Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

It came to me that day on the F train, coming back from Coney Island. You had on that little peach-colored dress and Wayfarers, and your nose was burnt. You were eating a cherry ice, and it came to me, ‘All it ever was was talking in our sleep, that’s all…Just talking in my sleep.’”

“I knew that’s what it meant,” she whispered. Her face was soft now, and her eyes were bright and deep.

“I had to get on with my life. And I did. I got over you, and twenty years went by, and then one day the phone rang and there you were. It was as if no time had passed at all. And to lose you again…”

“I understand,” she said. She took his hand in hers and put it in her lap. “You know what it is for me?”

“What?”

“There was this time in my life, Cell, long ago now, at Northfield and those first years in New York, when I felt better than I do now, better than I am. I felt clearer in myself, more confident, in touch with something…I almost want to say holy—I know that sounds ridiculous….”

“It doesn’t.”

“I felt that way when I was in my teens and twenties. I don’t even remember where I lost it. I just know I did. I woke up one day and it was gone. And now I’m forty-two. I gave up on ever feeling that again almost twenty years ago. I thought, That’s part of growing up, it’s just the human lot. Now here I am, and here you are, and suddenly I feel that way again. And it’s not that what I felt for Ransom wasn’t true, Marcel—it was for a long time. It’s just that, after an even longer one, it was over, and I haven’t wanted it to be. I kept thinking there had to be some way to coax it back to life. I feel like the condemned person; it’s eleven fifty-nine and I’m still waiting for the governor’s call. But it isn’t going to happen, is it?”

He held her gaze, then his eyes drifted, and hers followed his. The mantel clock said 12:15.

“Shit,” she said. “Oh, shit, Marcel. I knew. After all his talk of how he’s changed and how hard he means to try, to find out he’s been off his meds…When he told me that, I felt something just go crack inside me. That was it. I used to love him, now I don’t. Now I love you, and you love me. You do, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“It’s just that simple, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Oh,” she said, “oh, Cell, I’ve been so scared of this conversation, so scared. I put it off and put it off for months. I told myself it was because of Hope and Charlie, but what am I teaching them—to go down with the ship? To stick it out even when it’s dead? That’s not what I want them to remember when they look back at my life. And Ran. I feel so bad for him, Marcel. Now I have you, and you have me, but who does Ransom have? He’s out there somewhere with a gun, and if he hurt himself…But, the truth is, every time I’ve ever tried to pull away, he’s lured me back by getting sick. For years, I’ve let myself be held hostage with that threat, and I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m just not.”

“It’s hard, though, isn’t it?”

She squeezed his hands. “So hard. So hard. Thank you for seeing that. It’s like dying, Cell.”

He reached out and wiped her cheek. “Do you know what your boy Faulkner said, the one thing that really made me think he might have been as great as everybody said? He said, ‘It takes an awful lot of character to quit anything when you’re losing.’”

“Oh,” she said, stricken. “Oh, it’s true, isn’t it? But I’m happy, too, Marcel. I’ve wanted to say this to you for the longest time. You knew, didn’t you?”

“How would I have known, Claire?”

“You’re right,” she answered, stroking his face and smiling as tears ran down her cheeks. “How would you? I’ve been denying it for months, haven’t I? I am de Queen of de Nile, aren’t I?”

“You are,” he said, smiling, too, holding her wet face between his hands, “you are de fucking Queen of de fucking Nile.”

And now she kisses him, and the kiss is like a book that seizes them and neither can put down. At the end of every chapter, they’re compelled to turn the page, into a new adventure, and it goes on and on, and they’re lost in it and lose all sense of time, and when it ends, they’re refreshed like dreamers who awake and have no idea how long they’ve slept.

Then Claire stands up and offers him her hand.

Upstairs, in the big bed, which isn’t hers and Ransom’s anymore, which, as of tonight, is only Claire’s, she whispers, “Even if we do this, we can still turn back, right?”

Marcel gazes down, unsmiling, with tender fearlessness, and answers, “I don’t think so, Claire.” And then he drops his face against her neck, and they begin.

FORTY-SEVEN

Walking from Clarisse’s back home through the swamp that day, Addie all but decides to leave. She doesn’t take Clarisse’s threats lightly, doesn’t take them lightly in the least. Yet she doesn’t go, and why? Addie hardly knows the reason. Deep down, she is angry, too, angry both with Clarisse and like Clarisse. Addie’s angry at the war, at the way her marriage has turned out, at life, her life, which is not what she expected, not what she was promised and felt herself entitled to. She’s still waiting, waiting somewhere deep inside, for the true thing to start. And it hasn’t. There’s a part of her, connected to this anger, that won’t be driven out—not by Clarisse, or anyone. And so that night, instead of packing to join Blanche and Delphine