great earthquake and fire. Now surrounded in cattails and tall grass, it had been moved to the park for remembrance. She stared at it, swept up in its mystery—a symbol of perseverance, regardless of tragedy. The wind blew bitterly, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
“So beautiful,” she said. “So lonely.”
At her words, her skin tingled like ice. The spirits of long ago that haunted this grove seemed to whisper into the gray air. All you have is now. Now. And then soon, no more.
She swallowed down a nameless ache in her throat. “But I’m afraid.”
Of what.
“Of pain, of rejection, of losing him.”
Never.
&n
bsp; The word hissed through the rushes of the lake. Never.
“Then what should I do?”
In answer, the skin on her arms broke out in goose bumps and a shiver ran down her spine. Standing amidst the columns was a frighteningly beautiful woman, a striking woman. Her short red hair curled about her porcelain face. Her dark eyebrows arched in question. She was clothed in a stylish gray suit and pumps, and she glimmered as she walked. Yet she wore the shadows of death in the hollows of her cheekbones and the cautiousness of her eyes.
“Nora?” Emily whispered.
“That would be Noreen, my dear. But Nora will do.”
Shaking from head to toe, she ventured, “Thank…thank you for the dress, it was yours, wasn’t it?”
The ghost nodded and smiled, though her image rippled a bit when she did so. “Was it a success?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, didn’t you see?”
“I can’t go up there.” Her sultry voice shook a bit, but she raised her chin and persevered. “It’s all part of the rules, you see. Dreadful business. Nicholas has his rooms, I have mine. And never the twain shall meet. Makes for awful dinner parties. I had to entertain Dashiell and Lillian all by myself last month.”
Emily collapsed onto a stone stoop, her knees weak. “You, ah, there are others of you?”
“Of course! It’s San Francisco after all. People are simply dying to come here. Sorry, not the most tasteful of puns.” She smiled for the first time.
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 14
